{"id":42794,"date":"2015-04-01T23:37:08","date_gmt":"2015-04-02T05:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=42794"},"modified":"2015-04-01T05:18:31","modified_gmt":"2015-04-01T12:18:31","slug":"ranil-is-taking-sri-lanka-backwards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/04\/01\/ranil-is-taking-sri-lanka-backwards\/","title":{"rendered":"Ranil is Taking Sri Lanka Backwards"},"content":{"rendered":"

Metteyya Brahmana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Ranil is indeed moving the country backward, and the basic problem is ‘lack’ of good governance and democracy. It is simply unbelievable in a ‘democracy’ that Ranil Wickramasinghe is essentially running Sri Lanka without his name ever being on the ballot. Far too many voters who typically do not vote for the Western oriented UNP really did cast their vote for Maithripala because they believed he would be running the country, so now they feel defrauded by Ranil elevating the office of Prime Minister to a superior position to that of the President, and making all of the cabinet appointments so that the important positions are all controlled by the UNP. These voters are also angry that Ranil has pretty much stopped all of the economic development that was occurring under the former government, and is engaged in the same sort of dictatorial, authoritarian government that he had accused Rajapaksa of doing.<\/p>\n

Only an authoritarian government would tear-gas students protesting hikes in their fees or enact a full-face helmet ban that compromises the safety and health of millions of motorists and does nothing to stop bank robbers (the alleged purpose of the ban) who are free to use other means (oxypura and sunglasses?) to cover their faces.<\/p>\n

The non-UNP Buddhist voter is also concerned about Ranil’s de-militarization of the North without a ‘plan’ to make sure terrorism does not re-emerge, and believe his statements that suggest that he wants to fully devolve police and land powers along racial and religious lines in the North and East will permanently divide Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

The business community is pissed off at Ranil for raising their taxes and changing the investment climate from “full steam ahead” to “let’s wait and see” after several projects were arbitrarily stopped and government agreements and commitments were abandoned. They do not know if they can trust this government with their investment dollars, as some minister (or Ranil) might object ‘after’ deals are signed, and even after the project is started, and then the whole project unravels and their investment goes down the drain.<\/p>\n

There is also concern among the academic community and the more educated voter that Ranil just doesn’t understand the new emerging geopolitical reality and is operating on a 30-year-old post-colonial reality in which kissing the behind of the United States seemed to be all one needed to do to grow as a country. The US had configured the world (world order) with them on top and every other region in-check to extend their own dominance. In this geopolitical scheme, they attempted to pit India against China to divide-and-rule, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that it is in both China and India’s best interest to unite, not divide. China is India’s number one trading partner, and China has just surpassed the US as the largest economy in the world. A Free Trade Zone that would include China and India (SAARC + China) would simply dwarf the US-EU, and comprise a 3 BILLION person market. Both China and India are also the key reason Iran is able subvert economic sanctions by the US-EU, and represent 55% of Iran’s exports. All of this trade passes right through Sri Lanka, and therefore military cooperation between China, India, and Sri Lanka to safeguard this trade is imperative.<\/p>\n

This was clear in the latest state visit to China when the Chinese president offered ‘trilateral’ military cooperation between China, Sri Lanka AND India, as he knows China has ZERO interest in invading or attacking India, especially from Sri Lanka. The “String of Pearls – Encircling of India” theory was an American fabrication by US defense and intelligence operatives to convince India (through RAW – India’s intelligence service that is trained by the US CIA) that they ought to be concerned about Chinese presence in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Ranil\/Maithripala, Mangala, and Ravi expressed ‘surprise’ at the Chinese offer of trilateral military cooperation that would include India, which means they really aren’t paying attention to the shifting interests in their own region and do not have a good grasp of the new geopolitical reality. GSP+ is a drop in the bucket compared to a SAARC + China free trade zone, or even a Sri Lanka-China Free Trade Agreement. The US-EU know this and are therefore trying to use Ranil\/Maithripala\/Mangala\/Ravi’s naivete and lack of knowledge concerning the shifts in the interests underlying the geopolitical reality to forego this kind of regional unity in favor of the old divide-and-rule divisions in a self-serving international order they created that keeps them in a dominant position in the world.<\/p>\n

For all of Mahinda and his family’s faults, at least he understood the new geopolitical reality, and was positioning Sri Lanka to be a Chinese offshore manufacturing center with all of the infrastructure development which is necessary to make this a reality. It is too costly to move goods around the country if Sri Lanka is to become a manufacturing center if there are no modern highways, bridges, dams, airports and ports. The Chinese president re-iterated this fact in the recent state visit that he wants to help develop Sri Lanka’s infrastructure so Sri Lanka can become one of their offshore manufacturing centers, as the factory wages in China are now twice what they are in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has no manufacturing base at all (unless you call sewing clothing ‘manufacturing’), so it should be welcoming the Chinese offer, as this would greatly expand Sri Lanka’s exports beyond the garment business and accelerate economic growth.<\/p>\n

The key question is whether the voter will be able to figure all this out before the next series of elections in June? The economic and political cracks in the new government’s policies are beginning to show, but will they widen fast enough before the election? Ranil is counting on the pain from his policies being felt ‘after’ the election, so the country will be stuck in reverse for six long years. We will see if that is indeed the case. Although the voter may not be sophisticated enough to understand complex geopolitical reality, they do understand what ‘fraud’ means, and right now they think Ranil is defrauding them by inserting himself as the leader instead of the leader most voters want to run Sri Lanka. In a real democracy, Sri Lanka belongs to the majority of voters in the country, not Ranil. At some point this reality will assert itself either at the polls or through harsher means.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Metteyya Brahmana Ranil is indeed moving the country backward, and the basic problem is ‘lack’ of good governance and democracy. It is simply unbelievable in a ‘democracy’ that Ranil Wickramasinghe is essentially running Sri Lanka without his name ever being on the ballot. Far too many voters who typically do not vote for the Western […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}