By Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake –

Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake

In the run up to elections the post-Marxist National People’s Power (NPP), has run a high-gloss, foreign-funded election campaign to market its policies as a ‘new dawn’. Remarkably, the NPP and rival political parties alike had ignored wider geopolitical developments that may contribute to such a dawn given the globally networked nature of the geostrategic island’s ‘poly crisis’.

Re-orienting the Sri Lankan economy toward the BRICS that is challenging the ‘exorbitant privileged’ of the US dollar as global reserve currency would be one such step. The US dollar has been long used to debt colonize the Global South. However, all major political parties have done little to educate voters about Sri Lanka’s wider geopolitical challenges, or the need to pivot away from the West’s tired debt trap, neocolonialism.

BRICS emerging economies constitute a New Beginning in a ‘multipolar currency world.’ The Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa block also represents hope and an alternative development path for many countries caught in International Sovereign Eurobond (ISB), US dollar debt traps and the related International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout business. Like Sri Lanka there are 56 countries in Asia, Africa and South America that are in Covid-19 Lockdown induced debt traps, and the country would need to work with them to counter the Paris Club creditor countries.

Sri Lankan’s purchasing power plummeted with rapid local currency depreciation against the exorbitantly privileged US dollar amid a staged default two years ago in 2022. This was after the shadowy, off-shore Hamilton Reserve Bank filed a court case in New York against South Asia’s wealthiest country, then listed as an Upper Middle Income Country (MIC), purportedly for non-payment of a small amount of interest in February 2022. As the dollars in State accounts dried up coordinated Rating Agency messaging that the country was “bankrupt’ saw the crash of the rupee against the exorbitantly privileged dollar– instantly beggared citizens. Retrospectively, Sri Lanka’s first ever Sovereign Default appears to be a Full Spectrum Dominance LAWFARE and cyber operation amid coordinated fuel and food supply chain disruptions and faux democracy (Aragalaya) protests– to deliver the geostrategic Indian Ocean island to the lender of last resorts – the IMF.

Sri Lanka in the Asian 21^st Century

At this time the BRICS block have beaten the G-7 economies. Indeed, the ‘American Century’ seems done and dusted in an increasingly ‘Asian 21^st Century’ although US Presidential contenders, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have both promised to claw it back. But the train heading East, shifting wealth and power across the world appears to have left the station.

Different regional currencies have emerged to form an alternative trade, technology and de facto reserve currency network, some using Central Bank digital currencies (CBDC), and other cross-border payment systems. The global trend away from the US dollar fiat currency (Petrodollar), which is no longer backed by Saudi Arabian oil, accelerated after sanctions on Russia, including the freezing of $300 billion Russian assets over the war in Ukraine.

Necessity is the mother of invention: Countries fearful of dollar hegemony have been de-dollarizing. Increasingly, the Indian Rupee (INR) and Chinese Renminbi (RMB), dominate intra-Asian and Indian Ocean world trade and currency exchange. Similarly, countries like Sri Lanka which are in Eurobond US dollar debt traps would benefit from de-dollarizing and recalibrating trade in regional currencies and markets closer to home.

A Conspiracy of Silence regarding the BRICS and Foreign Funding of Election Campaigns

There are no purely economic solutions to fundamentally geopolitical problems.

Sri Lanka urgently needs a comprehensive, long-term, exit-strategy from Western –ISB-IMF-CBSL debt neocolonialism, as well as, new thinking to achieve this.

However, a cross-party consensus appears to exist among all leading political parties, local think tanks, and the corporate media, to overlook the new dawn that the BRICS represents for debt-trapped citizens.

A colonial mindset has long dominated the national education system and political discourse in the island that was a British Dominion with faux independence until 1972, when the country achieved real independence and its first Republican Constitution.

In recent times, neo-imperial UK-US-EU and Japanese, or G7, interests and funding in the form of ‘development aid’ for research in universities, think tanks and related NGOs, has shaped and contained public discourse on genuine policy alternatives.The current election season saw increased foreign funding from the so-called ‘Diaspora’ to all major political parties, particularly, the NPP, as well as, to various think tanks conducting dubious surveys and polls. The latter outfits have made dubious predictions on election outcomes seemingly to game them –fronting social media and Artificial Intelligence (AI) data mining- while spreading disinformation.

The failure of all major opposition parties to address the geopolitical dimensions of the crisis and prioritize economic alternatives to endless talks with IMF, ISBs and a gravy train of legal and financial consultants, including Lazard, Clifford and Chance, raises serious questions about their external funding networks and policy agendas. This is particularly true of the NPP’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake who had portrayed his party as a break from the past and a new beginning for the country! In lieu of educating itself and its supporters on the wider issues,  the pretender to the throne, the NPP which presented itself as an alternative to the existing corrupt political culture did not lift the bar on the national economic policy debate or explore GENUINE alternatives.

The Myth of TINA to the IMF

The election manifestos of US-backed and unelected President Ranil Wickremesinghe and the post-Marist opposition National Peoples’ Power (NPP) party, alike, were remarkably silent on the need for a new government to prioritize pivoting to the BRICS to bailout ISB debt-trapped citizens.

Since coming to power amid the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Aragalaya protest putsch, US-backed, unelected incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe has portrayed his government’s Debt Sustainability Agreement (DSA) with the International Monetary Fund as a panacea. His Minister of Finance, Shehan Semasinghe, meanwhile, claimed that ‘there is no alternative’ (TINA) to the lender of last resorts, the IMF. Amending the agreement as called for by some opposition parties would cause heavy losses to the country and amount to ‘suicide’ he noted.

The warning that Sri Lanka must stay the course on the ‘IMF’s ‘bitter medicine’ of borrowing from predatory International Sovereign or Eurobond (ISB) creditors—come 2028, ironically, in order to pay them off– regardless of who wins the election has been echoed by a host of ambassadors from Paris Club creditor countries, including a visiting Japanese Minister.

Clearly, warnings against ditching the IMF and its DSA must be contextualized in the growing challenge that the BRICS represents to Washington’s economic hegemony. In lieu of ISB Odious Debt Cancellation that international and local academics and debt justice activists have sought, IMF ‘solutions’ entail austerity measures and privatization of public assets to shrink the economy. These IMF measures are set to deepen the Eurobond debt trap and impoverish citizens in the not too distant future.

It is now quite evident that International Sovereign Eurobond (ISB) scams at the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL), were the root cause for the Sri Lanka’s odious debt pile up and staged default two years ago– in 2022. At the time China was blamed debt trap lending in a concerted global and local corporate media propaganda campaign as America’s economic proxy war on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) escalated.

Dollarizing Nature: Green Bonds and Scams in the Faux Anthropocene

With the wisdom of hindsight, Sri Lanka must look beyond the IMF’s pseudo solution of borrowing from predatory creditors in order to pay them off –come 2028: Only this time around the bonds and scams would be flavored, multi-coloured, and sweetened to make them more palatable to the economically gaslighted natives of a tropical Paradise Lost!

Under the IMF and ISB ‘advisors’ tutelage, vanilla bonds would be issued to pay off predatory ISB creditors and loan sharks, the largest being BlackRock that debt trapped Sri Lanka in collusion with corrupt local politicians and their business cronies. Strawberry pink macro-linked governance bonds are being designed with a USAID and EU-funded think tank, Verite Research, to monitor local corruption sans mention of ISB corruption or the fact that the names of bondholders are kept secret.

Meanwhile, Green and blue debt bondage (or Debt for Nature Swaps also known as ESG or Environment, Social and Governance Bonds), are being designed to save Mother Nature in the faux Anthropocene. This, by financializing and dollarizing forests, fields and marine areas and sea-bed resources in violation of core principles of both Debt Justice and Climate Justice.

In the midst of elections fog, for the first time a green bond was issued in Sri Lanka by the DFCC Bank. In a nut shell, green and blue bonds are designed by financializing, dollarizing and privatizing Mother Nature; tropical forests, marine areas, ocean resources, and the air we breathe with Artificial Intelligence generated science fiction carbon credit calculations amid the faux Anthropocene climate catastrophe narrative, to debt colonize Global South countries caught in post- Covid-19 Eurobond debt trap and perhaps save the exorbitantly privileged US dollar as the world de-dollarizes, also given America’s massive $ 35 trillion debt.

Simultaneously, the United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterrez has been talking up “climate boiling” and generating fear psychosis that may enable sale of green and blue bonds and scams. The faux Anthropocene is of course mainly caused by environmental pollution generated by the US-led NATO war machine, its war games in 800 plus military bases around the world, endless wars, not to mention Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) and HAARP. The latter enable staging climate disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, heat domes, flash floods, earth slips, forest fires etc. with glossy media footage of climate disasters for green and blue washed humanitarian Disaster Capitalism. However, there are few United Nations conferences on the need to ensure shutdown of environment polluting global military bases and NATO’s endless wars.

Are ongoing attempts at US dollar-based financialization of Mother Nature in the form of Green and Blue bonds and scams also meant to help prolong the dollar’s life as global reserve currency in an increasingly multipolar currency system—as the world de-dollarizes? Back in Sri Lanka, the IMF’s pseudo solution of issuing blue and green-washed bonds to deepen the debt trap and pay off predatory ISB creditors– come 2028, is set to inflate the debt numbers. This, with the usual IMF’s usual austerity measures and privatization of national assets to shrink the economy is a recipe for double disaster– a second Default in very short order!

Finally, the conspiracy of silence among major political parties on the need to re-orient economic policy to leverage new developments in Sri Lanka’s Asian neighborhood, such as, applying to join BRICS is concerning. Pivoting to BRICS and the global south would enable transfer of technology and access to new markets to leverage Sri Lanka’s valuable marine and mineral resources. This would help a growth-led escape from Paris Club creditors and the USD-Eurobond debt neocolonialism encrypted in the IMF Extended Fund Facility (EFF) agreement. There are no IMF solutions to Sri Lanka’s fundamentally geopolitical problems.