A major row has erupted in the Caribbean Community nation of Suriname following last week’s death of controversial former military strongman and president Desi Bouterse, with many challenging the state’s explanation about his death, while the immediate family is berating authorities for treating them with utter disrespect in their time of grief.
As his National Democratic Party (NDP) prepares to cremate him in the new month, authorities are being forced to deny Dutch and local media reports that a very ill Bouterse, 79, had secretly struck a deal with the Chan Santokhi administration to allow him to die at home, surrounded by his wife, Ingrid, top party officials and relatives.
But both Santokhi and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Albert Ramdin, dismissed as nonsense and irresponsible reports of the secret deal, saying that they are unaware of any arrangement with Bouterse to allow him safe passage from his hiding place to die in peace at his home in trendy Leonsberg as they appear to stick to the police story that his lifeless body had been spirited from his hiding place to his home undetected by authorities who had been monitoring it ever since Bouterse went into hiding in mid-January, hours before he was scheduled to begin a 20-year sentence for the mass murders of 15 political opponents in 1982.
An autopsy performed on his body revealed that he might have died last week, Monday or Tuesday, from liver failure linked to excessive or chronic alcoholic abuse. Both Dutch and local media challenged police reports that he had died in his hiding place, arguing that he was allowed to be at home for two days in the company of close relatives in his final hours.
“This is simply causing problems here. That is why I know that I am right that people from the Netherlands want to be destabilizing on social media,” Ramdin told Star News online publication. “Absolute nonsense. I know nothing of any agreement, and I don’t see this president promising anything like that. With these kinds of stories, without any foundation, they create unnecessary problems for us,” he told journalists at a media conference at the weekend.
For his part, Santokhi also dismissed such reports, noting that (Dutch media) “if those people are so righteous and love the country so much. Let them deposit all this information with the attorney general. That is the legal system of our country. That is how we are organized. That is how constitutional we are. I invite everyone: The public prosecution service is there. Bring that information. Let them investigate it. We want everything to proceed in an orderly manner. Provisions have been made. There is communication. With the NDP. With the family. Let us handle the case in a respectful manner. Let there be no noise that we do not need. I am not interested in noise. The position is that everything must proceed in an orderly manner.”
Meanwhile, Ingrid Bouterse announced Monday that she had canceled a planned telephone conversation with Santokhi because of the disrespect shown to the grieving families in recent days.
She said loved ones were forced to learn about the reasons for Bouterse’s death through public media. “We understood the seizure of the body and the investigation. What was painful and humiliating for us, however, is that we had to learn the cause of death through the media. It was difficult to accept that the details, in medical terms and subjective assessments, were shared publicly in an official press release,” she said in a statement.
“Determining the cause of death is understandable in connection with the designation ‘fugitive convict.’ However, sharing the medical cause of death and assessments thereof, while the government has communicated with respect about ‘the respectful funeral of former president Bouterse,’ is contradictory and disrespectful to us as a family.”
The administration had announced over the weekend that there will be no national mourning period, no state funeral, and no governmental condolences book, but flags will be flown at half-staff at government buildings this week. The Bouterse family countered by saying that it had not asked for a state funeral because its body of supporters would give the former two-time coup maker and the former two-term elected president a proper and fitting send-off.
“Although we know that there are examples of other convicted former presidents who were buried with state honors, we have never made this request. We believe that a people’s president does not wait for state honors, and we do not understand the discussion about’ Of the dead nothing but good,’ and added that the family experiences the opposite of the government in this matter. “The people will pay their last respects to a people’s president. We are preparing for the last greeting to our beloved Desi because death is only a horizon, and the soul is immortal,” concluded Ingrid Bouterse-Waldring.
