Hindu Returns Civilian Rule to Suriname

Hindu businessman Ramshewak Shankar was inaugurated as president of Suriname today, ending nearly eight years of military rule in the troubled South American nation.

Shankar, 50, was sworn in as the nation’s fourth president by National Assembly Chairman Jagernath Lachmon during a nationally broadcast morning ceremony at the jammed 4,000-seat Nis Stadium in Paramaribo, the capital.

Shankar, expected to name a Cabinet on Tuesday, will serve a five-year term as president of the former Dutch colony on the northeast coast of South America.

Shankar’s inauguration ends the rule of army strongman Lt. Col. Desi Bouterse, one of the few remaining military governments in the Western Hemisphere, and was the last step in the four-year transition to democracy negotiated by Bouterse and civilian party leaders.

Bouterse’s time in power was marked by widely reported human rights abuses, including the killings of 15 civilian leaders by military authorities in December, 1982.

Despite the army’s agreement to stay out of politics, Bouterse and the military retain a constitution-mandated oversight role in the government.

Shankar, deputy chairman of the largely Indian Hindu Progressive Reform Party, is described as a low-key technocrat with a reputation for honesty. Educated in the Netherlands, he served as agriculture minister from 1969 to 1971 and managed a state-run rice-farming project until entering private business in 1981.