Op woensdag 21 september j.l. verscheen op www.yahoo.com het nieuwsbericht met als kop: ”Suriname Slides Into Economic Abyss, in Shadow of Venezuela”.
De realiteit
In een nutchel werd de heersende situatie beschreven en daarmee werd ook de eventuele heersende opvattingen bij niet juist geinformeerden weggemaakt.”It is a South American nation in crisis: Businesses are closing, food prices are soaring and hospitals are running out of basic supplies such as paper towels and bandages. No, this isn’t Venezuela but rather nearby Suriname, a multi-ethnic former Dutch colony where the economy is in freefall amid collapsing global commodity prices and the local currency’s resulting slide against the U.S. dollar. Life has become exceedingly difficult in this isolated country of about 540,000 people on South America’s northeastern coast, which the World Bank says now has the world’s third highest rate of inflation, behind Venezuela and South Sudan.”
Hypocriet en incapabel
“The president said at a news conference Tuesday that the IMF requirements are “very harsh” and that his government may move to withdraw from the loan agreement and seek support from other sources such as the Islamic Development Bank. The IMF is cold and only thinks about the numbers and the deadlines we had agreed to,” Bouterse said. “If the agreement with the IMF becomes too difficult to follow, if we risk becoming victims of the agreement ourselves, we will have to look for other options.” Omtrent een belangrijke oorzaak die heeft geleid tot de huidige economische verpaupering staat,”President Desi Bouterse likely also contributed by spending heavily before the May 2015 election, exhausting currency reserves.” Over de gedachtengang en werkwijze van de regeringsleider is vastgelegd:”Bouterse, who has expressed admiration for the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, ran Suriname as a military dictatorship in 1980-1987, then returned as president in a 2010 parliamentary election. In 2000, he was convicted of drug trafficking in the Netherlands in absentia. He has been charged in Suriname with orchestrating the killing of 15 political opponents in 1982, but as the economy crumbled this summer, he invoked a clause of the constitution to suspend the trial, citing national security.”
Bedelstaf en levenslast
“As in other import-dependent countries, health care has been hit particularly hard. Doctors at the Academic Hospital Paramaribo, the country’s largest, recently posted a YouTube video pleading for help from Surinamese living abroad, saying they lacked such things as sterile tubes. We have reached the point that people will die an avoidable death, one said.” De situatie van een radeloze moeder werd rauw weergegeven, “she visited four pharmacies seeking a medicine to treat nausea and vomiting for her 2-year-old daughter before giving up and trying something else recommended by a pharmacist. I eventually gave my daughter medication that was not prescribed for her,” she said. “What else could I do?”
Laf en angstvalling
De attitude van grote delen van de bevolking en de het gewicht van instituten werd benadrukt,:”But that’s where the comparison to Venezuela ends. Anti-government protests have been relatively small, attracting several thousand people at most. The opposition is weak and divided, with some leading figures saying they don’t see the point in marching.”
P.s enkel een vraag, gaat het in deze om aanvallen van vijandige buitenlandse mogendheden?“ Time will tell, hij blijft een gekwel?”
Drs. Frits Lalay
