The National Democratic Party, the political vehicle of Desi Bouterse, the country's de facto leader since a 1980 coup, finished a distant second with three seats.

At its first session on 13 January 1988, the National Assembly elected the VHP's Ramsewak Shankar as president.

Henck Arron of the NPS, who had led the country as Prime Minister from independence in 1975 until the 1980 coup, became vice president.

To date, this is the only time under Suriname's present constitution that a party or alliance has won enough seats on its own to elect a president.

However, Shankar and Arron only held office for less than two years before being overthrown in 1990 in another coup engineered by Bouterse.