Garvin Karunaratne Author of How the IMF Sabotaged Third World Development(Kindle/Godages)

Cyprus, a fertile land

As fertile as Califoni

Fruit trees fully  laden, all varieties,  all over,

But all coastal areas, ALL GONE

Parcelled into bits, sold to foreigners,

Realtors everywhere

Selling-enticing strangers to buy-

Do bring in  foreign exchange

We make you a citizen

Do come in,  please.invest.”

Investors- Are they not parasites sucking the country o death

The country does Cry- being parcelled and sold outright.

Cypriots slaving as janitors, cleaners

Their life is as cast aways- the scum of the earth

Foreigners racing in plush rentals

Buying lavishly at endless Supermarchs

This has happened in Cyprus

The coastal area are ALL GONE

This Is happening in Sri Lanka, this minute

The Galle  Fort is ALL GONE.

Gone are the days when I covered the South

Dining at Hikkaduwa Rest

A dip in the sea and a sumptuous lunch

Now that is taken over by tourists

Once,  a decade ago

At Tissa I dropped in at Tissa Rest

A haunt of mine  long ago

I ordered tea

It never came

I don’t dangle dollars- dollar tips

A fifteen minutes- no signs of tea

I left in disgust., never to go there again.

Anyhow entertaining foreigners as tourists is OK

But selling parcels of land- The bane of Cyprus

Let that not happen to my Motherland.

In nostalgia, I relive a verse from our  Sandesas

Its Keragala:

Sara palaya, amba damba rambada valpita

Nera jalaya ala dola kandu pitin bata

Nera lolaya vadavana dutu danan hata

Keragalaya vajabey me lesin sita.

That was from  my literary days in the Fifties

The days when  I wrote, Sinhala Kaviye Navaugaya. (Godages)

It reads

Trees fully  laden with fruit- mango, amba, damba

Precious pristine water cascading  down.

Alluring and enticing

Keragala  lives in sheer luxury

Instead of parcelling and selling land

We should be developing, planting fruit

Making all our Jam and Juice and Coffee

Which we once did make- self sufficient.

Ours is a Land blessed with  plush veg: a haven to behold.

Our villages should be live, a prosperous peasantry

Its for our people- to enjoy, to live

Not for foreign owners- for their fun and frolics.

For our people to be underlings. NO

In Cyprus,  I went to the North- to Nicosia

As I approached, on the mountain in the Far domain

Was the Turkish Flag-shimmering away in the Sky

It was once Cypriot land, now wrested away

That was  1974 when the Turks invaded and took the North

The Green Line barricaded : stern armed men-T56s at the ready!

I remembered the Selalihini Sandesaya;

Airavana wuwat navtana risin ena,

Aira dahas dilu dunu kot sipat gena

Kaikavalehi deka sebalun reka sitina

Vaiya karan mal turu gana vana hisina”

It reads;

Ready to halt even Airavana, the Warrior of Gods

Sabre rattling with shining swords

Behold the warriors at Kaikawala

Get going over the tree tops.

 

My heart bled- Will that ever happen to Sri Lanka

The Port at H’tota to the Chinese

The Air port at Mattala to India

Trinco to another- haps God knows to whom?

Will the Treaty of Berlin of 1885 be enacted on our soil?

Chancellor Bismark did parcell Africa among the Europowers

Or Are we going the way that Somalia went?

,Once Somalia was a luxury land.

Siad Barre got Aid from the Soviets

Then the US offered better terms:-Siad turned to the US

Then the  weak Gorbachev faltered and fell

Then the US Aid ceased-dried up

Somalia was no longer a strategic point.

Somalia was left high and dry.

Warlords- the Aidids  fought, wrested areas

The rich vanished to the West-to the UK

Some of my students at Westminister narrated

A once  life of mirth and happiness- Now ALL GONE

Many scooted to the UK-

There is a Somaliland in Streatham- in England

Full of Somali shops, avoided as a plague by the Whites.

The rif raf left in Somaliland turned to plundering on the high seas.

That was all they could do.

Plundered bounty now runs Somalia.

Somalia dismembered.

Let than not happen to my Motherland.

Perhaps it is happening under our feet-

India for everything- to build our roads

To sell our petrol- earnings for India!

To make homes in the North and on Estates

Are we dumb not  to see through their shrewd tactics?

Why not our bricks and our hands build the homes

It requires only earth and wattle and daub

Though in 1977 Sirimavo handed over a debt free country

JR and Ronnie got caught in the IMF web

We will give you Aid- Loans Galore

but you have to allow free imports

(to enable us to sell you our products)

Allow the free use of forex to everyone

It was the rich that went on luxury holidays;

Camb and Oxford for the kids

Little did we know that the forex that came on loan

Found their way back to the donors with profits

Leaving our country with the  debt.

A Master stroke to make us colonies again-

This time it was a Financial Missile!

Now we stand surprised that debt piled up!

Weren’t we duff: could not put two and two together!

 

That was a   Conspiracy hatched by the IMF

to make our countries debted.

I’ve been singing this song for long

No one believed me:  Learned economists ignored me

All that is now proved Gospel Truth-

With expert John Perkins writing

Confessions of an Economic Hitman in 2005

Where he confesses to have drafted Aid Projects, with dud statistics,

Where the Aid given somehow went back to the donors,

Leaving Equador indebted.

That also did happen to All- Equador, Sri Lanka, Greece and Cyprus.

We are all caught in the web woven by the IMF-

Borrow and borrow;  Spend and Spend

Greece is in dire straits- Cyprus will follow soon

Way back in 1994 one of my foreign students wrote in

The Malaysian Straits Times

Creating Debt is the tool of the Superpowers”

To control us once again- Get us to become debted

.

It is time to rethink development-

Put the IMF teachings to the litmus test.

Garvin Karunaratne

26/12/2017

Author of How the IMF Sabotaged Third World Development(Kindle/Godages)