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| Sunday, 27 November 2005 |
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Green awaits Presidential Eleven Solemn Thoughts by Wendell Solomons Once the name of Sri Lanka's new President was declared, the younger generation leaped back into what they had been doing all along. In villages with less TV sets around, sisters stepped on the green to face batsmen with home-made bats. In the city, neighbourhoods sprang alive with the shouts of street cricket. Though Sri Lanka's First Eleven has been ranked among the world's best cricket teams, sadly for the country, such a team has not emerged in the field of economics. In classic literature King Arthur seated his team at a round table, and historians tell us about king's councils in the island of Lanka of those times. Move into post-Independence times and you observe the reasons why finding the correct players for statecraft can become an elusive process... In 1994, elected President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, began her search for a 'Core Group of Resource Persons'. However, the ranking top brass of the forces intruded on her search, with their focus on conflict. These were military officers conditioned during a record 17-year long Parliament to serve Kumaratunga's political opponents, the UNP. The channelling of the officers services to the lady President was promoted by Anuruddha Ratwatte, a former tea planter and an army reservist who chanced by family relationship to be near Kumaratunga. Using him as a channel, Army top brass led Sri Lanka into ill-planned and wasteful warfare. Friendly countries pointed out disaster in the plans and voiced their dismay. During this war, Army camps were so overrun by the Army's opponents that even leakage of information by top command came to be suspected. Finally, the lady President expressed her disenchantment with the Army. After a perilous decade, she tried to resume the task of finding the players whom she had searched for in 1994. On February 15th, 2004, the 'Sunday Observer' carried a report that she wished to set up a Think Tank to recommend urgent national policies and action plans. This wish did not come to fruition. Let us now look at incoming President Mahinda Rajapakse's concerns. UK's The Economist journal had noted in 1977 that Sri Lanka was a model democracy in the Third World. President Rajapakse is alive to the value systems that existed before the Open Economy. In accepting office at a formal ceremony, he touched on values this way: "I would work in close cooperation with our Asian friends, protecting Asian value systems." Points he made included those on old time personnel. "We must go back to the good principle that the public servant is not a lord encouraging bureaucracy but a servant of the people." We know the background points to a difficult task for President Rajapakse. After the Open Economy had let the professional horse out of the stable, what sort of professionals can Sri Lanka expect to find this side of India? India, for its part, had got the chronological sequence correctly. They persisted with Swadeshi and have become a bonanza investment destination for Western companies. Many investors are leading edge companies, such as Microsoft. Sitting out on a bough in this picture is the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce's Deva Rodrigo who claims that the new President "will have to do more ... to win the confidence of investors, local and foreign ... this is where the private sector should encourage the new President and push for more free market reforms." Financial section, " Sunday Times", Nov, 20th, 2005) It was Rodrigo's type of claim that led Mikhail Gorbachev when in power to say: "Around President Reagan are many men but he doesn't know which one is a terrorist ... Around Gorbachev are many men but he doesn't know which one is an economist." After Gorbachev in April 1999, short-term World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz said in Washington DC that the "failures" of Russia's transition were due to Western reformers suffering "a misunderstanding of the foundations of a market economy." In an interview Stiglitz said that the first step in 'reforms' is the promotion of State-level corruption as the facilitator of the privatisation requirement - a process that Stiglitz says would more be accurately called "briberisation." The 'reforms' echoed by Deva Rodrigo come from the conditioning of professionals for fragmenting of their own markets and business with the self-defeating, anarchist cult introduced to Sri Lanka by the World Bank and IMF in 1977. At a Kandy ceremony last year President Kumaratunga had noted that Buddhist values have come under challenge through the influence of this cult (front paged by the 'Sunday Observer' of Feb. 24 2005.) In his speech President Rajapakse spoke of those around him in his own open fashion, "I believe my friends are those who offer just criticism and not those who sing hosannas in my praise." Looking at Sri Lanka, a country subject to economic holocaust and a tsunami, we must wish President Rajapakse well so that he gets a First Eleven team on the field of national development early in his tenure. Respond to:mailto:wilmiron@gmail>wilmiron@gmail. |
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