Economic soverignty v Geographical soverignty

 What are we striving for economic sovereignty, or geographical sovereignty?

With a second wave of Coronavirus expected to last up to April 2021, governments around the world have been advised to move hard and fast. What happens when governments move hard and fast has become well known to some, if not many of their citizens, especially during this pandemic.

There is confusion, there is denial of liberty, there is no accountability.  

Some say people all over are losing trust in politics. Citizens may have legitimate reasons not to trust “politics” or rather is it the “politicians” given what we have seen of their performance over the last few months. But can you judge a book by its cover?

Others say one of the principal causes of distrust in politics is the likelihood of poor leadership, which has moved power over our affairs to others, not to our national governments but rather to supranational bodies and especially to financial markets, as many argue?

What really has happened?

On the one hand, perhaps, we are becoming more suspicious of authority generally. In the past, we accepted the dictates of governments as final. We never, hardly questioned authority. After the changing whims and fancies of governments over the recent months of COVID-19 restrictions, with rules and regulations, arbitrarily taken, later changed without consent of Parliament, perhaps for our own good, there appears to be a cycle of distrust, strangely in democratic countries with autocratic majorities in Parliament.

The media has recently also run stories about the veracity of decisions of politicians with different motives, agendas, when these decisions are not in the public interest. Some decisions are not based on principles of ethics, or agreed policies, but on expediency, whilst others are ruled in for self-interest.  This makes it more difficult to build a positive relationship between ordinary working people and decision makers?

There are some others who say that policies stay the same no matter who is “voted in to power”. This is partly due to all politicians being tarred with the same brush as overpromising “the moon and the stars,” to get elected, and under delivering or sometimes becoming dictatorial to show they are able to deliver, when they have a hell’s chance with the accompaniment of burden of debt. It is better to come clean with the ordinary citizen who cannot be hoodwinked for ever.

One must remember that it is all to easy to saddle an incoming government with an unenviable task of solving eons of mismanagement of debt. This is known to the public as “passing the baton”.

Are we losing economic sovereignty for geographical sovereignty? 

Sovereignty is the most important, if not sacred feature which differentiates the State from other associations in the land? If the State has no sovereign power, the State cannot maintain unity and integration in the land. Thus, it cannot be ignored that sovereignty is an essential ingredient for a state to be called or identified as a State, in both internal and external matters.

A State can only be independent if it enjoys sovereignty. People of a sovereign state may become disillusioned over time if this sovereign power resides elsewhere.

For this to never to occur, it is not important whether sovereign power in a Constitution resides solidly and solely in a President or in a Parliament. The People of a State are the custodians of sovereign power as in the Democratic People’s Republic of Sri Lanka.

For this to be perceived by the people of the State as well as recognised by the world of nation States, the priority is to prove both to its own people and to the world that it has the capacity first and foremost to honour its obligations and commitments.

Sovereignty and Sustainability

Conditions imposed by IMF and international creditors usually focus on problematic and generally unfruitful policy strategies such as:

1.    Export oriented growth

2.    Liberalisation of FDI

3.    Promotion really over-promotion of tourism

4.    Privatisation of State owned enterprises (SOE)

5.    Liberalisation of financial markets.

Each of these strategies is a trap disguised as an economic solution. We in Sri Lanka must be and are fully aware of it.                        

                                                       

Geographical sovereignty may focus on the land, distances, and infrastructure not in relation to jurisdiction or authority, but in relation to geographical threats and strengths.

Economic sovereignty, on the other hand, is the right of a State to be free of economic forces of interference that would challenge, disrupt or remove the rights and freedoms of that State to exist and to govern its own territory without being bound by unbearable external debt and be able to manage its own economy.

Of course, we recognise when economic sovereignty is lost, geographical sovereignty is not worth the paper it is written on, or worth talking about, with one qualification, of the State’s international obligations.

Victor Cherubim