Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told parliament on February 23 that the government would sign an Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement (ECTA) with India in mid-June. The proposal has been on the table since 2003.
In response, nationalist groups, including the Sinhala-chauvinist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) and some professional associations, have stepped up a virulent anti-Indian campaign.
Successive Indian governments have asked their Sri Lankan counterparts to sign a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) covering investment, trade, service and commerce. However, the agreement has been shelved because of opposition by sections of business that fear being marginalised by big Indian companies. These are the interests that are being defended by the chauvinist anti-Indian agitation of the nationalist groups.
When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Sri Lanka last March, just two months after Maithripala Sirisena was installed as president, the issue was raised again.
Amid ongoing differences within Sri Lanka’s corporate sector over the agreement, Wickremesinghe told parliament the pact was still in the negotiation stage.
Some Sri Lankan business layers calculate that they can profit from entering India’s market, which is growing despite a world-wide slump.
The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, which represents big business, has expressed support for ECTA, while cautioning the government to secure favourable terms.
These interests intersect with those forces in the Sri Lankan ruling elite that
Wickremesinghe declared in parliament that the agreement with India was part of his government’s pledge to create one million jobs in five years. He stated that free trade and economic agreements would be signed with the US, European Union and China.
The Government Medical Officers Association, the Sri Lanka Association of Professionals and the Sri Lanka Engineers Association held a march against ETCA on February 11 in Colombo. The demonstrators shouted and displayed slogans such as: “When you give the country to India, are we to jump into the sea?” “Jobs for Indians and unemployment for us” and “National security is in danger.”
These associations maintain that their members’ jobs will be destroyed when the doors are opened to Indian medical, engineering and technological services.
The JVP is in the forefront of inflaming chauvinism. The February 14 editorial of the JVP’s weekly Lanka incited hatred toward India, saying there are 42.5 million “uneducated jobless people in India.” According to the editorial: “This massive labour force which is ready to sell their labour for a pittance will flood into Sri Lanka, intensifying an already acute job crisis here, bringing down wages.”
Accusing the government of preparing to sign the deal secretly, the editorial concluded: “It was in this way that 1987 Indo-Lanka accord was signed.” It warned that the JVP would bring people onto the streets in opposition.
This was a reference to the JVP’s campaign from 1987 to 1990 which claimed that the Indo-Lanka accord would divide the country. The Colombo and New Delhi governments had signed the accord to deploy Indian troops to Sri Lanka’s north and east to disarm the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
During the JVP’s campaign, launched in the name of “protecting the motherland,” its gunmen killed hundreds of trade union leaders, working-class militants and political opponents. After the breakdown of secret talks with the JVP, President Ranasinghe Premadasa used this terror as a pretext to kill over 60,000 rural youth, JVP leaders and members.
Today’s anti-Indian agitation is backed by a group of members of parliament from President Sirisena’s Sri Lanka Freedom Party and chauvinist parties such as the National Freedom Party and Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP). Proclaiming themselves a “united opposition,” they support former President Rajapaksa.
Likewise, the FSP, a faction that broke away from the JVP, has welcomed the “struggle against the agreement.” The February 14 edition of the FSP’s weekly Janarala voiced contempt for India, declaring: “As the large unemployed work force [in India] likes to work for a penny, they would flood in to work here. Then Sri Lankans would have to either lose jobs or work for a small wage.”
The Inter University Students Federation, controlled by FSP, has also sought to channel the discontent of students behind this chauvinist campaign.
–By W. A. Sunil