"Suriname ex-dictator elected president" by Associated Press | July 20, 2010
PARAMARIBO, Suriname — Former dictator Desi Bouterse was elected president by Parliament yesterday, after weeks of jostling by opponents who sought to stop a convicted drug trafficker accused of killing political opponents from returning to power.
Sounds like one of our guys America.
Related:
"Suriname: In December 1982, CIA Director William Casey told the House and Senate intelligence committees that President Reagan had authorized the CIA to try to topple Suriname ruler Col. Desi Bouterse, supposedly leading his country into "the Cuban orbit." Even though the committee refused to approve the covert operation, there is good reason to believe that the administration did what it wished. An invasion of the country was scheduled for July 1, 1983 by Florida-based mercenaries-Americans and others. It was called off only after being discovered by the internal security agency of the Netherlands, the former colonial power in Suriname."
"Bouterse said the fifteen people who were executed were "all people connected with parts of the CIA."
Maybe not.
Our candidates get rejected everywhere down there, don't they?
Everywhere you can't fix an election anyway.
Bouterse’s supporters cheered and waved flags outside Parliament after he secured 36 votes for the presidency, due to a small party’s decision to back him in exchange for three Cabinet positions.
“I reach out my hand to everyone who feels that they are adversaries and ask them to leave the past behind so we can build this country together,’’ Bouterse told the crowd.
The same way the Globe leaves it in this story?
A two-thirds majority in the 51-seat Parliament is required to elect the president of Suriname, a largely Dutch-speaking country of 500,000 people on the northern coast of South America....
Bouterse first seized control of Suriname in a coup in 1980, five years after it gained independence from the Netherlands.
And now he has done it by ballot box.
He stepped down under international pressure in 1987.
In 1999 a Dutch court convicted him in absentia of trafficking cocaine to the Netherlands, but he has avoided an 11-year prison term because the two countries do not have an extradition treaty.And now he was elected president?
--more--"
I guess anyone can be president in Suriname.
