Ronald Venetiaan
Ronald Venetiaan (born June 18, 1936 in Paramaribo , Suriname ) is a scientist, politician and was President of the Republic of Suriname.
Venetiaan is Afro-Surinamese. His family comes from the Overtoom wood plantation on Upper Para in the Para district . After completing his school education in Paramaribo (1955), he received one of five Dutch scholarships for his outstanding achievements. He studied mathematics and physics with a focus on mathematics at the University of Leiden , Netherlands , where he also received his doctorate in 1964. He then went back to Suriname and initially worked as a mathematics teacher - and from 1969 as a school director.
Political career
Venetiaan took his first steps in politics in 1965 with a few smaller nationalist parties. As a staunch nationalist , his ideas were particularly close to Eddy Bruma's PNR ( Partij van de Nationalistische Republiek ); however, he then joined the Nationale Partij Suriname (NPS). During the great strikes in 1973 against the Sedney-Lachmon government, he was director of the AMS ( Algemene Middelbare School ) and at the same time leader of the teachers' union.
After the electoral success of the NPK ( Nationale Party Kombinatie ) in 1973, he became Minister for Education and Popular Development in the government of Prime Minister Henck AE Arron . On February 25, 1980, 16 NCOs, led by Desi Bouterse, overthrew the Arron government in a coup , thereby ending parliamentary democracy . Venetiaan had to give up his ministerial office and became a lecturer at the technical faculty of Anton de Kom University.
On November 25, 1987, with the first free and secret elections during the military dictatorship, the "old" parties came back to power. Venetiaan became Minister of Education and Popular Development in the Arron cabinet for the second time. With the so-called telephone coup on December 24, 1990, however, President Ramsewak Shankar and the Arron government were brought down again by the military under Desi Bouterse.
Venetiaan - I (1991-1996)
After the newly announced elections, Venetiaan became a presidential candidate for the first time for the party combination “New Front for Democracy and Development”. When he was elected on September 7, 1991, he replaced Johan Kraag, who was appointed by the military, as president and remained in office until September 14, 1996.
He only narrowly lost the following election in the popular assembly (407 votes for Venetiaan and 438 votes for Wijdenbosch) and Jules Albert Wijdenbosch became president. Venetiaan remained as a member of parliament ( De Nationale Assemblèe; DNA ). Among other things, caused by the high inflation rate, there were violent protests from all levels of the population - and there were strikes, mass demonstrations and protest meetings against the policies of the Wijdenbosch government. The social and political unrest was particularly strong in 1998 and 1999.
Venetiaan - II (2000-2005)
In the middle of 2000 there were early elections. The "New Front" - a coalition of the NPS, VHP (the largest party of the Indian population group), Pertjajah Luhur (previously Pendawa Lima : one of the parties of the Javanese population group) and the SPA (a smaller social-democratic-union-oriented party) - won 37 of the 51 parliamentary seats. Venetiaan received the necessary two-thirds majority in parliament on August 12, so that the people's assembly did not have to meet this time.
Venetiaan - III (2005-2010)
In the rotating parliamentary elections for the DNA on May 25, 2005, the “New Front” received only 23 parliamentary seats this time. These were divided as follows: NPS 8, VHP 8, PL 6 and SPA 1. Desi Bouterse's opposition NDP , who had tried unsuccessfully to return to power by election since the end of the dictatorship, became the strongest party with 15 seats. the Volksalliantie Voor Vooruitgang (VVV) by Jules Wijdenbosch received 5 seats. The actual election winner was the so-called A-Combinatie (a party from the inland) with 5 parliamentary seats; one of which was taken by Ronnie Brunswijk .
In the coalition negotiations that followed, the “New Front” succeeded in getting the A-Combinatie on their side. But since that was not enough for a two-thirds majority in parliament, the People's Assembly ( Verenigde Volksvergadering; VVV ) had to meet. On August 3, 2005, Venetiaan was re-elected as President for his third term with 560 votes. His opponent Rabin Parmessar received 315 votes, four votes were invalid.
On August 12, 2005 Ronald Venetiaan was sworn in together with Ramdien Sardjoe , the newly elected Vice President in the Paramaribo Center Church. According to the constitution, the term of office is five years.
The election of the president with a simple majority by the people's assembly is always required if one of the candidates does not receive a two-thirds majority in the vote in the DNA. The VVV consists of an electoral college of members of the DNA (51 parliamentarians) and members of the regional councils. In the last election on August 3, 2005, this electoral college consisted of a total of 879 voters.
Loss of presidency
In the parliamentary elections on May 25, 2010 Venetiaan ran again for the Nieuwe Front as a presidential candidate. Here, however, the merger of parties clearly lost against the Mega Combinatie (MC) with the candidate Desi Bouterse at the top and the NPS of Venetiaan lost four of their previous eight seats; after negotiations in which Bouterse was able to attract renegade MPs from other parties to his side, the former dictator was elected president for the first time. Venetiaan was a member of the newly elected parliament as a member of the opposition and leader of the NPS and criticized the new government for measures that glorified the military coup as a national holiday and Bouterse and his followers an amnesty for the 1982 massacre of opposition representatives they personally committed shortly before the verdict was pronounced granted.
After resigning as chairman of the NPS in 2012, he also resigned from his seat as a member of parliament on October 27, 2013.
Honorary Chairman
Ronald Venetiaan was appointed honorary chairman of his party, the Nationale Partij Suriname (NPS) , on November 22, 2013 . He has been a member since 1973 and was chairman of the NPS for around twenty years, from 1993 to 2012.
See also
literature
- Wim Hoogbergen and Dirk Kruijt: De oorlog van de sergeanten. Surinaamse militairen in de politiek . Amsterdam (Uitgeverij Bert Bakker) 2005 (pages 250-255) ISBN 90-351-2998-9 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ NPS brengt hulde aan ex-voorzitter Ronald Venetiaan. Starnieuws, November 23, 2013 (Dutch).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Venetiaan, Ronald |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Surinamese President of Suriname |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 18, 1936 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Paramaribo , Suriname |