Surinam voters reject dictatorship

Press, 28 November 1987, Page 12

Surinam voters reject dictatorship

NZPA-AP Paramaribo, Surinam Unofficial results show voters delivered a stunning rebuke to Surinam’s military dictatorship, giving a three-party coalition a landslide victory in the country’s first national Elections in 10 years. Surinam, a former Dutch colony in the north of South America, has been ruled by a military Government since 1980, when Commander Desi Bouterse’s band of Army sergeants seized power.

The unofficial but nearly complete results from seven of 10 voting districts indicated the Opposition Front for Democracy and Development had won at least 40 of the 51 seats in the National Assembly.

The leaders of the front said they had not expected to win by such a wide margin in Wednesday’s election. However, Mr Bouterse and his 2000-man Army are not expected to yield full political power to civilians.

Mr Bouterse was an army sergeant when he led the 1980 coup that toppled Surinam’s Parliamentary Government five years after independence from the Netherlands.

He said at Army headquarters that the Army would respect the outcome of the vote, but “regardless of the results, the revolution will continue.”

He refers to his Government as a “democratic revolution.”

Mr Bouterse has promised to return Surinam to democratic rule under a new system that will guarantee military participation in Government affairs. Under Surinam’s new Constitution, approved in a referendum on September 30, the military Government will be replaced by the National Assembly and a State Council.

The Assembly will elect the President, who will replace the Prime Minister as the country’s chief executive, but the assembly will not have the power to make laws. That power will belong to the State Council.

Mr Bouterse has yet to reveal how the State Council will be chosen. Voters know only that a

representative from the army — probably Mr Bouterse himself — will be a member.

The Ministry of Domestic Affairs, which co-ordi-nated much of the election process, supplied unofficial results to the news media.

Official returns may not be made public by the Independent . Electoral Council today. There was a heavy turnout among Surinam’s 195,000 eligible voters. Forty-seven observers from five continents monitored the Elections.

"I am very satisfied with the democratisation process and the way the elections have been organised and run,” said Willem Vergeer, an ob-

server from the Netherlands belonging to the European Parliament’s observation team.

Mr Vergeer, who made his comments to reporters, has been an putspoken critic of the Bouterse Government The three districts not counted, with 10 seats in the Assembly, are in areas under a state of emergency where . the Army has been trying for 18 months td put down an anti-Government guerrilla force.

The front did not contest the Election in the three districts.

All six parties that participated in the Elections had focused their campaigns on rebuilding the country’s economy.