“…SIMILARLY, AMBASSADORS AND HEADS OF MISSIONS RESIDING IN COLOMBO, AS WELL AS VISITING DELEGATIONS, ARE REQUIRED TO CONSULT THE FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTRY FOR GUIDANCE ON APPROPRIATE MEETING LEVELS WITH THE PRESIDENT, PRIME MINISTER, OR OTHER MINISTERS.” (https://www.ft.lk/front-page/Govt-issues-new-directives-to-strengthen-foreign-relations/44-771512)
So, ‘System change’ begins. The creeping closure of and by the System.
- The Vice-Chancellor of Peradeniya University issues a fatwah against the holding of a seminar by a students’ association on the IMF program.
- Dr Nalinda Jayatissa, Health Minister, frowns on private donations to hospitals and asserts that everything must come under a ‘national health plan’.
- The Secretary to the President issues an unprecedentedly haughty 11-page edict, regulating/restricting the interface of the diplomatic and donor community including UN agencies with national leaders, local authorities and institutions– with a Ministerial division playing Cerberus.
An ‘Iron Curtain’ is beginning to fall. It has nothing to do with leftism, except as a caricature. The System is being reconfigured so it is impermeable and impervious to universal norms, international interactions and critical national thinking.
High hypocrisy, no progressivism
The BBC noticed the U-turn and informed its global audience.
‘…The IMF deal became controversial as it led to severe austerity measures, tax rises and cuts in energy subsidies – hitting common people hard.
During the campaign Dissanayake and his alliance promised that they would re-negotiate parts of the IMF agreement.
But in his address to the new parliament, he performed a U-turn.
“The economy is in such a state that it cannot take the slightest shock… There’s no room to make mistakes,” Dissanayake said.
“This is not the time to discuss if the terms [of the IMF loan] are good or bad, if the agreement is favourable to us or not… The process had taken about two years, and we cannot start all over again.”…’ (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cevgl3gdnrjo)
President AKD reiterated this in his economic policy address in the New Year, kicking-off his Clean Sri Lanka program. “…Over the past year, we achieved some stability on the surface level of the economy and officially emerged from bankruptcy in the latter half of the year. This progress is owed to the immense efforts of officials from the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank, and the political leadership…” (https://www.ft.lk/top-story/President-promises-new-economic-policy-framework/26-771307)
If “this is not the time” to discuss whether the IMF agreement is good or bad, favourable or not, and must be continued unaltered since it has already taken two years; if “this progress is owed to the immense efforts of officials from the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank, and the political leadership”— the political leadership being Ranil Wickremesinghe–when exactly did this ‘Enlightenment’ dawn on AKD?
Why did he say the opposite during the “two years” the process took, including “over the past year” of stabilisation, in his manifesto and election speeches in September and November?
He was given a mandate to do what he and the NPP said at the time. He’s blithely doing the exact opposite now on the biggest issues. It is a betrayal of the mandate the people gave him and the NPP, and a transgression of the Social Contract.
Any half-way progressive President and Government would have embarked on a threefold strategy:
- Delay in debt repayment.
- Renegotiation of debt.
- Reduction of debt repayments.
President AKD and the NPP Cabinet did none of this. Instead, he appointed the Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce as negotiator and rushed to sign the debt restructuring/repayment deal that the neoliberal Ranil Wickremesinghe presidency had agreed to.
AKD’s sellout on sovereign debt will certainly ‘clean out Sri Lanka’ starting 2025, not 2028, as Dhanusha Pathirana explains. (https://youtu.be/7_ukDK1SzEQ?si=d1ObUJNzJFrJ7CUf)
False foundation
Anura leads a party which calls itself Marxist, but he is no longer a Marxist of any sort, which is bad news because he has thrown overboard the key insights of Marxism as a contribution to social science which every world-renowned economist has taken on board certainly since the 2008 Crash. I refer to “the economic structure of society” as “the real foundation” (Marx).
By contrast, ‘Anura Chinthanaya’ (Anura Thought) holds that other factors are foundational.
“To construct any strong building or initiate any successful project, a solid foundation is essential. Our nation, however, is one that has lost its foundation, its very groundwork. For this reason, we have focused our initial efforts on successfully establishing the fundamental groundwork required to rebuild this country. This foundation encompasses political authority, State mechanisms, the rule of law, respect for and protection of the Constitution, and a rejection of corruption, fraud, and bribery. These elements form the bedrock necessary to advance the nation. We are rapidly and systematically laying this foundation. The benefits of the robust economy built on this foundation must flow to our citizens.”
(President promises new economic policy framework | Daily FT)
In the most famous definitional summary of his own contribution, Marx identified:
“…the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political, and intellectual processes of life…”
(Karl Marx, Preface, ‘Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’, 1859)
Comrade President Anura stands Marx on his head:
“…This foundation encompasses political authority, State mechanisms, the rule of law, respect for and protection of the Constitution, and a rejection of corruption, fraud, and bribery. These elements form the bedrock…The benefits of the robust economy built on this foundation…” (ibid)
Anura’s thinking:
(i) Denies that the economic structure is the real foundation.
(ii) Holds to the contrary that the economy itself rests on another foundation.
(iii) Substitutes as the foundation, what Marx calls the ‘superstructure’ – law, politics, social consciousness—in place of the ‘economic structure’ which Marx calls ‘the real foundation’.
AKD is not a ‘post-Marxist’ who absorbs the best of Marxism into a new synthesis. Nor is he ‘non-Marxist’. He has abandoned the materialist conception of history and converted to the idealist conception. He is ‘counter-Marxist’ or ‘anti-Marxist’.
He speaks of “solid foundation…fundamental groundwork…the bedrock” without knowing what and where that is. He intends to “construct” a “strong building” but doesn’t know what the foundation consists of and therefore doesn’t commence with laying it.
Anura’s project and politics are foredoomed because:
A. His epistemological and conceptual fundamentals; the ‘foundation’/’groundwork’/’bedrock’ of his thinking on society and the economy; his very model, are wrong.
B. He has dynamited his actual (not imaginary) foundation: The net outflows from the debt-restructuring/repayment deal with ISB holders he needlessly capitulated to without trying to move the needle, structurally preclude fund inflows needed for industrialisation and development.
Excerpts from a longer article published on The Daily FT