e-Con e-News

Posted byee ink.August 8, 2026Posted inUncategorizedTags:asia, colombo, ethnic-conflct, minorities, sri-lanka, travel

blog: https://eesrilanka.wordpress.com

‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News 02-08 August 2026

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 ‘Licensed commercial banks in Sri Lanka,

which include both State & private banks,

some headed by retired judges of the

Supreme Court, would never have permitted

even a dollar to be sent out, if the transactions

were not lawful.’ – MM Zuhair PC

(see ee Random Notes, Judges & Phantoms)

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‘There were no written laws or, with the exception of the sittu,

judicial records; there was nothing to guide the judge save

traditions and living testimony. Appeal was expensive, and had

lost efficacy for the simple reason that men were

afraid to alienate powerful superiors’ – Colvin R. De Silva,

Ceylon Under the British Occupation, 1795-1833

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‘The power exercised by the governor… has been

injurious to commerce & accumulation of capital’

– Colebrooke-Cameron Royal Commission of Eastern Inquiry, 1833

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‘Sri Lanka’s laws & judicial institutions are colonial creatures.

Their decolonisation, including their structures, practices, &

cultures, is long overdue. Even our legal scholars & lawyers

with Marxist or socialist political histories have totally ignored

this specific dimension of ‘system change’… It is also no secret

that the vast majority of the people who are denied justice because

of delays are poor citizens, workers, peasants, & even the middle

classes. Injustice caused by the justice system is, in fact, a class issue.

This is exactly where the contradiction between law & justice

is glaringly visible.’ – Jayadeva Uyangoda (see Random Notes,

Sri Lanka’s judicial system: Last bastion of colonialism)

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‘In adjudicating wage disputes the police magistrates

themselves took the side of planters… A ruling by

the Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1844 that

civil servants who already held investments should either

dispose of them or retire did not immediately apply to all

public servants. The order did not extend to judges of the

Supreme Court, officers of the Customs, surveyors, military

officers – many of whom possessed land & cultivated coffee.

– SBD de Silva, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment

In the midst of a protracted and dreary to-do in the media about extending the retirement ages of judges, a University of Colombo professor (is he retired, or been granted an overage extension?) declares that the judicial system in Sri Lanka is the ‘last bastion of colonialism’.

     He also laments: those ‘legal scholars & lawyers with Marxist or socialist political histories [who] have totally ignored’ the colonial & class dimensions of ‘system change’. Yet, what about such ‘social scientists’ who bade farewell to class a few decades ago, & ‘overdetermined’ such factors as ‘ethnicity’. They promoted the ‘national question’ as not being about peasants & workers, but cultural matters. This led to a tsunami of ethnic studies & ethnic histories. All this ‘ethnicization’, effectively atomized us further, leaving us all as ‘heathens’ (the Greek root of the word ethnic!) as hordes that had to be kept outside their high white gates, in a World on Fire… (see ee Random Notes).

     We have no idea what kind of Marxists or Socialists would ignore imperialism or class, (even as there are many highly rewarded academically-modified varieties). Yet the honorable professor may himself be quite ignorant that the judiciary primarily has served & still serves the import-export plantation system. This plantation system indeed remains the first and last solid bastion, if not the foundation of colonialism and merchant rule in Sri Lanka.

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The President Counsel and former nominated-MP MM Zuhair asserts that ‘private banks, some headed by retired judges of the Supreme Court, would never have permitted even a dollar to be sent out’. This is, at best, a joke, and in the least, naïve, but mostly fuzz & froth. Zuhair is representing a client accused of posing as a director of the front company AY Investment operating in the Colombo Fort. The company is charged with remitting at least $715mn overseas for 105 companies & 55 individuals, facilitated by 227 bank accounts & 13 major banks.

     Then again, what on Earth are Supreme Court Judges even doing on the boards of private banks? Zuhair’s better argument should be that the import-export plantation system are the actual veterans in this import-export shell game, but to do so would be to sign his own professional and corporeal death warrant (see ee Random Notes).

     The plantations, quarterbacked by the leading multinationals such as Citibank, Standard Chartered, & HSBC, Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, CIC, Ceylon Tobacco, Baur, et. al., that still monopolize most of our resources, and rule this country, are the foremost launderers, legal and otherwise that drain wealth out of the country. But more crucially, they sponsor and operate through a myriad of local merchants & moneylenders, who pay off politicians & bureaucrats to prevent long-term investment in the modern industrialization of the country, sabotaging & destabilizing any attempt at ‘capital accumulation’.

The ‘nominated’ MP, as Zuhair was, also recalls that this category of MPs were created by the English to protect ‘special interests’. These special interests were promoted as being representative of ‘minorities’, who could be subject to majoritarian excesses, but in reality provided cover for the unelected entry into parliament of those representing the interests of ‘mercantile’ capitalism. For example, Robert Singleton Salmon from Lancashire, England, was appointed with 5 others (by the English monarch’s representative, the Governor General), as a Senator and then an MP, from 1950-1970,. He was president of the Ceylon Road Federation, a Life Member of the Ceylon Planters’ Association, the Patron of the Planters’ Benevolent Fund; Chairman of British Ceylon Corporation and Great Western Tea Company of Ceylon, Chairman of Planters’ Association of Ceylon (1945–47), Chairman of Board of Tea Research Institute of Ceylon (1946), and Chairman of Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board (1950–51)….As for Zuhair, and who and what he represents, we can only imagine….

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‘Sri Lanka’s 17^th IMF agreement that ends in March 2027 is no doubt the most consequential international agreement in the history of the country,’ declares Ahilan Kadirgamar in the Daily Mirror (see ee Focus). This maybe an exaggeration. SBD de Silva saw the Rubber-Rice Pact of 1952 between Sri Lanka & China (which the US agents inside the Central Bank of Ceylon tried to sabotage) as the country’s most successful international agreement.

     Perhaps SBD was referring to trade, and Kadirgamar is referring to the deadly consequences of this 17^th IMF program. Signed after the country’s unprecedented 2022 default, the USA now exerts an exceptionally strong lock-hold over the country, (apparently preventing Sinopec from developing a refinery in Hambantota port, see ee Quotes, Dirty Geopolitics). Kadirgamar suggests the USA’s agents are acting as debt-restructuring arbiters and serving Wall-Street bankers by pushing for a return to International Sovereign Bonds (ISBs) as early as 2027. This move amounts to handing the nation back to the predatory financiers that trapped us in the first place!

     Despite an overwhelming electoral mandate, the NPP government has played a cautious, reactive first 2 years, navigating external shocks (tariffs, cyclones, energy crises) while adhering to an IMF agreement signed by an unelected administration, which had been brought into power by ‘a soft coup’ of sorts. US-funded thinktanks and ‘thought-herders’ are already advocating for an 18^th program! The government’s pledge to make this the last IMF deal, says Kadirgamar, reflects a growing recognition that current austerity and export-led orthodoxy have failed to deliver sustainable growth.

     Kadirgamar reaches for a cricket metaphor to soften his criticisms. The second innings cannot mirror the first; it demands a bold, post-IMF vision that harnesses domestic resources, reforms or repeals such IMF-driven legislation as the Central Bank Act, and Public Finance Management Act. He prioritizes production, employment & welfare over external dependency. This entails transforming the Central Bank into a developmental institution, establishing a 21^st-century development bank, reforming SOEs without privatization, and pursuing agricultural transformation for food security (all anathema to the country’s imperialist sponsors & merchant agents – how he or the NPP proposes overcoming these perennial saboteurs, remains a mystery).

     He also calls for concrete measures such as expanding school meals, introducing a universal rice subsidy, and launching a housing scheme to generate broad employment. He believes they are essential to relieve widespread poverty & malnutrition. With its historic mandate (for what?), Kadirgamar hopes the government will now mobilize state & society far beyond the constraints of a crumbling capitalist order, charting a path toward equitable economic recovery through domestic investment, social mobilization, & a renewed institutional framework.

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Perhaps to placate a government weak on daring industrial policy, this week saw a spate of ‘news’ of dubious provenance, claiming advances in industrialization. Let us be clear: assembly is not industrialization! Yet, the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce claims: The country’s policy focus is increasingly shifting towards building vehicles locally…” Fancy that: increasingly shifting”! Where is the iron and steel from? Bogala Graphite Lanka claims it is continuing to invest in modern processing technologies”… ”demonstrating the potential for Sri Lanka to move beyond exporting raw minerals towards high-value, technology-driven mineral products….’ Potential”, indeed! (see ee Industry). Meanwhile, Since 2022, BDS has placed tea plucking machines in the hands of 179 estate workers across nine estates…” The news item fails to interview even one worker, yet insists; The results are nothing short of transformative. The results speak for themselves” (see ee Agriculture) If any reader has any more concrete proof of these ‘advances’, do enlighten us. Can these workers speak over the din of the machines? Let us know….

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This week sees the sun soaring directly overhead as it usually does in the first weeks of August, heralding the onset of autumn in much of Asia and the northern hemisphere. These matters lie unheralded by a colonial media, their brains not in their heads but buried in Europe. They treat such searing sun & torrential rains as surprises…

Ethnic Conflict & Other Minority Inventions in Sri Lanka