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International Election Special - Suriname 2025
32 Plays13 days ago
Professor Wouter Veenendaal is Professor by Special Appointment in Kingdom from Leiden University in The Netherlands. In today’s episode, Matt Davis interviews him on the upcoming 2025 general election in Suriname.
2025 sees an election in the South American country which was once a Dutch colony. How big is Suriname, what is the population, how do their elections work? All these questions are answered, and you can learn about the key issues in the Suriname election along with a few other facts about this little know country. Veenendaal’s research examines the effects of population size on politics and democracy, with a specific focus on politics in small (island) states.
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Transcript
Introduction to Observations Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Observations podcast hosted by democracy volunteers. I'm Matt Davis, special international elections correspondent for the Observations podcast.
00:00:20
Speaker
Today, we'll be talking about a country that has some upcoming elections, a country that you might know nothing about.
Suriname: Country Overview
00:00:27
Speaker
Today, we'll be discussing Suriname. You're probably wondering, where is Suriname?
00:00:33
Speaker
Well, Suriname is a country the size of England on the north coast of South America. with a population of a little over 600,000 people, meaning it has roughly the same population size as Glasgow.
00:00:46
Speaker
Also, it's the only South American country not to border a Spanish-speaking country. So there's something to remember if that ever comes up in a pub quiz. But who might you know from Suriname?
00:00:58
Speaker
Some famous Surinamese people include Jimmy Floyd Hasselbank, who played for Leeds United between 1997 and and played for Chelsea between 2000 and 2004. And Anthony Nesta, the first black swimmer to win a gold medal in the Olympics during the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
Political Landscape and History
00:01:19
Speaker
Suriname has a national assembly of 51 members, which are elected every five years by a regional proportional voting system. It has a semi-presidential system where the largest party can elect a president with a two-thirds majority.
00:01:32
Speaker
If no candidate receives a two-thirds majority after two rounds of voting in the National Assembly, a United People's Assembly, consisting of representatives from national, regional and local councils, convenes to choose the president by a simple majority.
00:01:47
Speaker
It has a multi-party system, which means often parties will have to form coalitions in order to govern. Now, Suriname has a legacy not dissimilar to those of Commonwealth countries, which now have English as their first language.
00:02:01
Speaker
However, Suriname was a Dutch territory, meaning now about 60% of its population speak Dutch. It received its independence in 1975 and now has key exports of gold, precious metals, refined petroleum, rough wood and bananas.
00:02:18
Speaker
These links to the Netherlands are why we have the Dutch University of Leiden's leading authority on the show. So for this episode, I'm delighted to be joined by Professor Wouter Fernandahl,
00:02:29
Speaker
a researcher who has looked at the politics of small scale democracies and how a country's small population size can have an impact on its politics. As part of this research, Walter has looked into the politics and political history of Suriname.
00:02:43
Speaker
But before we get into the interview, we'll first have a short commercial break.
00:02:54
Speaker
Did you know at the last UK general election, democracy volunteers observed in over 200 Westminster constituencies the largest domestic election observation in British electoral history.
00:03:07
Speaker
You can find out more about the findings at democracyvolunteers.org.
00:03:17
Speaker
Welcome back. So first of all, Walter, welcome. It's lovely to have you on. um How this will work is we'll look into how Suriname's politics functions and some of the issues that arise during its elections.
00:03:32
Speaker
So to get us started, what can you tell us about Suriname and its elections? Suriname is a former Dutch colony located in South America geographically but culturally part of the Caribbean and it became independent from the Netherlands in 1975.
00:03:49
Speaker
um Then relatively quickly after independence, five years after independence, there was a military coup. And then for eight years, Suriname had a military dictatorship under the leadership of Daisy Boutersen.
00:04:01
Speaker
And then in the early nineteen ninety s late 1980s, the country transitioned back to a democratic system modeled on the Dutch political institutions.
00:04:12
Speaker
And basically what you see is that after that, at elections, there has been a power struggle between the party of the former military dictator Desi Boutersen who passed away last year and the democratic you can say opposition even though Boutersen's party also transitioned to a democratic political party.
00:04:32
Speaker
Okay so obviously you've mentioned the colonial links there Suriname doesn't have an embassy in London but it does in the Netherlands does it maintain strong links with the Netherlands at the moment?
00:04:44
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. So even though the country is independent, what you realize when you visit Suriname is that it still remains very much focused on the Netherlands. Dutch news is being shown on television channels.
00:04:56
Speaker
People speak Dutch, so the language is also very important. And I would say that the links with other Latin American or Caribbean countries are relatively weak. So you still notice that despite the fact that this year the country is independent for 50 years, still remains very much focused on the Netherlands.
00:05:15
Speaker
And that's also because there is a very large Surinamese diaspora in the Netherlands. So many people have family in the Netherlands. Approximately half of all Surinamese people actually live in the Netherlands.
00:05:29
Speaker
Oh, wow. and That's, yeah, I didn't know that. That's quite interesting.
Cultural and Ethnic Dynamics
00:05:33
Speaker
So you've mentioned a bit about um the... troubled history with democracy that Suriname has had. of Could you tell us a bit more about that and potentially how Balthusar has had kind of ongoing influence since the dictatorship?
00:05:49
Speaker
Yeah. So as I mentioned, Suriname had a military dictatorship in the 1980s. In the end, that came to a close because similarly to other Latin American countries, there was ah wave of democratization that swept essentially the entire continent. So Suriname was part of that transition.
00:06:08
Speaker
Bauterse wanted to remain very much involved in politics. And one of the main reasons for that is that he wanted to avoid ah prosecution for the killings that happened under his regime and also the cocaine smuggling in which he was involved.
00:06:24
Speaker
So that is seen as one of the reasons why he established a political party, the National Democratic Party or the Purple Party, as it is known in Suriname. and wanted to compete in elections and also decided in 2010 that he wanted to become the president himself because then he could also become immune for political persecution.
00:06:43
Speaker
And he also wanted to have a law passed through parliament that would give him amnesty for the crimes committed during his regime. um And basically his party is a populist party that very much appeals to um the poorer segments of Surinamese society. There are also some ethnic differences with the other parties that we can talk about.
Impact of Upcoming Elections
00:07:05
Speaker
But that's basically the main opposition, I would say, in Surinamese politics between that party, which is a party of the masses, but also a populist party, and the traditionally more ethnically oriented ah other parties.
00:07:16
Speaker
Okay, yes. yeah So that kind of leads on to the next question about, let's say, how politics, I suppose, in Suriname works. And you were talking about how a large number of the parties cater to a lot of specific ethnic groups in the country.
00:07:31
Speaker
Now, from my understanding, Suriname's quite an ethnically diverse country. How does that work in terms of political representation? Yeah, that's definitely true. And I would say that's the driving force of Surinamese politics.
00:07:46
Speaker
So it's a very diverse country, which is also historical or colonial legacy, because as a result of transatlantic slavery, many people of African descent came to Suriname.
00:07:57
Speaker
Then many people from British East India came ah in the late 19th century. And after that, people from the Dutch East Indies, so Japanese population. So it's very diverse.
00:08:07
Speaker
And political parties have formed when they were organized for the first time in the 1940s around these ethnicities. And still many of the Surinamese political parties catered, as you say, to one specific ethnic group.
00:08:20
Speaker
So that remains very important. And it's quite interesting that as a result of that, Surinam has a tradition of consensus coalition governments forming coalitions between parties representing the different ethnic groups.
00:08:34
Speaker
and see Okay. um So why do these upcoming elections matter to Suriname, the Netherlands and the wider world then? I think the most important reason is that is the discovery of large oil fields just off the coast of Suriname.
00:08:51
Speaker
A similar thing has happened in neighboring Guyana, former a British colony. And it's generally believed that that discovery can have a major impact ah for Suriname in terms of economic development.
00:09:04
Speaker
So what you notice in comparison to past elections that is that at these elections, more is at stake. Because the parties really want to make sure that they can control ah the state apparatus and also to be able to distribute that oil money among their supporters or the segments of the population, ethnic groups, perhaps that support them.
00:09:24
Speaker
So for that reason, these elections are really, really important. sir Okay. Yes. Yeah. so um
00:09:32
Speaker
So I suppose... um it's For the 2020 elections, you wrote that Bautista's shadow loomed over Suriname, despite him not being elected at that time. ah Do you think his legacy still like hangs over this election?
00:09:47
Speaker
Yeah, so of course he passed away in the meantime a year ago. So what has happened is that this purple party that I talked about before, the populist NDP, is a party that was very much established as a political vehicle for Bauterse himself. So it was a very personalized party in support of one leader, Bauterse.
00:10:06
Speaker
And perhaps unsurprisingly, what has happened ah is that after his death, there has been a power struggle for control over the party. And that struggle in the end was won by Jennifer Simons, a former Speaker of the Parliament.
00:10:20
Speaker
and She is now the first um female candidate also for the presidency of Suriname. But her position is quite weak because of all the infighting that has happened within this party.
00:10:31
Speaker
So the current government of Suriname is quite unpopular. Everybody believes that this party, the Purple Party, would have a chance to win the elections because of that, because it's currently the opposition party.
00:10:42
Speaker
But the infighting has weakened the position of that party and of their ah presidential candidates. OK, so suppose if you were to make predictions, you you wouldn't expect them to do um certainly as well as they have done, say, 10 years ago.
00:10:59
Speaker
um in these upcoming elections? Yeah, it's difficult to predict because not a lot of opinion polls are being held in Suriname, but the one reliable opinion poll that I did see um indeed didn't show ah the Purple Party winning the election, whereas that is what you would expect after...
00:11:16
Speaker
Yeah, the current government being very unpopular in office. um So and the main reason for that, I think, is this infighting. So what I now saw is that actually the current the party that's currently the largest, that's the Orange Party.
00:11:31
Speaker
um the Progressive Reform Party, I think would be the english English translation, but that's a party that traditionally caters to the Hindustani, so East Indian voters.
Democratic Process and Challenges
00:11:41
Speaker
That, according to this opinion poll, was still the largest um in the poll, which surprised me because the party has been really unpopular when it's unpopular in in government.
00:11:51
Speaker
Okay. um I know some of your research talks about kind of how population size of a country impacts how it functions as a democracy.
00:12:02
Speaker
and Suriname is quite a small population. um how What impacts do you think that has how Suriname functions as a democracy?
00:12:13
Speaker
Yeah, so I think that doesn't ah go just for Suriname, but basically for all small states and islands in the Caribbean, but also other parts of the world. What I've noticed in my research is that politics in small societies focuses very much on personal ah differences and personal relations and much less on programmatic or ideological forms of competition.
00:12:34
Speaker
Also that there is a tendency towards clientelism, which is also really important in the Surinamese context. So that means that people vote for a politician and expect ah material benefits or favors in return is very important in the Surinamese context, in particular in relation to different ethnic groups and their representation.
00:12:53
Speaker
And finally, in in small societies, there's also a natural tendency towards power concentration. Also the case in Suriname. So the fact that power tends to be concentrated in the hands of the government, whereas other institutions such as parliament, the media or the judiciary tend to be relatively weak.
00:13:11
Speaker
um And within the government, that power is concentrated in the hands of just one, two or three powerful ah players who, in the case of Suriname, have been politically active for decades on end. Okay.
00:13:22
Speaker
Okay. How does so much power concentrate around um such small numbers of people when typically there's a lot of coalition building that has to go on for a government to form?
00:13:36
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. So this coalition building very much depends on the personal relations between politicians. And that is, i would say, a downside of the um proportional electoral system that Suriname has. So what you and always end up with a multi-party system in which parties need to form coalitions. But that coalition forming process is very opaque to voters. They have no idea which party is going to end up in coalition with another one because ideology doesn't matter.
00:14:04
Speaker
So it all is about um how the different personalities relate to each other, but also what agreements they can make about how state resources are being distributed among voters and how posts within the government are being allocated.
00:14:18
Speaker
So that is very important. um and But what you can also see is that some people who might have had a very bad relationship for a long period of time, they can suddenly yeah form a coalition together because on a personal level, they managed to iron out the differences between them.
00:14:33
Speaker
so It's also at this point really hard for me to predict. I can predict that no party will win a majority, but it's really hard to predict what government will come out of these elections because that's a very black box kind of process.
00:14:46
Speaker
Right. So, yeah, I suppose on that side of things, the election is only the first part. And then you have this coalition building that's, I suppose, a difference, almost its own part ah of the democratic process.
00:15:02
Speaker
Yeah, and what is really important important in the process, is also very important to keep in mind, is that Suriname has a very odd political system in a way in which the president is ah elected by parliament.
00:15:15
Speaker
So there is basically a second election taking place in which the members of parliament, the newly elected parliament, need to vote for a president. And president can only be elected if he or she obtains two-thirds of the votes of the members of parliament.
00:15:29
Speaker
And if that doesn't happen, it will go to... Another institute which is called the United People's Assembly that also includes all subnational politicians in Suriname. But in any case, that election of the president is really important because so to be elected, a party already needs to form a coalition with other parties that will support their presidential candidates.
00:15:48
Speaker
So that's where you see kind of the negotiations already taking place. OK, so um have there been kind of informal coalitions forming over the elect ah the election period already then?
00:16:01
Speaker
At this moment, not so much, I think. What you do notice is that for parties, for the different political parties, it's really important to be part of that government because they also need to show to their supporters that they are able to obtain this position that will also allow them to to distribute favors and services to their voters. So that's why it's really important for political parties to be part of the government, even if it needs to be with parties that they or political leaders that they have hated for a very long period of time.
00:16:30
Speaker
and Okay, yeah. So we're coming towards the end of the ah questions, I think, that I've ah got already. But is there anything that we haven't really touched on in these questions that you think would be quite important for our listeners to know, to have an understanding of Suriname and of its elections and how that all functions?
00:16:54
Speaker
That's a good question. We already talked about the unique um kind of system that Suriname has with the president who is directly elected from the parliament.
Presidential Election Process
00:17:03
Speaker
The same thing happens or that system is basically modeled after South Africa, which is very interesting because that's the other only other country in the world that has this kind of indirect election of a president by parliament.
00:17:15
Speaker
And I think it gives a very specific twist to Suriname's politics because and the position of the president in Suriname, the powers that the president has, are not very clearly defined in the constitution. And what you've noticed over the past decades is that some presidents um behave basically as prime ministers in a parliamentary system, whereas other presidents take on a more presidential role like presidents in a presidential system. And precisely because Suriname is a hybrid in which the powers of the president are not constitutionally defined very clearly,
00:17:48
Speaker
That also allows different persons to ah fill in this role differently. ah Okay, yeah. the yeah The lack of um specific like sets out for what powers ah suppose the executive has, unlike, say, America, which has its clear defined constitution, ah leaves more room to kind of have very different styles of presidency then.
00:18:15
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. yeah Although I would say that the current American president clearly doesn't have some of the powers that he has according to the constitution. But yes. Yeah, those there there's definitely things to say about yeah how effective a written constitution can be.
00:18:28
Speaker
But yeah, are there any kind of examples of, I don't know, one type of president being more prime ministerial and kind of choosing to align with their party slash coalition and the other one taking on more executive power?
00:18:42
Speaker
Yeah, so I would say that the presidents of the parties that are currently in the government, so basically the traditional ethnic parties, their presidents have usually operated more in a kind of parliamentary prime ministerial ah role. But that's also a result of the fact that these were coalitions. So the the leader of the government couldn't functioned too much as a president, also dominating the other ministers from the other parties.
00:19:08
Speaker
Bautershow, when he was elected as president, in he was president between 2010 and 2020. He very much operated as ah as a presidential a president. But also he could also do that because his party was by far the largest one in the government, only supported by one or two very small parties.
00:19:29
Speaker
So I suppose it's about the amount of personal loyalty that the president has that enables them to do that? Yeah, it's a matter of personal loyalty. It's a matter of the power balance, I would say, within the government.
00:19:41
Speaker
And it's a personality issue as well. because balus said Well, also as a military leader, was used to concentrate a lot of powers into his own hands. So he basically continued that style of leadership when he was president, democratically elected president.
00:19:57
Speaker
OK, yeah. Well, this has all been very interesting. so um i suppose to finish this off, could you tell us a fun fact about Suriname for our listeners to go about their days with? Yeah, I can. And that is that Suriname, in contrast to what you would perhaps expect from a former Dutch colony, it drive people drive on the left.
00:20:15
Speaker
And the reason is that it was also very briefly occupied ah by the United Kingdom. And in that period, driving on the left was
Conclusion and Fun Facts
00:20:23
Speaker
introduced. But it's very confusing to people ah from the Netherlands ah visiting Suriname or vice versa to change the side of the road on which they are driving.
00:20:32
Speaker
That does sound quite difficult, especially if, yeah, there's quite a long kind of ah distance between the two so you don't get that instance yeah yeah well thank you very much for coming on the podcast i really appreciate it this has been really interesting it's been great to hear what you have to say about surinam and its elections and yeah thank you very much great thanks a lot thank you for listening to the observations podcast this has been hosted by demoxy volunteers I've been Matt Davis, your special international elections correspondent for The Observations podcast.
00:21:07
Speaker
Thank you for listening.
00:21:18
Speaker
The Observations podcast has been brought to you by Democracy Volunteers, the UK's leading election observation group. Democracy Volunteers is non-partisan and does not necessarily share the opinions of participants in the podcast.
00:21:32
Speaker
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