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| Sunday, 24 February 2002 |
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Politics |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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LSSP statement on Local Government elections: The UNP government's postponement of the 2002 Budget to a day after the local government election is ominous. The UNP has accepted a commitment to implement in full the IMF package in order to obtain IMF aid for the year's budget. The hardship and disappointment this would cause to the people will be disastrous to the UNP at any election that should follow the budget. Hence the postponement of the Budget. The IMF package was what was tried on the PA government too. Even Cabinet papers were introduced for initiating these. The McMoran deal on Eppawela phosphate deposits, the sale of the majority shares in Telecom to foreign private investors the promotion of private sector investment in University education, and the sale of the distribution of "water rights" in the Negombo, Kalutara and Galle districts to private foreign companies were among these several proposed projects. But progressive opinion within the Cabinet succeeded in pushing them back. IMF, World Banking WTO With the UNP these are no longer individual measures which it can choose to implement or not. It has accepted the policies that promote these measures. The deregulation of the economy and its liberalization are the policies which the IMF and the World Bank press upon Third World governments. The UNP government's entire programme is based on these broad policy positions. These policies have brought disaster to the people as a whole in Third World countries. They have only helped Transnational Corporations of the developed western world to fatten themselves. Argentina is the most recent example of disaster caused by IMF policies. The bankruptcy of that economy has caused the disintegration of its parliamentary system and opened the way for dictatorship. The IMF and the Transnational corporations find political dictatorships preferable to parliamentary democracies. The LSSP in particular fought hard against the PA government succumbing to IMF policies and succeeded in large measure. With this experience the LSSP has earned the right to warn the people that the UNP government will pursue the same policies but in a much more determined and purposeful manner. There is none within the UNP government to take positions against such measures or to speak in the interests of the people. Privatization programme The UNP government's recognizable effort is to carry through its privatization programme under a media blitz on alleged corruption of the PA government and related mismanagement of state owned enterprises. The LSSP has no objection to the UNP government probing the corruptness of the PA administration or of its ministers where it alleges that such corruption has occurred. In fact it should be the duty of the new government to do so. But the LSSP wishes to warn the people that under the general charge of corruption and inefficiency in the public sector the UNP government is fast moving to its objective of privatizing the major sectors of the economy. Corruption and overstaffing of state sector institutions to the point of affecting their economic viability commenced with the UNP government of 1977. It was this that was continued by ministers in the PA government in such businesses as the Petroleum Corporation and the Ceylon Electricity Board. It was in the UNP period up to 1993 that unsecured loan without possibility of recovery and amounting to billions of rupees were distributed by the State sector banks to UNP cronies. Now the UNP is making use of this same corruption and inefficiency in the State sector as the reason for selling this sector to principally foreign capital. The UNP's own cronies will function as middle men and collect the commission on the deals. State involvement in the economy The nationalization of enterprises took place in our country under progressive governments in accordance with the needs of the people. It was not a process of building socialism because socialism cannot be built that way. This was the only way that the interests of the people living in the Third World with relatively weak capitalist economies like ours could be protected. Sri Lanka has never had a strong and enterprising capitalist class that could run the economy and its services. Those state sector enterprises which the last UNP government gave to its cronies floundered in no time. Our private bus service demonstrates the failure of local capitalism to invest in any field that requires sizable investment. The Tyre Corporation that was sold by the UNP in the 1980s to a local capitalist was ruined by him and today it is of no significance to the economy. So is the Werahera CTB Workshop and the Tractor corporation, to name but only a few. The then UNP government commenced the liquidation of the Paddy Marketing Board on IMF pressure and this has denied to the paddy cultivator the only facility by which he could get a reasonable price for his paddy. It also denied to the consumer his measure of rice at an affordable or reasonable price. The sale of the Distilleries Corporation to a crony denied to the government the ownership and control of a heavy revenue earning source. The privatization of the Milk Board and the sale of the Lakspray plant left us with no means to control the prices of milk foods. The UNP's policy then was to sell state-owned enterprises to its friends. Today it has no alternative but to sell them direct to foreign capital. This is the directive of both the IMF and the World Trade Organization. The UNP cannot resist this, and its friends will be the brokers and commission agents on the several deals involved in this programme of emasculating the State sector. Any success the UNP achieves at the local government elections by defeating the PA will be considered by it as a mandate to proceed with this programme of privatization. Today the nationalized sector has to be preserved for protecting our national economy in the situation of a globalized capitalism dominated by the major capitalist economies. Developed world capitalism through their Transnational corporations seek to own and control in their own interest and for their own profit the major sectors of Third World economies and their infrastructure. What they and their local henchmen are interested in Sri Lanka are such natural resources like our Eppawela Phosphate deposits, and power generation and distribution, import and distribution of petroleum products, telecommunications, national harbours and port facilities, rail and air transport shipping insurance and banking. With these in their ownership and control the foreign stranglehold on our economy will be complete. Foreign Investment The LSSP accepts that there are sectors of the economy that need foreign technology and capital for their development to meet the needs of competition from other countries in the region and outside of it. Our main harbours which will need to compete with the developed facilities in the region is a case in point. But this development cannot be at the price of the ownership of the enterprise or facility passing into foreign hands. The ownership of the nationalized sector has necessarily to remain in the hands of the State. Today Shell dictates to us the price of our cooking gas. Prima dictates to us the price of wheat flour. The Government has no means of controlling them because they are wholly foreign owned. Tomorrow with the import and distribution of petroleum products back in the hands of Shell and other foreign companies these will dictate to us the price of both diesel and kerosene. In what may be considered as the Peoples sector, the CWE etc, privatisation has been announced. The consumer catering outlets of the CWE are all to be handed over to a major private sector trading organization to run supermarkets. That would take the CWE especially in its prices outside the reach of the common man. Cheap labour creation by removing the protective labour laws which the working class has won through struggle is also part of the UNP programme. The freedom given to the private wholesale trader to freely import rice flour and other essential commodities will affect local rice production and in its long term effects raise the prices of both rice and flour. Local investment in industry will also suffer drastically with the liberalized import of goods that can through the advantages they have, drive the local industrialist out of production. Progressives in SLFP The LSSP calls upon the people to reject these policies of the UNP government by defeating the UNP at the forthcoming local government elections. The progressive sections of the SLFP in particular have a further decisive task. They have seen their leaders (even the secretary of their party) betray them to the class enemy. Even as we go into this election it is happening at local government level. SLFP Mayors, Chairman, and members feel no disgrace in joining the flock of the UNP. The PA's SLFP mayor of Dehiwela-Galkissa prepared the PA's nomination list for the area and on the next morning joined the UNP to head that list! All progressive sections including those of the SLFP must ensure, despite party allegiances, to ensure that only politically reliable persons are elected from the PA lists. Political reliance cannot be proved by the colour of the shirt that is worn. There must be an allegiance to a political programme and policy. PA candidates must prove that they totally reject UNP policy and programme designed by the IMF. Communal diversion This would mean that the PA must give priority at this election to the exposure of the UNP government's commitment to IMF policy. PA candidates who get elected must be those capable of carrying forward this fight against IMF sponsored imperialism. There can be an insidious attempt to divert public attention from such discussion and rouse communalist feeling as an easy way to win the election. On this the PA must learn it lesson from past experience. At the parliamentary election the people rejected communalism. The progressive forces in the PA must strengthen this healthy position. Communalism cannot be allowed to stage a come back through the local government elections contest. The LSSP commends to the people the endorsement of all honest attempts to reach a political solution to the ethnic problem. The LSSP certainly has reservations on the strategies employed by the government to achieve this objective. But these cannot be profitably discussed from rival election platforms. They should be discussed and resolved through a process of achieving national consensus on the matter through political discussion. |
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