S’pore no example for Sri Lanka!

Lee Kuan Yew

"One could claim that the above argument is pretty out of date. But it is still valid against the ideas of neo liberalism where powerful keep important sectors protected while weak nations are forced to obey the rules of free market. The way the world’s trading system works has little to do with ideology and everything to do with power. The strong are interested in free trade only when it suits them

by Vickramabahu Karunaratne

(October 03, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Strange arguments are put forward to explain the development of Singapore. It is claimed, based on such arguments that it is a living example of a developed nation to be followed by countries like us. In the first place Singapore is not a country but a city state placed on a rock. It was originally a part of Malaysia. Singapore declared independence from Britain unilaterally in August 1963 and joined the Federation of Malaysia in September along with Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak after the result of the 1962 Merger Referendum of Singapore. Later Singapore was expelled from the Federation after an ideological conflict between the state’s PAP government and the federal government in Kuala Lumpur. Thus it became an island city state where English is the main language. While Muslims and Hindus together are less than 20 %, others are mostly nominally Buddhist or Christian. Secondly it has no agrarian problem and agriculture is almost non existent.

Unique demography

Hence it is more like a European city though situated in Asia. The special political path it took was entirely due to this unique demography. Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore ruled the city state more like a prince from medieval Europe. His politics has more connections to Machiavellian theories than with modem bourgeoisie politics. In effect Singapore does not and cannot give any indication relevant to politics or the economic development of Lanka. Our main problems are due to the inability on the one hand, to remove agrarian backwardness and on the other hand to solve the Tamil national problem. Singapore city state did not have an agrarian problem, and their national identity problem was solved by accepting English as the common language. Also strong action was taken against racism. Of course we could have taken English language to the people with at least a department for English teaching. Actually we should have one whole ministry for that purpose. On the other hand, certainly racist violence of ’57 and ’83 should have been avoided. Still Singapore is not an example we could have followed.

We do not need the example of Singapore to prove that successful countries developed industrial strength before they fully open up their markets. In fact this is what America did after gaining independence. If the founding fathers had listened to Adam Smith then the Americans would have been tilling fields while Britain developed as an industrial state! But that is not what happened. Because using hefty tariff barriers, America went into industrialization. One could say that America’s route was followed by Germany, Japan and the Asian tigers. Most economies in East Asia did no start to liberalize imports until export growth was well established. This is an attempt squarely in the Keynesian tradition to show that trade can be made to work for the poor. But in the recent past trade restrictions cost poor nations twice as much as they receive in aid.

Neo liberalism

One could claim that the above argument is pretty out of date. But it is still valid against the ideas of neo liberalism where powerful keep important sectors protected while weak nations are forced to obey the rules of free market. The way the world’s trading system works has little to do with ideology and everything to do with power. The strong are interested in free trade only when it suits them. In any case all these dreams of creating an industrial state are made ridiculous by modern development of capitalism. There is an absolute necessity today to look into the problems of diminishing resources, destruction of environment, grave food shortage and possible nuclear disasters. There is something radically wrong with the system of global capitalism based on greed and super profit.

However, Mahinda in his recent visit to America devoted much of his time to win the favour of the global masters. He promised anything and everything to enter the domain of global capitalism. He said that many of the atrocities of terrorism that the West has come to experience in recent times, the people of Sri Lanka were themselves the victims of, for nearly 30 years, losing almost one hundred thousand lives, among them being a president of Sri Lanka, a visionary leader of India and scores of intellectuals and politicians. However, he carefully covered up the brutal repression of Tamil nationality and the issue of Tamil self-government. He said further “I can also proudly claim that my country through the economic strategy is comfortably realizing the millennium development goals, well in advance of the target set by the United Nations. We are at present strongly focusing on putting in place the necessary public infrastructure and strengthening the enabling policy environment for the private sector to invest even more in my country. In order to achieve the full realization of our potential, we desire a supportive external environment. Towards this end, we will always look for constructive engagement and partnerships. We will from our side, continue to contribute as we have always done, to the cause of multi-lateralism and a principled global order.” Thus while paying lip service to the Palestine issue with a friendly gesture to the Iranian president, Mahinda begged, pleaded and crawled before Western powers and their associates, for crumbs and pieces.