Editorial

Sri Lanka’s membership bid, along with that of dozens of other aspirants to join BRICS—the group of emerging markets and developing countries of the Global South—was put on ice at its summit in Kazan, Russia, last week.

The ostensible reason: BRICS’ (originally Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, later adding Egypt, Iran, the UAE, and Ethiopia) decision to freeze membership for now. Instead, they proposed a new ‘partner membership’ status for which Sri Lanka will hopefully be considered in due course, with priority consideration being given to those who were earlier in the queue following the previous BRICS summit in Johannesburg.

This was despite the obvious indication that some of the founding members of the group—notably China and Russia—must surely have no objection to expanding membership given the group’s popular (though perhaps not quite accurate) geopolitical identity as a club of the Global South, as opposed to an international order dominated by the US-led West.

The lack of consensus among BRICS members on expansion in general, and specifically which countries to include, points to challenges it will face as its appeal grows. BRICS works by consensus, and consensus can be tantamount to a veto, making their methods look dangerously like the very multilateral institutions such as the UN that it seeks to reform.

The decision to leave out some countries, like Brazil rejecting Venezuela or India’s reluctance to admit Pakistan and Turkey, smacks of a superiority complex—’all’are equal, but we are more equal’ attitude.

This was not how the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was formed in the late 1950s and early 1960s and which grew to represent the newly independent nations after WWII. Those nations collectively had some clout in international affairs without being sucked into the orbit of the ‘Big Five’ of the UN. The solidarity within the group, however, withered away by the 1980s and ’90s with the collapse of the Soviet Union and individual nations succumbing to the power of the US dollar that ruled international markets.

Thus, the US dollar came to be ‘weaponised’ as an instrument against nations that did not tow the West’s agenda and were subjected to bullying sanctions and trade embargoes. The inequality of the world economic order tied to the US dollar is what has given birth to BRICS. Unlike NAM, which is, or was, a political movement, BRICS is fundamentally an economic collective trying to break free from the stranglehold of the US dollar in international business transactions.

Fortunately, Sri Lanka’s request to join the BRICS’ Shanghai-based New Development Bank is not contingent on BRICS membership. It is, in fact, of more immediate and practical relevance given the Bank’s mandate to finance infrastructure and sustainable development projects in countries like Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka gains enhanced global outreach for multilateral economic and financial cooperation with a place at the table where financial and monetary decisions could potentially be made.

Aspiring members of BRICS like Sri Lanka are also on IMF lifelines and may not want the group to turn entirely into a strident anti-US/Western forum. There is a lot of synergy between the G-20 (Brazil is its current chair), which includes the African Union, India, Indonesia, etc. On the other hand, the US is not going to remain idle in the face of this new initiative that has gained currency from among countries that represent more than half the world’s population. Those who challenged the US dollar before, like the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, paid the price for their efforts.

Whether BRICS can meet overt and covert resistance to its efforts in bypassing and devaluing the importance of the US dollar remains to be seen. As for the optics, last week’s summit slammed the door on new full membership for nations keen to join their ranks. The Western hegemony cannot be merely replaced by a set of new ‘Brahmin’ nations on the block and the same old hegemonic wine in new bottles.

All eyes on NPP

This is, however, not to say that the President’s party is assured of a romping victory. Their primary target would be a simple majority (113+/225) in the House. The proportional representation (PR) system and the fact that they are not contesting all 22 electoral districts, along with the fact that they obtained only 42 percent of the total vote in September, do not augur well for the party. They are expecting the natural phenomenon of voters siding with the ‘winning party’ to propel them towards their end objective.

By all accounts, theirs was a stunning win at the presidential election, even though largely expected. Given the fact that they obtained only 3 percent of the vote at the 2019 presidential election, and had only three members elected to a Parliament of 225, it was akin to India’s BJP, which once had only three seats in Parliament and is now in office for the past 10 years. Both these parties had chequered pasts; they adapted their names and joined coalition governments. Their bases were grounded in the rural masses, and they worked from the grassroots to high office but through different paths: the BJP using the religious route; the JVP first the revolutionary road and later shedding that image and taking the social-democratic road.

The freshly minted President, now firmly ensconced in office, knows he is a lame duck sans a comfortable parliamentary majority. A certain section of the populace still views them with an element of suspicion due to the party’s radical past.

The exceedingly good behaviour shown these days by his otherwise vociferous old comrades (JVP) is almost too good to be true. How much longer can they suffer in silence with their frontliners advising from a separate floor and allow the ‘human face’ element of the alliance, the NPP, to have any overriding say in their party policies even after the forthcoming parliamentary election? This is going to be something to watch out for.