{"id":144528,"date":"2024-09-29T17:07:58","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T00:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=144528"},"modified":"2024-09-29T17:07:58","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T00:07:58","slug":"the-masquerade-of-tagging-taming-marxists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2024\/09\/29\/the-masquerade-of-tagging-taming-marxists\/","title":{"rendered":"The Masquerade of Tagging & Taming\u00a0Marxists"},"content":{"rendered":"

e-Con e-News<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Before you study the economics, study the economists!<\/em>\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

e-Con e-News 22-28 September 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka has elected a \u2018Marxist<\/em>\u2019, \u2018Leftist<\/em>\u2019 & \u2018Socialist<\/em>\u2019 & \u2018Communist<\/em>\u2019 executive president<\/strong>: The capitalist media keeps slobbering these labels out with studied stupefaction and saturated headlines to anybody who cares heed them. We do not have to guess what they will blurt out next. Happy endings are not their style \u2013 no matter what their bedtime stories and teleology promise about the \u2018ever-after\u2019 & \u2018hereafter\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     They are of course eager to erase: that Sri Lanka has also long been ruled by governments purporting to be \u2018Left\u2019, and including self-determined & party-affiliated \u2018Communists\u2019 \u2018Marxists\u2019 & \u2018Socialists\u2019 of more varieties than the English could ever dream of in their philosophies & newsrooms. Undermining them one by one: They wish to put an end to all this for all time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     So what are the merchant capitalists cooking up now? Why is Germany\u2019s Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom<\/strong>, more recently fingered in the coup in Peru, so interested in our upcoming \u2018economic battles\u2019? Germany after all is the birthplace of Karl Marx. Is this why? What then happens when history refuses to end, and keeps going?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     ee<\/em><\/strong> has noticed how fat our ee Economists<\/em><\/strong> section has become over the last few months and years. Sri Lankans are even being harangued about how we have abandoned \u2018race\u2019 & \u2018religion\u2019 in these elections and have now \u2013 thank their god \u2013 finally focused on economic issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     As a result, there appears to no end to the drivel dished out by experts, homegrown and imported, offering their panaceas, elixirs and other ointments to \u2018revive\u2019 Sri Lanka\u2019s economy. Many of these so-called \u2018homegrown\u2019 experts are draped in export-quality fineries, but underneath\u2026.whoa? (see ee Comments<\/em><\/strong>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     We have pointed out how Sri Lanka, well used to the thalagoya and kabaragoya, land and water monitors, has also had to endure: class monitors<\/strong>, war & peace monitors<\/strong>, UN<\/strong> & election monitors<\/strong>, the latest crowd of monitors being ratings agencies, <\/strong>which operate like heart monitors<\/strong>, shooting up & down, manufacturing suspense. One minute Bloomberg<\/em><\/strong> cries out: \u2018<\/strong>Sri Lankan bonds slide as election result puts IMF loan at risk.\u2019 Next minute: \u2018Moody\u2019s ratings: Gives optimistic update on AKD Presidency: We do not expect significant disruption to the country\u2019s reform agenda or macroeconomic policies.\u201d Perpetual price disturbance is the rater\u2019s game, but it is no way to run a country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

     In the Bloomberg<\/em> story, however, we learn, \u2018\u201dA Dissanayake win is the worst possible outcome for Sri Lanka\u2019s bonds,\u201d Tellimer strategists Hasnain Malik & Patrick Curran wrote in a note Sunday.\u2019 It turns out that Tellimer is owned by India Ports Global Limited (IPGL) a wholly owned subsidiary of Sagarmala Development Co, which is under India\u2019s Ministry of Ports, Shipping & Waterways<\/strong>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     So, why would India\u2019s Ministry of Ports, Shipping & Waterways froth and foam so? Well, as the presidential election grew closer, the NPP began to take on many national concerns, associated with the dreaded pohottuva government, even driving up to the Dalada Maligava. One of those concerns was the <\/strong>protection of energy sovereignty, and Adani\u2019s wind power projects (see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>, Lasanda Kurukulasuriya).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 This ee<\/em><\/strong> also reproduces Chandrasena Maliyadde\u2019s rather rollicking rollout of the causes of Sri Lanka\u2019s economic distemper. Rather than mumbling out such widely promoted symptoms<\/strong> like corruption<\/em> etc, Maliyadde, once Secretary to the Ministry of Plan Implementation, first reels out \u2018statistics \u2013 that are only next to damned lies\u2019 \u2013 yet reveal: Sri Lanka is \u2018a rather underdeveloped<\/strong> country\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     For even as Sri Lanka can proudly claim the highest indices in South Asia like \u2018life expectancy\u2019, and \u2018human capital\u2019, at the same time, the Western Province\u2019s share of the GDP is 40% and all other 8 provinces share 60%. 30% of the population lives below the poverty line, with the richest 20% owning 50% of national income, and the top 1% owning 31% of the wealth and the bottom 50% owning 4%. Maliyadde thus makes a distinction between development and growth. He points out that much of the analysis of Sri Lanka focuses on numbers and arithmetic, rather than human beings. He points to the need to show how the fruits of growth are generated & distributed<\/strong> \u2013 yet he fails to even mention<\/strong> once the need for modern industrialization<\/em><\/strong>, which alone can take us beyond \u2018debt traps\u2019 (see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 The current expectation is that once the new NPP government kickstarts \u2018debt\u2019 negotiations, with the IMF, World Bank & Asian Development Bank: their controller, the USA, will block Sri Lanka\u2019s access to investment, and prevent essential projects and initiatives, on some pretext or other, unless the country further implements imperialist dictat. The new President will then have to navigate all the IMF\u2019s roadblocks and landmines, involving banking, debt management, financial management, economic transformation, and electricity acts, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Over 60 questionable bills were rushed through Parliament<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by an illegitimate government, creating further complexities<\/p>\n\n\n\n

needing immediate attention.\u2019 (Charith Gunawardena)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Ranil has left enough checkpoints in the economic front\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to impose fiscal discipline in the executive & the legislation\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Sujata Gamage)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each failure to adhere to their demands, will ensure the new President faces the same turmoil as was dished out to topple previous national leaders. So, have they been lured into another<\/em> trap?<\/em><\/strong> The US, after all, is expert at waging wars, forever wars, hybrid wars, cold & hot wars\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s take a hint about the oncoming plot from economist WA Wijewardena. After a decade or more of columns offering weekly anodynes about good governance and rule of law, WAW suddenly exclaims: \u2018AKD\u2019s top priority should be to appease a population boiling from within<\/strong>.\u2019 Boil. Boil. Toil & Trouble!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Meanwhile, one losing presidential candidate was urging the diplomatic corps and military chiefs to call for a curfew<\/strong>. Well, this is what the Sunday Times<\/em> (linked to the last President\u2019s kin) splutters out shocked. This same oh-so-English Sunday Times<\/em> cast casteist cattiness at the very same candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Then we find out from another columnar economist, Sirimal Abeyratne, that the \u2018Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom<\/strong> in Colombo is concerned about the \u2018\u2018economic battle<\/strong>\u2019 that Sri Lanka must win after the Presidential Elections\u2019. Abeyratne believes any promise of \u2018economic normalcy is based on a frightening assumption, while many are not even aware of how frightening it is\u2019 for people assume, \u2018there will be \u2018no external shocks\u2019 in front of us.          <\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Abeyratne is the very embodiment of that Dutch painting called The Scream<\/em>. Abeyratne wrings his hands as he strives to keep his head from blowing off, yelling about:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018There is no reason to say that there won\u2019t be another pandemic<\/strong>\u2026 a<\/p>\n\n\n\n

global security threat<\/strong> affecting our tourism incomes<\/strong> & worker remittances<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There could be an escalation of ongoing wars<\/strong> out there, or an economic<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

shock in the US or the EU<\/strong>; what about a major cyber-attack<\/strong> or a global<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

energy crisis<\/strong> or any other external shock that can have a significant<\/p>\n\n\n\n

adverse impact on our economy? They are external shocks!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(see Post-Election Economic Battle<\/p>\n\n\n\n

& Friedrich Naumann, ee Economists<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well. Well. Well. How fragile we suddenly turn out to be. What is cute is this Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom. <\/strong>FNFF operators seem to pop up in the strangest places at the eeriest moments. The foundation is named after one of those proto-Nazi Germans who \u2018mapped a pre-war roadmap for imperialism\u2019 in the early 20th<\/sup> century.  And more recently \u2018Naumann \u2018has been fingered for promoting coups in Peru, Honduras, Venezuela, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     In 2013, the CID investigated the Naumann Foundation, operating in Sri Lanka since 1974, for going \u2018beyond its legal limitations in Sri Lanka\u2019, after conducting workshops for opposition parties, and funding then opposition UNP leader Ranil Wickremasinghe\u2019s foreign tours & political activities. A funder of Transparency International<\/strong> (TI) and thinktank Marga, etc, Naumann also sponsored US Advocata\u2019s \u2018Let\u2019s Reset Sri Lanka<\/strong>\u2018 ReformNow<\/strong> Conference at the BMICH, in August 2022, in the wake (sic!) of the aragalaya, which demanded \u2018Unlocking Land<\/strong> for Development, selling off national industries (SoEs, SriLankan Airlines), stripping Samurdhi<\/strong> (welfare), and dismantling labour laws (so-called flexibility<\/em><\/strong>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Abeyratne\u2019s enthusiasm was therefore further triggered, when the outgoing President Ranil\u2019s prolific Media Division (PMD)<\/strong> on election day, perhaps in contravention of election laws, got Abeyratne together with Borah merchant and US Advocata chairman Murtaza Jafferji to \u2018circulate their views\u2019. Borah scion Jafferjee seemed to have disappeared from public view, after he was appointed after the aragalaya by then-PM-&-Minister of Finance Ranil Wickremasinghe to form an \u2018Economic Stabilization Dialogue\u2019 between the Ministry of Finance & \u2018independent\u2019 economists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     There\u2019s an irony in all this. There are rumors being spread that the agents of the English & US multinational corporations \u2013 the cosmopolitan comprador bourgeoisie in Sri Lanka, who are largely non-Sinhala Buddhist, like the Borahs, Sindhis, Memons, Parsis and Chettiars, as well as the Muslim & Christian merchants & financiers \u2013 having long funded Sri Lanka\u2019s bourgeois parties, this time also heavily funded the NPP to draw them away from their JVP roots, and turn them into \u2018the alternate party of the compradore bourgeoisie\u2019. Most prominent among them are supposed to be Soli Captain, with his son Rusi, the biggest shareholders in Sri Lanka, including John Keells, the son of Ken Balendran, while their economics consultant is another former director of Keells, Indrajit Coomaraswamy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Hanif Yusoof, recently appointed Western Province governor, is linked to Expolanka, a front for the Japan import mafia. He is also linked to Mustafa Cassim, founder of Roar, a major disseminator of aragala videos. Yusoof is also linked to Osman Kassim who supposedly introduced Islamic banking to Sri Lanka., and founded Amana Bank, and also was a chairman of Expolanka\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

_________<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contents:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Masquerade of Tagging & Taming Marxists<\/a><\/blockquote>