Characterisations Of Rajapaksa-Regime Political-Economy
Prof Kumar David
Characterisations of Rajapakse-regime political-economy: Futility of dated economic categories
LSSP leader Professor Tissa Vitarana has since the IMF began to underwrite economic policy described it as a trend to neoliberalism. More recently he has taken a harder stance: the PBJ-Basil-Amunugama-Mahinda economic model, drafted in consultation with the IMF, is a substantial, if not wholesale capitulation to neoliberalism. I can’t recall public domain pronouncements by Tissa, but it is no secret that he has argued this position forcefully in the LSSP Central Committee and Political Bureau. I am aware that the views of the Communist Party are similar; while Vasudeva’s position is nuanced; he believes the Rajapakse regime has not capitulated to neoliberalism but that there are forces within the government pulling that way; he thinks there is a tussle whose outcome remains to be seen.
A similar debate has spread in the business community and economic pages of newspapers and journals. Bourgeois analysts refrain from lefty terms like neoliberalism, populist-capitalism, but grumble that the government does not encourage the private sector, is not market friendly or growth oriented, and the like. The terminology, like all argot, is the vehicle of an ideology – I say this without prejudice. In recent weeks we have also had a debate between Ahilan Kadirgamar and Muttukrishna Sarvanandan in the Colombo Telegraph website, the former laying the blame for our economic woes on neoliberalism and ‘financialisation’, the latter arguing that the government is not neoliberal enough. “(T)he lack of neoliberalism” is the cause of Lanka’s “economic and political” downfall; maybe that’s what a naughty succubus keeps whispering in Sarvi’s ear.
Another perspective
There is a need to intervene in this debate from an entirely different perspective since the categories in which left leaders, the business community, bourgeois economists, Ahilan and Sarvi, speak are dated, dead and irrelevant. Crucially, tangible neoliberalism no longer survives anywhere in the world; its classic form died when the IMF abandoned hard positions in the early 2000s and it was finally buried by the global New Depression that commenced in 2008. Read More
