By Kumar David –

Prof. Kumar David

The constant refrain in the press and in political circles is that nothing will come right and nothing can be done in Sri Lanka unless corruption is eliminated. “Aiyoo no hope for Lanka till corruption is eliminated”, “Corruption is endemic in this country”, “It is an incurable disease”. This is the refrain of people who moan, grouse and propose no concrete programme. Does Buddhism’s “All life is suffering” (dukkha) encourage this? I agree that the grouse is not without reason and I have seen hundreds if not thousands of published and spoken and curses. But what concrete programme do they propose as a practical way out? They are “ubiquitous scolders” as I call them waiting for a saviour, waiting for our Nelson Mandela to come down from the clouds and lead them to salvation?  What if Madiba is busy breaking rocks in Robben Island and his visit to our shores is much delayed? 

To quote more comments: “Having suffered corrupt governments, for so long an incorrupt one is the clarion call of the day”; “The masses are enduring economic hardships and seem to have made up their minds about a change of government. Whether it’s going include system change I don’t’ know”; “President Wickremesinghe (RW hereafter) is soiled by association with the Rajapaksa clique and for retaining corrupt Ministers in his Cabinet”; “Fraudsters that have been crowding the Rajapaksa-regimes are still in the Cabinet. IMF monitoring or not, there is no way fraudsters can become saints”; “RW does not have the aptitude to run a disciplined outfit”. This is all true but in addition to snivelling we surely need to intervene with concrete programmes? Snivelling alone won’t do.

Yes, protest movements and militant campaigns have achieved a lot elsewhere. That’s the lesson from other theatres. For example, the campaign against the $5 billion to $6 billion Husky Project, the West Coast Project and Pike In-Situ Project in Canada delayed or cancelled projects. Much larger, tens of-billion-dollar gas and oil projects are on the move for 2022-30; Gazprom, Russia ($139 billion), Exon-Mobil ($84 billion) and Chevron ($67 billion) both US, Qatar Energy ($66 billion) and Saudi Aramco ($62 billion)) both Middle East, Total ($62 billion) and Petrobras ($60 billon) are on the drawing board. The total planned long-term spending on gas and oil projects together can be found on web sources, for example globalwitness.org. They can be disrupted or delayed. That’s lesson one to learn from elsewhere.

What protest movements have achieved is very significant; economic and social and moral. If protest and mobilisation delay a project by a few years it makes the project-financiers very nervous. A one- or two-year delay in a tens of billion-dollar or a five or six-billion-dollar project can entail a loss of hundreds of millions and may even lead to cancellation. The setback is not only financial. Often such activity involves mobilisation of indigenous peoples whose lands are threatened and this sparks wider social movements in the population at large.  This is the second gain.

Thirdly there is the moral impact on young people. Earthrise is a powerful force driven largely by young people in all parts of the of the world. I wrote about this in my piece about “1848 – year of revolutions?” The aim of radical young people is to reverse climate change and prevent ecological disaster. This is a palpably political movement. The Island of Vanuatu, Kiribati, the Marshal Islands, Seychelles and Tavalu, to mention just five, will disappear under the sea within four decades whatever we do now. Dozens more will vanish if continued carbon dioxide emission is not reversed at once. Hence there are moral and economic imperatives; the same time the islander’s fears are existential. Thanha in polluting countries for more-and-more is clearly moral, but so is capitalism’s need for ever expanding markets. 

Do not say capitalism cares only about almighty dollars and has no morality. It’s more complicated and that’s the reason I brought in young people. Your daughter or granddaughter may be charged with a sense of moral justice. Try ignoring it and you will precipitate a family crisis and a sense of moral betrayal. My daughter and granddaughter are not persons whose moral opprobrium I will dare provoke! The point therefore is this; fighting social injustice works in three ways, all significant. It can impose costs on project investors, that is it can hurt them where it hurts the most, the pocket. Secondly, injustice can mobilise wide social segments in defence of the poor and indigenous people and minorities. And third, do not ignore the moral dimension, it can get fired up in unexpected ways. Remember that climate change and social injustice are two concerns that can ignite youth worldwide. “Earthrise”, the glorious photo of the Blue Planet made by the Apolo-11 astronaut’s on July 20 1969 has fired up the young everywhere. 

However, the problem is that some governments are backtracking. For example, China the world’s largest polluter seems to have backed out of its zero-pollution commitment and will go ahead with massive coal fired power projects. The reason is a big slowdown in economic growth due to electricity shortages. Though to be fair I grant that I have seen tens of thousands of wind farms spread out across huge land expanses. In Europe environmentalist are getting goose pimples about floating wind turbines out at sea which can be towed from location to location depending on the wind regimen. One can in summary say that the commitment to combating climate change is a mixed picture.

To move on from the economic to the political dimension, the problem is that illiberal, or sometimes frankly dictatorial minded rulers win lawfully free and fair elections, sometimes by thumping majorities as with Victor Oban in Hungary and Enrique Peña Nieto the previous president of Mexico, or at least by moderate margins (India’s Modi and Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa). What this means is that the masses are complicit in the process of undermining democracy. It may indeed be the case that these leaders “mislead” them by appeals to nationalism, extremist slogans and populism (aren’t we ever so familiar with all that) but the fact remains that the people themselves are very much part of the process of ruining democracy. Democracy in such cases is itself self-destructive and uncritical idealisation of liberalism is thoughtless.   

Aren’t anti-corruption and anti-fraud much the same in practice? In Lanka at this time Ministers and Parliamentarians outside the National People’s Power (NPP) are coprophagous and apply themselves only to their own benefits. Anura Kumara may have the drive, desire and discipline but it has to go hand in hand with a comprehensive plan of national economic development. It’s a game for big boys and he needs he needs the flexibility to play in this arena. The NPP has its work cut out for it. 

The international scenario is that the period before us will be defined by a broadening effort to find work-arounds and substitutes for reliance on the dollar and dependence on the United States. A recent example is the proliferation of Chinese currency swap arrangements, including the unprecedentedly large swap contract that was just been made between China and the European Union. 

Another is the ongoing effort to forestall the extraterritorial effort to prohibit trade with Iran using U.S. laws and by avoiding dollar settlement or the New York-based U.S. banking system.  Trade settlements in currencies other than the dollar are growing, with use of the yuan rising especially rapidly.  China’s emergence as the world’s biggest oil importer has boosted its attempt to buy oil in its own currency rather than dollars. The euro’s difficulties temporarily scared off those trying to stitch together new, plurilateral currency arrangements;  but these efforts are resuming among groupings as diverse as ASEAN, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Union of South American Nations, the West African Monetary Zone, and the so-called BRICS”  Given widening fears of overdependence on the dollar, there will be others yet undeclared who will explore these avenues. This is the background against which the NPP needs to formulate its programme.