Sri Lanka It's Happening

November 16, 2005

As far as I know there are only two marxists countries in the world today. WIth in 48 hours, there is a very good chance that the we may see the birth of the third.

It's bad enough that Sri Lanka's official name is The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. Whether Sri lanka is a democractic country is debatable. However for 1970 to 1977 Sri Lanka was in fact a socialist country.

At the time, the government of the current president's mother took over private enterprises, restricted imports and even banned eating rice on fridays. During that time the peopl of this country starved. In capitalism equality means for the poor to improve themselves to be on the same level as others. In socialism and marxism equality means both the rich and the poor starve.

In the early seventies, cloths were rationed, so was infant food. You had to be very rich to own a car, even if you did you could get only 2 replacement tyres at a time and no spare parts were available.

The SLFP, the party of the current president and her mother fortunately gave up these economic policies. So after the resounding defeat by the UNP in 1977 and being in opposition for 17 years they came back as a center-left party without the socialist economic policies.

The president's term ends in two days time, the man contesting the elections from the SLFP has soundly rejected the current policy of the party on ecnomics and the peace process. He does pay lip service to restarting the peace process and private enterprise. However the strings are pulled by the marxist JVP, a former terrorist organization. In other words, Mahinda is not the SLFP candidate but the JVP candidate.

In Sri Lanka people don't vote on issues. They are too stupid for that. People who have voted for the SLFP all their life will do so again, even though the candidate is a JVP candidate. Thus on 18th we may well see the country going backwards in time to be only the third marxists state in the world.

Posted by raditha at November 16, 2005 9:03 AM