Democratic Alternative '91
Surinamese political party

The Democratic Alternative '91 (Dutch: Democratisch Alternatief '91, DA'91) is a liberal political party in Suriname.
History
The DA '91 was founded in 1991 when it split off from the National Party of Suriname. The party was founded shortly before the 1991 general election. The intention had been to establish the party in 1991 but the "Telephone Coup" that removed President Ramsewak Shankar from office interfered with the planning.
Winston Jessurun was one of the founders, together with Gerard Brunings. Brunings has stated that when establishing the party they asked the Dutch embassy for programs of Dutch political parties and that of Democrats 66 appealed most to them. With the most significant change being changing Netherlands for Suriname.
In the 1991 elections, the party obtained 9 seats. At the 1996 elections the number of seats dropped to four. It further dropped to two in the 2000 elections and one in the 2005 elections.
The public source identifies “Democratic Alternative '91” as surinamese political party. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Democratic, Alternative and Surinamese.
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This entry incorporates text from “Democratic Alternative '91” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.