Remember the tsunami, remember Moragoda's America
One year on since the December tsunami -- unerringly described as devastating by the local and international media -- just five per cent of the 80000 or so permanent houses brought down by the waves have been reconstructed.

Despite that, the candidate from the incumbent regime -- or at least the ruling party -- won the Sri Lankan Presidential elections. The tale behind this is that Bush-ite capitalism, Moragodaism and Wickremesinghe-ism a la the United States of America is kaput; it just isn't working. The people of Sri Lanka are poor, they are struggling to recover from the December tsunami, they are being pummelled by rising prices of oil, and rising prices of everything, but yet they prefer a left leaning leader to a Bush-ite neo liberal capitalist who enjoys 'most favored candidate status' of the USA, the world's only superpower.
It's an ungloved body blow not only to Moragoda capitalism but also to Bush-ite hegemony, but there is a tale that hangs behind that situation. Thursday's 'The Island' newspaper headlined a story titled "did a influential Sri Lankan mislead the U.S. senate?''

The story said: "…an interested party is believed to have released what was termed as a "bi-partisan resolution'' co-sponsored by Joseph Biden Jr. (Democrat) and John McCain (Republican). But the resolution in fact appeared a day after the Sri Lankan elections.''

The gist of the article was that an influential fixer, hoping for a plum diplomatic post if his favourite candidate wins the presidential elections, sailed a story suggesting that the U.S. is backing the (..ultimately) losing candidate, Ranil Wickremesinghe.

The story shows the lengths people would go to get Ranil Wickremesinghe elected, as he with his neo liberal twin Moragoda are politically married to the big power, the United States of America.
Such were the forces arraigned against the winning candidate, Mahinda Rajapakse, but yet he won the elections. Even to the valid argument that the outcome of the poll would have been different if the North East had voted, it has to be said that in the majority south Rajapakse won convincingly.

This almost drives a final nail into the coffin of neo-liberal Moragodaist capitalism for Sri Lanka, which was advanced as a recipe for Sri Lankan economic emancipation by Milinda Moragoda. With Moragoda's rise, this brand of crass capitalism was seen to be on the rise. At the beginning Moragoda inspired such awe with this newfound brand of economic salvation that he preached for the nation.

Nobody was prepared to touch Moragoda, as he looked like a new age guru -- the economists version of the hirsute and bearded spiritual leader, the kind who exudes other worldly charm which inspires acolytes to fall at his feet….

It must be said that this writer was one of the first - - or perhaps the first -- to prick that Moragoda hot-air balloon. Happily, the first prick seems to have inspired many others to follow, and the Moragoda dirigible came down --- with a lot of help of course from the people of this country who have now repeatedly repudiated the Moragoda brand of U.S. led neo liberal bully economics.

In this vein, incidentally, I was happy to read a blog that appeared on the Internet. Here is an excerpt: "There is a particular column……in the Sunday Times, written by Rajpal Abeynayake. Now Mr.Abeynayake usually like to pinch, (sometimes even slap and punch) the UNP, and Ranil in particular. (Other favourites include Milinda Moragoda….)''
Ah, an acknowledged contribution to Moragoda-downsizing, which is very gratifying (!), but the more important matter is that Moragoda-recipe of American economic salvation, which is on the side of the rich against the hungry, has come crashing down in this country.

This is no coincidence. It may sound a stretch, but this vote against Wickremesinghe is also a vote against the amoral politics of America - eerily paralleled in many other developing countries where, as in Sri Lanka, the political forces supported and funded by America were routed by people power, particularly in Latin America.

It’s none the more significant, since this is the week that highlighted the speech of Nobel literature prize winner Harold Pinter, who according to reports, painted a nightmare portrait of America as an arch manipulator that has fooled the rest of the world into thinking it is a force for good, when in fact it is guilty of crimes that have been "systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless".

"It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant, " he said. Although ignored by successive U.S. administrations, Pinter said "thousands, if not millions" of Americans had been "demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions" over the years.

Sri Lanka's repudiation of Ranil Wickremesinghe is a repudiation of this "arch manipulator' of global politics, and the proof is that there was a great deal of mutual back-scratching between the Bush regime and the Ranil-Moragoda duo. The U.S senate story (above) also confirms the view that somebody wanted Ranil to ride to power on the back of the Americans.

That this repudiation of American capitalism comes close to one-year since the tsunami is significant. Mano Titawella, the former tsunami-czar, and darling of the Chandrika Kumaratunga administration said at a June press conference that the 78,000 or so tsunami ravaged houses will be reconstructed by the end of this year. At the point he made the boast, the rate of progression for tsunami housing reconstruction was 1+ per cent per month.

On the basis of this statistic, this writer challenged Titawella of grandstanding with intent to deceive. Titawella answered superciliously saying "your linear mathematics does not begin to explain my plan.'' Like hell it doesn't. Just 5 percent of the tsunami houses have been reconstructed at the end of the year, and Titawella is wrong by much more than the size of his oversize frame.

What a dismal performance, despite American and Clinton backing. This writer challenges Titawella to come out from whichever part of the woodwork he is hiding beneath now, and acknowledge that his "plan'' was pathetically wrong against my basic math instinct! But despite this dismal post-tsunami performance, the Sri Lankan people, downtrodden as they are, clearly voted against the American sponsored economic formula for the country. In the final analysis, it's a clear victory against, among other things, amoral global American bullying.

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