Western Hemisphere Election Study Series Volume XIV Study 4
September 19, 1996
CSIS Americas Program
People's Assembly Voting Results
Backdrop to the 1996 Elections
The Front Unravels, Bouterse Gets His Way
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), founded in 1962, is an
independent, tax-exempt, public policy research institution based in Washington, DC.
The mission of CSIS is to advance the understanding of emerging world issues in the areas
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world that support representative government and the rule of law.
* * *
CSIS, as a public policy research institution, does not take specific policy positions.
Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this report should be
understood to be solely those of the authors.
Copyright 1996 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
This study was prepared under the aegis of the CSIS Western Hemisphere Election Study
series. Comments are welcome and should be directed to:
Joyce Hoebing
CSIS Americas Program
1800 K Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006
Phone: (202) 775-3299
Fax: (202) 477-4739
E-mail: hoebingj@csis.org
General Data
Population
423,000 (1995 estimate)
Registered Voters
269,165
Votes Cast
179,416
Voter Participation
66.6 percent
(Approx. 67 percent in 1991, 88 percent in 1987)
Invalid Votes
5,944
Valid Votes
Parties and Coalitions
ABOP General Liberation and Development Party (Algemene Bevrijdings en Ontwikkelings Partij)
ALLIANTIE Progressive Development Alliance (Progressieve Ontwikkelings Alliantie)
DA 91 Democratic Alternative 91 (Democratisch Alternatief 91)
NDP National Democratic Party (Nationale Democratisch Partij)
NF New Front for Democracy and Development (Nieuwe Front voor Demokratie en Ontwikkling)
May 23 Election Results
| May 23 Election Results | ||||
| Party | Total Votes | % Votes | Seats 1996 | Seats
(1991, 1987) |
| NF | 72,480 | 41.8 | 24* | (30, 40) |
| NDP | 45,466 | 26.2 | 16* | (12, 3) |
| DA'91 | 22,548 | 13.0 | 4 | (9**, x) |
| Pendawalima | 16,040 | 9.2 | 4 | (2**, 4) |
| Alliantie | 14,578 | 8.4 | 3 | (X, X) |
| ABOP | 2,360 | 1.4 | 0 | (X, X) |
| Total | 173, 472 | 100.0 | 51 | |
In the months after the 1996 elections, 10 New Front members elected to parliament left
the New Front to join in a coalition with the NDP, leaving the New Front with 14 seats
and boosting the NDP total to 26 seats.
** In 1991 DA 91 was a four-member coalition that included Pendawalima, whose two seats
were part of the DA 91 total of nine seats.
People's Assembly Voting Results
The People's Assembly is made up of all 869 local, district, and nationally elected officials:
51 parliamentarians, 106 district representatives, and 712 local officials. Because no party
or coalition won the necessary two-thirds of the 51-member parliament to elect a
president, the People's Assembly was convened on September 5, 1996 to choose between
the candidate of the New Front, incumbent president Ronald Venetiaan, and NDP
candidate Jules Wijdenbosch. The breakdown of the People's Assembly vote was as
follows.
Wijdenbosch 438
Venetiaan 407
No-shows 22
Blank ballots 2
Executive Summary
In the May 23, 1996 elections the incumbent New Front for Democracy and Development
(New Front) failed to win a parliamentary majority, let alone the two-thirds needed to
name a president. The New Front, a coalition of ethnic-based parties, then unraveled in
the summer during failed attempts to widen its alliance among smaller parties. That paved
the way for the left-nationalist National Democratic Party (NDP), led by former dictator
Desi Bouterse, to come to power in a coalition that included New Front defectors.
On September 5, in accord with constitutional procedures, a narrow majority of the
People's Assembly made up of the 869 officials elected at the national, district, and local
levels in May chose Jules Wijdenbosch of the NDP as the nation's president. The New
Front's Ronald Venetiaan, the incumbent president, was the losing candidate.
The drawn-out process brought to an end the ethnic-coalition form of government
that had prevailed in Suriname before and after the period of military rule in the 1980s. It
succumbed to the mentality among the aging New Front political elites of placing group
before national interests, and by the undemocratic nature of the ethnic-based parties over
which they preside. Civilian rule after 1987 remained based mostly on deals, patronage,
and graft, and that in large part was why the electoral fortunes of successive Front
governments steadily declined until the coalition finally came undone in 1996.
Wijdenbosch has been a close associate of Bouterse and a principal political operator on his behalf since the early 1980s. There is little reason to believe that Bouterse
will not remain the most powerful political and economic figure in Suriname. The question
is whether he will be content to work from behind the scenes unlikely, given his ego and
mercurial personality and, if not, how he will take advantage of his party having come to
power legally.
While the old "graybeards" of the New Front lick their wounds, the Wijdenbosch
government inherits great economic and social problems and must address, too, the
heightened expectations of the poor, the young, and the jungle dwellers that supported the
NDP in the May vote. Suriname's political landscape has become increasingly fragmented,
suffering not only wider ethnic divisions between Afro-Creoles, East Indians, Javanese,
Bush Negros, and Amerindians, but increasingly sharper class and generational splits as
well. The NDP now may be the most popular party in Suriname, but it is still a minority
party leading a coalition that includes last-minute, opportunistic defectors from the New
Front and which may turn out to be no more stable than was the New Front itself. If the
NDP-led coalition starts to crack or its policies lead to unrest, all eyes will be on Bouterse.
The Country
Suriname achieved independence from the Netherlands in 1975. Roughly the size of the
state of Georgia, it lies on the north-central coast of South America and is the smallest
nation on the continent. It is bordered by Guyana to the west, French Guiana to the east,
and Brazil to the south.
Suriname encompasses about 39 million densely forested, sparsely populated acres
of the Amazon Basin. The forested area constitutes about 85 percent of the national
territory. An overwhelming majority of the population, estimated at 423,000 in 1995, lives
on a strip of relatively fertile alluvial plain along the Atlantic Coast. Nearly two-thirds of all
Surinamers live in and around the capital, Paramaribo, the steamy port city located a few
miles upstream from the mouth of the muddy Suriname River.
Suriname's principal export and source of foreign investment is bauxite. It also
produces rice, bananas, and gold. The bauxite industry is dominated by Suralco, a joint
operation between Suriname and Pittsburgh-based Alcoa, along with Royal Dutch/Shell.
Suriname ranks fourth among the world's producers of alumina and bauxite and the
industry accounts for up to 70 percent of Suriname's exports and 10 percent of GDP.
In recent years Asian logging firms have sought to exploit the country's vast
hardwood forests, but environmental concerns and widespread popular opposition have
held up pending joint agreements with the government. The logging issue played a
prominent role in the 1996 electoral campaign.
According to the U.S. Department of State, in its most recent International
Narcotics Control Strategy Report (March 1996), "Suriname continues to be a transit
point for cocaine destined primarily for Europe and to a lesser extent to the U.S...While it
is difficult to gauge the amount of drugs transiting the country, drug trafficking and money
laundering activities are increasing."
Suriname is a member of the United Nations and the Organization of American
States (OAS). It is one of the 66 African, Caribbean, and Pacific nations which are
signatory to the third Lomé Convention. Suriname was admitted to the Caribbean
Community (CARICOM) in February 1995 and in August of 1995 it was a founding
member of the Trinidad-based, 25-member Association of Caribbean States (ACS).
The official language is Dutch, but English, Hindi, Javanese, Chinese, and Sranan
Tongo (Taki-Taki), a Creole lingua franca, also are widely spoken.
Politics and Society
Over the course of three centuries Suriname was transformed into one of the most
ethnically complex societies in the world. The colonial plantation economy (sugar, indigo,
wood) was based on captured African labor. Many black slaves rebelled and fled deep into
the jungle interior where they preserved their African culture and lived as free Maroons
(called Bush Negros in Suriname). After slavery was abolished in 1863, the Dutch
imported contract labor from British India, the Dutch East Indies (especially Java), China,
Madeira, and, eventually, Syria.
Today, Suriname is composed of no less than eight distinct groups: East Indians (36
percent); Afro-Creoles, descendants of slaves (31 percent); Indonesians, principally
Javanese (15 percent); Maroons (10 percent); Amerindians, the original inhabitants of
Suriname (2.5 percent); Chinese (2 percent); Europeans (1.5 percent); and others, mainly
Sephardic Jews and Syrians (2 percent). All but the Maroons and the Amerindians, who
dwell mostly in the interior, are concentrated along the coastal plain. The Maroons are
divided into five groups, as are the Amerindians.
These population percentages have been distilled from a number of studies and
provide a close approximation of the relative size of each segment of Surinamese society.
Nonetheless, demographic determination is complicated by the outflow of up to half the
population since independence in 1975, mostly to the Netherlands. The last census, taken
in 1980, showed that the population had already declined by about 25,000 as a result of
emigration.
Ethnicity has been the defining element of Surinamese politics since internal self-rule was established in 1948, based on a parliamentary system. From the outset, political
parties were organized on an ethnic basis and group interests prevailed over national
interests. Creoles banded together in the National Party of Suriname (NPS), East Indians
in the Progressive Reformational Party (VHP), and Indonesians in the Party of National
Unity and Solidarity (KTPI). All three parties were (and still are) top-down, elite-controlled organizations whose leaders provided for their constituencies through patronage,
nepotism, and the dispensation of favors down through the party hierarchy.
Initially, political stability was maintained as the NPS and the VHP reluctantly
agreed to share power, with the support of the smaller KTPI. It was government by a
multiparty, multiethnic elite cartel consociationalism, to use the academic term and
elections were vote-your-race rituals that determined how much of the spoils each party
would be able to hand out to its followers. With the Netherlands providing millions of
guilders in development aid, there seemed to be plenty to go around.
In the late 1960s consociationalism broke down as the Dutch reduced subsidies and
a winner-take-all mentality infected the NPS and the VHP. Splinter parties broke off amid
intra-party bidding wars as competing elites promised to deliver larger slices of a
diminished pie. Then, in the polarized election of 1973, the NPS came to power
committed to independence from the Netherlands and infused with the ideas of the Black
Power movement that had filtered into the Caribbean.
The VHP fought against independence. It feared that the scenario of neighboring
Guyana, where a black-based party had subjugated the large East Indian group under
authoritarian rule following Guyana's independence in 1966, would come to pass in
Suriname. The NPS found support for independence in the Hague. The Dutch
government, sensitive to the idea of decolonization then in vogue in Europe, was ready to
let go and promised a huge long-term development aid package as part of the bargain.
Many in Suriname feared that the dispute between the NPS and the VHP would lead to
civil war. Finally, the VHP conceded and a new constitution was written that established a
presidential-parliamentary system that drew heavily from the prior framework for internal
self-rule.
Following independence in late 1975, Surinamese politics devolved further into
ethnic polarization, graft, and corruption. An NPS-led coalition defeated the VHP in the
1977 elections, an exercise marked by mounting tension between Creoles and East Indians
and evidence of fraud. Dutch aid was squandered, much of it used by the ruling NPS to
subsidize its patronage mill. The cost of bureaucracy soon reached nearly two-thirds of the
total government budget. The parliament, gridlocked amid acrimonious inter-ethnic
squabbling, became popularly known as the circus stupido, as Edward M. Dew reminded in
his most recent book.
As emigration to the Netherlands quickened, especially among East Indians, a
handful of small left-wing parties made threatening noises as they demanded changes in
the political system. But change came from an unexpected source: the military. As popular
frustration and cynicism mounted, few Surinamers were aware of the increasingly angry
noncommissioned officers (NCOs), whose demands for greater pay and recognition of their
labor union (following the Dutch model) had been ignored by the government.
Military Rule
On February 25, 1980, Master Sergeant Desi Bouterse led 15 NCOs and 1 junior officer in
a rapid-fire coup that easily toppled the government. The traditional political elites ran for
cover, but many Surinamers appeared happy to let "the boys" have a try at governing.
The young officers promised an end to paralyzing ethnic competition and
corruption, but appeared uncertain about how to achieve it. A period of co-government
between the military and liberal and leftist politicians was short-lived. Bouterse, who is
Creole with some Amerindian blood, soon emerged as military commander and political
strongman intent upon maintaining power at any cost. He displayed surprising skill in the
art of divide-and-conquer when it came to playing off and balancing military rivals, the
mostly left-wing civilians who peopled his regime, and Surinamese business elites. He
reinforced social control by establishing neighborhood organizations modeled on Cuba's
defense committees and overseen by the military.
Bouterse also was prone to precipitous, often brutal actions. Suriname's darkest
moment came on December 8, 1982, when Bouterse's troops arrested 16 leading citizens
involved in an embryonic redemocratization movement. They were taken to Bouterse's
headquarters at the old Fort Zeelandia on the Suriname River, where 15 of them were
murdered. Suriname's politics had been messy, but political violence had claimed less than
half that many lives in all of the 30 years prior to the coup.
When the Netherlands responded by suspending hundreds of millions of dollars in
aid, Bouterse strengthened ties with Cuba, Nicaragua, Maurice Bishop's Grenada, and
Libya. That resulted in increased pressure from the United States and Brazil, then under
right-wing military rule. The U.S. military intervention in Grenada in October 1983
alarmed Bouterse and he promptly expelled the Cuban contingent from Suriname.
By the mid-1980s the economy was failing. Cash reserves had plummeted and
Bouterse's left-wing puppet governments had failed to convince the Dutch to renew aid.
Suriname's traditionally well-organized unions braved the threat of repression to organize
paralyzing strikes, while most Surinamers shunned the February 25th Movement,
Bouterse's personal political vehicle.
Bouterse concluded that he could neither govern nor break Suriname's international
isolation without some support from the old ethnic parties. The NPS, VHP, and KTPI had
reunited around the demand for a return to civilian rule, and Bouterse agreed to negotiate.
Redemocratization To a Point
In 1987, after nearly two years of bargaining, Bouterse and the old leaders of the NPS,
VHP, and KTPI, came to an agreement on a new constitution. Bouterse would allow
elections for a new civilian government, but would remain as military commander. The
parties conceded to two constitutional articles that gave the military, identified as the
"vanguard of the people," virtually carte blanche to intervene in domestic politics at any
time. The two sides also agreed to the establishment of elected local governments.
Surinamers approved the new constitution in a referendum and campaigning began
for the November 1987 vote. The NPS, VHP, and KTPI restored their old consociational
alliance by forming the Front for Democracy and Development. Bouterse turned his
February 25th Movement into a political party, the National Democratic Party (NDP).
The NDP, in effect the civilian arm of the military, was well-financed thanks to the riches
accumulated by Bouterse and his cohorts through drug-trafficking and manipulation of the
burgeoning black market in imported goods. Bouterse hoped the NDP would secure
enough seats in the new 51-member parliament to block constitutional reforms aimed at
limiting the power of the military.
But Surinamers voted overwhelming for the Front, which won 40 of 51 seats in the
National Assembly, as the new parliament was called. A handful of small, mostly left-wing
parties took eight seats and the NDP won three. The VHP's Ramsewak Shankar, a
compromise choice within the Front, was installed as president of the nation. NPS leader
Henck Arron, who as president had been ousted in the 1980 coup, became vice president
and prime minister. Long-time VHP leader Jagernath Lachmon was appointed National
Assembly speaker.
The Front government faced formidable challenges. Suriname, which had enjoyed
South America's highest per capita income at the time of independence, now saw its
economy near ruin. Moreover, the Maroon-based "Jungle Commando," led by former
Bouterse bodyguard Ronnie Brunswijk, had begun an insurgency in the interior the year
before. Backed by anti-Bouterse expatriate organizations in the Netherlands, the guerrillas
threatened the critical bauxite industry. Finally, the Dutch remained reluctant to restore
development aid because of the unchecked power of the military and the violation of
human rights during its brutal but ineffective counterinsurgency against the Jungle
Commando. Bouterse had even sponsored a number of armed Amerindian groups to
counter the Maroon guerrillas.
The old ethnic parties had promised to cooperate to address these challenges. But it
was not long before they reverted to bickering and betrayals and the government sank into
paralysis. In December 1989, the government simply evaporated when one of Bouterse's
lieutenants called Shankar and told him and his ministers to go home in what became
known as the "telephone coup." There was little public outcry against the coup. In fact,
many Surinamers hoped, as they had in 1980, that something good might come out of it.
Unlike in 1980, however, protests by the Dutch, the United States, and the OAS
were immediate and sustained. Bouterse promised new, OAS-monitored elections within
six months and installed an interim government controlled by the NDP.
The NDP looted government coffers and went on a spending spree to enhance its
chances in the May 1991 vote. The three old ethnic parties gathered themselves together
yet again, brought into the fold the Suriname Labor Party (SPA) led by trade unionist
Fred Derby, and rechristened themselves the New Front. A new contender was the
Democratic Alternative 91 (DA 91), a multi-ethnic coalition formed by mostly young,
middle-class professionals who promised to end corruption and to circumscribe the
military's power through an enhanced, Commonwealth-type relationship with the
Civilian Rule Reestablished
The May 1991 election saw the New Front's share of the popular vote drop from 85 to 55
percent, enough to take only 30 seats in the National Assembly. The NDP won twelve
seats and the DA 91, nine. The New Front lacked the necessary two-thirds in the
parliament (34 seats) to name the president and refused to negotiate with either the NDP
or DA 91.
As per the 1987 constitution, a special People's Assembly was convened, consisting
of the members of the parliament and the local and district assemblies that also had been
elected, over 800 representatives in all. The New Front had performed better at the local
level and the People's Assembly voted by more than two-thirds for its presidential
candidate, Ronald Venetiaan. Venetiaan, the education minister in the old Front
government, had replaced Henck Arron as NPS leader. As part of the deal, VHP leader
Lachmon was again appointed National Assembly speaker, and the VHP's Jules Ajodhia
became vice president.
The second redemocratization effort began with a drawn-out, old-style scuffle
within the New Front for cabinet ministries and patronage. Then, Venetiaan moved to
limit the powers of the military. With the clear backing of the Hague and Washington,
both concerned by army drug-trafficking, and with the support of DA 91 in the
parliament, the constitution was amended in 1992 to strip the military of its political role.
Bouterse made threatening noises, but ultimately resigned as military commander to
formally lead the NDP and to oversee the vast empire of licit and illicit businesses he had
built while in power.
The real showdown came in 1993 when Venetiaan named Arti Gorre, once a close
aide to Bouterse, as the new military commander. Bouterse called Gorre a "traitor," while
officers still loyal to Bouterse rattled sabers. The top officers among the military leadership
were Iwan Graanoogst, who had instigated the 1990 telephone coup, Etienne Boerenveen,
who had been convicted in a Miami court for drug-trafficking in 1986, and left-wing
ideologues Chas Mijnals and Badrissein Sital.
Bouterse and his cohorts backed off when expressions of support for the
appointment of Gorre came from the Netherlands, the United States, France, Venezuela,
and the European Community. Graanoogst, Mijnals, and Sital were forced to resign and
joined Bouterse as private sector moguls and NDP honchos. Gorre decided to keep
Boerenveen on, as a bridge to remaining Bouterse loyalists in the military. Boerenveen
subsequently became head of the military academy and the chief liaison to U.S. forces
during joint U.S.-Suriname training exercises. Under Gorre the military was eventually cut
from about 4,000 to less than 2,000 soldiers.
Venetiaan made some headway in ending the insurgencies in the interior. With
OAS support the government concluded a peace agreement in 1992 that called for the
disarmament of the guerrillas. The pact included an amnesty for all parties accused of
committing crimes during the fighting and a commitment by the government to provide
development aid for the interior. Little aid was forthcoming, however, and a number of
small armed bands continued to operate, making economic demands rather than calling for
political change. Nonetheless, violence decreased to the point where nearly all of the
approximately 10,000 Maroon refugees who had fled to camps in neighboring French
Guiana felt safe enough to return home.
Backdrop to the 1996 Elections
Originally, the Hague had made the reinstatement of economic aid contingent on the
return to democracy. But even after the military had been put at bay, the Dutch refused to
release funds until Suriname subscribed to an IMF structural adjustment program.
Venetiaan, however, feared the political costs and would not relent. Structural
adjustment would cut into the heart of the old-style patronage politics that still defined
government in Suriname. Reducing the bureaucracy would mean lopping off Venetiaan's
own NPS supporters encamped in the civil service. Liberalizing markets would end the
protected import operations of the predominantly East Indian, VHP-supporting business
community. So, the government continued to print money to finance a mounting deficit,
which sent inflation over 100 percent and sapped the value of the Surinamese guilder.
In 1993 the government initiated its own program of limited austerity and
deregulation, without coming to terms with the IMF. It also did away with the multi-tiered
exchange rate, a source of widespread corruption. But the so-called "zero option" plan did
not satisfy the Dutch.
Meanwhile, discontent mounted over rapidly declining living conditions and
inflation. Crime rose and the police, despite new training and equipment, remained
susceptible to corruption and seemed overwhelmed. Thousands came to Bouterse's
frequent anti-government demonstrations. Labor strikes were punctuated by anonymous
grenade attacks against the homes of Assembly speaker Lachmon and prominent
businessmen. Venetiaan's ratings plunged to single digits in opinion polls and resentment
against the Dutch rose.
By 1994, unemployment among those under 30 was approaching 75 percent and
Paramaribo hospitals reported more than 100 cases of children suffering from
malnutrition. Amid unsubstantiated rumors of yet another coup, polls showed that the
goal of a majority of Surinamers, especially youth and professionals, was to leave the
country.
In 1995, polls showed the NDP with a clear lead over the New Front. With
elections looming in May 1996 and the distinct possibility that Bouterse could win the
presidency, the Hague quietly began to funnel funds to the government. The aid program
suspended in 1982 was not formally reinstated, but substantial support was provided. By
the end of 1995, international reserves had risen, the guilder had gained in value, the
government had stopped printing money, inflation had come down, and the steep
economic decline in the economy since 1992 seemed to have leveled off. Still, the New
Front trailed the NDP in the polls.