分类： politics

In a press briefing held earlier this week, Suriname’s Minister of Justice and Police Harish Monorath has laid out the stark challenges facing the country’s national police force, including a persistent staffing shortage and widespread exodus of experienced personnel to higher-paying roles abroad, while revealing that authorities quietly tolerate banned side work for officers to help them make ends meet. The comments came during a promotion ceremony Monday at the National Police Training Center, where 205 new recruits were formally elevated to the rank of Extraordinary Police Officer (BAVP).

Minister Monorath told reporters that for the police force to operate at full effectiveness across the country, its ideal total strength would sit at around 5,000 active officers. As of the latest count, however, the entire corps only numbers just over 2,700 personnel – less than 55% of the workforce needed to fulfill all core public safety mandates. Compounding this gap is a steady brain drain that the department has been unable to reverse: every year, more than 300 trained officers leave the force to take up positions elsewhere, most commonly in neighboring countries or other overseas locations where compensation packages are far more competitive than domestic salaries. Currently, the force can only recruit and train roughly 300 new officers annually to replace departing staff, while around 20 more personnel leave each month in search of better working conditions and higher pay, almost always outside Suriname’s borders. Monorath even noted that a common early warning sign of an officer planning to exit the force is a request for personal leave without objection, as officers prepare to transition to their new roles.

Addressing longstanding public debates over off-duty work for police and military personnel, Monorath clarified that while formal Dutch Caribbean law explicitly prohibits civil servants from holding secondary employment, the government has maintained a de facto tolerance policy to allow low-paid officers to supplement their incomes. “What people choose to do during their own free time is not something I can comment on or control,” the minister stated. He added that most police officers work rotating shift schedules, and the vast majority hold multiple jobs to cover basic living costs. Many officers take on private security work for gold mining companies, for example, while others travel to the country’s interior to earn extra income. He also refuted recent media reports claiming that Jean ‘Saya’ Mixon, one of his four appointed advisors, received or will receive police security protection, calling the claims completely untrue.

Public criticism of off-duty security work has grown in recent years, with critics arguing that when police or military personnel work for private third parties – particularly in Suriname’s resource-rich interior, where conflict over gold mining concessions is common – it creates major potential conflicts of interest that undermine public trust in state security institutions. Monorath acknowledged that the line between official duties and personal free time is not always clear cut when it comes to secondary work. However, he stressed that the department will take strict disciplinary action against any civil servant found to be carrying out unauthorized secondary work during their official paid working hours.

When we talk about national governance, our attention automatically goes to the president, vice president, and cabinet ministers. These are the public faces of power: they announce policy, sign official documents, and deliver public accountability. But anyone seeking to understand how power actually operates in practice has to look far past the familiar names and faces that dominate daily news cycles. Behind every elected official lies an extensive network of unelected actors, and it is within these behind-the-scenes circles that much of the real decision-making takes place.

This pattern repeats itself every time a new government takes office. Hundreds of political operatives shift into new positions, as party loyalists who provided unwavering support during election campaigns are rewarded for their service after victory at the polls. Roles are carved up, new positions are created, and influence is locked in for key insiders. This is the very system that current ruling coalition promised to reform, campaigning under the slogan *Tra fas’ de en nyun pasi* (New path, clean path) that pledged full transparency and open governance. Yet time and again, it is not the elected cabinet ministers who shape this network of influence — it is unelected advisors and close confidants. These actors, whether they hold a formal title or not, wield enormous tangible power. They control the placement of candidates for key government positions, regardless of whether those candidates are qualified for the roles they are given. It should come as no surprise, then, that persistent administrative problems continue to fester across the country, such as the ongoing anomaly in Nickerie, where two district commissioners are on the public payroll but only one can actually carry out official duties.

Those who believe all government policy is developed in formal meeting rooms are only getting half the story. The most influential actors in the President’s Office are widely recognized to be Faisel Abdoelgafoer and Sergio Akiemboto, operating through a tangled web of formal and informal channels that guide decision-making. Too often, unqualified candidates are placed on the boards of state-owned enterprises, a pattern that has led to a string of high-profile blunders in recent years. One of the most recent missteps involved Minister Harish Monorath and the Saya project, yet the minister faced no consequences for the incident. He escaped unscathed largely because he enjoys the unwavering backing of coalition leader and ABOP party chief Ronnie Brunswijk. Brunswijk not only maintains firm control over his own party but also holds the entire governing coalition in a chokehold, blocking action to address longstanding issues at state-owned firms Grassalco and EBS.

In many cases, key decisions are drafted, adjusted, and finalized long before they ever appear on the agenda for an official government vote. Just as banks are required to know not just their customers but the full network of connections around them, the public deserves to examine the full network of people that surround the nation’s top elected leaders. That is where private interests intersect with public policy, that is where backroom deals are struck, and that is where the overall direction of the country is ultimately set. Across every administration, there are advisors and holders of key positions who prioritize advancing their own personal agendas over the public good. Candidates are placed in roles not to challenge bad decisions or offer independent perspective, but simply to carry out the orders handed down from insiders. This creates a system where formal responsibility is visible to the public, but actual influence remains diffuse and hidden from view.

To date, the current administration has yet to present a clear, unified policy agenda for the country, thanks in large part to bitter infighting over competing interests within the coalition — disputes that are particularly intense in the housing development sector. The ongoing conflict over the country’s Fisheries Inspection Institute remains unresolved, while state-owned water utility Canawaima has been mired in quiet dysfunction for months.

It is long past time for the public to stop only looking at the “display window” of formal government, while blunders and mismanagement pile up behind closed doors. The real work of governance happens far from the public eye: in rooms with no press cameras, in unrecorded phone calls, in informal agreements that are never written down but still shape policy and outcomes. As long as we pretend that only elected officials set the direction of government, we are only fooling ourselves. Power does not only reside in formal job titles. It lives in access, in access, in personal connections, in who you can call and who calls you back. The critical question for Suriname is not who holds the top formal offices — it is who is really pulling the strings.

A new judicial probe has been opened into allegations of financial and administrative misconduct surrounding the former administration of Suriname’s Ministry of Public Health, centering on millions of dollars in missing equipment and rule-breaking procurement practices ahead of this year’s general elections.

The Public Prosecution Service confirmed in an official letter to current Health Minister André Misiekaba that a Gerechtelijk Vooronderzoek (GVO, or judicial preliminary investigation) has been launched, following a criminal complaint submitted by the ministry itself. The investigation initially names “unknown perpetrators” but targets Amar Ramadhin, who led the health portfolio from 2020 through 2025 before the recent election cycle. Misiekaba has publicly verified the launch of the probe to local outlet Starnieuws.

At the core of the investigation are two key issues: hundreds of pieces of medical and office equipment purchased with grant funding from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) that cannot be located, and 900,000 Surinamese dollars worth of late-term procurement that violated all mandatory public financial regulations.

Ministry officials say internal reviews and a third-party audit uncovered massive gaps in record-keeping for the IDB-funded equipment, which was earmarked for public health system upgrades. Complete distribution logs do not exist: key records were lost when ministry computers crashed, and only a small fraction of the equipment can be traced through installation records held by the department’s IT division. The IDB, which provided the grant to support the country’s public health modernization, has formally requested clarification from the Surinamese government following its own audit queries into the whereabouts of the donated assets.

The second set of irregularities centers on SRD 900,000 in procurement completed in late April 2025, just weeks before Suriname’s national elections. According to Minister Misiekaba, these purchases bypassed all required public procurement protocols: mandatory steps including soliciting multiple competitive bids and sign-off from the ministry’s internal audit division were entirely skipped.

Even more concerning, ministry leadership says the supplier has sent a formal demand for payment of the outstanding invoice for these goods, but a large share of the purchased items cannot be found anywhere within the ministry’s inventory. Shockingly, the ministry’s own director has stated he had no advance knowledge of these transactions, raising questions about unauthorized off-the-books spending.

Misiekaba defended the ministry’s decision to file the criminal complaint that triggered the GVO, saying there was no other viable path forward to address the irregularities. “There was no other choice than to file a criminal complaint,” he told Starnieuws. The ministry has already taken internal disciplinary action in response to the findings: the acting director of administrative services has been replaced and placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation, while multiple other officials connected to the procurement have been reassigned to other roles. The ministry’s internal audit division has formally stated it was never consulted on the questionable purchases, as would be required under national public finance rules.

Public and parliamentary criticism has mounted sharply in Suriname over the role of Jean “Saya” Mixon, who served as an advisor to Harish Monorath, the country’s Minister of Justice and Police. The backlash has grown so intense that some lawmakers have even called for Monorath’s resignation from his cabinet post.

In a blunt response to the demands, Monorath pushed back against critics, noting that the only authority that can remove him from office is the country’s president. “People can say whatever they want,” Monorath stated. “The day the president has had enough, I will leave office. It is that simple.”

The minister addressed the ongoing controversy shortly after presiding over a promotion ceremony for 205 new police recruits at the national Police Training Center, where he was pressed by reporters to clarify whether Mixon still retains any formal or informal connection to his ministry. When pressed for a concrete answer on Mixon’s current status, Monorath declined to provide explicit details, instead claiming the entire matter is already closed.

“Parliament requested me to confirm that the individual in question no longer holds an advisor position as defined by law,” Monorath explained. “I have done that. That’s it.”

When reporters asked whether Monorath had formally thanked Mixon for his past service, the minister denied any formal recognition took place. “Nothing was ever formalized, there was never an official appointment, so there was nothing to thank him for,” he added.

Monorath further pushed back against widespread claims that Mixon had been performing official work at the ministry, or accessing resources and facilities belonging to the Suriname Police Corps (KPS). “None of those claims are true,” he said. “He never came to the ministry office, and he never received security protection from the KPS.”

He also refuted allegations that Mixon has been receiving security detail from special reserve police officers. Monorath did acknowledge that it is common practice for regular police officers to take on private security work during their personal time off, including traveling into the country’s interior regions for private assignments when they have multiple consecutive days of leave.