Lessons from Brexit
ASUNDAY, JULY 3, 2016
n opinion poll conducted in the United States after Britons voted to leave the European Union (EU) has thrown up results that Sri Lankans can well relate to. The USA TODAY and Suffolk University survey finds Americans agreeing by an overwhelming margin that the outcome of the referendum was a sign of anger and dissatisfaction that can be seen in other countries, including the United States — “an indication of a broader feeling among people around the world, where they are feeling more and more helpless about controlling things in their own countries”, as defined by one participant. Another reflects that a lot of people were unhappy with the status quo, feeling, like many Americans did, “that we kind of lost control over our own destiny”.
Then, there were those revelatory comments made in April by EU President Jean-Claude Juncker. He said the bloc faced ruin because of a backlash by voters angered by a lack of respect for the powers of national governments. This mea culpa, welcome as it is, offers small consolation to the countries in whose internal affairs the EU and other nations in the West have liberally meddled, Sri Lanka firmly included.
It was only in May that this newspaper reported how the EU — purportedly the very embodiment of free commerce — had laid down a sprawling list of non-trade conditions in exchange for Sri Lanka winning back duty concessions under the bloc’s GSP Plus facility. Back then, we called this ‘neocolonialism’. Millions more have now echoed us in decrying the EU’s institutionalised culture of holding sovereign governments to ransom.
As we emphasised, the GSP Plus concession is trade, not aid: “If economically developing countries are being encouraged to be self-reliant, sanctions in any form, the West’s latest ‘weapon of war’ cannot be used selectively to bring countries in line with its foreign policy.”
On the one hand, the EU is employing sanctions to cow others down to its foreign policy. But, on the other hand, the British people have reacted against the block’s “protectionist policies” that impacted on their fellow member States.
Sri Lanka has since lodged its application for the GSP Plus concession after, no doubt, bending over backwards to appease the bloc. This administration has shown little skill in negotiating itself out of untenable situations; if anything, it seems to hurtle faster and deeper into more and more deeply compromising positions.
For instance, the Government is now brazenly yielding to pressure from New Delhi to finalise the controversial Indo-Lanka Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement (ETCA). Some junior ministers are even dressing up the deal as essential to counter balancing the negative economic impact (which is yet to be analysed or understood fully) of Brexit. This is disingenuous, to say the least. Further, the Government is considering issuing permits to Indian fishing trawlers to operate legally in Sri Lankan waters — a proposal that has only ever emanated from the Indian side and to which there has been fierce resistance by the Sri Lankan industry and fisheries officials.
Even in the past, the Western nations deployed a whole gamut of “tools” to bend developing countries to their demands. They repeatedly slapped travel restrictions on Sri Lanka citing security concerns and human rights violations. Today, it has come to pass that no corner of the world is safe from the scourge of terrorism; and that human rights are ever more being trampled upon by nations struggling, as we did, to contain this plague.
In that process, increasingly, people’s power is asserting itself when people see their mandates to the Governments they elected being ignored by the ruling class.