Features

Men or mice? Sri Lanka at debt negotiations

Published

2 years ago

2024/07/2

BY SANJA DE SILVA JAYATILLEKA

Sirasa TV1’s Public Platform (anchored by Sonali Wanigabaduge) of 29th June is only the latest in a series of valuable, one might say crucial, civil society and independent media initiatives to bring more clarity on Sri Lanka’s debt crisis and the on-going negotiations believed to be rescuing us from it.

Despite government hype, experts with impeccable credentials that appeared on this and other programmes like it, are seriously worried about the on-going restructuring efforts which seem to be characterised by capitulation to creditor interests rather than responsible negotiations in order to achieve a fair deal for the people of Sri Lanka.

On this particular TV programme, Prof Jayati Ghosh, joined by Germany’s Christina Rehbein (member of the European Network on Debt and Development) threw a completely different light on what we are led to believe is the problem and its only solution. It appears that Sri Lanka’s negotiators’ understanding of “good news” was to settle for a creditor-friendly, shortsighted solution at the expense of its own citizenry.

The government’s recent self-congratulatory hype needs serious re-scrutiny.

Our Right to Sustainable Solutions

It was at an event at the SLFI, organized by Ahilan Kadirgamar and the newly-founded Yukthi, that first brought an alternative perspective on Sri Lanka’s debt crisis. The public event had Jayati Ghosh, Martin Guzman and Charles Abugre on their panel. Yukthi deserves our deepest gratitude for this initiative at which we came to know that the usual narrative of corruption and bad governance which had been fed to us, including by the populist Opposition, as the primary reason for our plight, was a lesser cause for the crisis.

These scholar-practitioners spoke about other, bigger systemic and structural reasons for this crisis, with the structure being the current international financial architecture as it is constituted today. This structure and its processes are being challenged and sought to be corrected at this moment, including through an initiative of Pope Francis as well as one by the Secretary-General of the UN. Jayati Ghosh was on an important advisory panel to the Secretary-General, the report of which seeks to reform the existing, flawed system.

At the Yukthi event, and reiterated later on TV1’s People’s Platform by Jayati Ghosh, it was pointed out that there have been successive debt cycles going back to the 1970s. After the 2008 financial crisis in the West, there was an excess of liquidity floating in the Western economies, which needed investing for profit. Thus began the untrammeled lending to emerging economies to the delight of the elites running those countries. As the experts pointed out, it takes two to manufacture debt, with responsibility on both sides for the risks. But the lenders, while recognizing the danger of lending to certain higher-risk countries, nevertheless weren’t deterred. They introduced a risk premium to cover that risk. The private money markets made it easy to borrow, and many countries did, including ours, at high interest rates.

However, when the risk actually came to pass and some countries defaulted, the lenders refused to take any responsibility for making a bad investment and demanded the full pound of flesh, while having made plenty of profit on the lending already. All the blame was put on the borrower country which then squeezed its citizens to extract the penalty for which they were not responsible.

This, we are told by the progressive experts, does not have to be the last word on the subject. Countries have the right, yes, the right, to negotiate a deal in which both parties to the contract take responsibility. This includes a substantial haircut on the borrowing; a cap on interest rates; debt standstill until new terms are negotiated so the interest doesn’t pile up while the creditors drag their feet; and critically questioning the IMF programmes which are meant to help with recovery.

17th Going On 18th?

It was on TV1’s Public Platform that it was revealed that the mandatory IMF programme, which is considered imperative for negotiations of debt restructuring, is not required by international law. It is only that creditors insist on it. From their perspective, it is probably seen as necessary to introduce some fiscal discipline to errant elites. However, this doesn’t mean that the programmes that the IMF proposes to countries as imperative for recovery aren’t full of holes. In fact, it was suggested that most of the IMF programmes have failed.

Jayati Ghosh pointed out that when the bulk of the ISBs were borrowed by Sri Lanka after 2014, the country was under an IMF programme. What, she asks, was the IMF doing, by allowing it? How could it be the case that the IMF has the answers to a problem it failed to prevent while on its watch and actually under its supervision?

The visiting experts said that while the IMF has the status of a UN institution, it primarily represents the interests of the creditors in rich capitalist countries due to the quota system that gives those countries dominance over IMF decisions. It is not a neutral umpire. Therefore, the IMF protects the creditors rather than the debtor countries and their citizens.

In Sri Lanka’s case, Prof Ghosh pointed out that while our crisis was a foreign exchange crisis, the IMF programme has lumped our local currency debt together with the foreign currency debt, which, according to her, is plain wrong. This unwarranted clubbing together then makes it possible to squeeze the already burdened citizens, as in the case of the pension funds. The visiting experts asserted that the Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA) produced by the IMF cannot be trusted to be correct, and in fact, appears to be wrong. This is a serious matter considering our programmes for recovery are based on this DSA.

Verite Research has asked for transparency of the basis for the IMF’s assumptions included in their DSA, in order to verify that the conclusions are correct. The IMF will not reveal it, and those concerned for Sri Lanka fear that the IMF programme will inevitably fail because of its unrealistic assumptions on which our day-to-day existence depends. On TV1’s Public Platform, Christina Rehbein said that the 18th IMF programme is already almost an inevitability, given the flawed nature of the 17th programme we are in now.

The recent ludicrous suggestion by the IMF of taxing owner-occupied houses, which even this IMF-friendly government was quick to backtrack on, should be an indicator of the kind of economic expertise deployed to oversee our recovery. The government had no objections and indeed issued a gazette for its implementation until there was a spirited backlash from the public, including Opposition parliamentarians.

The nature of the government’s relationship with the IMF is certainly our business. Its mistakes, when meekly accepted by our governments, are eventually borne by us. Therefore, we need the negotiating teams of our government to be well-informed, self-confident men and women, not mice. If our government agrees to conditions without adequate forethought, the elites negotiating for the government are unlikely to suffer the consequences. They will simply pass it on to the majority of Sri Lankan citizens. Right now, it does look as if we have deployed mice, to the barely concealed disdain of foreign and local experts.

Elect wisely

The civil society discussions and seminars on the debt crisis such as the ones mentioned, and other interventions by local experts in the media, indicate that the perspective on the global financial system on the part of the governing elite is critical.

If the governing elite is intimidated by the hegemonic system and disinclined to or lack the courage to challenge the shortcomings of it, its institutions, its products and assessment of its personnel, we as citizens will pay.

It is imperative that as a nation in default, our elites have the imagination and the courage to think creatively, gather support from sympathetic, experienced international experts (like Prof Manuel Guzman, former Finance Minister of Argentina) and present a stronger, more favourable case.

Jayati Ghosh repeatedly advised that it is foolish to accept that “there is no alternative” to the proffered IMF programme or even to what the private creditors may be willing to offer. Scholars such as her who are now working with the world community to make the changes to the system, provide evidence that there is much that needs to change. They say Sri Lanka is in a good position to demand those changes and to negotiate a good deal for its citizens.

Since it’s election year, who and which group of politicians are more likely to re-evaluate the international system and ensure we are treated fairly? Which group regards the status quo as sacred, and invokes TINA (Maggie Thatcher’s “there is no alternative”) most regularly? Certainly, this government does. Its negotiators have also agreed to secrecy terms with the creditors, which prevents anyone from figuring out if the best deal is being negotiated for us. While they negotiate in the dark, we pay in plenty in the cold light of day.

But we need to ask this about the governments-in-waiting, too. Some in the Opposition think that the suggestion that one of the causes of the debt crises in non-Western states is the dumping of dollars in newly emerging markets, is a “conspiracy theory”. Fair enough, since it is during their time in power that most of the ISB dollar debt was obtained. However, when in office, had it regarded the private money markets with a little more skepticism if not downright suspicion, we may not have such a huge debt burden.

Sri Lanka has had the experience of successfully challenging the received wisdom with regard to the international system and winning the day, even at the UN. When it works in the interest of the country with good men and women, it can achieve much. And yet, even after that victory, a different Government, and different men and women capitulated at the UN with joint resolutions detrimental to the country, without offering any challenge whatsoever; and not making the effort to negotiate a fair position for all concerned. The men and women we choose to govern us will dictate our fate for years to come. In some cases, the agreements they bind us to may have very long-lasting deleterious consequences.

We need to choose wisely. The politicians need to make the effort to take enlightened positions. In this day and age, things are not so technical that an expert cannot be found who explains it clearly, lucidly. The people will strive to understand and make the choices accordingly. The more enlightened the legislator, the better they would discern the information they are given.

Debtor Coalitions

Prof Jayati Ghosh suggested that Sri Lanka’s best chance is building ‘debtor country coalitions’ in order to negotiate from strength. Some have already negotiated with brilliant results, obtaining 50% haircuts on their debts. This was confirmed at the Yukthi seminar by Finance Minister of Argentina, Manuel Guzman who negotiated his country’s foreign debt restructuring. By contrast, our government is apparently happy with 7%!

Dumping dollars cheaply in the emerging markets made our imports cheaper than manufacturing at home, Jayati Ghosh explains. Having made it so, the people are blamed for living beyond their means. The management of the national budget is in the hands of our legislature and the bureaucrats who advise them. They need to find the best strategies to reverse their own errors. Talking to other countries who have successfully managed the crises will throw up some valuable ideas for consideration.

The experts suggested that Sri Lanka can utilize local laws in creditor countries which protect debtors from unfair deals, such as in Germany (a creditor country of Sri Lanka), to get a better deal. This was suggested because, obviously, we have not done so already.

Prof Ghosh pointed out that there is a debtor conference in Spain next year and urged Sri Lanka to use the opportunity to present an effective case for a fair deal, together with a like-minded group of debtor countries. There is no better opportunity, and Sri Lanka is well placed to take advantage of this, she advised.

She was also firmly of the opinion that Sri Lanka’s solution was not to constrict the economy and the purchasing power of the people, but to “grow out of the crisis”.

With all these experts, who do give a damn about people like us who are being put through the ringer, why isn’t our own government doing better? We ought to be grateful to those who took it upon themselves to educate the Sri Lankan public in what was considered “too technical”, through shining a light on the crisis, its origins and purported solutions, so that we may be able to play a role in our own destiny. And that would be by challenging our governing elites on their lies, compelling our leaders to do better by us, and electing those who would be relatively more capable of standing up successfully for our interests.

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Features

Counting cats, naming giants: Inside the unofficial science redefining Sri Lanka’s Leopards and Tuskers

Published

5 hours ago

2026/01/12

Thilina Walpola

For decades, Sri Lanka’s leopard numbers have been debated, estimated, and contested, often based on assumptions few outside academic circles ever questioned.

One of the most fundamental was that a leopard’s spots never change. That belief, long accepted as scientific fact, began to unravel not in a laboratory or lecture hall, but through thousands of photographs taken patiently in the wilds of Yala. At the centre of that quiet disruption stands Milinda Wattegedara.

Sri Lanka’s wilderness has always inspired photographers. Far fewer, however, have transformed photography into a data-driven challenge to established conservation science. Wattegedara—an MBA graduate by training and a wildlife researcher by pursuit—has done precisely that, building one of the most comprehensive independent identification databases of leopards and tuskers in the country.

“I consider myself privileged to have been born and raised in Sri Lanka,” Wattegedara says. “This island is extraordinary in its biodiversity. But admiration alone doesn’t protect wildlife. Accuracy does.”

Raised in Kandy, and educated at Kingswood College, where he captained cricket teams, up to the First XI, Wattegedara’s early years were shaped by discipline and long hours of practice—traits that would later define his approach to field research.

Though his formal education culminated in a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Cardiff Metropolitan University, his professional life gradually shifted toward Sri Lanka’s forests, grasslands, and coastal fringes.

From childhood, two species held his attention: the Sri Lankan leopard and the Asian elephant tusker. Both are icons. Both are elusive. And both, he argues, have been inadequately understood.

His response was methodical. Using high-resolution photography, Wattegedara began documenting individual animals, focusing on repeat sightings, behavioural traits, territorial ranges, and physical markers.

This effort formalised into two platforms—Yala Leopard Diary and Wild Tuskers of Sri Lanka—which function today as tightly moderated research communities rather than casual social media pages.

“My goal was never popularity,” he explains. “It was reliability. Every identification had to stand scrutiny.”

The results are difficult to dismiss. Through collaborative verification and long-term monitoring, his teams have identified over 200 individual leopards across Yala and Kumana National Parks and 280 tuskers across Sri Lanka.

Each animal—whether Jessica YF52 patrolling Mahaseelawa beach or Mahasen T037, the longest tusker bearer recorded in the wild—is catalogued with photographic evidence and movement history.

It was within this growing body of data that a critical inconsistency emerged.

“As injuries accumulated over time, we noticed subtle but consistent changes in rosette and spot patterns,” Wattegedara says. “This directly contradicted the assumption that these markings remain unchanged for life.”

That observation, later corroborated through structured analysis, had serious implications. If leopards were being identified using a limited set of spot references, population estimates risked duplication and inflation.

The findings led to the development of the Multipoint Leopard Identification Method, now internationally published, which uses multiple reference points rather than fixed pattern assumptions. “This wasn’t about academic debate,” Wattegedara notes. “It was about ensuring we weren’t miscounting an endangered species.”

The implications extend beyond Sri Lanka. Overestimated populations can lead to reduced protection, misplaced policy decisions, and weakened conservation urgency.

Yet much of this work has occurred outside formal state institutions.

“There’s a misconception that meaningful research only comes from official channels,” Wattegedara says. “But conservation gaps don’t wait for bureaucracy.”

That philosophy informed his role as co-founder of the Yala Leopard Centre, the world’s first facility dedicated solely to leopard education and identification. The Centre serves as a bridge between researchers, wildlife enthusiasts, and the general public, offering access to verified knowledge rather than speculation.

In a further step toward transparency, Artificial Intelligence has been introduced for automatic leopard identification, freely accessible via the Centre and the Yala Leopard Diary website. “Technology allows consistency,” he explains. “And consistency is everything in long-term studies.”

His work with tuskers mirrors the same precision. From Minneriya to Galgamuwa, Udawalawe to Kala Wewa, Wattegedara has documented generations of bull elephants—Arjuna T008, Kawanthissa T075, Aravinda T112—not merely as photographic subjects, but as individuals with lineage, temperament, and territory.

This depth of observation has also earned him recognition in wildlife photography, including top honours from the Photographic Society of Sri Lanka and accolades from Sanctuary Asia’s Call of the Wild. Still, he is quick to downplay awards.

“Photographs are only valuable if they contribute to understanding,” he says.

Today, Wattegedara’s co-authored identification guides on Yala leopards and Kala Wewa tuskers are increasingly referenced by researchers and field naturalists alike. His work challenges a long-standing divide between citizen science and formal research.

“Wildlife doesn’t care who publishes first,” he reflects. “It only responds to how accurately we observe it.”

In an era when Sri Lanka’s protected areas face mounting pressure—from tourism, infrastructure, and climate stress—the question of who counts wildlife, and how, has never been more urgent.

By insisting on precision, patience, and proof, Milinda Wattegedara has quietly reframed that conversation—one leopard, one tusker, and one verified photograph at a time.

By Ifham Nizam ✍️

Features

AI in Schools: Preparing the Nation for the Next Technological Leap

Published

5 hours ago

2026/01/12

Thilina Walpola

This summary document is based on an exemplary webinar conducted by the Bandaranaike Academy for Leadership & Public Policy ((https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqZGjlaMC08). I participated in the session, which featured multiple speakers with exceptional knowledge and experience who discussed various aspects of incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into the education system and other sectors.

There was strong consensus that this issue must be addressed early, before the nation becomes vulnerable to external actors seeking to exploit AI for their own advantage. Given her educational background, the Education Minister—and the Prime Minister—are likely to be fully aware of this need. This article is intended to support ongoing efforts in educational reform, including the introduction of AI education in schools for those institutions willing to adopt it.

Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept. Today, it processes vast amounts of global data and makes calculated decisions, often to the benefit of its creators. However, most users remain unaware of the information AI gathers or the extent of its influence on decision-making. Experts warn that without informed and responsible use, nations risk becoming increasingly vulnerable to external forces that may exploit AI.

The Need for Immediate Action

AI is evolving rapidly, leaving traditional educational models struggling to keep pace. By the time new curricula are finalised, they risk becoming outdated, leaving both students and teachers behind. Experts advocate immediate government-led initiatives, including pilot AI education programs in willing schools and nationwide teacher training.

“AI is already with us,” experts note. “We must ensure our nation is on this ‘AI bus’—unlike past technological revolutions, such as IT, microchips, and nanotechnology, which we were slow to embrace.”

Training Teachers and Students

Equipping teachers to introduce AI, at least at the secondary school level, is a crucial first step. AI can enhance creativity, summarise materials, generate lesson plans, provide personalised learning experiences, and even support administrative tasks. Our neighbouring country, India, has already begun this process.

Current data show that student use of AI far exceeds that of instructors—a gap that must be addressed to prevent misuse and educational malpractice. Specialists recommend piloting AI courses as electives, gathering feedback, and continuously refining the curriculum to prepare students for an AI-driven future.

Benefits of AI in Education

AI in schools offers numerous advantages:

· Fosters critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills

· Enhances digital literacy and ethical awareness

· Bridges the digital divide by promoting equitable AI literacy

· Supports interdisciplinary learning in medicine, climate science, and linguistics

· Provides personalised feedback and learning experiences

· Assists students with disabilities through adaptive technologies like text-to-speech and visual recognition

AI can also automate administrative tasks, freeing teachers to focus on student engagement and social-emotional development—a key factor in academic success.

Risks and Challenges

Despite its potential, AI presents challenges:

· Data privacy concerns and misuse of personal information

· Over-reliance on technology, reducing teacher-student interactions

· Algorithmic biases affecting educational outcomes

· Increased opportunities for academic dishonesty if assessments rely on rote memorisation

Experts emphasise understanding these risks to ensure the responsible and ethical use of AI.

Global and Local Perspectives

In India, the Central Board of Secondary Education plans to introduce AI and computational thinking from Grades 3 to 12 by 2026. Sri Lanka faces a similar challenge. Many university students and academics already rely on AI, highlighting the urgent need for a structured yet rapidly evolving national curriculum that incorporates AI responsibly.

The Way Forward

Experts urge swift action:

· Launch pilot programs in select schools immediately.

· Provide teacher training and seed funding to participating educational institutions.

· Engage universities to develop short AI and innovation training programs.

“Waiting for others to lead risks leaving us behind,” experts warn. “It’s time to embrace AI thoughtfully, responsibly, and inclusively—ensuring the whole nation benefits from its opportunities.”

As AI reshapes our world, introducing it in schools is not merely an educational initiative—it is a national imperative.

BY Chula Goonasekera ✍️
on behalf of LEADS forum admin@srilankaleads.com

Features

The Paradox of Trump Power: Contested Authoritarian at Home, Uncontested Bully Abroad

Published

1 day ago

2026/01/11

Thilina Walpola

Protests and a vigil have been held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the shooting of Renee Nicole Good occurred on Wednesday (photo courtesy BBC)

The Trump paradox is easily explained at one level. The US President unleashes American superpower and tariff power abroad with impunity and without contestation. But he cannot exercise unconstitutional executive power including tariff power without checks and challenges within America. No American President after World War II has exercised his authority overseas so brazenly and without any congressional referral as Donald Trump is getting accustomed to doing now. And no American President in history has benefited from a pliant Congress and an equally pliant Supreme Court as has Donald Trump in his second term as president.

Yet he is not having his way in his own country the way he is bullying around the world. People are out on the streets protesting against the wannabe king. This week’s killing of 37 year old Renee Good by immigration agents in Minneapolis has brought the City to its edge five years after the police killing of George Floyd. The lower courts are checking the president relentlessly in spite of the Supreme Court, if not in defiance of it. There are cracks in the Trump’s MAGA world, disillusioned by his neglect of the economy and his costly distractions overseas. His ratings are slowly but surely falling. And in an electoral harbinger, New York has elected as its new mayor, Zoran Mamdani – a wholesale antithesis of Donald Trump you can ever find.

Outside America it is a different picture. The world is too divided and too cautious to stand up to Trump as he recklessly dismantles the very world order that his predecessors have been assiduously imposing on the world for nearly a hundred years. A few recent events dramatically illustrate the Trump paradox – his constraints at home and his freewheeling abroad.

Restive America

Two days before Christmas, the US Supreme Court delivered a rare rebuke to the Trump Administration. After a host of rulings that favoured Trump by putting on hold, without full hearing, lower court strictures against the Administration, the Supreme Court by a 6-3 majority decided to leave in place a Federal Court ruling that barred Trump from deploying National Guard troops in Chicago. Trump quietly raised the white flag and before Christmas withdrew the federal troops he had controversially deployed in Chicago, Portland and Los Angeles – all large cities run by Democrats.

But three days after the New Year, Trump airlifted the might of the US Army to encircle Venezuela’s capital Caracas and spirit away the country’s President Nicolás Maduro, and his wife Celia Flores, all the way to New York to stand trial in an American Court. What is not permissible in any American City was carried out with absolute impunity in a foreign capital. It turns out the Administration has no plan for Venezuela after taking out Maduro, other than Trump’s cavalier assertion, “We’re going to run it, essentially.” Essentially, the Trump Administration has let Maduro’s regime without Maduro to run the country but with the US in total control of Venezuela’s oil.

Next on the brazen list is Greenland, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio who manipulated Maduro’s ouster is off to Copenhagen for discussions with the Danish government over the future of Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of Denmark. Military option is not off the table if a simple real estate purchase or a treaty arrangement were to prove infeasible or too complicated. That is the American position as it is now customarily announced from the White House podium by the Administration’s Press Secretary Karolyn Leavitt, a 28 year old Catholic woman from New Hampshire, who reportedly conducts a team prayer for divine help before appearing at the lectern to lecture.

After the Supreme Court ruling and the Venezuela adventure, the third US development relevant to my argument is the shooting and killing of a 37 year old white American woman by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis, at 9:30 in the morning, Wednesday, January 7^th. Immediately, the Administration went into pre-emptive attack mode calling the victim a “deranged leftist” and a “domestic terrorist,” and asserting that the ICE officer was acting in self-defense. That line and the description are contrary to what many people know of the victim, as well as what people saw and captured on their phones and cameras.

The victim, Renee Nicole Good, was a mother of three and a prize-winning poet who self-described herself a “poet, writer, wife and mom.” A newcomer to Minneapolis from Colorado, she was active in the community and was a designated “legal observer of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities,” to monitor interactions between ICE agents and civilian protesters that have become the norm in large immigrant cities in America. Renee Good was at the scene in her vehicle to observe ICE operations and community protesters.

In video postings that last a matter of nine seconds, two ICE officers are seen approaching Good’s vehicle and one of them trying to open her door; a bystander is heard screaming “No” as Good is seen trying to drive away; and a third ICE officer is seen standing in front of her moving vehicle, firing twice in the direction of the driver, moving to a side and firing a third time from the side. Good’s car is seen going out of control, careening and coming to a stop on a snowbank. Yet America is being bombarded with two irreconcilable narratives – one manufactured by Trump’s Administration and the other by those at the scene and everyone opposed to the regime.

It adds to the explosiveness of the situation that Good was shot and killed not far from where George Folyd was killed, also in Minneapolis, on 25^th May, 2020, choked under the knee of a heartless policeman. And within 48 hours of Good’s killing, two Americans were shot and injured by two federal immigration agents, in Portland, Oregon, on the Westcoast. Trump’s attack on immigrants and the highhanded methods used by ICE agents have become the biggest flashpoint in the political opposition to the Trump presidency. People are organizing protests in places where ICE agents are apprehending immigrants because those who are being aggressively and violently apprehended have long been neighbours, colleagues, small business owners and students in their communities.

Deportation of illegal immigrants is not something that began under Trump. It has been going on in large numbers under all recent presidents including Obama and Biden. But it has never been so cruel and vicious as it is now under Trump. He has turned it into a television spectacle and hired large number of new ICE agents who are politically prejudiced and deployed them without proper training. They raid private homes and public buildings, including schools, looking for immigrants. When faced with protesters they get into clashes rather than deescalating the situation as professional police are trained to do. There is also the fear that the Administration may want to escalate confrontations with protesters to create a pretext for declaring martial law and disrupt the midterm congressional elections in November this year.

But the momentum that Trump was enjoying when he began his second term and started imposing his executive authority, has all but vanished and all within just one year in office. By the time this piece appears in print, the Supreme Court ruling on Trump’s tariffs (expected on Friday) may be out, and if as expected the ruling goes against Trump that will be a massive body blow to the Administration. Trump will of course use a negative court ruling as the reason for all the economic woes under his presidency, but by then even more Americans would have become tired of his perpetually recycled lies and boasts.

An Obliging World

To get back to my starting argument, it is in this increasingly hostile domestic backdrop that Trump has started looking abroad to assert his power without facing any resistance. And the world is obliging. The western leaders in Europe, Canada and Australia are like the three wise monkeys who will see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil – of anything that Trump does or fails to do. Their biggest fear is about the Trump tariffs – that if they say anything critical of Trump he will magnify the tariffs against their exports to the US. That is an understandable concern and it would be interesting to see if anything will change if the US Supreme Court were to rule against Trump and reject his tariff powers.

Outside the West, and with the exception of China, there is no other country that can stand up to Trump’s bullying and erratic wielding of power. They are also not in a position to oppose Trump and face increased tariffs on their exports to the US. Putin is in his own space and appears to be assured that Trump will not hurt him for whatever reason – and there are many of them, real and speculative. The case of the Latin American countries is different as they are part of the Western Hemisphere, where Trump believes he is monarch of all he surveys.

After more than a hundred years of despising America, many communities, not just regimes, in the region seem to be warming up to Trump. The timing of Trump’s sequestering of Venezuela is coinciding with a rising right wing wave and regime change in the region. An October opinion poll showed 53% of Latin American respondents reacting positively to a then potential US intervention in Venezuela while only 18% of US respondents were in favour of intervention. While there were condemnations by Latin American left leaders, seven Latin American countries with right wing governments gave full throated support to Trump’s ouster of Maduro.

The reasons are not difficult to see. The spread of crime induced by the commerce of cocaine has become the number one concern for most Latin Americans. The socio-religious backdrop to this is the evangelisation of Christianity at the expense of the traditional Catholic Church throughout Latin America. And taking a leaf from Trump, Latin Americans have also embraced the bogey of immigration, mainly influenced by the influx of Venezuelans fleeing in large numbers to escape the horrors of the Maduro regime.

But the current changes in Latin America are not necessarily indicative of a durable ideological shift. The traditional left’s base in the subcontinent is still robust and the recent regime changes are perhaps more due to incumbency fatigue than shifts in political orientations. The left has been in power for the greater part of this century and has not been able to provide answers to the real questions that preoccupied the people – economic affordability, crime and cocaine. It has not been electorally smart for the left to ignore the basic questions of the people and focus on grand projects for the intelligentsia. Exhibit #1 is the grand constitutional project in Chile under outgoing President Gabriel Borich, but it is not the only one. More romantic than realistic, Boric’s project titillated liberal constitutionalists the world over, but was roundly rejected by Chileans.

More importantly, and sooner than later, Trump’s intervention in Venezuela and his intended takeover of the country’s oil business will produce lasting backlashes, once the initial right wing euphoria starts subsiding. Apart from the bully force of Trump’s personality, the mastermind behind the intervention in Venezuela and policy approach towards Latin America in general, is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the former Cuban American Senator from Florida and the principal leader of the group of Cuban neocons in the US. His ultimate objective is said to be achieving regime change in Cuba – apparently a psychological settling of scores on behalf Cuban Americans who have been dead set against Castro’s Cuba after the overthrow of their beloved Batista.

Mr. Rubio is American born and his parents had left Cuba years before Fidel Castro displaced Fulgencio Batista, but the family stories he apparently grew up hearing in Florida have been a large part of his self-acknowledged political makeup. Even so, Secretary Rubio could never have foreseen a situation such as an externally uncontested Trump presidency in which he would be able to play an exceptionally influential role in shaping American policy for Latin America. But as the old Burns’ poem rhymes, “The best-laid plans of men and mice often go awry.”

by Rajan Philips ✍️