Political Flag Waving

When we first landed in Aruba, we immediately noticed all of the cars zooming around that had big, colorful flags on them. There were also flags flying in the front yards of houses along the roads. They were colors like red or green, with letters on them like MEP or AVP. At first we thought they were football teams, but it turns out that they are related to the upcoming election. Each color represents one of the poltical parties. Isn’t that a neat way to support a party? We’re thinking of trying to start it in the US when we get back.

Politics in Aruba are pretty interesting. It’s sort of the classic European parlimentary system, but the scale is much smaller. There are only 21 representatives, so a ruling coalition can be formed with only 11 members. You can read more about it here.

Today we ran into a rally for the AVP party. That’s the local version of the Christian Democrats. Their rally included this big truck that was booming incredibly loud music as it moved through the streets.

One of the cars following the truck saw Peter and gave him a big, green AVP flag. He was extremely excited by this and wants to know all about Arubian politics and has been asking lots of questions about why different people are voting for different parties.

Here’s a picture of Peter with his flag:

He wants to hang it up in his room when we get back.