Brexit: long overdue!

The most asked question on Google in the year 2019, according to reports, is ‘Where is Sri Lanka?’ I am not sure who is looking for Sri Lanka or why. Maybe it has something to do with Sri Lanka being picked as the No 1 island to visit. Again, I am not sure who concluded this or why.  

Sri Lankans know where Sri Lanka is. Most Sri Lankans know what Sri Lanka is. Of course there are those who think Colombo is Sri Lanka and vice versa and who, consequently, don’t think that non-Colombots really count and therefore are often shocked at how politics unfold. That’s a different story. 

There are people from other countries who know where Sri Lanka is and have a rough idea that the island is not only about tea. The more discerning and aware know the island’s history, its strategic importance in the Indian Ocean and of course who plundered what and when.  Most, however, have only a cursory knowledge of the island. Arundathi Roy, for example. Gullible to the core, and yet sufferable in ways Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn are not.  

Boris and Jeremy, leaders of the Conservative and Labour Parties in the UK had many things to talk about in the run up to that country’s parliamentary elections. Usually, Sri Lankans are not really bothered about by such processes, not least of all because the result, either way, has little chance of changing the predatory and condescending attitudes and actions of the UK government(s) with respect to Sri Lanka. This time, however, both leaders mentioned Sri Lanka in the course of their respective campaigns.  

It’s not hard to understand. There’s a significant number of Tamils of Sri Lankan origin living in the UK who have the vote. Elections are about votes. Politicians woo voters. They are a promising lot. The aim to please. And so Boris and Corbyn had to say stuff that they believed was music to the ears of this relatively tiny segment of the voting population.  

A minor matter and it didn’t really count, but it nevertheless indicates stuff. Jeremy talked of genocide. That's a good thing. Britain know all about genocide, ethnic cleansing, cultural erasure and plunder. Boris wants to achieve ‘reconciliation, stability and justice.’ Across the world, he says. In current or former conflict zones, he says. Yeah, right!    

Those who get high on either Boris or Jeremy should relax. They are no different. The only good thing is that we have to deal with just one of them. As things turned out that would be Boris. 

Now Britain may have reconciled itself to forgetting the past and the present when it comes to horrendous excesses (yes, a mild word, that). However, if Britain wants justice, that’s good. Here’s stuff that Britain could do.

First. Return all the loot. Second. Compensate for genocide, torture, dispossession and for having flowered up a people via divide-n-rule. Third. LEAVE US ALONE!  

That country, folks, doesn’t know whether it is coming or going. It preaches democracy but is just another monarchy. It could never tell East from West and still believes the sun has not set on collective behind. It believes that it is a free country when it is in fact a client state of the United States of America. It is not sure if it is a part of Europe or if it is not. It pretends to be one country in the United Nations but when it comes to sports (like Rugby and Football) it ‘breaks’ into its constituent parts.

And they want to give us direction. Wait. I need to laugh for a good ten minutes over that!  

Alright. Done laughing. Seriously, folks, when you dig deep into all this, it is not funny. It’s gruesome. And it is unresolved. 

Sri Lanka is not the UK and not only because we haven’t really robbed other countries or stockpiled weapons. We don't do what they do. We don’t tell others what to do. We don’t insist they inhabit our version of their reality. We are not telling them to mind their own flowering business.  

Britain has its own tumors to deal with. That much is clear. Xenophobia. Terrorism. Chicken coming home to roost. That kind of thing. Perhaps the likes of Boris and Jeremy feel good about themselves by dissing countries like Sri Lanka. 

And we here they are fretting over something called ‘Brexit’. Britain + Exit, that is. The first time I heard that term, I remembered Nanda Malini’s catchy song in the ‘Pawana’ album, titled ‘Nidahas Baila’.  This is how Sunil Ariyaratne saw it: sudda yanna giyeth nae, nogihin hitiyeth nae. (The white man did not stay, and neither did he leave)!  

We’ve been waiting for Brexit for more than two centuries. And it’s not their fault alone. There are people among us who just don’t want them to leave. Maybe ‘Brexit’ is a Sri Lankan project. An unfettering. It might actually give a boost reconciliation, ensure stability and obtain justice simply because we won’t have rank idiots telling us who we are, what we are about and what we ought to do. 

This article was first published in the 'Sunday Morning' [December 15, 2019]

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malindasenevi@gmail.com. www.malindawords.blogspot.com.

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While we plot SLexit…

In November 1917, as the Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Republic, Leon Trotsky was tasked to negotiate the nature of the peace with the German Imperial High Command.  The delegation led by Trotsky, even as it was negotiating the terms of the peace treaty with the German Government in Brest-Litovsk that December, distributed leaflets to the German troops urging them to revolution. The Brest-Litovsk Treaty cost the Soviet Republic Finland, the Ukraine and its best grain lands.

Almost a hundred years later, a delegation of the United National Party campaigns in the UK, urging Sri Lankan expatriate voters of that country to vote against Brexit.  Britain voted to ‘leave’ the European Union.   

Different times, different agendas, different ideologies.  Trotsky’s ‘leafletting’ was not directly linked to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, but essentially the position he had taken regarding the nature of peace won the day.  The efforts of the Sri Lankan delegation were in contrast trivial and their preferred outcome did not materialize.  Trotsky had the blessings of his Government which of course was not democratically elected and was therefore answerable to the people on in terms of self-proclaimed representative legitimacy.  The Sri Lankan delegation was made of democratically elected representatives.  Whether they had the approval of the people, i.e. through the nod of the Parliament and the Cabinet for this ‘side business,’ is therefore a legitimate concern, especially if public funds were used to cover relevant expenses. 

 What’s common here is that in both instances those who were politicking had their respective countries’ interest at heart.  Trotsky was plotting ‘world revolution’.  The Sri Lankan delegation, in its wisdom, was probably inspired by concerns about the country’s economic future.  Both intentions were ‘noble’ in that sense (let’s say for argument’s sake).  Both had something to do with the alteration of political boundaries, in one case the ceding of territories controlled and in the other a landmass to which there was no claim whatsoever.  The latter, then, in this sense was undoubtedly presumptuous. 

The presumptions are not limited to a land matter though and that’s what needs to be addressed.   It is no secret that this Government was doing its bit in the West’s anti-China campaign, never mind the fact that China owns massive chunks of Western debt or that China, according to the United National Party, was also active in the anti-Brexit camp.  What’s pertinent is that after putting the country’s proverbial hand around the head as per the West’s bidding or what turned out to be misplaced faith in the West, it finds itself touching a nose called ‘Asia’.  This ‘Asia’ is essentially China and Japan – India, for all its friendly and big-player pretentions, is an Asian ‘minor’ all things considered.    

In short, the Government bet on the West and lost.  All the talk about GSP Plus is nonsense simply because it is a) a highly overrated facility and b) we don’t have it.  Rushing into the as yet mysterious ECTA with India on account of Brexit is not only a cheap trick but one that exposes a kind of desperation that only a Government that is clueless can have.  Just the other day a group of Indians, marketed laughably as ‘independent experts’, was here in Sri Lanka to sing the praises of ECTA.  If India is the Government’s ‘PLAN B’ now that it has been made to eat humble pie with respect to the West on account of Brexit, it only shows that lessons are not being learnt.

The Indian (dead) rope trick aside, however, it is a good thing that the Government has finally obtained a better sense of global realities.  Mending relations with China cannot be too difficult.   The Chinese have better things to do than saying ‘hoo, hoo, we told you so!’  They are in this for profit (just like the West and like India), so let’s have no illusions about it.  However, they won’t do the ‘have the profit and eat the cake of political control’ that appears to be the West’s (and India’s) preferred model of ‘Supporting Sri Lanka’.   This is not to say that the Government should snub India of course, but it pays to be honest and to refer realities.  India is good to build a few houses and lay a few miles worth of railway lines but that’s about it.  Sure, you can have a trade pact but if good business is about negotiating the best package and using whatever leverage one has to push it through. 

 

The West’s bargaining power was dented by Brexit and whether or not it was the far right’s position that won is irrelevant to Sri Lanka simply because ‘right’ or ‘left’, it’s all ‘wrong’ as far as Sri Lanka is concerned when it comes to the West’s foreign policy prerogatives.  India certainly has more power than Sri Lanka on all counts and there cannot be any agreement that yields ‘equal benefits’.  We are talking of crumbs here after all.  India’s bargaining power has to met with a chip called ‘The nature of Sino-Lanka relations’.  

This Government lost by going to the weaker of the global economies.  It can lose all over again as it turns to the regional powers by betting on the weaker of the Asian economies. 

Finally, it should be kept in mind that exercises such as politicking in some other country hoping to change outcomes is not cost-effective.  Sri Lanka is not the Soviet Republic, Harsha De Silva is not Leon Trotsky, Britain is not Finland.   India is not a lesser European Union, but China is certainly far larger on all counts than the EU and North America put together.  Dimensions count whether we like it or not. 

Ideally, of course, the long term plan has to be SLexit as someone quit.  Britain has helped us a bit in the necessary unshackling.  An Indian shackling as alternative would be funny if it weren’t dangerous to economic as well as political interests of Sri Lanka.  A Chinese shackling cannot be prettier but if some kind of fetter is inevitable, that has to be the pragmatic choice (while we plot a sustainable SLexit from all forms of international bullying). 

The above article was published in the Daily Mirror (June 30, 2016) 

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.  Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com. Twitter: malindasene. 

 

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