VIEWPOINTS

CRACKING COCONUTS TO MAKE CURRY AGAIN!

Wijith DeChickera holds similar concerns to those expressed by global human rights watchdogs – even as the economic revival programme unfolds

President Ranil Wickremesinghe is the toast of the town. Charitably, there are those who would raise a glass to him for securing the IMF’s US$ 3 billion programme – as Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) MP Dr. Harsha de Silva tweeted, sending signals about alignment of neoliberal SJB members’ ethos to the United National Party’s (UNP) economic ideology.

Sharing a cuppa and camaraderie between the UNP’s paterfamilias and SJB stalwarts in the so-called ‘IMF tent’ at the Royal-Thomian in March raised eyebrows in the latter’s social democratic wings where its leader Sajith Premadasa criticised the Extended Fund Facility (EFF).

It also drew approving nods from Colombo’s patriarchal economic elites, welcoming possible political coalition between these parties if proposed governance reforms favour business.

Incredulous others would readily pop into the toaster this unelected and authoritarian president who is deploying the military to quell dissent among political protesters.

Until his career is charred for being a leader who parachuted into power on the bloodied backs of the erstwhile aragalaya – and now ostensibly turns his back on the nation’s poor dissident youth for an IMF bailout that could bolster the fortunes of the rich.

It’s ironic that Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and National People’s Power (NPP) tandem leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake has warmed to, if not uncritically welcomed, the International Monetary Fund’s ‘bailout’ – as many mistakenly characterise the EFF – since initially expressing hostility to ‘Western interventionism’ in Sri Lanka’s sovereign affairs as his Marxist-socialist coalition saw it then.

Since a time battle lines were clearly drawn as to what would suit a once bankrupt country best, the political ground shifted as it became painfully apparent to even diehard naysayers there was no way out of the fiscal quagmire we had driven ourselves into – by governmental diktat, gazette and skewered policy decisions – short of securing the mutual agreement of our external debtors to a conditional programme by the IMF.

There is light at tunnel’s end for advocates of ‘good governance’s’ tried, tested and failed ethos who want to loosen the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna’s (SLPP) stranglehold on parliament.

Also, to oust a legal enough but not entirely legitimate president, who’s unelected and representative of a party that’s virtually nonexistent in the legislature, being decimated at a past electoral outing.

Nothing short of a new compact between former UNP and SJB comrades will secure a fresh mandate to expedite the neoliberal project again, angling Sri Lanka away from ubiquitous Chinese suitors and hooking up with Western powers that be.

The JVP-NPP’s latter-day falling in line with the government’s IMF leanings drove a wedge between the coalition and its dissident offspring, the radical Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) and aggressively progressive street fighter battalions – although the FSP has much in common with JVP affiliated Inter University Students’ Federation’s (IUSF) anarchistic agenda.

This has given the incumbent regime fresh vigour for its militarised campaign of policing student, trade union and sundry dissident protests nipping at the heels of a republic tired of tear gas, watercannon and skedaddling from the law’s muscular arms to parade their well-worn placards against authoritarianism, privatisation etc. elsewhere.

It strengthened the administration’s resolve not to conduct local government (LG) elections despite Supreme Court interim orders and the Election Commission indication that Rs. 5 billion from formerly cash-strapped Treasury coffers would suffice to hold the polls – a penury relieved by IMF largesse in forking out needed funds.

It’s moot whether a cocky government riding high on funded laurels – and roughshod over victimised voters’ heads – and unwillingness to test the electorate’s will would extend beyond the 2024 presidential poll to parliamentary elections in 2025.

This recalcitrance will dance with studied steps to curb protests – by cracking skulls, if necessary – although the JVP, trade unions (TUs) et al are likely to be targeted more for their unionism (a neoliberal bugbear) than radicalism.

Hopefully, the TUs will lack the appetite for crippling general strikes; and government will come off its high horse, ahead of more criticism of Sri Lanka’s human rights track record by global watchdogs.

The IMF programme is rife with potential traps for citizens subject to life’s vicissitudes stemming from our elites’ mercurial approaches to growth, development and progress in Sri Lanka.

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) sounded warnings on how the International Monetary Fund’s governance diagnostic for Sri Lanka – especially as regards its anticorruption scrutiny and report, due in September – could be leveraged by the global lender to set tough conditions later, after the programme doles out dollars that might benefit the very elites that caused our country’s ruination.

As HRW’s South Asia Director Meenakshi Ganguly urged: “Official corruption and tax rules that benefitted the wealthiest were key drivers of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, for which Sri Lankans struggling to make ends meet should not have to carry the burden.”

There’s more to national bankruptcy than defaulting and fiscal deficits!

So the sooner government recognises that people deserve real accountability – including for past malfeasance across the board of politics, business and administration – the better… bailout and all.

“The International Monetary Fund’s governance diagnostic for Sri Lanka … could be leveraged by the global lender to set tough conditions later, after the programme doles out dollars that might benefit the very elites that caused our country’s ruination”