The inhabitants of the South American Surinam state vote on Sunday to the 51-member parliament, who will vote for a new president and vice president in a few weeks. As the AFP reported in its report, the elections will determine how the huge oil wealth of this smallest country of South America will be used to transform it from the poor to rich.
This small state – the only one in America, whose official language is Dutch – is struggling with high debt, rising inflation and poverty that affects almost every fifth of its 600,000 inhabitants. However, recent discoveries in the sea suggest that this condition may change soon.
“It will be a huge income for the country,” said the acting President Chan Santokhi AFP this week, adding that by law Santokhi has the right to run for the second term.
Chances are balanced
Political analysts did not want to speculate before the elections, which of the political parties will be the most successful in the parliamentary elections because their chances are balanced. However, Defense Minister Krishn Mathoor said when he left the polling station that Santokhi’s progressive reform party (VHP) should win the elections because it laid “basics of economic stability and we have to build on it.”
14 political parties, including Santokhi Centrist VHP and left -wing National Democratic Party (NDP) of the deceased former coup leader and autocrat, who became elected President Desi Bouteters, are candidate in Sunday elections.
Vice -President of the General Liberation and Development (ABOP) of Vice President Ronnie Brunswijk – a former partisan, who revolved against the Boumeter government in the 1980s, is also applying for voters’ favor.
Preliminary results of parliamentary elections are expected on Sunday evening.
A new government can change the fate of the country
Anyone will take the lead of Surinam will have a unique opportunity to change the fate of the country, AFP said. Experts say Surinam earns billions of dollars in the next decade or two on recently discovered oil deposits in the sea.
The French band Totalenergies announced a $ 10.5 billion project last year, which will begin with an oil field with an estimated production capacity of 220,000 barrels per day at the Surinam coast. Production should start in 2028. Surinam has created a “license fee for everyone” fund to point the money from the expected income directly to the hands of citizens.
Surinam is a diverse country inhabited by descendants of people from India, Indonesia, China, the Netherlands, indigenous groups and African slaves, which in November commemorates the 50th anniversary of independence from the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
They are associated with China
Since the acquisition of independence, he has been trying to get closer to China as a political ally and business partner. In 2019, Surinam became one of the first Latin American countries to join the infrastructure initiative of China known as the belt and the road.
In an effort to limit the influence of China in the Latin American region to Surinam in March, US Foreign Minister Marco Rubio also visited.
AFP added that more than 90 percent of the territory of Surinam is forests and is one of the few countries in the world with a negative carbon footprint.
Santokhi insists that this condition is not endangered and that Surinam can use its unexpected oil profits “to switch to the green energy we need, also because we know that fossil fuel energy is limited”.
