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Guyana will work with any democratically elected leader …says Foreign Affairs Minister

May 27, 2010 News

Despite the chequered background of former military strongman Desi Bouterse and his showing in the Surinamese elections, Minister of Foreign Affairs Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett said that Guyana must adopt a “wait and see” position.
She added that the Guyana Government will work with any democratically elected leader.
Rodrigues-Birkett said that while Bouterse is not yet declared the President of Suriname, whenever he is, it will represent the will of the people of that country.
Bouterse is closely bound with the military regime that controlled Suriname from 1980 until the beginning of the 1990s.
In February 1980, the government of newly-independent Suriname collapsed after a military coup which declared the country to be a Socialist Republic and saw Bouterse becoming Chairman of the National Military Council.
Though the Suriname Presidency was retained, Bouterse was the nation’s de facto ruler until his resignation in 1988.  He had served briefly as president himself for a period in 1982.
Bouterse was a leading figure in Suriname’s post-independence civil war, and is responsible for the infamous “December murders” of 1982 and events in the Maroon village of Moiwana in 1986.
Since then he has been accused on various occasions of involvement in illegal drug trafficking. In July 1999, he was convicted in absentia in the Netherlands for cocaine trafficking.
The Netherlands has an international warrant for his arrest but Bouterse looks set to become President of Suriname all over again.
Should he get into office, Bouterse wants a deeper connection with South America and that includes bridging the Corentyne River.

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