Opposition leader Jennifer Geerlings-Simons is poised to become Suriname’s first woman president after no other parties put forward a candidate by Thursday’s nomination deadline. The National Assembly is now expected to acclaim the 71-year-old former parliament speaker as head of state at its session on Sunday, 6 July. Geerlings-Simons’s National Democratic Party and five smaller allies control 34 of the legislature’s 51 seats, comfortably exceeding the two-thirds majority required to elect a president. The Progressive Reform Party of incumbent President Chan Santokhi, which holds 17 seats, said it would not field a nominee, citing the lack of a viable governing mandate. A medical doctor who entered politics in 1996 and served a decade as Assembly chair, Geerlings-Simons succeeds NDP founder and former strongman Desi Bouterse, who died in December 2024. Her running mate, 65-year-old former energy minister Gregory Rusland, is set to become vice president. The new administration is due to be sworn in on 16 July, when Santokhi’s five-year term ends.