Elections in Suriname 2015— By Dr Rishee Thakur

May 24, 2015 News

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Most Surinamese seem to agree that national elections due tomorrow, represent a referendum on their own strongman Desi Bouterse. They also agree that his 2010 Mega Combination victory was the quintessential performance of third world populism – a shrewd display of grand gestures, serious arm twisting and behind closed-doors negotiation.
It eventually gave him 30 seats in the 51-seat National Assembly (DNA) and the presidency for five years. One assessment saw it as Mr. Bouterse’s considerable “political acumen in aggregating disparate political interests … in establishing a viable coalition government”. In the end, the Alliance not only held and stayed the course but appeared to have convinced some Surinamese that this was the way to go.
Two weeks before the elections Bouterse’s seems to be riding a wave of enthusiasm, convinced that come tomorrow, he is likely to have another five years at the Presidency. Indeed, his New Democratic Party (NDP) is so confident of returning with a clear majority that it has dropped its Mega Combination allies along the way and has opted for a go-it-alone strategy.
Bouterse appears to be singularly popular among young people who seem to have responded to his call for a “new vision”. His carefully crafted message is for young people to stop wallowing in the poverty of a past that is tainted with recriminations and insecurities – perhaps to both forget and go beyond it.
The popular expression “broko a pina tek yu gudu” – leave poverty, pursue the materiality of everyday life (loose translation) – seems to be the mantra that has captivated the imagination of young people. It is estimated that there are a little more than 50,000 young voters on the final list of electors, more than three-quarters of whom will be voting for the first time.
Some of the enthusiasm for the NDP seems to be fed by two things. First, a growing urbanism and a popular youth culture that borrows heavily from the outside – American/European, on the one hand, and Bollywood, on the other.
What is interesting about the obvious clash/outcome is that it seeks to resimulate the abrasions of race/ethnicity that we in Guyana seem to know and easily internalize. For them this is nothing more than the argons of conflicting claims and challenges that are free of hostility and conflict. Second, this can be explained by the fact that political belonging is partly settled in Suriname’s consociational system of ethnic representation.
While the contest of everyday politics is granted, reflected in the contest of elections and the multiplication of ethnic parties, it is not allowed to overflow into the political that will challenge the place of any community (ethnic or otherwise) and their/its place in the system. And it is this overcoming that seems to be the cutting edge of youth culture that the NDP seeks to foreground and retail.
Suriname has a population of close to half a million, ethnically divided among  East Indians (Hindostani) 37 percent, Creoles (including African and mixed) 31 percent, Javanese (Indonesians) 15 percent, Indigenous 2 percent, Chinese 2 percent, whites 1 percent and others 2 percent. No one can remember the last time there was an open ethnic/racial confrontation initiated by political rivalry.
Notwithstanding, not all are happy with the image of Bouterse as the champion of a new politics and the support it has brought the New Democratic Party (NDP). Many of an older generation complain that the President has successfully manipulated the political process to his advantage and deluded young people into believing that all is well.
Early on, after his 2010 elections, Bouterse had an uphill battle to convince those that were affected by some of his actions that he had a “come in peace”. Two groups, the Organisation for Justice and Peace and the Foundation December 8, 1982 – “petitioned the President of the National Assembly to declare Mr. Bouterse’s election illegal.” And while Bouterse offered an apology for the 1982 killings he denied involvement in it.
In addition, there are considerable criticisms about the government’s “welfare” programme to “buy” votes which has simply bankrupted the treasury, while his general profligacy has turned all those on fixed wages/salaries into the working poor.
Critics point to the fact that when the government undertook significant fiscal reform by replacing the Dutch Guilder with the SRD (Suriname Dollar) in 2005 the rate of exchange against the US dollar was in the neighbourhood on 280 to one. Now that rate is about closer to 3.5 SRD to one US$.
Two things appear to annoy the opposition and critics alike and which cannot be hidden: the emergence of super salaries for a selected few, close friends and relatives, and a mega boom in palatial residents and buildings.
These critics and the opposition suggest are the fruits of a “crony capitalism” that cannot be sustained.
A retired headmaster in Nickerie is concerned that his fixed pension is not likely to sustain his lifestyle and has to find ways to economise. He is also convinced that while Mr. Bouterse and the NDP has a certain popularity it would not be enough to carry them through as it did the last time around.
In his view the NDP is not likely to carry more than 16-18 seats in the first round and would be hard pressed to from a new government.
Notwithstanding, there is a not a little whiff of cynicism in the air over the elections, the western response to Mr. Bouterse and the latter’s new found imprimatur among youths. In a meeting with students from the University of Anton de Kom, Suriname, earlier (April 2015) I was not a little taken by the fact that while students were not impressed by Mr. Bouterse’s popularity among young people they were not swayed by the “western” criticism of him either.

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