Eman, ‘Henny’ (Jan Hendrik Albert) (1948– )

Aruban centre-right politician, prime minister 1986–89 and from 1994. In 1978 he succeeded his father as leader of the centre-right Aruban People's Party (AVP) and in the following year he was elected to the Netherlands Antilles parliament. Having secured separate status (but not independence from the Netherlands) for Aruba, in 1986 Eman became the country's first prime minister. He lost power, to Nelson Oduber, of the People's Electoral Movement (MEP), after the January 1989 general election, but returned to office in August 1994, heading a coalition government.

Born into a political family, his grandfather had founded the AVP, which campaigned for separate status for Aruba, the second largest of the six islands of the Netherlands Antilles. Educated in the Netherlands, where he studied law and wrote a masters degree, at the University of Leiden, on the subject of separate status, Eman returned to Aruba to begin a business career.