Lanka Citizen

“Today both Ranil Wickremesinghe and Mahinda Rajapakse talk about the nation, about making sure that the nation will not be divided. Mahinda, more than Ranil, talks about the “national” interest, but even Ranil talks of election-time iconography. The weva, the dagoba, the ketha, the temple, the Dalada Maligawa, the Sri Maha Bodhiya, Parakramabahu and his palace, Sapumal Kumaraya and the need to eksesath the nation, we’ve heard it all, seen it all.”

Malinda Seneviratne, in his weekly column to the Daily Mirror, commenting on that both the Presidential candidates have remained conspicuously silent about the position that they would take, if elected, at the Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Hong Kong in December, had to say this:

This is perplexing because if Sri Lanka signs on to the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services), none of the promises as found in manifestos and as articulated in campaign rallies, will have any meaning. Two conclusions are possible. One, both candidates (and their advisors) are absolutely ignorant of GATS. Two, they are not interested in protecting this country, its people, its culture, its history and heritage. I would err on the latter, given the track records of politicians in this country.
………………..
Today both Ranil Wickremesinghe and Mahinda Rajapakse talk about the nation, about making sure that the nation will not be divided. Mahinda, more than Ranil, talks about the “national” interest, but even Ranil talks of election-time iconography. The weva, the dagoba, the ketha, the temple, the Dalada Maligawa, the Sri Maha Bodhiya, Parakramabahu and his palace, Sapumal Kumaraya and the need to eksesath the nation, we’ve heard it all, seen it all.
After GATS, Sri Lanka will be unrecognisable from what it is now. The following is not a far-fetched dooms day scenario (how I wish it is!), but a most likely outcome: Eppawala: Gone. Water resources: Gone. Sinharaja: Gone. Sigiriya frescoes: obliterated. Clean air: Gone. You name it, it will not be what you remember it to be, what you expect it to be for your children. It will cease to be a republic, cease to be democratic in any meaningful sense, cease to be a nation with borders, with a culture, with a history and a civilisation. All that will remain is nostalgia. Are you ready?
Let us put it in crudely, for the sake of easy comprehension. A floating casino is set up on the Kandy Lake, in full view of the Dalada Maligawa. Can the Mayor of Kandy protest? Can the Diyawadana Nilame or the Chief Prelates of the Asgiriya and Malwatte Chapters? The answer is, “no”. Forget casinos. It could be a brothel. And if Catholics, Hindus and Muslims are wont to say, “none of our business”, let them consider brothels, taverns, casinos and other places where vice is peddled at the following locations: Madhu Church, St. Anne’s Church at Thalawila, St.Anthony’s Church at Kochchikade, St. Jude’s Church at Indigolla, Nallur Kovil, Munneswaram Kovil in Chilaw. Consider putting up a place to slaughter pigs just outside the Dewatagaha Mosque in Town Hall. Or let’s go multi-religious. How about a casino on top of Sri Pada? Or a brothel in Kataragama. Our Minister of Trade will decide in December in Hong Kong whether we reserve the right to oppose such things, or if we let these places and things that define who we are to be desecrated in front of our eyes.
The point is not that it will be done, the desecration I mean, but that we open ourselves to that violence against which we agree not to raise a finger in protest. And it is not just about places of worship or matters religious. It is about all life. Every little thing that contributes to the matter of living, if it is a tradeable service, will be subject to GATS. What we would be signing away, if in December we become party to this barbaric agreement, would be not just our sovereignty but our very lives.
Is all life contained or containable in the sterile and materialistic article called “free trade”? Surely not! Let us consider a cemetery that contains the remains of your dead grandfather. Let us suppose someone wants to replace it with a military academy that provides the service of education. GATS would require us to erase the word sacrosanct from our vocabulary, would require us to allow the graves of our ancestors to be vandalised. All in the interest of facilitating free trade. All that will remain is nostalgia and maybe not even that. Are you ready?
On November 17, 2005 the people of this country will vote for a President. In December, in Hong Kong, his Minister of Trade will decide whether his President is a puppet or worse a forsaken soft toy, or a leader worthy of a people who believe that freedom, history, nation, dignity and indeed their very lives are important. In December, that Minister of Trade will be subjected to all kinds of direct and indirect pressures. His moral integrity will be tested to the maximum. His human frailties will be found out and they will be preyed upon. He will be pitted against his counterparts in other developing countries. His President will be arm-twisted in much the same way. We all know what happened in the infamous Green Rooms as the Uruguay Round of the GATT was arm-twisted to a close in the early nineties.
This time the stakes are higher. This time, the forces of resource extraction, labour exploitation and cultural erasure are playing for an outright win. We can expect them to give it their all. Are we ready to give our all to resist them? Do our candidates have the intellect, the integrity and the patriotism that are absolutely necessary to fight this fight? These are questions we need to ask.
In December, our country and everything that the word “nation” connotes will fight what could well be the last fight. Mahinda Rajapakse and Ranil Wickremesinghe have not uttered one word about GATS. That is their prerogative.

As citizens of this country, as human beings who have lives, livelihoods, aspirations, memories, ancestry and progeny, as human beings who want to dream about futures, can you and I afford to remain silent, though? I think not.

excerpts, courtesy Daily Mirror, 30.10.2005

Priority: Individual good or collective good?

by citizen-ordinary

This is the part II of an article written in response to the proposals made by the Leader of the Opposition, Ranil Wickremesinghe recently inviting public discussion on what should be the ‘podu yahapatha’ or the common good of Sri Lanka. The proposals yet to be published in detail at the time this article was written, in essence reportedly suggest that our common good should be based on democracy and the market economy. (pl. see Divaina, 21/01/2005).]

In the first part of the article ( pl. see citizenlanka.blogsome.com - ed. ) , I suggested that in determining what is our common good, the crucial issue is whether our understanding of our good life is one that gives priority to the individual good or the collective good.

I want to suggest that when we say that in the industrialized West, the market economy is the basis of the common good, what we, in fact, mean is that it is the individual good and not the common good that is given priority in the collective life of those countries. The belief underlying taking market as the determining principle of the economy is that individuals freely determine what is good for themselves in the exchange in the market place. Here, the good of collective life is conceived as the sum of the goods of the individuals who make up the community. The chief concern of such an understanding of the ‘common good’ is the ‘welfare’ of the individuals through the provision of individual goods. Hence, when we propose the market economy as the guiding principle of the common good, the underlying idea is that the individual good is supreme and not the common good.

The individual good, as it is concerned with the urgent needs of life and self preservation often go against the interest of the collective or the public good, and hence itself cannot be the public good. In other words, accepting the market as the governing principle of the economy cannot be the basis of the collective good except by interpreting the collective good as the sum of the individual goods.

Hence, in discussing what should be our our podu yahapatha, we need to discus whether we accept the idea of the rational, autonomous individual who freely chooses his individual goods in the market place as the basis of the common good, which is, ironically, equivalent to saying that there is no common good but only the individual good. We need to ask whether the right thing to do is to place the individual good before common good or the public interest . It is not the least reason for such a questioning, that unhindered individualism and the predominance given to the free market bode no good for the common good is borne by that, as commonly observed, they produce alienation of individuals from the collective life resulting in much discussed forms of social dislocation found not only in the Industrialized West but also in the industrializing East.

In a world characterized by individualism, politics becomes not an end with intrinsic value but simply a means to assure `welfare` to the individuals in the community by determining government policy. The ‘minimum state’ or the ‘welfare state’ as different understandings of liberalism would have it, is the instrument of such a politics. Thus, the dominance given to the market in an economy makes the idea of democracy itself hollow reducing politics to looking after individual welfare, and citizenship to exercising one’s voting right to elect mangers to run the welfare programs for the individual benefit. Politics thus becomes the business of politicians, bureaucrats and technocrats. Citizens become the recipients of welfare, and consumers and voters. Civil society individuals who seek the restriction of the state to its necessary minimum considering the state as the threat from which the individuals need to be protected, demand for themselves the political power, which they want to deny to the state. Interest groups and lobbyists take precedence over citizens.

I want to suggest that the stronger understanding of our collective concern with politics is that it understands that politics requires an attention to the good of collective life conceived of as other than the sum of the goods of the individuals who make up the community. Without an overriding sense of the common good and a politics based on that, the ordinary citizens have no say in how their lives are governed. I also want to suggest that our common good needs to be based on the political equality of citizens, democracy, not simply in the form of electoral representation, but a democracy where citizens can actively involve themselves in determining what is good for us as a collective. It is in developing such an understanding of our collective life which actively involves citizens beyond electoral politics and therefore being passive recipients of individual welfare whether under liberal or socialist rhetoric, that lies the possibility of developing a Sri Lankan ethos.

Economy or Politics: Which comes first?

Therefore, it can be argued that establishing a market economy is not a prerequisite of democracy. It is rather the place we assign to the market economy in our understanding of collective life that will define our democracy.

We have to accept that entrepreneurship can be utilized for the common benefit and that markets are immensely productive but if we are to preserve our humanity, we ought not allow the free play of elementary human desires at the market to determine how we understand ourselves as human beings. If we want to excel as human beings we cannot allow the market to dictate terms to us, but instead we must use the free play of market forces to our collective benefit in areas where it is appropriate.

Instead of allowing the economy to decide our politics we should make our politics determine the nature of our economy. No politician true to his vocation can seriously say that economics takes priority over politics without losing his credibility as a politician. What we need is to make our democracy work politically. It is politics that reflect the public interest unlike a pre-determined economic model prescribed by technocrats and only ideologically taken to be a collective good but not in practice. This is borne by that around the world, under the neo-liberal market economy the very idea of citizens having their say and act in determining their own collective good has come increasingly under siege. If people have the opportunity for active involvement, to have their say and to act in public life they will be able to choose the economy that they consider is compatible with their aspirations.

It is the public that should determine how to organize our national economy, and what should be considered private goods that are appropriate to be left to the relative free play of the market and what are the public goods that should be collectively managed as to ensure our collective well being. For example, it is not politicians with their pre-determined neo-liberal ideological myths of the virtues of a free market, but the ordinary public, the citizens who use public transport who should collectively determine how we should run our public transport.

Our present understanding of democracy is that we periodically elect representatives to govern us and in the interim we hand over our responsibility as citizens to politicians, bureaucrats, technocrats, civil society individuals, interest groups and lobbyists. This form of representative democracy we inherited from the British needs to be moulded anew into a vibrant public democracy to suit our national ethos. If to invite the public to debate the collective good is to give them the opportunity to participate in determining the collective good, in other words, the first move in the direction of a genuine democratic practice, then we need to take such an invitation to develop a new political culture, to its logical conclusion, by developing a rich public life beyond the level of election rhetoric, where in all matters of collective life, the public is purposively given the opportunity to get actively involved. It is of such imaginative mind and action that true statesmanship is made.

We have to agree that the key to developing a new political culture for the new generations to come is to move away from the rancorous nature of much of politics which has become the bane of Sri Lanka lately, and engage in political dialogue and conversation based on civility. The civility we need to inject into our political life has to be based on the respect for the other whose different opinion we must try to understand as presenting us with a different perspective of the world we commonly share, which appears true for him or her just as much as our own perspective appears true for us. The real political issue is to develop a common understanding out of such diverse perspectives on our common world to make our collective life stable and peaceful.

(For some of the ideas in this article, the writer is indebted to Benjamin R. Barber’s book Strong Democracy, University of California Press )

Originally published in The Island (http://www.island.lk/2005/02/09/features1.html)

Please send your comments to lankacitizen@gmail.com

by Citizen-Ordinary

The leader of the Opposition, Ranil Wickremesinghe is proposing a much needed public discussion on what should be the ‘podu yahapatha’ or the common good of Sri Lanka. (see, Agenda at http://unpsrilanka.org/ - ed) The proposals yet to be published in detail at the time this article is written, in essence suggest, it is said, that our common good should be based on democracy and the market economy. ( Divaina, 21/01/2005)

The majoritarian, representative democracy with all its inherent weaknesses, and made much weaker in the Sri Lankan context, however, has come to stay in Sri Lanka. Abolishing the executive Presidency which centralises draconian powers in the hands of one individual who is not accountable to the law of the country, and therefore weakens the strength of our democracy, would be a definite move in the direction of improving upon our democracy.
The market as a legitimate part of the economy has also come to stay even though the manner in which the dominance of it was forced upon us in the post-1977 period has wreaked havoc on the Sri Lankan society, the unfolding of the serious ramifications of which will take a long time to come, as shown by one of its prime examples, the privatized public transport, experienced by the ordinary folk who travel around by bus. The real issue about the market is not whether it can be considered a legitimate partner in the national economy, but whether we want to accept the market as the guiding principle of our collective life. If the results of the last general election is any indication to go by, then the message from the large majority of the Sri Lankan public seems to be a resounding NO! However, even after the debacle at the last elections, in proposing this, what Ranil Wickremesinghe is proposing to have, in fact is a public debate on the neo-liberal economic policies even though one may wonder whether it is already not too late to have this debate now!

When we say that the Industrialised western countries or countries such as Singapore have achieved high levels of ‘development’ following the model of democracy and market economy, what we express seems to be our fond hope that Sri Lanka also can be ‘developed’ following the same model, rather than being realistic on how different countries achieve ‘development’ each in its own unique way, subject to specific historical conditions and cultural factors. It is also outside the consideration whether we in Sri Lanka would necessarily want to follow such a model of development even if we could succeed in such an attempt. Our penchant for Singapore as the model of development may be due to our desire to find an easy solution to the messy situation of being citizens of a country full of internal strife in all areas of collective life that do not seem to be resolvable ever. It is no wonder that in a context where there is so much of conflict, instability and social unrest, many of us would dream of doing a Lee Kwan-Yew in Sri Lanka as if human world can be put in order by the sleight of hand of a clever magician. We need to remind ourselves that even Singapore itself could produce only one Lee Kwan Yew in its life time. But more importantly, even if one of us is clever enough to become a Lee Kwan Yew as if by a secret magical act, the possibility is that being the political beings that they are, Sri Lankans would not tolerate a Lee Kwan Yew in their midst.

While the Fukuyama doctrine of End of History which can be taken to mean that the unfolding of history in the world culminates in the entire world embracing neo-liberal economic policies which give dominance to the free reign of market forces, may seem to sound generally valid in the aftermath of the collapse of the state-centred economies of the socialist bloc countries, one cannot necessarily conclude from the latter event that politics has come to an end, or for that matter should come to an end, even in a world dominated by liberalism. The dominance of liberalism itself is the reason to revive our sense of politics, to preserve and advance the political gains won by the public in such a world, as otherwise unhindered liberalism tend to be heading in a direction which generates forces of self-destruction within its own territory. This is in addition to the resentment generated from without liberalism against it due to the action of its overzealous advocates to export liberal democracy by force to the territories of the ‘non-believers.’

The State or the Market? Both!

The other side of neoliberal myth that insists markets can solve every problem is the belief that the government can do little other than making the life of people difficult. Neo-liberalism turns the idea of collective good into an issue between the free market economy and the government. To pose the question in terms of whether to choose between the private capitalist sector and the government which is the political instrument of the collective life is to raise a red-herring.

On the other hand, the state centred economy is not the only option to market-centred economy. In industrialised countries in the West, one finds the state playing a considerable, if not a major role, in maintaining the important sectors of public transport, health care, education, child care, taking care of the elderly and welfare assistance in varying degrees. Quite a few of these countries have a strong welfare system which is jealously guarded against the intrusions of immigrants from the poor countries.
Nevertheless, we must commend Ranil Wickremesinghe for being courageous to stand by his convictions and willing to raise his vision of the common good for public debate thus throwing the gauntlet at other political parties and leaders who will be forced to articulate their visions for the common good of Sri Lanka.

Hence, if the public rises to the occasion taking the cue from Ranil Wickremesinghe and challenge all political parties to clearly articulate their visions for the common good of the country for public scrutiny, this may very will be the opportunity Sri Lanka has been waiting for its national re-awakening!

In my view, it is a sensible idea to agree that the priority given to the market mechanism in certain areas is a necessary component of the national economy as we have already come to realise and accept now in practice, instead of going back to a fully state regulated economy, the latter being a move which no one with a sense of practical reality would want to suggest. However, what aspects of the economy, to which extent, under what conditions should be subjected to the dictates of the market, is a matter to be collectively decided on the merit of each case, and therefore should not be a forgone conclusion that accepts the virtue of the market forces as a panacea for all ills in society. We know from our general experience that allowing capitalism unhindered free play in the market place, whether it is in production, trade or consumption has the general tendency of bringing into the open the rapacious character of individual human beings at the expense of public interest.

By now, with the benefit of hindsight we should be able to realise that the decision to privatize the public transport subjecting it to the dictates of market forces was the wrong decision. That it continues in its present form is only a testimony to the priority given by our politicians and bureaucrats to their ideologies and therefore the desire to place the perceived benefits of the private bus operation to the economy above the welfare of the ordinary public.

The helpless public who has no effective say in determining how collective affairs are run, daily suffer in the hands of private bus operators whose inhumanity towards fellow public is guided solely by the profit motive. These private operators of public transport have become a powerful political force unto themselves and probably a vote bank. The public, I am sure would be vigilantly watching the political alliances of these bus operators when it comes to their decision to whom to vote for in the elections. Anyone who takes the trouble to find out about the public transport in industrialised countries in the West will realise that in many cities in those countries public transport is not run on the basis of profit but as a public service, in most part funded by the city, provincial/state and national/federal governments. It is so because the public in those countries demand that the governments treat their citizens with common decency and consider that their labour force should have access to comfortable and convenient transport as they make a valuable contribution to the economy. Both the private sector in those countries and their governments are sophisticated enough to know that the productivity of labour increases under healthy working conditions of which transport to and from work is an essential part.

In fact, how we answer the question what sectors of our public services should be privatized in what manner, is not a secondary issue but one that is integral to, and hence one that itself would reflect, our understanding of our common good. In this sense any discussion of our common good need to go beyond simply stating that it should be based on democracy and market economy, but examine for which understanding of the common good we want to have democracy and market economy as its basis. I want to suggest that in determining what is our common good, the crucial issue is whether our understanding of our good life is one that gives priority to the individual good or the collective good. This we will examine in the next part of this article.

(For some of the ideas in this article, the writer is indebted to Benjamin R. Barber’s book Strong Democracy, University of California Press ) .

originally published on 2005/02/08

(http://www.island.lk/2005/02/08/features9.html)

e-mail us at: lankacitizen@gmail.com

President of the Lanka Private Bus Owners Association (LPBOA) Gemunu Wijeratne yesterday expressed his opposition to the donation of 177 buses by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government for Public Sector Bus Transportation. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government said the buses were donated to recover the set back of the passenger transportation system in the country. Wijeratne, protesting the move by the Tokyo authorities, said that if they are donating buses to revamp the ailing public sector transport system they should provide buses to the private bus operators since the private busmen are responsible for 80 % of conutry’s passenger transport fleets with 18,500 buses in operation, including in the north and the east with 500 buses in Jaffna district alone.

According to Transport Ministry Secretary, D. S. Jayaweera `EC the buses so far received from the 177 fleet donated by Japan has been used to strengthen the urban bus services and reduce the traffic congestion by attracting low occupancy vehicle users. At present the poor level of urban bus services has encouraged the increase of low occupancy vehicles he said adding it was a timely move by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. “These buses will be made use to improve the Urban Transportation System.

Already 69 buses have been received by the Ministry while the rest is being shipped” Jayaweera said.

Wijeratne accused the government of incurring additional expenditure of Rs 100 million a month to pay salaries to the employees after the SLCTB was revamped recently. Asked whether revamping the SLCTB wouldn’t have competition in the passenger bus transportation system hitherto monopolized by the private bus owners he said the SLCTB will run in to losses in the future due to unnecessary expenditure and excess staff.

Japanese Ambassador Akio Suda in a message said ‘Sri Lanka’s demand for a good and a quality transport system has been growing with urbanization and industrialization. Colombo which is smaller than Tokyo, is still densely populated and hence would require more convenient transport service to meet the needs of the people. It is equally important that adequate buses are provided to other cities and rural areas of Sri Lanka as well.

THE ISLAND |

point of view

By the Economist

The 2004 Annual Report of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka says the total number of employees in state institutions amount to 1,094,415. Since 1990 the number of public sector employees has increased almost by 50 per cent. Isn`t it strange that Sri Lanka was one of the first developing countries to implement economic liberalization policies yet it has the largest bureaucracy per capita in the region’ The Sri Lanka: Development Policy Review of the World Bank highlights this point and goes on to show that the government (including semi-government institutions) recruit close to 18 per cent of the labour force in the country.

Why is the government sector employment so large ‘

One reason why the government sector has become large is due to the North/East problem. First, as a solution to the problem the Indo-Sri Lanka Political Accord was signed and with it came the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. This led to the creation of the Provincial Council (PC) system for devolution of power. The PCs have generated an additional layer of a bureaucracy amounting to nearly 300,000 personnel and they serve little purpose in terms of enhancing productivity and efficiency in the economy. Needless to say, there is a large amount of duplication and overlapping of functions between the central government and the PCs. Second, there has been a substantial increase in the armed forces with the escalation of the North/East crisis during the 1983-2001 period ‘ the forces have almost doubled in size since the early 1980s. These two areas have substantially contributed to the large government sector employment and they account for between 500,000 ‘ 600,000 workers. The other factors that contributed to the growth of employment are: (1) ineffectiveness of the Voluntary Retrenchment Schemes introduced to trim down state sector employment; (2) regular large scale public sector employment made by politicians during election times.

Public sector is not very efficient not because it is inherently so as some people seem to think but due to political interference of public sector activities. Public enterprises/corporations become easy prey when politicians want to find jobs for their supporters. Many such recruits make the enterprises overstaffed and the new recruits most often prove to be redundant with the passage of time. In recent years with more and more computerization of the functions of public enterprises/corporations, the redundant workers have increased and one only needs to visit government institutions to observe the number of workers idling and just waiting for time to pass by.

When Sri Lanka has a bloated public sector who`s productivity is questionable why did the government decided to provide jobs for approximately 40,000 graduates in the public sector’ The answer to the question is not simple and straightforward. We have to examine the characteristics of the labour market and the type of unemployment to provide a meaningful answer.

Job Market and the Unemployment Problem

Although unemployment has declined during the 1990s, still it hovers around 8 per cent of the labour force. There are a number of characteristics in the Sri Lankan labour market that act as impediments for more employment creation. Among others, three hypotheses have been put forward to explain unemployment in Sri Lanka. First, the skill mismatch hypothesis which argues that the type of skills produced by the Sri Lankan education system is not suitable for the job market. Dudley Seers in his 1971 report for the ILO used this explanation to describe unemployment in Sri Lanka during that time. Second, is the job queuing hypothesis which argues that Sri Lanka`s unemployment is voluntary because youth wait for `good` jobs and in the meanwhile depend on family income. Third, it is argued that unemployment is due to the rigidities in the labour market resulting from outdated labour legislation. Such legislation prevents smooth labour exit. It is argued that due to this factor it is difficult for firms to expand in a labour intensive manner and thus create new employment.

All three explanations, among others, have some validity although the World Bank seems to think that most of the unemployment in Sri Lanka is voluntary. It is argued that most of the unemployed are waiting for `good` jobs openings but are not interested in the readily available `bad` jobs. There are many `bad` jobs available in the market ‘ about 15,000 vacancies in the garment industry, shortage of rubber tappers, and so on. The problem it is argued is not the shortage of jobs but the gap between `good` and `bad` jobs.

The World Bank goes on to argue that this gap is enhanced by the frequent waves of public sector employment by the governments in office. Public sector jobs have a traditional appeal and at the lower level it is argued that they are attractive (`good`) than similar jobs in the private sector and it is the key factor that contributes to queuing for `good` jobs. Accordingly, successive governments were advised by the World Bank to stop recruiting people to the public sector to halt voluntary unemployment and allow the market to determine the jobs. Thus, a universal freeze on public sector recruitment was put into effect in 2002 by Management Circular No. 16(1) of October. It was aimed at not only addressing the voluntary unemployment problem but also to improve the efficiency of the public enterprises/corporations.

The assumption underlying this policy was that the new entrants to the labour force will be absorbed by the growing private sector activities through the deregulation measures in the rest of the economy. This in turn will create a better balance between `good` and `bad` jobs and to a great extend solve the unemployment problem. Did this happen during the past’ The private sector as usual was on the `wait and see` mode and the graduates that the Universities were churning out were waiting at home for `good` jobs from the private sector. The call never came. The graduates took refuge in extreme political doctrines and became a disruptive force in the society.

Jobs for Graduates from the Private Sector ‘

Market liberalization and social culture needs examination in the context of jobs for graduates from the private sector. Social culture could be defined as patterns of behaviour in society at large or of selected groups in society. Sri Lankan private establishments exclusively employ the English language as a medium for conducting business regardless of the official status of Sinhalese/Tamil. The Sri Lankan business community promotes the idea of `indispensability of English for success in life` in the globalized world. A business culture centred around the English language has led to an exclusion of a large segment of society from the development process. Moreover, the recent privatization has also raised the question of language: namely the place of English in society. State run organizations, upon being privatized, have made redundant thousands already employed in the official languages.

With the private sector setting the field of employment at the expense of the Sinhala/Tamil employing state organs, the political system was under severe pressure from the frustrated masses ‘ educated for so long in Sinhalese/Tamil and awaiting employment, upon being shown the door on the grounds of non-eligibility. The Sinhalese youth insurgency of 1971 and 1988/89 and the Tamil separatist struggle of late 1970s and thereafter were responses to such frustrations. The irony here is the inconsistency of the policy of education with that of changing economics. They are not designed to meet at any point in harmony to integrate for producing desired results.

Clearly the need to refrain from creating more public sector jobs is obvious, but then for this to happen the private sector should not only immediately create jobs but should be willing to absorb the vernacular educated graduates. When the private sector is in its usual `wait and see` mode and keeps its distance from the non-English speaking graduates the problem of graduate unemployment will remain.

The Problem at Stake

It is not prudent to depend too much on the private sector to create the required jobs until certain conditions are fulfilled. First, until the North/East problem is fully settled the `wait and see` attitude of the private sector will prevail and most private investments will be short to medium term oriented which would not generate large scale jobs. Second, as long as stringent labour legislations are in operation the private sector will resort to less labour intensive techniques for more efficiency.

The government finds it difficult to tell the unemployed graduates to wait till the private sector expands and generate jobs in the long run. Keynes said that `in the long run we are all dead` thus something needs to be done soon. A two-pronged approach is thus required by the government to address this problem. Education reform should be expedited so that all graduates are trained either to be employable in whatever language or trained in the English language, and secondly labour market reforms should be expedited. Without engaging in addressing these two areas, the forces of deregulation/liberalization in other areas of the economy will find it difficult to create the required jobs in the market.

The solution to the problem is thus not straightforward. Attitude is a key problem ‘ most businesses think that Arts graduates are useless because they do not know English (few businesses have absorbed a small number of graduates under the `Taruna Aruna`programme). The private sector should realize that unemployment could be a disruptive force and shake business if they do not have jobs and idle for too long. No amount of criticism of the public sector recruitments will be taken notice by the politicians as long as the deep seated issues are not addressed when the unemployed graduates grow in number. While the government immediately takes steps for education and labour reform, the private sector should seriously consider absorbing a few graduates every year ‘ if not under the normal recruitment at least under their Corporate Social Responsibility ‘ as a first step towards addressing the problem. A deep-seated problem requires multidimensional solutions and the private sector should be a partner in this process.

Courtesy: Sunday Island, 2005/10/23

http://www.lankanewspapers.com/news/2005/10/4112.html

by Ajith Samaranayake

As for agriculture Mr. Rajapakse has a closer identification with the peasantry as tacitly acknowledged even by Mr. Wickremesinghe’s campaign managers who have got him to shed his lounge suit for the more average if neutral shirt and trousers or tunic suit….it has for the time being at least thrown up such curiosities as Dr. Rajitha Senaratne’s bell-bottomed new-fangled farmer, a cross between the old betel-chewing farmer and the new lumpen denim-wearing generation spawned by urban popular culture. Even more bizarre is the spectacle of the futuristic coconut plucker communicating with the ground on a mobile telephone.

Never before has the Presidential Election field been so crowded as for next month’s election. However it is clear that the fight is a duel between the two big-time contenders. The rest are mere extras pursuing a chimera, self-regarding individualists sprung from obscurity and destined to return to the same state of limbo.

The only exception perhaps are the three Left candidates, the relatively unknown Chamal Jayanetti sporting Comrade Vickremabahu’s colours, veteran Samasamajist Siritunga Jayasuriya now running under his own colours and Wije Dias of the Kirthi Balasuriya school of Dialectics, the last warrior of purist Trotskyism.

A Presidential Election is basically about policy just as much as it is a contest between strong-willed individuals on an ultimate quest for the highest reaches of power. In that sense how is the present contest shaping up?

UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe who was the first to canter on to the field began by saying that he would bring about peace on an unlikely front, what he chose to describe as the ‘Kussiye Yuddhaya’ or war in the kitchen.

If the debonair Opposition Leader had thought that this would make him the darling of the housewives he was soon shifting ground and projecting himself as the successor to King Parakramabahu the Great, a mantle incidentally picked up from the late Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake who made this the main plank of his 1965-70 Government.

This throwback to the agrarian UNP of the Senanayakes, the dynastic core of the Grand Old Party, itself is of more than passing interest. For it was President Jayewardene, Mr. Wickremesinghe’s political mentor, who broke the Senanayake stranglehold on the UNP and what is more radically shifted the party’s centre of gravity.

If the pre-1973 UNP of the Senanayakes was wedded to the welfare state, a mixed economy and agrarian revival the new-look Jayewardene UNP stood unabashedly for an open market economy, liberalisation and export-led growth piloted by a new urban entrepreneurial class turning their faces away from plaebian agriculture to exotic export products like gherkins.

This was the UNP which Mr. Wickremesinghe inherited and only time will tell whether this new UNP cry of ‘Back to the Land’ is only a reflex election-time gesture or signals a radical shift in policy. However, it has for the time being at least thrown up such curiosities as Dr. Rajitha Senaratne’s bell-bottomed new-fangled farmer, a cross between the old betel-chewing farmer and the new lumpen denim-wearing generation spawned by urban popular culture.

Even more bizarre is the spectacle of the futuristic coconut plucker communicating with the ground on a mobile telephone.

Such oddities aside these new developments have sparked off at least a peripheral debate on economic policy. The 2002 Ranil Wickremesinghe Government was identified with the neo-liberalism of the ‘Regaining Sri Lanka’ manifesto described by its critics as contributing to the downfall of that Government.

Is the UNP then ready to shift from the mercantile capitalism of the towns to the agrarian countryside? Or does it think that if can ride two horses at the same time through a new-fangled device of reviving the rural sector by injecting large doses of urban capital, for this clearly is the ideological underpinning of Dr. Senaratne’s fond image of the bell-bottomed farmer. But obversely will the urban capitalist be ready to invest in the rural sector when there are more attractive offers on the market?

On the other hand the UPFA and its Presidential candidate Mahinda Rajapakse are on more consistent ground when they advocate a sturdy national economy balancing the public and private sectors and leading to all-round national development.

As for agriculture Mr. Rajapakse has a closer identification with the peasantry as tacitly acknowledged even by Mr. Wickremesinghe’s campaign managers who have got him to shed his lounge suit for the more average if neutral shirt and trousers or tunic suit.

But for Mr. Rajapakse the more worrying question will be whether he will be able to persuade substantial sections of the urban business and professional classes that their interests will not be jeopardised. It is necessary to keep in mind in this context that in 1994 President Kumaratunga was able to win such a degree of support from this constituency normally identified with the UNP.

On the ethnic front Mr. Wickremesinghe has the advantage of adhering to his former stated position of the cessation of hostilities and negotiations based on the Tokyo and Oslo declarations. But this is not without its pitfalls for he is open to attack (as indeed he has been consistently) from nationalist positions.

However, his advantage in the present contest is that these adversaries from the JVP and the JHU have now been incorporated into the Rajapakse campaign. This prompted an initial UNP line that a Rajapakse Presidency would lead to war but this seems to have abated. Mr. Rajapakse for his part talks of a honourable settlement and has been at pains to distance himself from any suggestion of sabre-rattling.

However, he has clear differences with President Kumaratunga’s policy on this matter and whether this will be to his advantage (in the sense that he will be able to distance himself somewhat from the incumbent President and project himself as his own man) or not is to be seen.

As things stand therefore Mr. Wickremesinghe with his understanding with the SLMC and the CWC and expectations of the Tamil vote appears to be heavily banking on the minorities for support.

Similarly Mr. Rajapakse will depend heavily on the southern vote with his own proven credentials in the south reinforced by his understanding with the JVP and the JHU.

He is not without minority support either with the NUA and the EPDP on his bandwagon while he can rely on a section of the Muslim vote as well in his own right as a friend of the Palestinian cause.

The SLFP and the UNP both being national political parties also have their core constituencies so that the outcome of the election will depend on what degree the victor will be able to eat into his rival’s constituency while garnering the inevitable floating vote.

Courtesy Sunday Observer, 23.10.2005

The rebirth of the Sri Lanka Transport Board, more popularly known by the acronym CTB, last week is an acknowledgement that the privatisation of the public bus service has not been as successful as desired.

So many years have passed since private buses were introduced on our roads (or re-introduced) but neither the authorities nor the private bus operators themselves have been able to ensure a good enough service to the commuting public.While the privatisation of the road passenger transport sector certainly did have some notable benefits for hapless commuters, the main one being more frequent buses, it failed to solve all the problems that plagued the transport sector and spawned a new set of problems.

Buses may now be available every few minutes on most routes but the service thins out once the rush hour is over and late night services and those on less populous routes are far from adequate. This is because private bus owners shun less profitable times and routes.It is here that a public bus service is required since private operators cannot be relied upon to provide a good enough service.

Successive administrations have also failed to organise an adequate system where bus operators are compelled to operate services on less profitable routes and times just like the incentives given to private telephone companies to roll out their service in rural areas. Nor have the authorities been able to arrange a system that seems common sense to most people - joint time tables for private and public bus services to ensure a smooth, uninterrupted service.
Instead what we have seems like absolute anarchy – a private bus service that has been allowed to run amok and become a law unto them selves.

The competition among private operators has led to speeding and reckless driving. Private buses now invoke fear in the public mind and are seen as killing machines given the frequency with which they run down and kill pedestrians and other road users. Also, the public has had enough of rude conductors and aggressive drivers. Despite repeated promises by the private bus operators association, most bus crew still do not issue tickets and still resort to overcrowding. The National Transport Commission has also proved ineffective in trying to ensure private bus operators adhere to the law and in improving the service.

We saw recently how the private bus mafia went on strike and disrupted the public transport as they opposed increases in fines for roads offences. No government can tolerate such blatant attempts at blackmail. This outrageous attitude is one of the reasons that prompted the government to revive the CTB.

The move not only has been able to win bipartisan support in parliament but also has beenhailed by no less an organisation than the J-Biz (Joint Business Forum) which issued a statement welcoming the revival of the CTB. It is very rare for the business community to support a state venture and say it is better than the privatised bus service.

The Sri Lanka Transport Board has degenerated over the years and now accounts for only around 15 per cent of the bus transport service. The importance of an efficient public transport system has been underscored by the fact that even with only around eight per cent of the population owning private vehicles, there is already severe congestion on our roads and that if this were to merely double, the roads would become impassable and we would be in permanent gridlock. The private bus mafia, as they are now called with some justification, cannot be allowed to bully the public and government and hold them to ransom.

courtesy Sunday Times, o2.10.2005

By The Free Thinker

The debate on the most appropriate model for the national economic policy continues to heat up and the cross-fire between the supporters of the two proposed models continues. This article evaluates these two models, not from an economic textbook perspective, but rather from a “systemic” perspective. “Neoliberalism” is nothing else but “neo-colonialism” in disguise. Market fundamentalism lacks a human face. Unrealistic GDP growth does not make much sense if it marginalises major segments of the community and erodes social values.

Whichever party wins the Presidential and likely general elections, the challenge remains the same - to address issues concerning economic, political, social, cultural and technological development in a holistic manner. The absence of this would result in instability and an inability to provide a better future for all Sri Lankans.

UNPs neo-liberalism
It came as no surprise that the UNP is yet again pursuing an economic policy based on the ideology of “neo-liberal economic globalisation”. While the term ‘neo-liberal’ is not used explicitly, the core elements of UNP’s economic strategy leave no doubt that it has indeed been based on neo-liberal (where the primary focus is on economic growth through liberalisation of the market and the reduction of government intervention) economic ideology, despite being couched in populist pro-poor sentiment. As expected, large sections of the Sri Lankan business community (often the biggest beneficiaries from free market economic policies) gleefully welcomed it as the panacea for all the nation’s ills.

The UNP is advocating a “top-down” approach with accelerated economic growth eventually ‘trickling down’ as benefits to the masses. Central to the election pledge is the commitment for the creation and sustenance of a GDP growth rate of 10% over the next 10 years. High levels of economic growth do not automatically generate social and environmental benefits. In fact experience in most less developed nations has proved that all too often the converse is true. Besides, GDP does not measure quality of life, social progress, poverty eradication, human development or environmental quality. It is clear that the UNP has yet again failed to empathise with the masses and the almost 43% of Sri Lankans who live on less than US$ 2 per day.

The drivers of neo-liberal economic policies effectively redistribute wealth from the already impoverished to the rich, aggravating poverty and inequality, thus preventing the implementation of pro-poor poverty alleviation, human development and national development strategies.

Social cohesion
Democracy will also be eroded, as wealth, and thus power is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. This is a threat to social cohesion, since if possession of capital equates to possession of power, then the minority (often urban) elite would ultimately control and conceivably coerce the thinking, beliefs, knowledge and behaviour of the impoverished (often rural) majority, creating a vicious cycle of being captured in the poverty trap.

UNP’s pledge to restore peace and harmony may only be wishful thinking if it continues to advocate economic policies which are responsible for creating economic disparities and socio-economic marginalisation in the first place.

Wealth distribution
History shows that the UNP’s open economic policies (post 1997 and 2002/2004) have left the country very dependent on the global economy and with a heavy debt burden. The disparity in wealth distribution has widened. The UNP policies are antithetical to the interests of the poor, both urban and rural. The ‘middle-class’ in this country has almost disappeared. The rich have got richer (much richer) at the expense of the helpless poor. The private sector has a very narrow base (heavily weighted towards the large and mega sectors) and the country is still awaiting the so-called “trickle-down” effect, which the UNP has been speaking about since 1977.

State intervention
The primary problem with reducing the government’s control however is that democratically elected governments are accountable to its citizens. The market, foreign investors, large multi-national corporations, and multi-lateral development banks are NOT. It is evident that yet again, the UNP has been misled by the architects of global economic hegemony, the global financial institutions institutions (IMF and World Bank).

One of the main arguments in support of the neoliberalistic approach is the ‘win-win’ theory of comparative advantage –i.e: that countries will benefit by investing in industries in which they produce goods most efficiently. This however is also its most significant flaw. The reality is that in this ‘information era’ which facilitates the rapid ‘mobility of capital’, it is increasingly difficult for ‘less developed nations’ (those with consequently unstable economies, low productivity and poor infrastructure) to attract or retain mobile investment capital.

It is the law of the jungle, where the strongest (in this case the more developed nations) not only survive but are also the only winners.

Western dominance
The prevailing form of neoliberal economy reduces the self-reliance of nations and encourages a high dependence on the global economy. It results in a loss of economic, political and social independence. It is thus inappropriate for less developed nations who will remain economic slaves of the West forever.

FDIs
The UNP believes that an open-door policy towards FDI, and the ability to offer competitive terms to attract investors, is one of the major factors contributing towards economic growth. While this is not totally incorrect it must be understood that harnessing domestic resources for development is a more sustainable path towards development. It is also wrong to assume that the capital inflow is substantial. A big portion of the capital is borrowed from local banks.

The SLFP pledges to implement the “carrot and stick” approach. Providing enough carrots to attract investors, but using the ‘stick’ when investors try to create a win/lose scenario in their favour. FDIs do not come as a matter of charity; they come to make profits, to make use of local resources, to take advantage of cheap or skilled local labour, or to capture the local markets against other foreign competitors, indeed even against local enterprises. In Sri Lanka we have seen this in the very successful local beverage (soft drinks) market, where household names such as “Elephant House” were replaced by the likes of Coca Cola and Pepsi. FDI therefore has to be attracted on more fair and equitable terms that create a win/win situation for both the investors and the host nation.

Privatisation
The fundamental rationale behind privatisation is that the public sector is corrupt and inefficient. This may be true. However to assume that the private sector is totally honest and efficient is an understatement and a seriously flawed assumption. In Sri Lanka we have witnessed fall-outs of unregulated privatisation. Six privatised companies (Mattegoda, Veyangoda, Kantalai, Hingurana, Bogala Graphite, and Kahatagaha Mines), were totally abandoned by their new owners – some of them by stripping their assets. The case of Kabool Lanka Textile Mills is another case in point. The investors left with the bank’s having to shoulder a very high debt burden. The privatisation of our education system has created a very dangerous trend too. It has created social segregation and an erosion of our core values.

Capital market liberalisation
The liberalisation of capital markets can have very damaging effects on local markets and increase the volatility of the economy. The Asian financial crisis was a prime example when this occured. The sudden and unexpected “flight of capital” depleted the reserves of nations overnight and resulted in wide spread social unrest.

Market-based Pricing
When a nation is ‘down and out’ the IMF recommends Market-based Pricing, a bureaucratic term for increasing the prices of food, water, and utilities. This cruel policy tightens the noose around the neck of an already suffering nation. The result of IMF removing food and fuel subsidies in Indonesia in 1998 created civil commotion. It almost appears that the IMF predicts this scenario but pursues this strategy nevertheless for obvious reasons. The fact is that while there are losers, there are winners too. Multinational corporations then move in and pick off valuable assets at throw-away prices.

Curbing state spending
Debt burdened government’s are advised to implement radical austerity measures designed to reduce the need for assistance and increase the government’s ability to pay off debts. In practice however this generally means cutting spending on education, health care and social welfare. Lacking proper educational opportunities and healthcare, low income people suffer. Lack of education, poor health and nutrition also inhibits domestic economic growth. This leads to a vicious cycle in which debt reinforces poverty and poverty increases dependence on external aid which increases debt levels.

Development with a human face
The role of Government should not be restricted to supporting the business community alone. The business community does not have to deal with unemployment, the national education and health systems, the next generation, foreign policy, extremist groups or sociological development. It is the government’s role to look after the interests of all stakeholders and this is the responsibility that the SLFP is committed to, in addition to being a ‘business-friendly’ government. The SLFP has vowed to establish a system of governance that is fair, equitable and sustainable, while maintaining the highest level of responsibility, accountability and transparency.

The SLFP is committed to delivering what is best suited for economic growth. But growth must have a human face. It must benefit the majority of the people, and this is what they intend to achieve. GDP growth alone does not alleviate poverty or reduce uneployment. The ‘delivery mechanism’ is more crucial than the debate over the interpretation of the various economic models. It is results that matter, and the electorate judges government’s by performance and not rhetoric. The SLFP’s economic policies differ from that of the UNF in that it is not the “one-size fits all” neo-liberal model, but rather a more customised business-friendly model that suits Sri Lanka.

Growth and development
Growth and development are not the same thing. Growth can take place without development and vice-versa. Growth, strictly speaking, is an increase in size or number. There are numerous examples of companies (or indeed people and nations) that have grown exponentially but have not developed. They are vulnerable and lack the internal capability to resist threat or challenge. Development on the other hand is not a condition or state but a process. It is an increase in capacity, ability, desire and potential. It is more a matter of psychological maturity, motivation, knowledge, understanding and wisdom. It is about the freedom of choice and physical and mental emancipation.

Conclusions
“The fact that globalisation has come does not mean we should sit by and watch as predators destroy us” — Mahathir Mohamed, Ex-Prime Minister of Malaysia. These powerful words capture it all. Malaysia experienced an attack by predators in 1997. It was only the wisdom of Dr. Mahathir that saved that nation from the fate that befell countries like Indonesia and Thailand who blindly followed the IMF advice.

While neo-liberal economic globalisation may suit developed nations with competitive advantages, it is totally unsuitable for a less developed nation such as Sri Lanka. This inflexible approach has proved particularly difficult for many less developed nations wishing to build up infant industries, promote local employment, protect cultural diversity and/ or restrict resource exports. This approach is very ‘extremist’ and therefore conflicts with sustainable sociological development. It leads to an increasing concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few, and the marginalisation and impoverishment of the many.

It would make Sri Lanka puppets in the hands of vested Western interests and plunge us deeper into the whirlpool of aid dependence. The over-dependence on the global economy, could result in turning Sri Lanka into a “Banana Republic” (remember the mostly American banana growers who manipulated the governments in South America), with large multi-national conglomerates controlling our domestic and foreign policies with total disregard for our people.
We seem to forget that it is the flawed policies of the neoliberal model that fuelled social unrest in this country, namely the rising of the JVP and the LTTE in the post-1997 era. This approach creates ‘tunnel vision’. The lack of a holistic approach to the national economic policy could have far reaching negative implications for the country.

Neoliberal economic liberalisation has its merits of course, and it is not suggested that we “throw the baby out with the bathwater”. What is being proposed is that this model be customised to meet the specific strategic needs of this country based on its competitiveness and stage of development. This is exactly what the SLFP intends to do. The answer is the “balanced economic” model. The challenge is thus to create an environment that balances sustainable economic growth complemented with social development.

The Sunday Times Note: The author sent us a 5,800 word article which had to be reduced due to lack of space - )

Courtesy Sunday Times

‘77 Cyanide Memories for The 2nd Coming of the 500-year Samsara

When asked during the recent campaign who was responsible? The US / UK / Canadian government which supported the UNP to the hilt, said, “Not I”, and the IMF and World Bank said, “Not I”, and the Employers’ Federation of Ceylon (sic!) said, “Not I,” and the UNP said,”Not I,” and the 200,000 murdered and the 500,000 maimed sighed, “Ah! Samsara!.” Coming soon again to a theatre of war near you. Sponsored by your local private bank.

On 23rd September 1977, Mr. JR Jayawardena introduced a constitutional amendment in Parliament to make himself President, with full executive powers.

The first act of the new regime was to release Rs. 700 million to ‘liberalize’ import laws. The UNP government then announced a guaranteed weekly ration of flour and rice, in keeping with its electoral promises. Soon after, however, the UNP Finance Minister Ronnie De Mel visited the World Bank, the IMF and the imperialist countries belonging to the “Sri Lanka Aid Consortium ” in October 1977.

Under the previous United Front government, 60% of economy was nationalized or remained under state ownership or control: Local industries were encouraged to produce goods and protected from foreign competition. There had been a complete ban on imports, which included a prohibitive tax. Imports of foodstuffs had been also banned, and farmers in the northern Wanni district also benefited.

The UNP Government’s first Budget of November 1977, which was adopted by the National State Assembly (NSA) on 1st December 1977, abolished in one stroke the guaranteed supply of flour and sugar to the people, and at the same time subsidized petrol and fertilizer for big corporations. The Minister also abolished all exchange and import controls, resulting in the abolition of all public sector monopolies for the imports of medicines, milk, yarns, textiles, oil, etc. The UNP government then unleashed a flood of foreign luxury goods and durable consumer items into the country, from canned foods to cars and television sets (though there were no television channels yet.) The budget also devalued the rupee by almost 100% of the official rate.

The UNP government of 1977 swept all controls for capital away, and relinked the country’s economy to the changing needs of the imperialist economies. These measures involved: trade and payments liberalization, currency devaluation, high interest rates, an open door to foreign capital, the setting up of a free trade zone, and the virtual removal of social welfare subsidies, all done under the dictates of the World Bank and the IMF. The state sector comprising industrial and trading corporations as well as the plantations and transport were either privatized outright or came under the control of private business .

In January 1978, parliament debated the establishment of free trade zones covering a 150 square mile area, between the Maha Oya and the Kelani Ganga, during which debate the President of the country JR Jayawardene made his famous speech:

“So, we have demarcated a certain area. In that area, I want to say quite frankly, let the people of the world including our own capitalists come and make it a ‘robber barons’ area…. Let anybody come and invest … You cannot have industrial establishments having wildcat strikes … In this area there can be no strikes. .. So, if you are going to make this area an area where capitalists … invest, certain laws have to be made non-operable in that region.” (Hansard, January 19, 1978)

S.B.D. De Silva writes that the labor market was to be “tidied up along with an informal repression of militant trade-unionism,” and the repression of democratic rights. Violence was then unleashed on workers. Hundreds of workers at Dasa Industries in Kelaniya, “mostly young women,” enrolled into the union and struck work that January 1978, in solidarity with 27 male electrical workers who had struck work and were locked out

Their union noted: “A dastardly attack by UNP thugs on leaders of the newly formed Branch Union almost immediately afterwards, did not succeed in breaking up our newly formed Branch Union, but seriously impeded its expansion. The Jathika Sevaka Sangamaya, headed by JR Jayawardene’s “strong man” Cyril Matthew, the Minister of Industries, was the only Union recognized by Dasa Industries.”

Soon after the adoption by the government of the IMF and World Bank’s economic policies, an IMF resident officer was posted to Sri Lanka for the first time. In March 1978, a visiting World Bank official praised the government for its “courageous” budget and announced it would back the establishment of the massive Mahaweli project, and back the establishment of free trade zones where unions wouldn’t be allowed to exist.

International Banks and imperialist countries attending the “Aid Consortium” meeting in April then pledged a record Rs. 6.8 billion to back the government’s Ôcourage.’ The government’s subsequent budget then announced tax holidays for corporations, abolished price controls on most goods, and imposed heavier export duties on tea alone, ensuring continued low wage levels for almost 1 million plantation workers. The acceptance of economic control by the IMF and World Bank had unleashed unparalleled repression in many countries, and Sri Lanka would also soon be overwhelmed by political violence.

After a circular was issued on 15th September by the Ministry of Public Administration to all Government departments, services and corporations, meetings of employees in or near their workplaces were banned, and trade union militants were arbitrarily transferred or interdicted on various pretexts.

One union noted: “All this was done to prevent free discussion of the question of participation in the strike amongst the employees in the public sector. In the meantime, newspaper propaganda was given to alleged threats of racial and other disturbances being created in the context of the token strike, and volunteer units of the Army were called out. All this was for the purpose of building up a state of public alarm, and was obviously designed to pave the way for the declaration of a State of Emergency ultimately, if the Government thought it necessary to prevent the strike taking place by that means, or to resort to repression if it did.”

At their Annual General Meeting on 29th September, the Chairman of the Employers’ Federation of Ceylon had “seized upon the situation created by the Government’s actions and statements” in relation to the call for the token strike on 28th September, to call upon the Government, “to consider enacting as a matter of priority the necessary legislation to deal with political strikes in the private sector without the declaration of an Emergency.” The Chairman added that it might be desirable:

“To introduce legislation enforcing a total ban on strikes and lock-outs in essential services with provision for compulsory adjudication or arbitration and the requirement of a sixty per cent support of the workers through secret ballot for strike action in non-essential services.”

The Free Trade Zone had exacerbated other problems. Domestic production was seriously affected by the removal of protection after 1977. Export-oriented industrialization relegated indigenous enterprises ‘to the role of subcontractors to foreign firms.’

S.B.D. De Silva writes that the Free Trade Zone was dominated by a ready-made garments industry, and foreign firms enjoying tax holidays and other concessions “asserted themselves over established local firms.” De Silva points to a parliamentary committee discussion n 1979:

“Hon De Mel [Minister of Finance]: …Korea has exhausted her quota. Hong Kong has exhausted, Singapore is exhausting; so the only thing [the foreign investors] find attractive in Sri Lanka is to collar Sri Lanka’s quota. Do you agree?

Mr. A. Gnanam [a leading Sri Lankan industrialist] : I agree.

Hon. De Mel: Could Sri Lankan industrialists not have got the quota and done this industry without any foreign help?

Mr. Gnanam: … Sri Lanka has the best garment industries … If they were allowed to export [with a tax holiday] they would have done without the Free Trade Zone.

Hon. De Mel: In other words, the Free Trade Zone has only deprived the Sri Lankan industrialists!” (Hansard)

Meanwhile, the rise in imports, far exceeding tourism income and remittances from Sri Lankan workers in the Middle East, caused a rapid rundown in foreign exchange reserves. A trade deficit in 1978 was followed by a massive deficit in 1979. The foreign debt burden expanded drastically. The deepening crisis then led the government into “strategies of repression” in the eighties and after (De Silva).

Mass firings of workers, the cataclysm of war and mass murder followed.

When asked during the recent campaign who was responsible? The US / UK / Canadian government which supported the UNP to the hilt, said, “Not I”, and the IMF and World Bank said, “Not I”, and the Employers’ Federation of Ceylon (sic!) said, “Not I,” and the UNP said,”Not I,” and the 200,000 murdered and the 500,000 maimed sighed, “Ah! Samsara!.”

Coming soon again to a theatre of war near you. Sponsored by your local private bank.

by A. Sivanandan

“But the greatest threat to Western values arises from globalisation and market fundamentalism, changes that affect personal morality. For the market reduces even personal relationships to a cash nexus. And the transition from welfare to market state has made corporations rather than people the priority of government, which, in turn, replaces moral values with commercial values, caring with indifference, altruism with selfishness, generosity with greed.”

Read the full article below:

Why Muslims reject British values

As ministers accuse Muslims of failing to integrate into mainstream
society, a leading black intellectual and anti-racist campaigner
calls on Tony Blair’s government to face up to the reality of
continued racism in Britain

A. Sivanandan (Sunday October 16 2005, The Observer)

No country in Europe could be prouder of its multicultural experiment than Britain. But in the wake of the bombings of 7 July,
multiculturalism has become the whipping boy. In a widely heralded speech, Margaret Hodge, the Work and Pensions Minister, blamed a surge in white, working-class racism on its black victims’ failure to ‘integrate’, adding that ‘promoting an understanding of other cultures should not involve abandoning British cultures and traditions’, such as, apparently, school Easter bonnet parades, which she claimed have been eclipsed by Diwali celebrations.

She was speaking to a debate which has moved so far to the right that the gains made by the black struggle are being jettisoned. Even the term ‘coloured’ instead of ‘black’ is up for rehabilitation. What’s next? The replacement of ‘racism’ by ‘colour bar’?

The road to assimilation, as opposed to integration, is already being
cleared by scrubbing out multiculturalism. It is unlikely that
Blair’s Commission on Integration would have arrived at any other
conclusion. But multiculturalism did not create segregation or ethnic enclaves. There is a failure to distinguish between the multicultural society as a fact of Britain’s national make-up, arrived at through the anti-racist struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, and
multiculturalism as a cure-all for racial injustice, promoted by
successive governments. The first envisages a culturally diverse
society. The second - not really multiculturalism, but what I term
‘culturalism’ - engenders a culturally divisive society.

‘Culturalism’ or ‘ethnicism’ was Margaret Thatcher and Lord Scarman’s answer to the racism that ignited Britain in 1981. In his
investigations into the Brixton riots, Scarman located the cause of
the riots in ‘racial disadvantage’, the cure being to pour money into
ethnic projects and strengthening ethnic cultures.

As the institute of Race Relations pointed out at the time, the fight
against racism cannot be reduced to a fight for culture; nor does
learning about other people’s cultures make racists less racist.
Besides, the racism that needs to be contested is not personal
prejudice, which has no authority behind it, but institutionalised
racism, woven over centuries of colonialism and slavery into the
structures of society and government. Scarman, however, denied its existence.

For 20 years, our analysis was largely ignored, until Sir William
Macpherson unexpectedly gave it official currency with his 1999
report on the murder of Stephen Lawrence, finding institutional
racism throughout the police force. But the notion was soon killed
off again by the tabloids and the right.

Now Tony Blair’s government seems determined to undermine the
functioning diverse society that exists in large parts of Britain, on
the basis of a segregation theory conjured up to explain the
alienation of Muslim youth. This theory is not borne out by the facts.

First, in as far as the idea of segregation has validity, it applies
not to the 7 July bombers, but to the generation of their parents,
when it arose from racial segregation in public housing combined with the closure of the factories and foundries where they worked.

Second, all of the bombers were well integrated. Abdullah Jamal,
formerly Germaine Lindsay, was married to a white, English woman; Mohammad Sidique Khan was a graduate who helped children of all religions; Shehzad Tanweer, also a graduate, often helped in his father’s fish-and-chip shop; Hasib Hussain’s parents sent him to Pakistan because they felt he had fallen into the English drinking- and-swearing culture.

Yet these young men were prepared to take their lives and the lives of their fellow citizens in the name of Islam. One reason, therefore, must be as Mohammad Sidique Khan stated it: the invasion and destruction of Iraq.

The more Blair denies his complicity in the destruction of Iraq and
its part in the terrorist cause, the more he has to find other
reasons for 7 July, and the more he engages in the politics of fear
to erode democratic rights and civil liberties. Conversely, the
sooner he owns up to the Iraq debacle, the sooner he will be able to
address the most important element in apprehending terrorists:
intelligence, intelligence, intelligence.

Instead, his government substitutes authoritarian measures. The
September 2005 anti-terrorist bill was the fourth counterterrorist
measure in five years, expanding the definition of terrorism and
creating new terrorist offences. The Anti-terrorism Crime and
Security Act 2001, hurried through parliament after 11 September,
effectively abolished habeas corpus for foreign nationals. When the
law lords ruled against this, the government merely replaced
detention without trial with control orders. Now it has signalled it
will extend them to British nationals, while the proposal to hold
suspects for three months without trial is internment by another name.

Blair argues that ‘the rules of the game have changed’. But the game is democracy, and one part of it cannot be changed without starting a chain reaction that damages the whole and debases British values.

And yet Blair exhorts ethnic minorities to live up to these British
values. When our rulers ask us old colonials, new refugees, desperate asylum seekers - the sub-homines - to live up to British values, they are not referring to the values that they themselves exhibit, but those of the Enlightenment which they have betrayed. We, the sub- homines, in our struggle for basic human rights, not only uphold basic human values, but challenge Britain to return to them.

But the greatest threat to Western values arises from globalisation
and market fundamentalism, changes that affect personal morality. For the market reduces even personal relationships to a cash nexus. And the transition from welfare to market state has made corporations rather than people the priority of government, which, in turn, replaces moral values with commercial values, caring with
indifference, altruism with selfishness, generosity with greed.

Once there were great movements, within countries and
internationally, against poverty and exploitation and all kinds of
injustice - against capitalism and imperialism. Today, there are no
great working-class movements, no Third World revolutions. Hence, struggles against poverty, against dictatorships and against foreign occupation grow up around religion, ‘the sigh of the oppressed’, and take on the characteristics of millenarian movements. At the same time, they give rise to distortions such as fundamentalism.

Yet I am not without hope. I see Islamic fundamentalism as a passing phase, certainly in its intensity, because 7 July has also rebounded on the Muslim leadership and clergy in this country, demanding that they consider what is being done in the name of the Koran. And in the soul-searching that must follow, I see the first stirrings of the Islamic Reformation.

From that may follow a profound and desirable shift in the anti-
imperialist struggles waged by the Muslim world: away from individual acts of terror, to mass, collective action that finds common cause with the anti-globalisation, anti-imperialist movement beyond it.

A Sivanandan is Director of the Institute of Race Relations, London

courtesy The Observer