Sri Lanka is seeking emergency aid to secure lifesaving drugs amid its worst economic crisis. The island nation, which imports 85% of its medicine requirements, has run out of dollars to pay for imports, putting its healthcare system on the brink of collapse
NEW DELHI : Sri Lanka has reached out to the Indian Drug Manufacturers’ Association (IDMA) seeking supplies of emergency medicines and lifesaving drugs as hospitals run out of stocks because of the economic crisis that has engulfed the nation.
We have received a communication from Sri Lankan counterparts requesting medical supplies. There are very few companies who do business with Sri Lanka, and only those who have the licence can supply the material there,” said Daara Patel, secretary-general, IDMA. They have given us the list of medicines which we have circulated to all our members. As and when our members respond to us, we will see how best we can help Sri Lanka. I think some of them would definitely come forward to support Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka is seeking emergency aid to secure lifesaving drugs amid its worst economic crisis. The island nation, which imports 85% of its medicine requirements, has run out of dollars to pay for imports, putting its healthcare system on the brink of collapse. The Sri Lankan government has also appealed to other countries to donate lifesaving drugs.
I wish to inform you that the government of Sri Lanka, via its diplomatic missions abroad, has circulated an international appeal for the donation of emergency and lifesaving drugs that are not manufactured in Sri Lanka and which cannot be procured through the line of credit extended by India,” Niluka Kadurugamuwa, the deputy high commissioner and spokesman of Sri Lanka’s high commission in New Delhi, said in an email response to a query.
An 8 April communication from the island nation’s state ministry of production, supply and regulation of pharmaceuticals to its foreign ministry said, There is a considerable amount of vital medical supplies such as orthopaedic implants, anti-cancer drugs, reagents and consumables used at blood banks, HLA (human leukocyte antigen) testing, HIV-AIDS testing reagents and laboratory reagents that are imported from the US, Europe and Australia. Due to the prevailing foreign reserve crisis, it has been extremely difficult to maintain the supply chain of above mentioned extremely important medical supplies imported from Europe.”
While giving a list of 273 such items, the ministry said, We would be extremely grateful if you could assist state ministry in coordinating with foreign missions and any other interested donors to maintain the medical supplies which are not manufactured in Sri Lanka and could not be imported using the Indian credit line.”
Sri Lanka is India’s 18th largest partner in terms of pharma trade. India exported pharma goods worth more than $274.4 million to Sri Lanka in FY21, marking a 25% growth over the previous year. However, exports fell to $234.56 million in the following year.
Earlier, the State Pharmaceuticals Corp. of Sri Lanka said it had asked the Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India to sensitize” its members on the need to ensure medical supplies to the crisis-hit country. Given the financial crisis, Indian manufacturers are worried about payments for their exports to Sri Lanka.
Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (PHU) Leader Udaya Gammanpila said, the No-Confidence Motion (NCM) against the Government will be presented to Parliament this week by the 11 constituent parties and the 42 independent MPs.
He was confident that 125 MPs had already pledged their support to the NCM.
As a result, if the Government is defeated by the NCM, an SLPP MP will be appointed as Prime Minister, and an Interim Government will be formed. The draft NCM has been sent to the SJB, JVP, and SLPP, and they have already pledged their support to vote in favour of the motion,” he said.
Gammanpila noted that he expects the Speaker to include the NCM on the agenda after he presents it.
IMF team for Sri Lanka completes initial technical discussions on an IMF-supported program and have issued a statement.
The Statement: Washington, DC: During the 2022 IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C., IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and other senior members of IMF management met with a Sri Lankan delegation, led by Finance Minister Ali Sabry and Central Bank of Sri Lanka Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe, and discussed policy actions to address economic challenges. The IMF team for Sri Lanka held initial technical discussions on an IMF-supported program with the delegation. Masahiro Nozaki, mission chief for Sri Lanka, issued the following statement today:
;During April 22, the Sri Lankan delegation and the IMF team had fruitful technical discussions on the authorities’ request for an IMF-supported program. The discussions covered recent economic and financial developments in Sri Lanka, the need for implementing a credible and coherent strategy to restore macroeconomic stability, and the importance of stronger social safety nets to mitigate the adverse impact of the current economic crisis on the poor and vulnerable. The IMF team welcomed the authorities’ plan to engage in a collaborative dialogue with their creditors.
Going forward, the IMF team will support Sri Lanka’s efforts to overcome the current economic crisis by working closely with the authorities on their economic program, and by engaging with all other stakeholders in support of a timely resolution of the crisis.
SLPP parliamentarian Prof. Charitha Herath says that he endorses former minister Dullas Alahapperuma’s suggestion calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet as well as the forming of a national government.
The former Media Minister on Friday had written a letter to the President stating that the prime minister and the, Cabinet must step down and let the parliament form a new coalition government.
He had also urged the President to appoint a smaller cabinet with a genuine consensus representing all parties in parliament for a maximum of one year.
I endorse what Dullas Alahapperuma says. We should form a national government collaboratively with all parties agreeing ASAP,” Herath tweeted.
The National List MP stated he is of the view that the present government under PM Mahinda Rajapaksa needs to step down as Dullas Alahapperuma suggests.
Prof. Herath also proposed the following steps as the way forward:
Present government needs to step down.
The forming of a national- caretaker type- small government for a period of 6-8 months.
The speeding up of the ongoing IMF discussions and to quickly plan the economic readjustment.
To get the three draft proposals on the 21st Amendment work on to get an amalgamated version if possible. (He said the drafts from the SJB and 40 independent MPs were submitted and the government’s draft is still pending.)
A plan to pass the 21st amendment within 3 months while the presidential system and issues of the present presidency could be addressed in here.
The holding of an election after 8 months, given that economic hardships will be managed to some extent by that time.
(Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund said on Saturday it held fruitful technical discussions” with Sri Lanka on its loan request, while the World Bank said it was preparing an emergency aid package for the crisis-stricken country.
Sri Lanka, an island country of 22 million people, is struggling to pay for imports amid a crushing debt crisis and sharp drop in foreign exchange reserves that has fueled soaring inflation. Prolonged power cuts and shortages of fuel, food and medicines have sparked nationwide protests.
Sri Lankan Finance Minister Ali Sabry has been in Washington this week talking to the IMF, the World Bank, India and others about financing help for his country, which has suspended payments on portions of its $51 billion in external debt.
The World Bank’s emergency response package includes $10 million to be made immediately available for the purchase of essential medicines, funds shifted from its ongoing COVID-19 health preparedness project, a World Bank spokesperson said.
The global lender, which along with the IMF held its spring meetings this week, did not provide a total value for its package, but Sabry said on Friday that about $500 million in aid was being considered.
The World Bank spokesperson said the package would leverage existing bank-financed projects and repurpose funds to quickly provide medicines, meals for school children and cash transfers for poor and vulnerable households.
Support to provide cooking gas, basic food supplies, seeds and fertilizers and other essentials is also under discussion, the spokesperson said, adding that the World Bank was deeply concerned” about the situation in Sri Lanka.
The IMF said in a statement on Saturday that talks between its staff focused on the need for Sri Lanka to implement a credible and coherent strategy” to restore macroeconomic stability, and to strengthen its social safety net and protect the poor and vulnerable during the current crisis.
The IMF team welcomed the authorities’ plan to engage in a collaborative dialogue with their creditors,” IMF Sri Lanka mission chief Masahiro Nozaki said in a statement after the country took steps to explore a restructuring of some $12 billion in sovereign bonds
Sabry told reporters on Friday that the talks with the IMF were focused on a more traditional Extended Fund Facility program, but that $3 billion to $4 billion in bridge financing was needed while this could be finalized.
The IMF has said that Sri Lanka’s debt needs to be put on a sustainable path before it could make new loans to Colombo – a process that could require lengthy negotiations with China and the country’s other creditors.
Sabry said on Friday that in addition to the IMF loan and World Bank assistance, Sri Lanka is discussing with India some $1.5 billion in bridge financing to help continue essential imports, and added that he has also approached China, Japan and the Asian Development Bank for help.
In Cherry Blossom lined Washington DC in the glare of global media last week Sri Lanka became the poster child of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF), Spring Meetings. The strategic Indian Ocean island’s pathetic plight featured on major media and television channels that craft the global narrative, with images of people in queues amid food, fuel, and medicine shortages due to its crashing currency, soaring cost of living and ‘Arab Spring’ style protests.
One of the wealthier nations in the South Asia region and listed as a lower Middle Income County (MIC), Sri Lanka with a population of 22 billion people had just defaulted on her debt payments– for the first time in the country’s history. Global media imaging of the scenic island nation’s financial crisis served to affirm the relevance of the Washington Consensus and the Fund albeit as the lender of last resorts.
The timing of the Sri Lanka rupee’s crash against the exorbitantly privileged” US dollar was as miraculous as the Easter Sunday hybrid war attacks in the tourism-dependent island that targeted Chinese-owned Shangri La and other luxury hotels, which were mysteriously claimed by Islamic State (ISIS) in 2019.
Meanwhile, Oxfam released the Inequality Kills” Report and called on the IMF to abandon demands for austerity as a cost-of-living crisis drives up hunger and poverty worldwide”. Its spokesperson noted that 87 percent of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) COVID-19 loans require developing countries facing some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises to adopt tough, new austerity measures that will further exacerbate poverty and inequality.
The organization noted that the wealth of the world’s 10 richest men doubled since the pandemic began while the incomes of 99% of humanity are worse off because of COVID-19”. 263 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty in 2022, due to the combined impact of COVID-19, inequality and food and energy price inflation – accelerated by the war in Ukraine.”
Sri Lanka’s total debt is USD 51 billion and the country must pay USD 7 billion this year to International Sovereign Bond (ISB) traders based in New York as noted by Senior Economist and Head of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), Dr. Dushni Weerakoon.
For a comparative perspective, Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for USD 43 billion, in the same week! The greatest transfer of wealth in human history transpired over the past two years while much of the world was in Covid-19 lockdowns and global trade disrupted, also resulting in speculation in commodities futures, which were partly responsible for the spike in global food and fuel prices as noted by Economist Jayati Ghosh. Is the exorbitantly privileged Greenback weaponized against sanctions hit Russia being used on other strategic ‘emerging economies’ as a hybrid Cold War envelops the world? Should the US dollar and its supporting financial architecture be dumped?
Staged Dollar Shortage, down-grades and Arab Spring Protests
Back on Colombo’s Galle Face seafront, Arab Spring Playbook-style protests by youth enjoying their freedom after 2 years of Covid lockdowns unfolded as part of the push to propel the Colombo regime’s pivot to Washington DC.
Usually anti-government protests happen at the iconic Independence Square, but the current protests were staged close to South Asia’s busiest sea port – the Colombo Harbour and notably near the Chinese built Colombo Port city.
While the protestors, anonymously organized via Social Media, called on the Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapakse to go home they did Not say Gota Go Home to AMERICA”. The President after all was a US citizen until 2019. Nor was Debt Cancellation or a debt jubilee on the agenda of the Protestors, some of whom held posters calling on the government to go to the IMF in the hope of better financial management. The IMF had been painted as a savior by various economists and local think tanks as the drum beat to default intensified!
But the Protestors had other creative solutions to the island’s crisis of corruption and economic miss-management: A Buy Local Products Campaign’ to encourage citizens to support local manufacture and industry and stop consuming expensive imported luxury goods, for instance.
Some suggested a permanent halt of the practice of providing Duty Free car permits to politicians, doctors, university lecturers and the privileged ‘professional’ class, as well as abolishing various special health Insurance schemes.
Other protestors wanted to reverse the privatization of the national Health care and Education system and the sale of Yugadhanavi power plant to a dubious American company called New Fortress. The latter had compromised Sri Lanka’s Energy Security.
Several protestors suggested marching to the US embassy and call on the US Government to return all the assets of the dual US citizen and Minister for Economic Disaster, Basil Rajapakese in Los Angeles to pay down the National Debt. Others called for accountability for those responsible for the Central Bank Bond Scams. Long term suggestions to grow the economy and develop the country were setting up Research and Development working groups on Energy Security, Ocean and Mineral resources.
Some academics supporting the protests suggested Debt Cancellation and cited the Debt Jubilee project that had earlier called on the IMF and World Bank to offer an immediate cancellation of all principal, interest and charges due to the deadly economic toll of the World Health Organization ‘s (WHO) Covid-19 lockdowns in poor countries.
The Jubilee project had also recommended that the G20 support moves by any country to stop making payments on debt to private external lenders and that new IMF and World Bank finance should be in the form of grants not loans, and require other lenders to reprofile the debt where sustainability is uncertain, or restructure their debt where it is unsustainable,[1] to help ensure money is used to support public policy priorities in response to the COVID-19 crisis, rather than to repay other lenders.
Sovereign Bond Debt Trap
Like Lebanon, once known as the Paris of the Middle east, Sri Lanka is a relatively wealthy country in South Asia and listed as a lower Middle Income Country (MIC). The strategic island is ahead of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Afghanistan on the SAARC regional poverty count.
The country has always paid down its debt and had no previous history of default. Likewise, its debt to GDP ratio, another metric to determine the solvency of a county, at 110 percent was not off the map although this is cited as one of the reasons for rating agency downgrades, leading to difficulty borrowing to sustain debt servicing and default. But this too may be kept in perspective. The top ten countries with the highest debt to GDP ratio according to the World population review are: [i]
While China has often been identified as the source of Sri Lanka’s Debt trap it is Euro-American based International Sovereign Bond (ISB) traders, whose names are kept secret that are mainly responsible for the default at this time.
The above map’s colour coding may be miss-leading since it is the green coded International Sovereign Bonds (ISB)s and Other Financial Markets that are the cause of Sri Lanka’s debt default at this time.
While the names and proportions of the national debt owned by various bi-lateral donors and multi-lateral agencies, such as the ADB, World Bank, Japan, China, each with around 10 percent and India around 4 percent, were known, the names of the US and EU based ISBs that own over 55 percent of the island’s debt and which are part of the shadowy international financial system where black money is parked in off shore accounts, which are primarily responsible for the ‘debt trap’ and down grades are never disclosed.
In the final analysis such downgrades are based on Subjective considerations of CONFIDENCE” as stated by Dr. Nishan De Mel in the ability of the county to sustain debt repayments by Rating Agencies and the IMF. “When the IMF determines that a country’s debt is not sustainable, the country needs to take steps to restore debt sustainability prior to IMF lending” the Fund’s country director Masahiro Nozaki said recently in a statement regarding Sri Lanka. The IMF does not differentiate between illiquidity and insolvency!
From a longer and wider perspective, the question arises: was Sri Lanka pumped and dumped” by the Washington Consensus which up-graded it to a lower Middle Income Country (MIC), thus making it ineligible for low interest development aid which compelled borrowing on Capital markets– like other countries that are placed in the ‘Middle Income Country Trap?
Rating Agencies and Sovereign Bond traders work in concert with the Washington Consensus and the OECD Paris Club of Western aid donors, and do not recognize the difference between illiquidity and insolvency. It is increasingly evident that the island’s debt crisis has many external dimensions and is not entirely internally driven.
Arguably, under most metrics Sri Lanka should not have been down-graded to the point of default by Rating Agencies like Moodys and Fitch at this time. The downgrades were principally due to the USD 7 billion payments due to US-based Bond traders like Goldman Saks, Black Rock and Vanguard.
Asset managers BlackRock Inc. and Ashmore Group Plc. are said to be among the creditors organizing in a group ahead of the talks, and have hired law firm White & Case for advice. Ayres Investment Management LLP, DecisionBoundaries LLC and Perella Weinberg LP are among firms seeking to provide financial advice to Sri Lanka’s creditors, sources said, as the country heads towards a revamp of its $12 billion of external debt. Recent filings show major asset managers such as Fidelity, T Rowe Price and TIAA also hold some of the country’s outstanding dollar bonds.
Disregarding the difference between illiquidity and insolvency, the drum beat and narrative of and for Sri Lanka’s Default was in the air for some time- at least since the rejections of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact: As Professor Howard Nicholas, of the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) recently suggested in a lecture organized by the Economic Students Association of the University of Colombo, alluding to Geopolitics and the recent visit by US Secretary for South and Southeast Asia, Victoria Nuland to Colombo, the island’s Default seemed to followed a systematic, deliberate and planned route to deliver Sri Lanka into IMF’s and Washington’s clutches.
Default would effectively enable the IMF’s and foreign ‘legal advisors’ to effectively takeover this strategic island nation’s economic policy process, and Sri Lanka would lose Economic and Social Policy Autonomy and Sovereignty. Simultaneously, the IMF’s aid conditionalities would enable Washington to stave off a perceived China Threat and likely make it impossible for Sri Lanka to source its oil, gas and other Energy requirements which are at the root of the current crisis at discount rates from sanctions-hit Russia. Has, Sri Lanka become, like Ukraine, a theater of US proxy war this time in the Indian Ocean Region as the New Cold War escalates?
However, from a different perspective, this island at the center of Indian Ocean Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOC), seems to suffer from a Paradox of Plenty’ or perhaps a geostrategic ‘Resource Curse”.
An Unsinkable Aircraft carrier? Asset stripping a strategic island
Former US Under Secretary for South and Central Asia, Alice G. Well, a few years ago called Sri Lanka a valuable piece of real estate’ in the Indian Ocean, and the country not long ago turned down a Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact and a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA).
Others have termed Sri Lanka an unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the Indian Ocean – more strategic than the Chagos Islands whose citizens were forcibly evicted by US marines in the early sixties in order to set up the Diego Garcia military base and CIA Black site, which was recently Green washed by the occupying British Government as a Marine Protected Areas (MPA). In February 2019 the International Court of Justice in the Hague had ruled that the British and hence US occupation of Chagos Islands is illegal under international law as the Island belongs to the government and people of Mauritius.
In the context, it is noteworthy that the Sri Lanka Business Times of April 17, 2022 announced that the Government heading into IMF negotiations is hoping to raise US$8 billion from the lease or sale of valuable public assets to bolster its rapidly dwindling foreign reserves, based on a report of a newly-appointed economic advisory committee.
Among the main items for sale or long lease were the Katunayake International Airport for $2 billion, Mattala Airport for $300 million and Ratmalana Airport for $400 million. The Colombo North Port Development Project was to be handed over for an investment of $600 million while Colombo Port City lands would be leased out at a total of $4 billion.
Shares of Sri Lanka Telecom will be sold at a price of $500 million and Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation shares for $300 million. The strategic island’s telecom frequencies important for cyber-security, 5G technology had been previously targeted, like the island’s land, transport and energy sectors, by the MCC.
Divestment of non-strategic state-owned assets, such as lands owned by Sri Lanka Railways and Sri Lankan Airlines has been suggested as a part of the government’s multi-pronged plan in the short-term to improve their operational and financial efficiency while increasing the country’s reserves position.
There is a difference between illiquidity and insolvency that has been ignored in the rush to monetize strategic transport, energy, land and cyber security assets in this island at the center of the Indian Ocean SLOC. Moreover, divesting strategic assets because of cultivated corruption in the targeted public institutions is tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater!
Questions arise as to who made the above valuations of Sri Lanka’s strategic assets? When and on What basis? In the context of the island being deemed ‘valuable real estate in the Indian Ocean SLOC with extensive ocean and mineral resources, including Rare Earth Elements the island may actually suffer from a geostrategic resource curse, that made it a donor darling in the past and the subject of various Colonization projects in the name of ‘Development Aid’.
Selling off strategic assets of the island that had been previously ear-marked by MCC seems to be a pre-condition for the ‘lender of last resorts!” It is increasingly evident that the island’s debt crisis has many external dimensions and is not entirely internally driven. The strategic island has long been in the cross-hairs of big power rivalry.
Geopolitics of Sri Lanka’s permanent crisis: A Staged Default and the Dollar Weaponized:
The IMF was gracious in Washington and commended Sri Lanka’s brand new Finance Minister, Ali Sabry, who was previously Minister for Lawfare, for his dash to Washington for a bailout” and for the steps it has taken to stabilize the economy. Sri Lanka was urged to apply for Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI) having delayed debt restructuring for two years. Meanwhile, Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman who was also in DC for the Spring Meetings, made representations on behalf of her dear debt-trapped southern neighbor. India is a US Quadrilateral Group (QUAD), partner in America’s confrontation with China in the Free and Open Indo Pacific”.
The country was advised to find financial and legal advisers in 15 to 20 days to chart the restructuring and payments of debts: That’s accompanied by fiscal reforms and other points, to meet the requirements of traditional multilateral lenders like the IMF and WB. Sri Lanka needs $4 billion this year to help ease shortages of food, fuel and medicines as its foreign reserves dry up and it heads for a default.
Notably, absent at the IMF meetings was the President’s brother, dual US citizenand ex-Minister of Economic Disaster who had staged and led Sri Lanka’s Default into Washington’s arms.
Back in 2020 during Covid-19 lockdowns the law of the land was changed to enable Basil Rajapakse, s high-school dropout, known as Mr. 10 percent for seeking commissions and corrupt deals, to enter parliament and head the Covid-19 Task Force that directed 2 years of militarized Covid Lockdowns and excessive purchases of Pfizer injections. Basil was supposed to lead the GoSL delegation to the IMF, but had become a liability as questions are asked about the external actors behind Sri Lanka’s STAGED DEFALUT>
Questions had been raised about foreign interests and hands behind Sri Lanka’s crisis following Pakistan Prime Ministers allegation of regime change operations in his country: Was the long-planned and anticipated plunge of the Sri Lankan rupee against the ‘exorbitantly privileged’ US dollar that came to pass just in time for the IMF’s Spring meetings partly to preempt a rescue from China which has invested heavily in Sri Lanka?
In the final analysis, questions arise if Sri Lanka, ruled by a hybrid Rajapakse family comprise of dual American citizens being targeted for hybrid economic warfare? With the USD increasingly weaponized also against sanction-hit Russia and other emerging economies this is not just a theoretical question. Is the debt crisis staged by local and global networks of financial corruption at play in this strategic island in order to deliver Sri Lanka on a platter to Washington and its Consensus? After all we live in a post-Covid 19 world where conspiracy theories increasingly seem to come true.
It has come to a level that even the dead are manipulated for political gain. The blame is now subtly being shifted with a twist for political purposes. These antics are not in any way helping the dead rest in peace. Sri Lanka has witnessed many deaths throughout its post-independence history. Thousands of innocent lives were eliminated for no reason. Majority of these crimes had invisible hands and we are yet to pinpoint the mahamolakaru” of these killings. Anyone can make wild allegations but the present Easter Sunday inquiry has finalized cases against the arrested – in such a scenario, why present contradictory claims without proof or evidence? Is this not preventing closure for the dead & their families?
On Easter Sunday 19 April 2019 – 8 suicide bombers targeted 3 churches and 3 hotels and killed over 250 people and injured many more.
It was a shock to the people but it wasn’t a shock to many others in the Ranil-Maithripala Government who received over 90 warnings from Indian intel services. Even an opposition MP was told by his father not to attend Sunday mass.
With everyone now peddling conspiracy stories, it also behoves to wonder if the Catholic Church also knew of an impending doom.
The then Foreign Secretary declared they knew something would happen but thought it would be something small. Did all in the know also come to this conclusion. If so, it is imperative to question who else was in the know” apart from those who admitted it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPLopoYWJS8
Immediate arrests and identifications as well as camera footage clearly revealed the suicide bombers as Islamic & it later came to be revealed that they had been indoctrinated and had been practicing their aim from remote areas of Kattankudy. The discovery and recovery of arms and ammunition was a sign that something was being planned as well as the vandalism to Buddhist statues to create a narrative. Actions begets reactions. It is media savvy to go behind the reactions and ignore the actions that led to the reactions.
The 1983 July debacle is an excellent example to highlight how a UNP government led attack ultimately ended up blaming the Sinhalese for no reason. Was it a coincidence that the same UNP government was in power in 2019 – 36 years later.
Just like the blame was pinned on the Sinhalese, there is a sinister plan to do the same though Sinhalese Buddhists had nothing whatsoever to do with Easter Sunday mass massacre. The international media reports issued immediately after the Easter Sunday was promoting this notion as well but had to change on account of the identities of the suicide bombers, the swords found in mosques, the arrests of many Muslims linked to the murders. However, the father of the 2 suicide bombers was a member of the JVP and was contesting elections under JVP.
The Cardinal is only too aware of the angst between Catholics & Muslims.
The Holy Wars fought between them for centuries is evidence. Who was the mahamolakaru” for these wars? It was the religious texts. Nothing can erase this fact. Fast forward to present context, no amount of excuses demanding mahamolakaru” can erase the essence of the texts that enables people to be brainwashed to kill in the name of their faith. Committing suicide in the name of their religion is held as a supreme sacrifice. Unless these references are removed, there will be more ‘molakaru’ indoctrinating people to kill.
While that is the main aspect for drawing people to carry out this horrendous crime, the other aspect equally blameworthy, is the negligence of the intel sent in advance that a crime was to take place, naming venues & even the suicide team. It is baffling why the Cardinal is not going after these instead of using adopting to steer the crime to provide a political twist. What is being subtly conveyed is that the crime took place for the current government to come to power. Let us not be naïve, that by April 2019, the sham of yahapalana was well exposed and people had had enough of them & were looking for an election to oust them. Whether Easter Sunday took place or not, yahapalana shelf life was over in the minds of the People. This was why the former PM could not even get 10,000 votes & his party won only a bonus seat to Parliament. This result was not due to Easter Sunday but because of the disappointment of the people who were watching them since 2015. Similarly, the people have been watching the present government since 2019/2020 and their displeasure is also made clear and next election, the people will show their displeasure.
Therefore, the Cardinal should not use the dead unless he has proof. If he has proof, he must take it to the police & file complaint. The Church should be happy that in less than 3 years justice has been served.
Assets & properties worth Rs.533million belonging to the suicide bombers confiscated
Naufer Ibrahim who had been propagating ISIS fundamentalism regarded as the mastermind behind the attacks to be charged by the US & Sri Lanka to be charging him as well.
Maybe the Cardinal can also provide who the mahamolakaru” was for all the colonial crimes committed over 500 years including Sri Lanka. The churches are built on Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka – therefore they cannot take the moral high ground without accepting accountability or giving apology.
Who was the mahamolakaru” for all the sexually abused children in the Church considered an institutional global crime.
Who was the mahamolakaru” during the Inquisitions where millions were killed.
Who was the mahamolakaru” behind the Crusades?
Who is the mahamolakaru” behind religious conversions & indoctrinating to cults
As for justice, the Church must be happy that within 3 years they have a list of people to be held accountable for the heinous crime that took place on Easter Sunday.
We want to know the invisible sets of people who helped the LTTE, promoted them, led protests in support of them, ran orphanages for them and even carried arms for them. Why are everyone silent when it comes to these demands?
But the molakaru & their sponsors” & attackers of the Kent & Dollar Farm killings have yet to be named.
The molakaru & their sponsors” & attackers of the Sri Maha Bodi attacks in 1987 have yet to be named.
The molakaru & their sponsors” & attackers of the Kattankudy mosque massacre in 1990 have yet to be named.
The molakaru & their sponsors” & attackers of 30 years of LTTE have yet to be named. It is true Prabakaran & the ground force was militarily defeated but all of the invisible people who helped LTTE are still at large & they have yet to be named & shamed.
Similarly, why did the molakaru” kill Prem Kumar in Pakistan in December 2021?
Who was the ‘molakaru” that inspired Samsudeen to stab shoppers in New Zealand?
The new line being peddled is that 8 suicide bombers killed 270 people to bring the present government to power. So why didn’t these people emerge to prevent regime change in 2015, wasn’t it the same government? Where were these suicide bombers during LTTE – why didn’t they come forward then to help the current government?
These wild notions without proof is only harming the dead & is unfair by them & it is like how the usual culprits enjoys plucking out the dead every time they want to make a political statement.
Curses are of little use – karma will come to the real culprits including those that pretend to be without sin. As they say, those who have not sinned, throw the first stone.
Sri Lankans fondly hope to emulate the Singapore success story, and become another ‘Tiger‘ economy. But there are some major difficulties with that hope.
The most glaring of these is the fact that the Chinese of Singapore are deeply engrained entrepreneurs and businessmen.
To demonstrate that, in the 1950s and 1960s passenger cruise ships called in for re-fuelling and taking on water and food and there were the shipyards available for repairs. It was a safe haven for rich tourists on ‘round the world cruises’ to do some exotic tropical sightseeing and shopping. The Chinese built on that business. When international air travelers landed they provided free or cheap ‘stop-over’ hotels for them to rest and go shopping. They had built air conditioned shopping malls where international travellers could purchase, tax free, Japanese electronic goods.
At each step they re-invested their profits in new projects that would bring in more profits but also, most importantly, give jobs to young Chinese to work. They protected their money, they invested it wisely. They guarded it well and make it work for them – which has brought many jobs for Singaporeans.
Sadly, that entrepreneurial spirit is lacking in Sri Lanka. The wealth of the country flows out on the purchase of luxury cars and other luxury goods – all helping the west economically, but damaging the growth of investment and jobs here. Most responsible Singaporeans would consider that imprudent and reckless spending.
To avoid another Bangkok situation – the rich/poor divide accompanied with its unrest, I call on the President to redirect flows of funds to profitable investments in the poor parts of Sri Lanka.
Amidst the unprecedented and dire economic crisis in Sri Lanka and massive anti-government street protests turning into all-night vigil as thousands of demonstrators gather daily at the Galle Face Green in the capital city of Colombo, there is hope and light at the end of the tunnel.
The latest information is that the World Bank stands ready to provide emergency support in addition to the credit line bailed out already with India.
The World Bank says it is ready to provide emergency support to Sri Lanka and protect the vulnerable people amidst the unprecedented economic crisis in the country.
World Bank Vice President for South Asia Hartwig Schafer said he held talks with Sri Lankan Finance Minister Ali Sabry and Governor of the Central Bank Dr Nandalal Weerasinghe in Washington this week.
He said they discussed actions to address the economic crisis, support stabilisation and recovery, and protect the vulnerable people in Sri Lanka. The World Bank is deeply concerned about the situation’s impacts on the poor and vulnerable. It stands ready to provide emergency support for essential medicines and health-related supplies, nutrition, and education.
Finance Minister Sabry and a delegation including the CBSL governor and the Finance Secretary are in the US for the annual spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
The finance minister also had talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Washington on Monday.
Fuel from India.
Another consignment of 40,000 mt of fuel from India arrived in Colombo
400,000 tonnes received so far under the Indian Line of Credit China announces RMB 200 million emergency aid to Sri Lanka Sri Lanka’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Professor G.L. Peiris, met with the Ambassador of China to Colombo, Qi Zhenhong, at the Foreign Ministry on Thursday.
Ambassador Qi assured that the Chinese Government would continue extending assistance to Sri Lanka in every possible way, including direct Chinese Government support, regional Government support and support through Red Cross China.
The China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) has pledged an urgent emergency humanitarian aid of RMB 200 million to Sri Lanka, including 5000 tonnes of rice (with the previously announced
2000 tonnes), pharmaceuticals, production materials and other essentials.
Furthermore, the Yunnan Province has announced a donation of RMB 1.5 million worth of food packages to Sri Lanka.
The release said that Foreign Minister G.L.Peiris extended Sri Lanka’s profound gratitude to the Government of China for the unwavering and consistent support.
Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G.L.Peiris briefed the Ambassador on the measures which are being put in place by the Government to overcome the prevailing situation immediately, including the ongoing discussion with the IMF for financial assistance as well as reformulating Sri Lanka’s debt and in that context Minister Peiris requested further assistance from China, particularly in the field of bridging finance during a difficult time.
Foreign Secretary Admiral Prof. Jayanath Colombage, senior officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and officials of the Chinese Embassy were present during the meeting.
We believe that the Sri Lankan government and people will overcome the temporary difficulties and maintain economic and social stability and development,” said spokesperson XuWei from the Chinese government.
Another consignment of 40,000 mt of fuel from India arrived in Colombo this week.
Sri Lanka amends PCR policy for selected travellers The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) has amended its PCR policy for unvaccinated and vaccinated travellers.
Issuing a notice, the SLTDA said unvaccinated and not fully vaccinated travellers have been exempted from the on-arrival PCR test and quarantine requirements about the coronavirus.
The SLTDA further said that the amendment came into effect yesterday.
Indian Consulate General in Jaffna distributes dry rations Jaffna, April 21 (news in. Asia): As a part of the Government of India’s humanitarian assistance to the people of Sri Lanka, the Consul General of India in Jaffna, in coordination with religious leaders, distributed dry rations to 60 families from Jaffna District on Thursday.
Clash breaks between Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Mahinda Rajapaksa Jamila Husain from NewsIn Asia on April 21 announced as appears in Daily Mirror that a tug of war seems to have broken out between President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, with the latter now preparing to push for the 19th amendment, which will take away the powers of the executive and empower more forces back to the Parliament.
The Daily Mirror learns that for weeks now, there has been severe political instability among the government parties and its coalition members, many of whom are now seated in the opposition with the 11 member alliance calling for Mahinda Rajapaksa to resign as the Prime Minister while some others stating that if there is a resignation, then it should be the President who should step down.
Senior political sources said that the President’s selection alone made the recent cabinet and state ministry appointments. The prime minister was not consulted, nor did he attend the swearing-in ceremonies.
The prime minister called for some senior ministers to be included in the cabinet. Still, President Rajapaksa had insisted on a younger and new cabinet, hoping that this would calm down the protestors and put the country back on track.
India and Sri Lanka resume talks on connecting power grids India and Sri Lanka have resumed discussions on linking their electricity grids; officials told Reuters on Tuesday, a step that could aid New Delhi’s goal of reducing China’s influence on the island nation, now grappling with a severe economic crisis.
There was no immediate prospect that power cuts brought by the crisis could be eased by the talks, which are a preliminary effort on a multi-year project both sides have explored before.
India has extended assistance running into billions of dollars to its southern neighbour to fight the crisis, brought on by a steep drop in foreign exchange reserves that stalled imports of essentials such as fuel, disrupting the power supply.
Fake news appearing in Tamil Guardian
Dr Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs, is supposed to have said that if the people of Sri Lanka are agreeable, India is willing to proclaim that Sri Lanka will become the State of India.
The Indian High Commission in Colombo has issued a series of tweets slamming a morphed image” that claims to be from India’s external affairs minister, offering to proclaim Sri Lanka become the State of India” in response to the ongoing economic crisis.
Lankan President holds out an olive branch to the opposition.
Balachandran in Colombo reports that The beleaguered Sri Lankan President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, held out an olive branch to the opposition parties and people wanting him to quit for the economic mess he has allegedly created. But he firmly stated that he would not quit yielding to extra-constitutional removal methods, including the continuous demonstrations in front of his office in Colombo for the last ten days calling for his resignation.
In a statement, the President reiterated his call to the opposition to join him in solving the grave problems the country is facing. He asked them to suggest constitutional reforms that can help tone up governance which he admitted is replete with flaws. Indeed, in his instance, there is an ongoing constitutional reform process.
Sri Lanka Highlights: One person has died, and over ten people were injured after police and protesters clashed in Rambukkana Tuesday afternoon. According to the Daily Mirror, the protesters were hurling stones at the police station following the incident.
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund will consider providing quick financial assistance to debt-burdened Sri Lanka following representations by India, Sri Lanka’s finance ministry said. Shamir Zavahir, an aide to Sabry, said on Twitter that Sri Lanka asked for a loan under the rapid financial instrument (RFI) window meant for countries needing urgent balance-of-payment support.
So, my fellow Sri Lankans the future is not that bleak. there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Having read the Biblical account of how Adam and Eve were punished, one cannot help wondering if the pain and throes of labour were unknown to woman until the beginning of the era of Adam and Eve. A scientist will be hard to come by, who believes in such fantasies. Again, we have plenty of irrefutable evidence that man, long before Adam and Eve, had occupied all the continents of the world, even remote Pacific islands and had always laboured hard to survive. Therefore, to say that Adam and Eve were the first to commit a sin and because of that, painful child birth was ordained as punishment, is totally proven wrong by the study of life. Even animals, who are much lower in the order of life, give birth in pain. If one watches a cow giving birth to a calf, her suffering seems similar to the pain of a human female. Many such animals, we know, inhabited the earth millions and millions of years before Adam and Eve.
To earn ones livelihood with labour is common to man, but not distinctive at all. Women also labour for their earnings and livelihood. Before that, every specie of life earns its livelihood through labour. This fact is the key motivator in the evolution of life. The struggle for existence is perhaps the very first distinctive mark of life which separates it from the world of the inanimate. It is a natural phenomenon, with nothing whatsoever to do with sin.
Again, if this be the punishment prescribed as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin, then one wonders what would happen after Atonement? If Jesus Christ atoned for the sins of the sinful human beings, was the punishment prescribed for the Sin abolished after the Crucifixion? Did those who believed in Jesus Christ as the ‘Son of God’, if they were women, cease to have painful childbirth? Did the believing men start earning their livelihood without exerting manual labour? Did the propensity to sin cease to pass on to the future generations and innocent children started being given birth to? If the answer to all of these questions were to be ‘yes,’ then of course there would be some justification in seriously contemplating the Christian philosophy of Sin and Atonement. But Alas, the answer to all these questions are no, no and no. If nothing seems to have changed since the Crucifixion, both in the Christian and non-Christian worlds, then what would be the meaning of Atonement?
Even after Jesus Christ the sense of common justice continues to dictate to human beings all over the world that if any person commits a sin, punishment of that sin has to be given to that person alone and to none else. Every man and woman must suffer the consequences of their sins by themselves. Children are always born innocent. If this is not the truth then God’s attribute of Justice is thrown overboard.
We as Muslims believe that all divine books are based on eternal truth and none can make any claims contrary to that. When we come across inconsistencies and contradictions in any so called divinely revealed book, our attitude is not that of total denial and rejection but that of cautious and sympathetic examination. Most of the statements of the Old Testament and the New Testament, which we find at variance with the truth of nature, we either try to reconcile by reading some underlying cryptic or metaphoric message, or reject part of the text as the work of human hands rather than that of God. While Christianity itself was true, it could not have contained any distortions, unacceptable facts or beliefs giving a lie to nature. That is why we started not with the textual examination but with the fundamentals themselves, which through centuries of consensus have become indisputable components of Christian philosophy. Rudimentary among them are the Christian understanding of Sin and Atonement. I would much rather believe that someone, somewhere during the history of Christianity, misunderstood things and tried to interpret them in the light of his knowledge and misled the following generations because of that.
Inherited Sin
Let us suppose for the sake of argument that Adam and Eve sinned literally as described in the Old Testament, and were duly punished. As the story goes, the punishment was handed out not only to them but to their entire progeny. Once that punishment was prescribed and delivered, why was there the need for any other punishment at all? Once a sin has been punished, it is done with. Once a judgement has been passed, no one has the right to continuously add more and more punishments. In the case of Adam and Eve it is not only that they were severely reprimanded and if anything more than punished for the sin they had committed, but also the nature of the punishment which was extended to their progeny in itself is highly questionable. Of that we have said enough. What we are attempting to point to is a far more heinous violation of absolute justice. To be punished continuously for the sins of our forefathers is one thing but to be compelled to continue to sin as a consequence of one’s forefather’s error is simply abominable.
Let us get down to the hard realities of human experience and try to understand the Christian philosophy of crime and punishment in relation to our everyday experience. Let us suppose a judgement is passed against a criminal, which is far too severe and harsh in proportion to the crime committed. That could, of course, lead to loud and severe condemnation of such a gross disproportionate penalty by every sensible man. In view of this, we find it very difficult to believe that the penalty imposed on Adam for his sin, came from a Just God. It is not just a case of an out of proportion penalty. It is a penalty, that according to the Christian understanding of God’s conduct, outlived the life span of Adam and Eve and was extended generation after generation to their progeny. For the progeny to suffer for the punishment of their parents is actually an extension of the violation of justice beyond its ultimate limits. But we are not talking of that either. If we had the misfortune to observe a judgement passed by any contemporary judge, making it compulsory for the children, grand children and great grand children, etc. of a criminal to be coerced by law to continue to sin and commit crimes and be punished accordingly till eternity then what would be the reaction of contemporary society, which has acquired a universal sense of justice through civilisation?
In the fifth century, Augustine the Bishop of Hippo, was involved in a confrontation with the Pelagian movement, concerning the controversy of the nature of the fall of Adam and Eve. He proclaimed the Pelagian movement as being heretical because it taught that Adam’s sin affected only himself and not the human race as a whole; that every individual is born free of sin and is capable in his own power of living a sinless life and that there had even been persons who had succeeded in doing so.
Those in the right were labeled as heretics. Day was denounced as night and night as day. Heresy is truth and truth heresy.
The Transfer of Sin
Let us now re-examine the theme that God does not forgive the sinful without punishing them because it is against His sense of justice. One is horrified to realise that for century after century Christians have believed in something which is most certainly beyond the grasp of the human intellect and contrary to human conscience. How on earth, or heaven for that matter, could God forgive a sinful person merely because an innocent person has volunteered himself to take the punishment instead? The moment God does so, He violates the very fundamental principles of justice. A sinful person must suffer for his sins. In short, a multitude of complex human problems would arise if the punishment is transferred to someone else.
It is argued by Christian theologians that such a transfer of punishment does not violate any principle of justice, because of the voluntary acceptance by the innocent person of the other person’s punishment. What would you say in the case of a debtor, they ask, who is overloaded with debts beyond his capacity to pay and some God fearing philanthropist decides to relieve him of his burden by paying his entire debts on his behalf? Our answer would be that indeed we would loudly applaud such an act of immense generosity, kindness and sacrifice. But what would be the reaction of the person who confronts us with such a question, if the debt payable runs into trillions of pounds sterling and there steps forward a philanthropist who takes out a penny from his pocket, demanding that all that is due to the debtor should be cancelled out against that kindly penny offered as a substitute for that debt. What we have in the case of Jesus Christ, peace be on him, offering himself to be punished, for the sins of all humanity, is far more grotesquely unproportionate. Again, it is not only one debtor or all the debtors of one single generation, but we are talking about billions of born and unborn defaulters extending up to Doomsday.
But that is not all. To conceive of crime as only a debtor who owes money to someone else is the most naive definition of sin that I have ever come across. This scenario which has been presented deserves to occupy our attention a little longer before we turn to some other aspects of crime and punishment.
Let us consider the case of a debtor called A, who owes a hundred thousand pounds to person B. If a rich philanthropist, in full command of his senses, seriously and genuinely wants to relieve the debtor of his burden, the common law would require him to pay to B all that person A owed him. But suppose the hypothetical philanthropist steps forward with the plea that person A should be absolved of his responsibility of payment to person B and instead he himself should be beaten up a little bit or imprisoned for three days and nights at the most, in his place. If it really happened in real life it would be a treat to watch the horrified faces of the astounded judge and the confounded poor creditor B. But the philanthropist has yet to complete his plea for clemency. He would further stipulate: ‘O my lord, that is not all I want in return for my sacrifice. I require all the debtors of the entire kingdom alive today or to be born until the end of time to be absolved of their dues in return for my suffering of three days and nights.’ At this point one’s mind boggles.
How one wishes to propose to God, the Just God, that at least those who had been robbed of the fruits of their labour, or of the savings of their lives should have been compensated to some degree at least. But the Christian God, it seems, is far more kind and clement to the criminal than to the innocent who suffer at the hands of the criminal. A strange sense of justice indeed which results in the forgiveness of robbers, usurpers, the abusers of children, the torturers of the innocent and the perpetrators of all sorts of beastly crimes against humanity, provided that they believe in Jesus Christ in their dying moments. What of the incalculable debt they owe to their tormented victims. A few moments of Jesus in hell seem sufficient to purge them of their long lives of unpunished heinous guilt, generation after generation.
Punishment Continues to be Meted Out
Let us now consider a different, more serious, category of crime, the consequences of which human nature simply cannot accept to be transferable. For instance, someone mercilessly abuses a child and even rapes and murders it. Human sensibilities would no doubt be violated to an unbearable degree. Suppose such a person continues to cause similar and greater suffering all around him without ever being caught and brought to justice. Having lived his life of crime unpunished by human hands, death closes in upon him but he determines to elude even the greater punishment of the Judgement Day and suddenly decides, at last, to have faith in Jesus Christ as his saviour. Would all his sins suddenly melt into nothingness and would he be left to glide into the other world free of sin like a new born babe? Perhaps such a one who defers his belief in Jesus till the time of death proves to be much wiser than the one who does so earlier in life. There always remained for the latter a danger of committing sins after belief and falling prey to the devils designs and insinuations. Why not wait till death is close upon you giving the devil little chance and time to rob you of your faith in Jesus? A free life of crime and pleasure, here on earth, and a rebirth in an eternal state of redemption is no mean bargain indeed.
Is this the wisdom of justice that the Christians attribute to God? Such a sense of justice or such a God himself is totally unacceptable to human conscience, which He Himself created, without, alas, being able to discriminate right from wrong.
Looking at the same question in the light of human experience and human understanding, one has every right to denounce this philosophy to be meaningless and without foundation. It has no reality or substance. Human experience teaches us that it is always the prerogative of those who suffer at the hands of others, to forgive or not to forgive. Sometimes governments, to celebrate a day of national rejoicing or for other reasons, may declare an amnesty to criminals without discrimination. But that does not in itself justify the act of pardoning those who have done some irreparable harm and caused perpetual suffering to their fellow innocent citizens. It should be remembered that if the act of indiscriminate pardon at the hands of a government can by any measure be justified and if this is not considered by Christian theologians as a violation of the sense of justice then why do they not extend the same courtesy to God and concede to Him the right of forgiveness as and when He so pleases? After all, He is the Supreme Sovereign, the Creator and Master of everything. If He pardons anyone for any crime that may have been committed against fellow beings, the Supreme Master has the unlimited power to compensate the aggrieved so generously as to make him perfectly satisfied with His decision. That being so where is the need for the sacrifice of His innocent ‘Son’? This in itself constitutes a mockery of justice. We are born attuned to the attributes of God. He so declares in the Holy Bible:
Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our own image, in our likeness.’ (Genesis 1:26)
On the same subject in the Holy Quran He says:
And follow the nature made by Allah—the nature in which He has created mankind. (30:31)
This tenet, common to both Christian and Muslims alike, requires that human conscience is the best reflective mirror of God’s conduct in a given situation. It is a matter of every day experience with us that many a times we forgive without having violated the sense of justice in the least. If we are wronged personally, then in respect of the crime committed against us we can go to any length in forgiveness. If a child hurts his parents by being disobedient or by causing damage to some precious household article, or by earning them a bad name; he has sinned against them. His parents may forgive him without their conscience pricking them or blaming them for having violated the sense of justice. But if their child destroys the property of their neighbour, or injures the child of another person, how could they decide to forgive the child for causing suffering to others? It would be deemed an act of injustice even according to their own consciences if they did so.
Crime and punishment have the same relationship as cause and effect, and they have to be proportionate to some degree. This aspect of the relationship between crime and punishment has already been discussed at some length with regards to financial misconduct of one man against another. The same argument applies with greater severity to other crimes like injuring, maiming or murdering innocent citizens or violating their honour in any manner. The greater the enormity of the crime, the more severe one would expect the nature and extent of punishment to be. If God can forgive all and sundry, as I do believe that He and only He can, then the question of Atonement in exchange for punishing an innocent person does not come into play at all. If, however, it is a question of the transference of one criminal’s punishment to another innocent person who has opted for such a measure, then justice would most certainly demand that the punishment must be transferred in its entirety to the other person, without decreasing or diluting it to any degree. Again of that we have already said enough.
Do the Christians believe that this dictate of justice was applied in the case of Jesus the ‘Son’ by God the Father? If so, it means that all the punishment due to all the criminals of the Christian world born at the time of Christ or ever afterwards till Judgement Day was amassed, concentrated and brought to an infernal intensity of such a degree that the suffering of Jesus Christ for merely three days and nights equalled the torture of all the punishment which the above mentioned sinners had earned or were to earn till that last day. If so, no Christian should ever be punished on earth by any Christian government. Otherwise, that would be tantamount to an act of gross injustice. All that the courts of law should do after reaching the verdict of guilty would be to ask the Christian criminal to pray to Jesus the ‘Son’ to save him. And the matter should be rested and brought to a close there and then. It would simply be a case of book transfer of criminal’s account to that of Jesus Christ.
What would Christianity offer to those who are punished by law and what would it promise those who remain unapprehended here on earth? Will both be punished to varying degrees or will they be punished indiscriminately?
Another dilemma relating to a criminal’s redemption because of his belief in Jesus Christ arises out of a less clear and undefined situation. If, for instance, a Christian commits a crime against an innocent non-Christian victim, he would be forgiven of course because of the blessings of his faith in Jesus. The punishment of his crime will then be transferred to the account of Jesus instead. But what would be the profit and loss statement of the poor innocent non-Christian victim. Poor Jesus and the poor victim, both being punished for a crime they did not commit.
One’s faculties are confounded if we try to imagine the enormity of all the crimes ever committed by humanity since the dawn of Christianity till the time when the sun of existence sets on human life. Have all these crimes been transferred to the account of Jesus Christ, peace and blessing of Allah be upon him? Have all these sins been accounted for in the small space of three days and three nights that Jesus is supposed to have suffered? Still one keeps on wondering, how could the vast sea of criminals so intensely embittered by the deadly poison of crime be sweetened and cleansed entirely of the effects of their crimes by the mere act of their believing in Jesus. Again, one’s thoughts are carried back to the remote past, when poor Adam and Eve so naively committed their first crime only because they were very cunningly duped and ensnared by Satan. Why was their sin not also washed clean? Did they not have faith in God? Was it a minor act of goodness to have faith in God the Father and was it their fault anyway that they had never been told of a ‘Son’ living eternally with God the Father? Why did not the ‘Divine Son’ take pity on them and beseech God the Father to punish him for their crimes instead? How one wishes that had happened, it might have been so much easier to be punished only for that one single faltering moment on the part of Adam and Eve. The entire story of humanity would certainly have been rewritten in the book of fate. A heavenly earth would have been created instead and Adam and Eve would not have been banished eternally from heaven, along with the untold number of their unhappy progeny. Jesus alone would have been banished from heaven merely for three days and three nights and that would have been that. Sadly, neither God the Father nor Jesus, thought of this. Look how Jesus’ holy lovable reality is unfortunately transformed into a bizarre and unbelievable myth.
Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang has assured China’s continued support to Sri Lanka to assist in greater economic stability.
During a phone conversation with Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Chinese Premier said China empathizes with Sri Lanka for the difficulties and challenges it faces and asserted that China is ready to provide much-needed livelihood assistance for Sri Lanka within its capacity.
The Chinese Premier also assured his Sri Lankan counterpart that China is ready to play a constructive role in Sri Lanka’s stable socio-economic development based on the principle of non-interference in its internal affairs.
China also assured support for continuous progress in bilateral practical cooperation projects, and hopes for an early start of the negotiation and signing of their free trade agreement, so as to enhance mutually beneficial cooperation.
Sri Lanka is ready to strengthen cooperation with China in finance, economy, trade and tourism, advance the negotiation of the bilateral free trade agreement, and deepen bilateral cooperation,” Prime Minister Rajapaksa said.
He also thanked the Chinese government for providing emergency humanitarian aid and the continued support and cooperation.
Sri Lanka is still in the early stages of negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and it would take some time to secure funding, Finance Minister Ali Sabry noted yesterday (22). The Minister, who is in Washington, DC to hold discussions with the IMF, made this remark at an online Media briefing with Sri Lankan journalists. He also acknowledged that Sri Lanka had been slow to approach the IMF, in recent discussions with the organisation.
Ali Sabry stated that discussions have been held with the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), India and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to obtain the necessary funding for Sri Lanka until it receives financial assistance from the IMF.
Accordingly, the World Bank has agreed to provide USD 300-600 million in financial assistance to Sri Lanka within four months, he said. He said the funds would be used to import medicines, gas and fertiliser and provide relief. He also said India had agreed to provide another USD 500 million credit facility to purchase fuel.
Furthermore, India is considering providing another USD 1 billion for the import of essential food items and then another USD 1 billion. In addition, India has officially pledged to support the payment of USD 1.4 billion in Letters of Credit every two months until January, the Minister said.
The main Opposition Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) and the SLPP rebel group haven’t been able to iron out their differences as regards the urgently required proposed 21 Amendment to the Constitution meant to address the current political crisis amidst the worst post-independence economic fallout, political sources say.
Parliamentary sources told The Island that the dispute was over the SJB’s push for the abolition of the executive presidency. Both groups have handed over their proposals to Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena. The SJB, which comprises 54 members in Parliament recently lost one of them when its National List MP Diana Gamage accepted a State Ministry.
Colombo District MP Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakse, PC, handed over the constitutional proposal.
SLPP rebel Gevindu Cumaratunga explained that they basically agreed on the urgent need to curtail powers and immunity granted to the executive by way of the 20th Amendment. The SLPP rebels consist of about 40 MPs.
Acknowledging that the members of the rebel group had voted for the 20th Amendment, National List MP Cumaratunga said that they had done so following President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s assurance that a new draft new Constitution would be unveiled within two years after the Nov. 2019 presidential election.
Responding to queries, in terms of the SLPP rebels’ proposal the President should appoint the Cabinet of ministers in consultation with the Prime Minister, restore the 10- member Constitutional Council to ensure transparency in key appointments, including those in the judiciary.
The SLPP rebel group has made this proposal against the backdrop of its formal request to President Rajapaksa that the entire Cabinet, including the incumbent Prime Minister should step down. Cumaratunga emphasised that the group remained committed to their original demands that they had handed over in writing to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Referring to the proposed CC, MP Cumaratunga said that the SLPP had recommended that three civil society members of the outfit chaired by the Speaker should be suggested by the Organisation of Professionals’ Association (OPA), Chamber of Commerce and the University Teachers. The two other main recommendations dealt with the public sector procurement and the denial of foreign passport holders the right to contest parliamentary and presidential elections.
Cumaratunga said that they were still making an attempt to convince the JVP to back their constitutional proposal. We are still hopeful that a consensus could be reached as the continuing delay caused further deterioration of the national economy. All political parties realise the growing threat due to uncertainty and economic turmoil,” he said.
Responding to the SBJ demand that the abolition of the executive presidency should be part of the proposed 21 Amendment, MP Cumaratunga said that the main Opposition appeared to have changed its stand on the executive presidency. Having asked for a balance of power between the President and the Parliament, the SJB had overnight demanded the abolition of the executive presidency, MP Cumaratunga said.
Cumaratunga dealt with this issue in Parliament yesterday. The leader of civil society group Yuthukama pointed out that the executive presidency couldn’t be abolished as long as the Provincial Councils systems introduced in terms of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution remained.
The International Monetary Fund said on Saturday that its staff held fruitful technical discussions” with Sri Lankan authorities on the crisis-wracked country’s request for an IMF-supported loan program this week.
The Fund said in a statement that the discussions included the need for Sri Lanka to implement a credible and coherent strategy” to restore macroeconoimc stability and to strengthen its social safety net and protect the poor and vulnerable during the current crisis.
The IMF team welcomed the authorities’ plan to engage in a collaborative dialogue with their creditors,” IMF Sri Lanka mission chief Masahiro Nozaki said in a statement.
During a phone conversation with Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, China’s Premier Li Keqiang assured his country’s support to Sri Lanka to facilitate greater stability in economic and social development.
China feels for Sri Lanka for the difficulties and challenges you face, and we want to do our utmost to provide help to improve the peoples livelihoods in your country, Premier Li has told PM Rajapaksa.
The Chinese Premier also assured Prime Minister Rajapaksa that China will work with the Sri Lankan government to address some of the urgent financial issues that Sri Lanka is currently facing, the Office of the Prime Minister said in a statement issued today.
Among other areas discussed during the phone conversation were the possibilities of fast-tracking negotiations on the free trade agreement, reducing Sri Lanka’s trade deficit with China and attracting more Chinese tourists when the situation permits.
;We will continue to work together to advance and promote friendship and relationship between our two countries,” Premier Li said, “and we do feel for you for the difficulties you face at the moment, and we will also work together to address the difficulties.
Prime Minister Rajapaksa thanked the Chinese Government for the recently-announced humanitarian aid and the continued support and cooperation.
The Leader of the United National Party, Parliamentarian Ranil Wickremesinghe states that the Indian loan scheme for fuel subsidies and the USD 1 billion credit line for essential commodities will be finished by the first week of May.
He further stated that the country’s economy and banking sector will be at high risk as a result.
Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa states that if an interim government is to be formed, it should be done under his leadership.
He made this statement in an interview issued by the Prime Minister’s Media Unit.
However, the group of 41 independent parliamentarians have focused on supporting the no-confidence motion brought by the Samagi Jana Balawegaya or bringing a new no-confidence motion if the Prime Minister does not step down from the cabinet.
Meanwhile, the Bar Association of Sri Lanka states that economic stability or a solution to the current economic crisis cannot be expected without building political stability in the country.
The Bar Association has also submitted a 13 point proposal to overcome the current crisis.
These include the abolition of the executive presidency within 15 months, the formation of an interim government by national consensus, and the appointment of an independent 15-member advisory council.
Among those proposals is the empowering of the 19th Amendment through the enactment of the 21st Amendment.
The Bar Association states that the President should not hold any ministerial post.
The youth taken into custody by the CID for allegedly attempting to set fire to the fuel bowser at Rambukkana, has been released on two surety bails of Rs.100,000 each by Kegalle Magistrate Court. However, no one placed bail.
The youth who was arrested for allegedly setting fire to or attempting to set fire to a fuel bowser in the Rambukkana incident has been remanded.
The youth was produced before the Kegalle Magistrate’s Court this afternoon.
Acting Magistrate Malcolm Machado ordered that the suspect be released on two personal bails of Rs. 100,000 each.
However, the youth was remanded for failing to meet the relevant bail conditions.
The young man who was with the police during the Rambukkana incident has caused a great deal of controversy in recent days.
That was when the video of him coming to the burning oil bowser, removing a piece of twig that was stuck in it and returning was also published in the video media.
Various reports were published on social media this morning that the youth had been abducted by an unknown group while he was at home.
When we inquired about this from the Rambukkana and Kegalle police stations this morning, they stated that no such incident had been reported.
However, we went to the house of the youth concerned, Rambukkana, Pinnawalawatta, Dharmapala Mawatha and inquired about it.
The mother and father of 28 year old Indika Prasad said that the police had come and taken him away.
Later they had gone to the Rambukkana police to lodge a complaint.
Meanwhile, the Police Media Division later issued a statement regarding the incident stating that the CID has arrested a suspect who was involved in the protest and was a member of an unruly mob.
The IMF has just published a new review of Argentina’s economy. It is grim reading. Argentina is in trouble: economic conditions have worsened considerably since the last IMF review, back in June 2018. But the review also reveals that the IMF could be in even bigger trouble. It is repeating the same mistakes it made in the Greek crisis – but with a much larger amount of money at stake.
Nicolas Dujovne, Argentina’s treasury minister, left, greets Christine Lagarde, managing director of… [+]
Argentina has been struggling all year. A drought has severely curtailed agricultural production, widening the current account deficit and triggering a mild recession. Concurrently, Fed interest rate rises and a booming U.S. economy have driven up the U.S. dollar, making it ever more expensive for Argentina to obtain the dollars needed to pay interest on its massive dollar-denominated debt pile. The central bank has been printing money to finance the government’s growing deficit, but this has helped to fuel inflation that now runs at over 40%.
In June, the IMF agreed a standby credit arrangement of $50 billion with Argentina, the largest in the Fund’s history. $15 billion would be drawn immediately and the remainder would be made available as needed over the next three years. Half of the $15 billion would be used for government budget support.
But it quickly became apparent that, enormous though this financing agreement was, it would be nowhere near enough. In September, as the peso crashed and Argentina stared default in the face, the IMF hastily agreed to front-load the credit arrangement, so that the Argentine government could immediately draw an additional $13.4 billion (making a total of $28.4 billion). A further $22.8 billion would be drawn in 2019 and $5.9 billion in 2020-21.
This is no longer a standby” arrangement. It is a full financing agreement. Argentina has now become dependent on IMF funding – and the IMF has committed to lend by far the largest amount of money in its history.
The review just published is the first evaluation of progress under the Standby Arrangement. And it shows that Argentina’s economy – and its finances – are now considerably worse than the IMF’s most pessimistic forecast at the time the arrangement was made:
Argentina’s current economic indicators versus IMF “adverse” scenario in June 2018IMF
The last time we saw deterioration like this immediately after the start of an IMF program was Greece in 2012. Of course, everyone knew that the fiscal measures to which Greece had agreed were bound to make matters much worse. Everyone, that is, except the IMF, which continued to forecast that growth would return any day now even as the Greek economy slid into the deepest and longest peacetime depression of any advanced country since the 1930s. In 2013, the IMF’s economists admitted that the Fund had got things badly wrong in Greece. And now, the IMF is loudly saying that debt relief is needed in Greece, to the annoyance of the EU creditors.
But does Argentina’s unexpected deterioration really stem from the IMF program, or is it due to other factors? The IMF’s directors must be praying that the program is not the cause of Argentina’s deepening recession. The IMF’s reputation in Argentina is toxic. In 2001, a too-harsh IMF adjustment program failed ignominiously, resulting in disorderly default and a three-year depression in which Argentina’s economy contracted by 28%. Argentinians have not forgotten the hardships of that time: the IMF remains hugely unpopular, and President Macri took a considerable political risk in approaching the IMF at all.
To its credit, IMF has been trying to avoid making some of the mistakes that it made in 2001: the fiscal consolidation program includes measures to protect the poor, and there are even some improvements in welfare benefits, notably childcare allowances to increase the participation of women in the workforce. But it is still a fiscal consolidation program aiming to close the primary deficit (currently 2.7% of GDP) by 2019 and deliver annual primary surpluses to the tune of 1% of GDP from 2020 onwards. There are budget cuts and tax rises across the board. In an economy that is already in a considerably deeper recession than the IMF predicted four months ago, this is bound to have contractionary effects unless it is offset by monetary expansion.
So, is there going to be monetary expansion? After all, Argentina is not like Greece. It issues its own currency, so it can simply print more of it.
No. Far from it. To bring inflation down, the IMF specifies that the monetary base must be fixed, and interest rates must be maintained at their current level of over 60%, or even higher if necessary: it cheerfully cites two examples of adjustment programs that successfully” employed fixed monetary base regimes with interest rates exceeding 100%. The consequences of this for businesses, households, and the economy as a whole, don’t bear thinking about.
The exchange rate will be allowed to float, which in a less indebted country might bring some relief through currency depreciation, but in Argentina just makes debt default even more likely. The central bank can intervene in FX markets to dampen large exchange rate swings, but if it sells U.S. dollar reserves to support the exchange rate, the pesos it purchases must be permanently removed from circulation. This all adds up to a severe monetary contraction, not expansion.
So the IMF is prescribing concurrent fiscal and monetary contraction, for an economy already in recession and with unemployment over 9% and rising. I’m sure that the men and women who are going to lose their jobs, and those who won’t be able to find jobs that pay enough to keep their families, will be really impressed with the IMF’s childcare allowances. Not.
This brings me briskly to the real problem with the IMF’s program. It should not exist.
The fundamental problem that the IMF made in Greece was lending to an insolvent country. Harsh adjustment programs do not make unsustainable debt sustainable. They simply create misery for the population while making the debt burden even worse. The IMF should not have lent to Greece at all. It should have faced down Greece’s creditors and insisted on orderly debt restructuring right from the start.
The IMF’s debt sustainability analysis for Argentina says that its dollar-denominated debt is sustainable, but not with a high probability,” which is a convoluted way of saying it is unsustainable under any realistic scenario. So the IMF is once again lending an insane amount of money to an insolvent country and trying to make its debt sustainable with a harsh pro-cyclical adjustment program. And furthermore, just as it did with Greece, it is justifying its decision to lend by producing forecasts based on wildly optimistic assumptions:
Federal government debt is projected to rise to 81 percent in 2018 but start declining from 2019. The peak in the debt to GDP ratio in 2018 is 16 percentage points of GDP higher than projected at program approval, due to the higher-than-expected depreciation and lower growth projection. However, under staff’s new baseline, which envisages a rebound in market confidence, and faster fiscal consolidation, debt is expected to fall to slightly below 60 percent of GDP by 2023.
Staff’s new baseline” is this:
IMF forecasts for GDP growth (composition) and REERIMF, FRANCES COPPOLA
Investment will apparently come roaring back in 2020, despite ongoing fiscal consolidation and a monetary desert. And the REER will recover much of what it has lost this year (incidentally it has already fallen quite a bit further than this chart shows). Quite why either of these should happen is never explained, except by vague references to “confidence.” We know all about the “confidence fairy,” don’t we? She’s a myth.
The IMF admits that its baseline is hugely risky:
There are important downside risks to this path, including, economic and financial conditions not improving as envisaged in the baseline; the structurally high share of foreign currency denominated debt; fiscal and external financing needs; and potential contingent liabilities.
The Greek disaster taught us that where IMF forecasts are concerned, risks all too often become realities. The risks to the baseline make it highly likely that this program will fail.
Perversely, one of the factors that makes it likely to fail is the floating exchange rate. Currency depreciation helps to restore competitiveness – Argentina’s trade balance is already back in surplus – but it makes foreign-denominated debt even less affordable. This program is focused first and foremost on making debt sustainable, and to that end relies on substantial real exchange rate appreciation. But it is not in Argentina’s economic interests for the exchange rate to rise so much. Nor is it likely, if present global trends continue.
Furthermore, the concurrent fiscal and monetary tightening is likely to deepen and extend Argentina’s recession, rather than bringing it to an end by 2020 as the staff baseline projects. This too would cause the peso to depreciate further. The IMF’s debt sustainability analysis warns that debt/GDP would rise considerably if the peso were to depreciate further or growth were to disappoint.
If the program failed, Argentina could be forced to default on some or all of its dollar-denominated debt, potentially including its IMF loans. But Argentina’s extended arrangement is the largest and riskiest the IMF has ever taken on. The Fund cannot afford a default.
The IMF knows better than to get itself into such a mess. This is what it said on its own blog in February 2017:
There are circumstances, however, where the government’s debt level is so high that it is unsustainable”; that is, where the scheduled debt service exceeds the capacity of the member to service it, even taking into account both a strong adjustment program and significant financial support from the IMF. In these circumstances, it is not feasible—either politically or economically—for the problem to be solved through further belt tightening. Any assessment of debt sustainability needs to be underpinned by realistic—rather than heroic—assumptions regarding future growth prospects, taking into account the reality that economies have often taken longer to recover from crises than was originally expected.
Argentina in June 2018 may not have met these criteria, but it is hard to see that Argentina now does not. It needs debt restructuring, not more loans. The IMF must rethink, before it is too late.
IMF chief Christine Lagarde. Greek media recently quoted her describing 2011 as a ‘lost year’, partly because of IMF mistakes. Photograph: Stephane Mahe/Reuters
The International Monetary Fund admitted it had failed to realise the damage austerity would do to Greece as the Washington-based organisation catalogued mistakes made during the bailout of the stricken eurozone country.
In an assessment of the rescue conducted jointly with the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European commission, the IMF said it had been forced to override its normal rules for providing financial assistance in order to put money into Greece.
Fund officials had severe doubts about whether Greece’s debt would be sustainable even after the first bailout was provided in May 2010 and only agreed to the plan because of fears of contagion.
While it succeeded in keeping Greece in the eurozone, the report admitted the bailout included notable failures.
“Market confidence was not restored, the banking system lost 30% of its deposits and the economy encountered a much deeper than expected recession with exceptionally high unemployment.”
In Athens, officials reacted with barely disguised glee to the report, saying it confirmed that the price exacted for the €110bn (£93bn) emergency package was too high for a country beset by massive debts, tax evasion and a large black economy.”
Under the weight of such measures – applied across the board and hitting the poorest hardest – the economy, they said, was always bound to dive into an economic death spiral.
“For too long they [troika officials] refused to accept that the programme was simply off-target by hiding behind our failure to implement structural reforms,” said one insider. “Now that reforms are being applied they’ve had to accept the bitter truth.”
The IMF said: “The Fund approved an exceptionally large loan to Greece under an stand-by agreement in May 2010 despite having considerable misgivings about Greece’s debt sustainability. The decision required the Fund to depart from its established rules on exceptional access. However, Greece came late to the Fund and the time available to negotiate the programme was short.”
But having agreed that there were exceptional circumstances that warranted the biggest bailout in the Fund’s history, officials were taken aback by the much bigger than expected slump in the Greek economy. The country is now in its fifth year of recession and the economy has contracted by 17%. The IMF thought it would contract by just 5.5%.
In the evaluation of the package provided in 2010, the IMF said: “Given the danger of contagion, the report judges the programme to have been a necessity, even though the Fund had misgivings about debt sustainability.
“There was, however, a tension between the need to support Greece and the concern that debt was not sustainable with high probability (a condition for exceptional access).
“In response, the exceptional access criterion was amended to lower the bar for debt sustainability in systemic cases. The baseline still showed debt to be sustainable, as is required for all Fund programmes.”
In the event, the report added, the Fund was open to criticism for making economic projections that were too optimistic.”
While the report says a deep recession was unavoidable, it is critical of senior officials in Brussels and European capitals who said Greece would fare better outside the euro. Concerns that Greece could be ejected from the euro and return to the drachma intensified an already febrile situation.
“Confidence was also badly affected by domestic social and political turmoil and talk of a Greek exit from the euro by European policymakers,” it said.
Brussels also struggled to co-ordinate its policies with the ECB in Frankfurt, according to the report.
“The Fund made decisions in a structured fashion, while decision-making in the eurozone spanned heads of state and multiple agencies and was more fragmented.”
The Greek media recently quoted IMF managing director Christine Lagarde describing 2011 as a “lost year” partly because of miscalculations by the EU and IMF.
The authoritative Kathimerini newspaper said the report identified a number of “mistakes” including the failure of creditors to agree to a restructuring of Greece’s debt burden earlier – a failure that had had a disastrous effect on its macroeconomic assumptions.
“From what we understand the IMF singles out the EU for criticism in its handling of the problem more than anything else,” said one well-placed official at the Greek finance ministry.
He added: “But acknowledgement of these mistakes will help us. It has already helped cut some slack and it will help us get what we really need which is a haircut on our debt next year.”
Sri Lanka is in a crisis. How much of that crisis is to be blamed on every government that ruled Sri Lanka since 1978 who have gone to monetary lending institutes for loans for loan repayment/development & meet budget deficits? From 1980s to 2009 much of the country’s expense went to defeating terror. Then post-war economic development. Then regime change in 2015 & from 2019 Sri Lanka faced a covid pandemic. Without a doubt every government that ruled has failed in managing the fiscal affairs of the country. We have spent beyond our means, we have not invested where we should have & we have failed to invest in areas that could have delivered not only revenues but employment as well. In short, country planning has failed. Taking loans to repay loans & committing to give up what we have is likely to end up with no roof over our heads. Politicians are quick to take the easy way out by agreeing to stringent conditions & hoping to somehow hold on to power & pass the buck to the next government to face. This warped thinking has landed the people or the nation nowhere except maintain the survival of all politicians. Do people realize what they are heading for?
The IMF and World Bank, part of the Bretton Woods heritage since 1944. IMF is the private investment arm of the World Bank. Sri Lanka has received 16 IMF loans. Where have we succeeded or failed? Leave it to the experts” the economists” they say but these experts & economists have come and gone & enjoyed hefty remunerations but they have not provided any blueprint for success or for Sri Lanka to emerge from the mess. Each time it’s always let the ‘experts’ decide but the buck always stops taxing and selling our assets.
IMF & Egypt
Egypt saw regime change in 2011 & the ousting of its leader Hosni Mubarak.
Egypt is Middle East’s most populace country. Egypt is the world’s largest importer of wheat majority coming from USA. Egypt imported 12million metric tonnes of wheat in 2015/16.
Conditions imposed by IMF for a $12billion loan
IMF conditions affecting Egypt – resulting in riots
Cutting subsidies on bread main staple food of 92.2m people, a third of whom live in poverty. People rioted for ‘right for food & bread’ with women screaming for food for their children.
New income taxes
Selling public assets
Reducing energy & food subsidies.
When fuel was increased the consumer mafia hiked prices by 100% – sugar, cooking oil & rice saw short supply.
The bread subsidy cut was revoked after riots
Egypt’s tourism industry has been hit by 5 years of political turmoil
Egyptian Parliament to pass value-added tax bill & introduce a law to allow landlords to raise rent with no ceiling to replace existing law that puts caps on rent increases.
Proposal to slash public sector wage bill (could mean firing staff & cutting pensions) Egypt has 5m public sector.
However, it is clear that IMF/WB support together with economic policy changes HAS NOT SUCCEEDED to lower inflation. IMF says its policies are a ‘rescue for Egypt’ but Egyptians say it is eliminating their economic rights.
IMF & Kenya
IMF wants Kenya to overhaul its 3 top public universities as part of $2.34billion loan (Kenyatta, Nairobi & Moi) as a solution to the debt crisis from covid.
In addition IMF requires Kenya to financially evaluate Kenya Airways, Kenya Airports Authority, Kenya Railways Corporation, Kenya Power, Kenya Electricity Generating Company & Kenya Ports Authority.
Kenya’s public universities operate on a $100m budget gap. The Auditor General listed 11 institutes as being insolvent. Public universities have statutory debts totally $190m owed to the Kenya Revenue Authority. More than 80% of their budgets is spent on recurrent expenditure (salaries)
IMF & Pakistan
$6b IMF bailout program will expire in September 2022
IMF Conditions 2022:
Increasing individual income tax by reducing the slabs to create higher tax
Reduce tax credits & allowances except for the disabled & senior citizens
Introduce special tax procedures for very small taxpayers & create new tax payers
Increasing power tariffs
Set up new institute for refinancing scheme (State Bank of Pakistan outstanding was Rs.1.22trillion as of Sept 2021)
Pakistan to complete 1ststage of recapitalization of 2 private sector banks
Energy subsidy reform for residential consumers.
Publication of beneficial ownership information from companies awarded public procurement contracts for Rs.50m & above.
IMF slaps at least 20 conditions on average for each loan.
Majority of conditions were focused on politically sensitive areas (public sector wage cuts/private sector reform) IMF loans require mandatory changes for each loan. IMF couldn’t care less what a country’s economic or country circumstances were. Even when the entire world suffered economically from covid, IMF did not budge from its conditions.
Loans given to Cyprus, Greece & Jamaica had 35 conditions each.
The question is – how can drastic cuts enable countries to repay loans while keeping the people from ending up in poverty?
IMF & South Africa
$4.3b IMF loan precedes a bailout with stringent conditions.
South African politicians were relieved that the IMF did not specify ministers to give up their residences & cars & pay for them out of their salaries
The European Network on Debt & Development declared that nations desperate for cash were at a disadvantage in dealing with the IMF which they said was like negotiating ‘at the barrel of a gun’ – some in Sri Lanka presume IMF is the best & only solution Sri Lanka has. Have they studied the conditions IMF imposes?
Former Central Bank Governor W B Lakshman in 1985 declared
Sri Lanka after 1977 has become yet one more laboratory for IMF-WB experimentation. These institutions, whose resources and policies are controlled by the developed countries of the West, probably sincerely believe that the free market, private enterprise, capitalist system which proved effective in those countries in the advancement of the forces of production, will also be effective in the Third World”
What is the good if the people of a country end up in more poverty from the tax burdens they face to meet the IMF conditions?
The countries that refer to themselves as ‘rich’ became so having plundered the resources of countries that they claim as ‘developing’.
Claiming to honor sovereignty, what is the point when western monetary bodies demand the privatization of country assets/resources which then fall into foreign hands? There is increasing demands interfering into a country’s internal affairs & domestic jurisdiction for loans too.
Why can’t the loans be tied to investments that enable to repay the loan in a negotiated period which leaves a country to enjoy full profit once loan repayment is complete. If IMF/World Bank invests in building a country’s manufacturing – not only employment but exports can also be satisfied.
What happens at present is a third world government once coming to power acquires the unpaid loans of previous governments & when a budget deficit arises after loan repayment & recurrent costs, a government invariably has to go to a lending body for another loan. If the lending shark demands the government to pay back the loans by increases taxes while also privatizing state assets, what happens is that the people are economically drained and the state loses ownership of its assets. When all IMF loans are eventually repaid – all that is left is a country still in debt or its people in dire poverty in view of the unbearable taxes & the country is left with not having any assets/resources to even come out of the economic crisis it has fallen into.
What do the protestors demanding the ouster of the present government as well as the entire parliament, have to solve the current economic situation?
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.” – The spirit of ancient Rome in its last days of glory. The hero of the story, the man called “a pillar of iron” is Marcus Tullius Cicero, the lawyer-statesman who tried vainly to save the republic he loved from the forces of tyranny. -Taylor Caldwell, A Pillar of Iron
Judging from press reports, indications are that Sri Lanka is heading towards anarchy and its leaders and citizens are now acting in a manner that invites anarchy. It is a situation fraught with danger with even greater political instability and consequently, further economic ruin. Sri Lanka doesn’t have a Cicero, so, for the sake of the once resplendent island, it is perhaps opportune, even imperative, for all stakeholders including the Mahanayakes, the vociferous Cardinal Ranjit, political party leaders, politicians, union leaders and the Galle Face protestors, to take a breather and call off the protest action for the moment. They have achieved a significant victory in remaking the government, and the general political ethos. Now, their protests appear to be leading the country to a situation that may get out of hand and lead to violence and damage to property, and even a confrontation with the Armed Forces, should they be called to restore law and order in the event of large-scale unrest.
Emotions are too high and rational thinking is too low. There is an expectation that a change of the Presidency and the government will bring about an immediate solution to the problems affecting most people of the country. Genuine, spontaneous protestors as well as opportunistic protestors, are raising the stakes for such an overnight solution that will result in shortages and queues for fuel, gas, food, medicines disappearing as soon as their demand for the President and the government to resign eventuates. Hardly any of the protestors have come up with solutions to the structural issues, both economic and political, that have led the country to where it is in now.
It is illogical to believe that there will be an overnight solution to the many problems facing the country today as a solution is going to be complex and time taking. If their sponsors are promising the opposite, then they are being mischievous, brazenly opportunistic and taking the protestors to be people who can easily be fooled. Whatever the outcome of any resignations, of the President, the cabinet or the government, there will not be any immediate relief to the people, and this will, without question lead to further protestations, and anger being directed towards a new government which would have replaced the current one.
In order to facilitate everyone taking a breather, a circuit breaker is needed to make it happen. A couple of immediate measures are suggested
A meeting of all party leaders, and the following agreed upon.
The Prime Minister and the newly appointed cabinet to resign.
A multi-party interim government to be formed with party leaders deciding on a new Prime Minister.
A new interim multi-party cabinet to be formed with no more than 20 ministers.
All State ministries to be temporarily suspended and their allocated functions re allocated to cabinet ministers.
The 20th amendment to the constitution to be replaced with a reconstituted 19th amendment with appropriate changes to shift executive power vested with the President, to the Prime Minister, who will be the head of the cabinet, and a cabinet of ministers, both answerable to the Parliament. The subject of Defense and Foreign Affairs to be retained under the President with a multiparty parliamentary committee to determine policy in these two areas.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to submit himself to a vote of confidence from the Parliament once above is done, and to resign if the vote of confidence is lost. The Parliament will then elect a President from amongst the Parliamentarians to serve the remainder of the outgoing Presidents term.
The new Prime Minister and the cabinet assesses the status relating to the current shortages, how they will address these, and their action plan to ensure a shortage free supply situation relating to essentials and issue a statement to the public giving them a truthful picture
A general election is held in 2 years
It is heartening to note that party leaders have already begun discussions on the 21st Amendment and proposals have been submitted to the Speaker. In developing a final version, it is hoped that public consultations are also held to enable inputs from the many who have been part of the political revolution, especially the Galle Face protestors, who effectively conceived the need for the 21st amendment. The mechanics for a more meaningful, explicit role should be included in the 21st Amendment for people’s participation in policy determination.
Secondly, the 21st Amendment should also include mechanics as to how professionals, academics and other technocrats could contribute to policy determination. If these two essential elements are not included, the 21st amendment would only be an exercise where power is still retained with the very people who failed the country and merely a shifting of that power from one entity to another.
The current extent of protests, the numbers who participate, although understandable in the circumstances the country is in, have raised some questions and increasing concerns amongst many. There appears to be a growing concern as to how well these protests have been organized and how they have been funded. Reports have surfaced that some people have been ferried from area to area to participate in protests. Participation of huge numbers at long distance protests are questionable at the best of times and so are sudden protests labeled as spontaneous” protests taking place in different parts of the country.
A possible scenario relevant to Sri Lanka might be an unseen hand manipulating the situation either from within or without, or both. The question to ponder is whether there is an unseen hand operating from within or from outside choregraphing events for some purpose, even a sinister one. Of course, it is true that it is the President and the government that has provided the fodder for such an unseen hand to do what it is doing if indeed it is doing it.
Quoting Taylor Caldwell, anyone saying or doing things in the open is less formidable, for he is known and carries the banner openly. But the unseen hand will move amongst protestors freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself”.
If such an unseen hand is a local hand, another question to ponder would be about the end objective of that intrusion. It could be for good reason such as bringing about a drastic upheaval of the political system which has brought the country to a state of bankruptcy. Dynasty politics, crony politics, involvement and influence of criminal elements including drug dealers in election outcomes, divisive politics where Sri Lankans have been pitted against each other using religion, ethnicity as tools to divide, have all contributed to the soiled political system in the country. Changing this situation through these protests is a welcome development and the protestors have managed to achieve some outcomes which would not have been possible without this revolution.
However, if the local hand has as its ultimate objective the seizer of power using these protests and introducing violence into the protests and creating a total anarchic situation where the forces of the unseen hand themselves resorts to violence to seize power, then the protests are an unwelcome and dangerous development.
If the unseen hand is from outside and it has funded their local allies to stage these protests, the ultimate objective would be an attack on the sovereignty of the country. Such occurrences are not uncommon and is the modus operandi of some major powers in the world. Sri Lanka is a pivotal strategic location and superpower interest in the country is a known fact and not anyone’s figment of imagination.
If the protestations become rudderless now, and the country ends up in the creek without a paddle, anarchy in other words, the suspicion that an unseen hand either from within or without, or both, manipulated it to end up in that situation would acquire some credibility.
By Harsha Kumar Suriyaarachchi Movement of Citizens for Our Values
Proposals to have a corruption free government which will not disrespect the generations of values of the Sinhalese society that protected and saved this country for last 2500 years
We have seen our motherland deteriorating very seriously in economic, political and technical aspects along with the spiritual values of the society. It has come to a socially unacceptable level where the country wide public protests erupted. Fortunately and wisely, these protests in general took the peaceful path. (The acts of mobs not considered a part of genuine protestors).
Despite a few suspicious unwise attempts to create unrest and violence, the government too generally behaved quite democratically in dealing with the protestors.
However, the protests took as the major demands as stepping down of the president and the prime minister. These two demands are logically not incorrect as the president and the prime minister are not only responsible to run a corrupt free country but also are suspected to be apparently supporting and abating the corrupt elements of the country, starting from many cabinet ministers. The public, while helplessly witnessing legal institution acquitting large number of political affiliates from corruption and criminal charges, while helplessly witnessing increase of commodity prices largely owing to the unbearable corruption by the politicians and officials, finally had to behold the events of unavailability of basic commodities which was proclaimed due to lack of availability of dollars.
People however, correctly identified the corruption by politicians as the root cause for the nose-dive degradation of the country even though the society did not fully address the role of the corrupt officials who too had vastly contributed to the degradation of the country.
The next major demand thereby of the protestors is for all the members of the parliament to resign. While the resignations demanded by protestors being turned down on the grounds of several fair looking excuses like constitutional limitations, the anger towards the president, prime minister, the cabinet and all the members of parliament sky rocketed as taking parallels as inflation and price hikes of the commodities.
The government in an attempt to show that it is listening to the protestors, re-constituted the cabinet of ministers but didn’t take any step forward towards the two main demands that President and Prime minister should resign. The new cabinet though is without other Rajapakshas, who the protestors demand to resign, the majority of the new cabinet ministers too are henchmen of theirs. Thereby, it eventually will fail to deliver the intended goal which is the non-corrupt country. The reconstituted cabinet subsequently will even fail to lead the country at least to see the end of protests.
While government is showing inapt to address the poor state of the economy and the social deterioration, the protests haplessly appear to be hijacked by various elements with ulterior motives. If to group some of such and to see who are behind, it is apparent that political, racial and anticultural malicious and organized elements are handling the show.
This is a dangerous and pathetic situation from the point of view of the country, that if the protests so being run by those malicious groups succeed the country will lose its long-maintained values and even if protests failed still the country will lose her fight for a corruption free society.
Citizens of the country should realize the gravity of this grave situation immediately. The society should be informed and the government should be pressurized. Hence, we, Movement of Citizens for Our Values”, are now coming forward to reveal the reality to the Sri Lankan society and to dilute the effect of the malicious groups who would otherwise thwart the great ongoing fight against corruption, which primarily started and being proceeded by so many of honest youth.
Consequently, we would take steps to support the ongoing protests against corruption by demanding the government to take following actions.
Start taking steps to hold local government elections due, and hold it as soon as possible, democratically and peacefully. This will enable youth all over the country seeking justice to find their leaders locally. Such will be the only practical step forward to remove all the corrupt politicians early from holding power on this soil.
Pass an act immediately to adopt electorate voting system for parliamentary elections. Use the electoral map of 1978 constitution and do not waste time on delimitation drag.
Withdraw the talks on 13+ and pass an act to revoke the 13th amendment, which introduced provincial council and completely abandon provincial council concept for elections.
Stop, and stop mass media, from maliciously attacking Sinhalese and Buddhist values and the culture of this country that prevailed for thousands of years. Remove all the gazettes or other regulations or any acts that have demeaned, discriminated or non-prioritized Sinhala or Buddhism
Pass an act immediately to stop the government coming to any agreement with foreign countries or foreign companies or foreign individuals that has a validity period exceeding 35 years. Thereafter, Start renegotiating with the respective parties to remedy the existing agreements which have violated the above condition.
Take steps to utilize the abundantly available renewable energy to fully (100%) meet the energy demand of the country including transportation. This will stop the highest drain out of foreign currency (next to corruption, of course).
Take steps to empower Traditional and Ayurvedic medical systems to improve the health and longevity of the people, which would also retain foreign currency immensely in the country.
The United States recently released a report on the human rights situation on 198 countries in 2021. The country’s state department made various allegations of human rights violations against Bangladesh.
The US State Department’s annual global report on human rights was launched on April 13, 2022, by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
In Bangladesh, there have been claims of widespread impunity for security force abuses and corruption, according to the report.
According to the 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Bangladesh report, “significant human rights issues included credible reports of unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings; forced disappearance; torture or cases of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government or its agents on behalf of the government.”
Rejecting the report, the state minister, Shahriar Alam has already said in a briefing at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs last Sunday. Shahriar Alam said the report was given without verifying the information. The US ambassador to Dhaka will be summoned for this.
In an official response, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs said that the US report is far from the reality of Bangladesh. The state minister also claimed that information was taken from weak sources in making it. He said that in Bangladesh, there are issues that are far from reality, which we are excluding from outside. Which Bangladesh will never be able to entertain? Especially the rights issues of homosexuals that have been mentioned. There is a big problem with the quality of research that has been used. The sources from which the information was taken are weak. It is a clear political agenda.
The state minister said the United States needed to hold talks with Bangladesh before releasing the report. The information mentioned in the US report will be verified by the concerned ministry and the US ambassador will be summoned in this regard. “We hoped they would share the matter with us first,” he said. It also falls within a rule. We have decided that we will talk to the United States about every issue. Shahriar Alam said the government does not expect anyone else to interfere in the internal affairs of Bangladesh.
“The government took little means to investigate and prosecute cases of corruption, abuse, and murders by security officers,” according to the report.
Bangladesh’s government said on April 17, 2022, that the United States’ human rights country report “heavily underplayed” Bangladesh’s existing system of accountability over law enforcement agencies, while Dhaka remains “intensely engaged” with the UN mechanism and US recommendations to protect human rights.
The report appears to urge the creation of a lawless society in order to destabilize society and the government,” the foreign ministry stated in a statement. It goes on to say that the Bangladeshi legal system forbids killing by indiscriminate use of firearms.
Md Shahriar Alam, State Minister for Foreign Affairs, stated that the government will seek an explanation from the United States noting that there are fundamental flaws in the report.
There are many limits of the reports published by the US state department. The report is based on the results of various non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the majority of which are supported by donors. They do not fund such programs out of their own pockets. Because these NGOs, particularly those in Western countries, are supported by donors, they feel compelled to collect negative news, fearing that if there is just positive news, their financing will be cut off. Politics may or may not play a factor in this.
They are naturally loyal to whichever country provides the funds because they are supported by donors. Even large NGOs rely on donations, and they struggle if they do not receive the funds they require. During the pandemic, this is exactly what happened. During the pandemic, NGOs were largely inactive. Because the western world was also hurting from the pandemic’s consequences, the NGOs were unable to contribute much funding. In this sense, there is a constraint.
The US, like Bangladesh, did not delegate this obligation to the UN. Who entrusted them with the task of compiling reports about other countries? What is the law in this regard? It is their own set of rules. Is this report credible in the eyes of the world community? No country, neither Bangladesh, India, or China, has entrusted them with this task.
Whatever they are doing may be logical, but it would have been great if they had done so after consulting Bangladesh. By making and publishing the reports, The US always tries to interfere into some internal affairs of other countries. Human rights are a universally accepted term. Bangladesh is also working to promote human rights, law, peace and harmony in the country. Bangladesh has own human rights commission. The legal codes of Bangladesh ensure the protection of human rights in Bangladesh.
Because we have a strategic engagement with them, they may have brought this up during those meetings. Bangladeshis must also be informed about human rights violations in the United States, or this endeavor will lose credibility. There are numerous examples of human rights violations in the United States.
Extrajudicial killings are committed by US police. In the United States, roughly 1,000 such occurrences occur each year on average. In addition, there was the Black Lives Matter movement. In fact, not only Bangladeshi students, students from the whole Indian subcontinent face hate crimes. Let’s talk about the human rights situation in the USA. recent 918 people have been shot and killed by police in the USA in the past year. This isn’t my data. This is the data of the ‘Washington Post.’ Protests over the 2020 Black Lives Matter, revived by the extrajudicial killing of George Floyd by three Minneapolis police officers, indicate the largest protest movement in U.S. history. The US should look at the human rights situation in its territory first.
On February 26 this year, UN human rights experts called on the US government to end police torture and racial discrimination in the United States. According to reports of Western media outlets such as The Guardian, BBC, there are serious violations of human rights in the USA. Shouldn’t US loot at the human rights situation in its territory first?
The constitution of People’s Republic of Bangladesh clearly spells out the fundamental principles of state policy. The Constitution explicitly articulates the protection and promotion of human rights (art. 11). It obliges all branches of government to respect and ensure the rights it enunciates.
There are might have some separate incidents but Bangladesh Police aims to enhance the capacity and willingness of all its members to contribute in a collaborative manner to the creation of a safer and securer environment based on respect for human rights, equitable access to justice, and rule of law in accordance with the spirit of our constitution and the principles of the universal human rights. It is true that there might have some separate incidents but the US authority shouldn’t evaluate the whole scenario by a single framework. In the case of Bangladesh, Security forces may fire several times to save lives when terrorists fire their weapons. There might have been some separatist incidents.
We (Bangladeshi citizens) shouldn’t spark any new controversy and worry based on this recent human rights. US-Bangladesh bilateral relations wouldn’t affect. We have recently had the US-Bangladesh Partnership Dialogue where we discussed several important topics ranging from military cooperation. condition based on This is not the first time the US has produced a study like this in recent years. There isn’t much of a difference between those and the latest report. It is the natural habit of the US to make such kind reports every year.
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