by Dr Vickramabahu Karunaratne
(September 19, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I was invited by the Rotary club of Kandy-Metropolitan to deliver a talk on democracy and good governance. Chandana Pathirana, as the organizer of the event told me in advance that many club members were interested in understanding the present situation; and my critical views will be of interest to them. This is a time for concern for everybody in this country; both the rich and the poor. Is centralization of power going to help or will it make matters worse?I made comments to answer this main question of the day. Having listened to my talk patiently they started a live discussion and I was surprised with the content. Businessmen and professionals digging into leftist political theory is something I never expected.
There were two important questions that were raised from several directions. If globalisation and global powers are behind the centralization of the political power in Lanka, is there any purpose of challenging it? Can the opposition find a way out challenging the present powers of globalisation? The second question was are not Tigers terrorists? As such was there any other way of solving the Tamil problem except by repression? I said that India and the global powers were behind the war against the Tamil struggle. In fact the Tamil insurrection of the poor youth is one of the main results of following development strategies pressed onto us by multilateral agencies and international money lenders. In turn, the same powers compelled Mahinda to use ruthless repression against the insurgents. That gave ample opportunity for them to influence the Lankan regime in many ways.
The result is a great devastation in the country with Mahinda becoming a puppet of India and the global powers. The MNCs system is sick. There is no way out for Tamil speaking people except a joint struggle with those who accept equality, autonomy and the right of self-determination of the Tamil speaking people. We have to think of a social democratic movement that can combine the struggles of all communities. The JVP and the General will never accept the autonomy of the Tamil speaking people. They are unable to break away from bigoted racism. On the other hand, there are some in the UNP who are prepared to break away from Ranil’s neo liberal economic stand. Ranil tends to compromise with the Mahinda regime because of common economic policies. Both believe that the decaying system of MNCs will help us to achieve an industrial revolution!
In that scenario the social democratic group may play an important role in the coming period.
Post a Comment