The Surinamese parliament on Sunday endorsed the first female president in the country's history, Jennifer Simons, 71, who is taking on an important challenge: managing its newly discovered enormous oil reserves, which could turn around one of the poorest nations in the region.

Suriname, the poorest country The smallest country in South America in terms of both population and territory, is also celebrating the 50th anniversary of its independence from the Netherlands this year.

Jennifer “Jenny” Simons, who leads a coalition of opposition parties, has won the presidency of Suriname after the current president, Chandrikapersad “Chan” Santokhi, decided not to seek re-election as his party did not have the required two-thirds support in the House of Representatives.

“I come to this office to serve, and I will use all my knowledge, strength and insight to make our wealth available to all our people,” Simons said in a brief speech after lawmakers approved her appointment to applause.

House Speaker Ashwin Adhin described the election of the first female president as “a historic moment of national significance.”

“I am very aware of the responsibility that now rests on our shoulders, a responsibility heightened for me by the fact that “I’m the first woman to hold this position,” Simons added. “I don’t need many words. My thanks and we’ll get to work.”

The country’s new leader is a doctor by training, although she entered politics in 1996 as a deputy for the capital, Paramaribo, constituency.

She was previously the president of the Surinamese Parliament and since 2024 has led the National Democratic Party (PND), which was founded by the coup leader and later elected president Desiré “Dési” Bouterse, who died while a fugitive from justice.

In the elections held on May 25, the PND managed to win 18 of the 51 seats in the Surinamese Parliament, more than Santokhi’s centrist party,and secured the agreement of five other smaller parties in the chamber to garner the support of 34 deputies.

The oil curse

Simons' inauguration is scheduled for July 16, when Shantokhi's five-year term ends.

The new president will face significant challenges.

Nearly 20% of Suriname's 600,000 inhabitants live below the poverty line.

Its population is highly diverse, consisting primarily of descendants of indigenous, Indian, Indonesian, Chinese, Dutch, and African groups.

About 90% of the Caribbean country's surface is covered by tropical forests, and its economy has been sustained for decades by mining - it has, among other things, gold - and agriculture.

In recent years, it has looked increasingly to China as a political ally and trading partner, and in 2019 it became one of the first countries in South America to join China's Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, also known as the New Silk Road.

Inflation, which reached over 60%, and agreements with international financial organizations to restructure the country's debt sparked major protests in 2023 against the austerity measures imposed by the Santokhi government.

But the discovery of significant oil fields in Surinamese territorial waters in 2020 has changed the country's expectations and attracted new investment.

Oil companies such as France's TotalEnergies and Petronas are already operating in the fields, and exploitation of an offshore block is expected to begin in 2028 with an estimated production of 220,000 barrels per day, much more than the 5,000 to 6,000 current ones.

Simons' predecessor, Santokhi, had even promised that the benefits of the oil wealth would be distributed among Surinamese, with each citizen receiving US$750 in a savings account with an annual interest rate of 7%.

In a statement to AFP, Santokhi noted that Suriname was “aware of the oil curse,” also known as “Dutch disease,” which had affected other resource-rich countries, such as Venezuela, Angola, and Algeria, unable to convert oil wealth into economic success.

Norway is an exception to this “curse” thanks to the establishment of a sovereign wealth fund.

How the wealth that seems to be coming, which experts estimate at around US$10 billion over the next 10 to 20 years, will be managed will be one of Jennifer Simons' challenges.

But the new The president, whose term runs until 2030, has not clarified what her government will do with the new oil revenues.and the fragile coalition that underpins it could lead to disagreements over how to run it.

Turbulent history

Suriname has a turbulent history of rebellions and coups since gaining independence from the Dutch crown in 1975.

One of these was the so-called “sergeants’ coup” in 1980, in which Bouterse became the country’s de facto leader until 1987, at which time he was accused of being involved in the murder of 15 opponents, including lawyers, journalists, businessmen and imprisoned military personnel. Years later, in 2010, he returned to the presidency, this time by ballot, until being defeated in 2020.

Jennifer Simons maintained a close collaboration with Bouterse during his elected presidency, something that his critics now point out to him.

During this time, she was Speaker of Parliament and was key in passing an amnesty law that directly benefited Bouterse.

The former president, widely described as a dictator by many Surinamese, was ultimately sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2024 for the murder of political opponents, but Bouterse went on the run and died in hiding later that year.

With Bouterse on the run, Simons was elected to lead the National Democratic Party in July 2024, returning to the politics she had abandoned four years earlier.