Is this guy cool? Does he have any capacity to spread socialism to Sri Lanka? What’s the current state of politics in the country?

  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    12·
    2 days ago

    IIRC, Sri Lanka has been flipflopping between different presidents and parties over the last few years as the same economic hardship is hitting them as everywhere else, but even the “good” presidents are totally unwilling to resist IMF austerity, and even the most principled and well-intentioned communists just cannot get anything done if they aren’t willing to tell the World Bank to fuck off. I’m unsure whether this is a corruption/morality thing or if it’s because Sri Lanka genuinely is in such a shitty place that it would be provably worse for them to stop taking loans (i.e. they might be well and truly debt-trapped and only foreign help from China and friends could save them), because Sri Lanka has had such a complex history that I just haven’t had the time to look deeply into it with ~200 other countries also taking up my attention span.

  • viva_la_juche [they/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    13·
    2 days ago

    They been communist for awhile (ostensibly anyway? Idk cursory search on Wikipedia said since the 70s or so). People used to joke about how everyone always forgets they’re aes bc they never get brought lol

    • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
      22·
      2 days ago

      You might be thinking of Nepal.

      Sri Lankan politics are messier than you’d believe. I’m not an expert but you have at least one political dynasty, power changing hands between people with 3 different last names for 30 years, a recent civil war along ethnic lines, a failed revolution at the end of the Cold War, a wrecked economy with massive amounts of debt that culminates in the popular uprising 2 years ago that chased out the sitting president and his brother.

        • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
          6·
          2 days ago

          Nepal is the country that overthrew their monarchy in the 2000s under an alliance of largely MLs and MLMs.

          Laos is the country that has been ruled by a ML party since 1975.

          Sri Lanka doesn’t really have any history in common with either of these in the last century, it’s just as far from each as they are from each other. Any political overlapping thread with Nepal was over 100 years ago, and small.

            • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
              1·
              2 days ago

              Laos= landlocked peripheral country, was a French colony from the late 1800s and then client state, not super viciously fought over but just bombed a lot until the end of the Second Indochina War in 1975, when the Pathet Lao made socialism the law of the land.

              Nepal= landlocked yet somewhat less peripheral country, never colonized but was a British client state from the early 19th century to the early 20th century, had active Marxist armed rebellions for decades that culminated in the abolition of the monarchy, now is a parliamentary democracy with strong Marxist parties.

              Sri Lanka= rather important spice and maritime country, colonized to escalating degrees by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English, won independence peacefully from Britain and in the 70s became democratic socialist in name.