Suriname--a Revolution Gone Awry

This formerly Dutch outpost on South America’s northeast shoulder Monday marked the fifth anniversary of a revolution that has gone awry but won’t go away.

Lt. Col. Desi Bouterse, the 39-year-old strongman, declared the day a holiday, to be celebrated with a military parade, a music festival and a public rally in grassy Independence Square.

In a speech at the rally, Bouterse said his government will move toward democracy, but he added: “We are not talking about any foreign model of democracy. We are talking about our own kind of democracy, which we will establish in our own good time and in our own way.”

‘I Am Still Here’

Speaking in Dutch, he criticized the Netherlands for withdrawing support from his government, and he derisively recalled Dutch predictions that he would fall from power in six months, a year or two years. “But the periods keep repeating themselves, and I am still here,” he said.

Bouterse wore a military fatigue cap and dark glasses. During his evening speech from a platform under towering tamarind trees, he was flanked by soldiers holding automatic rifles. Applause from the crowd was infrequent and subdued.

Bouterse’s revolution has been clearly unpopular since December, 1982, when the regime arrested and summarily executed 15 of its best-known opposition figures. The killings dimmed what little revolutionary fervor there had been among the people.

“The whole nation has more or less refused to get in on the revolutionary process,” a Paramaribo clergyman commented.

Constitution Planned

In an attempt at a fresh start, the government recently created a 31-member assembly that was given 27 months from its opening date, Jan. 15, to write a national constitution. Monday’s anniversary celebration included a ceremonial session of the assembly, which includes representatives of organized labor and business as well as the military.

Fred Derby, head of the country’s largest labor federation, said union representatives in the assembly want the planned constitution to provide for elections and democracy, but he added that he is “not talking about West European democracy.”

Derby, 45, said in an interview that he envisions a national legislature of one or two chambers with some representatives elected by popular vote and others chosen by organizations of labor, employers, churches, women and youth. He said this proposal coincides essentially with what he understands Bouterse to want.

Asked if the military should also name representatives, Derby said: “In the beginning, I’m not against that.”

Seeking Civilian Support

In creating the assembly, the government’s apparent goal was to enlist the support of civilians by giving them a role in providing the revolution with political form and content--elements it has largely lacked since it began with a sergeants’ rebellion on Feb. 25, 1980.

Bouterse, then a sergeant who specialized in physical education, led the rebellion. It was sparked by a mutiny of noncommissioned officers trying to form a union, but it was explained as a revolutionary break from political structures imposed in colonial days.

The military government closed the Staaten, an elected parliament that had been the core of Suriname’s political system since long before full independence was granted by the Netherlands in 1975.

Most of Suriname, which is about the size of Georgia, is covered with dense tropical forest. The people here take great pride in the natural beauty of the wilderness, especially in the abundance and variety of tropical songbirds.

About 85% of the population, estimated at 360,000, is concentrated within 25 miles of Paramaribo, the capital. Paramaribo, a port city 12 miles from the Atlantic on the muddy Suriname River, is characterized by stately wooden houses, tall palms and bright bougainvillea.

Diverse Ethnic Groups

The diverse political and ethnic groups--Dutch, Creole, East Indian, Indonesian, African--had resolved their differences over the years in a spirit of peaceful civility, and the executions of the opposition leaders in 1982 came as a shock.

“It was out of character, extremely unusual,” a foreign diplomat said. “It’s just not Suriname.”

The government said at first that the 15 victims were shot trying to escape detention but said later that they were executed. The killings were necessary, the government said, to crush a plot aimed at “the total liquidation of the leadership of the progressive organizations.”

This account is widely questioned. A Western diplomat said the victims “were not the kind of people who would plan a coup.”

In reaction to the killings, the Netherlands suspended a sizable program of development aid, the equivalent of about $2 billion spread over 10 years or more. As a condition for resuming the aid, the Dutch have demanded concrete steps by Suriname toward resuming the democratic process and guarantees against violent repression.

Treaty Violation Charged

Suriname has charged that suspending the aid violates a treaty signed at the time of independence and is a denial of the Netherlands’ obligation to compensate it for 300 years of colonial exploitation. Yearly aid allocations amounted to as much as a third of the Suriname government budget.

Still, Bouterse said in a speech Saturday that the aid has done Suriname little good.

“The so-called development aid we received for years did not only cause our economy to become distorted, it has also generated a sham prosperity,” he said. “The utilization of the development aid caused a consolidation of the neo-colonial structures.”

The military government’s rhetoric has been consistently anti-imperialist, but leftist influence has come and gone. Bouterse appears to have shifted with the ideological winds.

“He has flipped all over, like a weather vane,” a Paramaribo businessman said. “He has no dogmatic convictions one way or another. He is a military man who has found himself in power and likes it.”

‘Knows What He Wants’

But a Surinamese editor insists that Bouterse has developed a definite ideological position. “He knows what he wants,” the editor said. “He wants a socialist state. He feels now that he is a man with a mission.”

Bouterse was a close friend of Maurice Bishop, the late revolutionary leader in Grenada, and Cuba’s Communist government once had about 100 diplomats and advisers here. But after Bishop was overthrown and killed, in October, 1983, Bouterse asked Cuba to withdraw its ambassador and all except four members of its mission. The request coincided with the U.S.-led invasion of Grenada. Cuba pulled its mission out of Paramaribo and closed its embassy.

Diplomatic sources say that Bouterse’s request to Havana was made under pressure from Washington and from neighboring Brazil’s right-wing military government. But others say Bouterse blamed the Cubans for the turmoil in Grenada that led to Bishop’s death.

Since then, Suriname’s ties with Brazil have grown stronger and include economic and military aid from Brasilia.

Ties to Nicaragua, Libya

Still, Bouterse has also been developing relations with the revolutionary Sandinista government of Nicaragua and with the radical regime of Col. Moammar Kadafi in Libya. The Kadafi government is setting up a “people’s bureau,” or embassy, in Paramaribo.

In 1983, Suriname’s civilian Cabinet was dominated by eight ministers representing two small, left-wing parties: the pro-Cuban Revolutionary People’s Party and the Progressive Workers’ and Farmers’ Union. But after a series of crippling labor strikes early in 1984, Bouterse reorganized the Cabinet to include representatives of labor and business organizations.

The leftist parties were left out. However, the Progressive Workers’ and Farmers’ Union is still said to work closely with Bouterse, and the Revolutionary People’s Party is influential in the army’s political arm, the 25th of February Movement.

Bouterse’s most useful domestic allies at the moment seem to be labor leaders. Support from the union membership, however, is questionable.

“If he had (support from) the labor rank and file, I think he would hold elections tomorrow,” a former politician said.