The Caribbean Community’s only Dutch-speaking nation, Suriname, will vote in what is believed to be its most important general elections on Sunday. Whichever party gets a majority of votes and leads a coalition government will likely inherit billions annually from offshore oil and gas production slated to begin in 2028.
With the stakes so high and promising for near-term economic prosperity, more than a dozen political parties will be vying for 51 seats in the national assembly. However, polls show that fewer than six will likely win any significant number of seats.
The leading players include the VHP Hindustani Party of current President Chan Santokhi, a former police chief and justice minister, the National Democratic Party (NDP) of late and former military strongman Desi Bouterse, the National Party of Suriname (NPS) led by former cabinet minister Greg Rusland and a key player leading up to independence in 1975, ABOP, led by current Vice President Ronnie Brunswijk and vying for thousands of Maroon votes, and Pertjajah Luhur (PL), which targets the votes of Surinamese of Indonesian-Javanese descent. Bronto Somohardjo, a former cabinet minister in the current coalition, led that party.
For most of its political life since independence from the Netherlands, the political landscape has traditionally been shaped by a multiplicity of coalition governments representing the various racial and ethnic groups. This was the case with the Santokhi-led government after it won 20 of the 51 seats in 2020 at the expense of an NDP-led coalition.
The polls show that it will likely end up with between 14 and 17 seats, meaning it will have to work again with one or more of the other main parties to form a government. Of the four original coalition partners in 2020, only the VHP and ABOP have remained, as the NPS and PL had pulled out for various reasons, including allegations of widespread corruption and nepotism.
Whichever multiparty group takes power will also have the opportunity to celebrate 50 years of independence in late November while preparing the country for its oil wealth bonanza.
Earlier this year, Santokhi unveiled a wealth trickle-down program designed to give every Surinamese a share of oil projected future revenues ranging from about US$750 to about $1,400 per person by the time the first barrel of oil is produced.
“Enough with the poverty! This money you’re receiving now is from just one source, Block 58. The second source is also coming. Whatever the second source may be, the third or the fourth source, you will benefit enough from those sources that we Surinamese will always live in prosperity,” he had said at the program’s launch.
Critics dismiss this as a vote-buying, pre-election gimmick in a country that has seen an increase in poverty and inflation and a decline in the local dollar’s value from about US$10 1 to nearly 40 to the 1 today. The country of about 600,000 has also been in the grips of a tough IMF austerity program that authorities say they are unlikely to sign up for a second round.
Meanwhile, Malaysian oil giant Petronas, Total Energies of France, Shell, Chevron, and Qatar Energy are preparing to drill up to five exploratory wells in the Suriname Basin this year, even as Total announced last year a $10.5 billion investment in a major oil field near the Guyana border.
As Sunday approaches, former vice president and NDP candidate Ashwin Adhin says that, apart from growing inflation and other problems, the national debt should be a grave concern for citizens.
“Do you remember how this government talked about our debt? They said that the debt is not just the national debt, but the debt of all state-owned companies added together. They say that the national debt is 3.7 billion USD, and if we include the 1.6 billion in debt, then the debt of this government at the moment is 5.3 billion US dollars,” he said at a political rally at the weekend.
