Suriname's New President Has Her Work Cut Out For Herself

Getting the House in Order: Suriname’s New President Has Her Work Cut Out For Her Suriname This month, Suriname got its first female president, Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, following an election in May, in which her party won by one seat. The doctor and former parliamentary speaker, who was elected leader by parliament on July 6, is now charged with steering the small South American nation of close to 650,000 people on the eve of a looming oil boom. She has a lot of work to do, say analysts. “Suriname is a country in which natural resource wealth, cultural diversity, political complexity, corruption, and danger form a tapestry of contradictions,” wrote the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  For the past 15 years, the former Dutch colony has been governed by three men who formed a plundering, corrupt triangle the country could not escape from – until now, say analysts. The country was run by a military ruler in the 1980s, dictator-cum-democrat Dési Bouterse of the National Development Party (NDP), who came to power in two different coups, in 1980 and 1990. He returned to power after elections in 2010 and 2015 even as he was wanted on national and international warrants for drug trafficking and murder. He died in December while a fugitive from justice. Another player in the triangle is former Vice President Ronnie Brunswijk, Bouterse’s former bodyguard, who turned against him and became a guerrilla leader in the 1980s. Wanted by the Netherlands for cocaine trafficking, he has been leading a party he started for Maroon voters (the descendants of escaped African slaves). He joined a coalition with the NDP before changing allegiance to form a government with Chandrikapersad Santokhi of the Progressive Reform Party, a former police chief who prosecuted Bouterse before he himself was elected president in 2020. As a result of his dealmaking with Santokhi, Brunswijk, also a businessman with interests in timber and gold, was put in charge of the ministries that oversee forests and resources. Meanwhile, Santokhi, as president from 2020 to 2025, appointed his wife to the supervisory board of the national oil company. The problem, some analysts say, is the system. Suriname is one of the most diverse countries in the world, made up of Indians, Africans, Javanese, Indigenous groups, Chinese, Europeans, and others. Its system is designed to accommodate that diversity and promote consensus. However, some believe the fractured system has also allowed for corruption, nepotism, and the dominance of strongmen. As a result, its leadership often gets its hands dirty. Adding to the problem is Suriname’s status as a key drug-trafficking hub in the region. Almost all past presidents have been convicted of involvement with drugs. Bouterse’s son Dino is in prison in the United States for trafficking in drugs and arms – and attempting to help Lebanon’s Hezbollah set up a terrorist training camp. By way of stark contrast, Greelings-Simons is scandal-free, with a reputation for getting things done. Suriname needs that desperately, say analysts. That’s because things are about to change because of its natural resources. The Surinamese are now hoping to mimic neighboring Guyana, where the gross domestic product per capita increased 41 percent last year to almost $31,000 annually, more than four times greater than Suriname’s $7,600 per capita. The recent approval of the $12.2 billion, 1.4 million-acre GranMorgu project in Suriname with French oil company TotalEnergies is expected to deliver similar windfalls. By 2028, the project is expected to pump as much as 220,000 barrels per day from offshore fields containing 760 million barrels in total. Meanwhile, drillers have already generated more than $300 million a year for Suriname’s treasury for three years in a row – a previously unheard-of haul there. That could cause a problem for a country that is so steeped in criminality and corruption and with a bankrupt economy. Still, its population, mired in poverty, is determined to share in the wealth and have a say in how it is spent, wrote Global Americans. In this past election, voters told the Economist that they wanted something new, something more than the “men who only line their pockets,” and chose a woman as a change. They now hope she can deliver. To do that, Karel Eckhorst of the International Monetary Fund told the magazine that the country needs more than wealth: “Oil isn’t the magic bullet,” he said. “Good governance is.”  Share this story