Paramaribo, 29 October – Suriname’s Prosecutor General Garcia Paragsingh has formally denied a formal information request submitted by Popular Liberation (PL) party parliamentary faction leader Bronto Somohardjo for aggregated, ethnicity-disaggregated statistical data on how suspects are processed during prosecution decision-making processes, prompting sharp pushback from the sitting lawmaker who frames the refusal as a deliberate attempt to undermine his legislative duties.
Somohardjo, who also serves as a member of the National Assembly (DNA), originally submitted the written data request to the top public prosecutor on 20 October. His submission sought granular public metrics tracking prosecution and case dismissal rates across four high-priority crime categories: drug offenses, domestic violence, assault, and theft, with breakdowns sorted by the ethnic background of suspects to enable public oversight of potential disparities in prosecutorial policy implementation.
In an official signed rejection letter dated 28 October, Paragsingh stated that after conducting a required due diligence review of the request, her office saw no valid justification to release the requested datasets at this time. The only explicit justification provided for the denial was the fact that an unfinished, active criminal investigation is currently underway targeting Somohardjo himself. Notably, the top prosecutor’s correspondence offered no additional explanatory context to outline any direct, logical connection between the lawmaker’s personal pending criminal case and his request for fully anonymized, aggregate public statistics on general prosecutorial practices across the country.
Speaking to local outlet Starnieuws following the release of the rejection letter, Somohardjo dismissed the prosecutor general’s stated rationale as absurd and completely incomprehensible. He emphasized that his request never sought access to any materials related to his own personal criminal case, but only anonymized, population-wide data on how all Surinamese citizens are treated by the prosecution service. The veteran legislator argued that linking his status as a person under active investigation to a legitimate parliamentary oversight request for general public administration data sets a dangerous precedent that could be used to silence elected representatives holding the executive branch accountable. He added that he is now actively probing whether the prosecution’s move represents a deliberate tactic to restrict and obstruct his core responsibilities as a duly elected public representative serving the Surinamese electorate.