by Shamindra Ferdinando

The Communist Party and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party differ sharply on President Anura Kumara Dissanayake seeking India’s support for Sri Lanka’s efforts to secure BRICS membership.

Addressing a CP event in Colombo recently, former General Secretary of the CP and ex-Minister DEW Gunasekera strongly criticised the NPP government for including President Dissanayake’s request to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help him in the endeavour in their joint statement.

According to the Jt. Statement issued following talks between President Dissanayake and Premier Modi on Dec 16, the latter has requested India’s support for Sri Lanka’s application to become a member of the BRICS.

Perhaps, President Dissanayake should have privately sought Indian backing and never included that request in the Jt. Statement, the veteran Marxist said.

BRICS consists of nine countries namely Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran and United Arab Emirates. In addition to full members, there are nine partner states-one level below full membership. They are Indonesia, Malaysia, Cuba, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Bolivia, Thailand and Uganda.

LSSP veteran and Trotskyist and former Minister Prof. Tissa Vitharana, in a message issued for 2025, declared that he was happy President Dissanayake sought India’s help in this regard.

Efforts on the part of BRICS to convince Saudi Arabia and Turkey to join the organisation has failed.

Sources said that Sri Lanka’s bid to join BRICS would definitely come up during President Dissanayake’s state visit to Beijing later this month. Both India and China are among the five founding members of the powerful grouping that has emerged as a rival to Western-dominated G7 and in time to come even the United Nations and Western dominated multilateral bodies like the IMF and the World Bank.

Former minister Gunasekera told The Island that Western powers were wary of BRICS working on a new global payments system to bypass US-led sanctions in the banking sector. Responding to another query, the veteran politician regretted President Dissanayake skipping the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia, late last October. Sri Lanka should have been at least represented by Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath, Gunasekera said, declaring that the decision on the part of NPP government to send the then Foreign Secretary Aruni Wijewardena was nothing but a huge mistake.

Gunasekera underscored the pivotal importance of the move to accommodate NATO member Turkey and key US allay Saudi Arabia in the BRICS group. Sri Lanka couldn’t afford not to join the grouping as it is a credible counter to the US led Western hegemony that bullies especially poor and weak countries as they please to no end.

Gunasekera said that the West wouldn’t want Sri Lanka to join BRICS. The ex-Minister said that the government would have to move cautiously as bankrupt Sri Lanka faced daunting task of balancing its relations with China and the US. On the whole, the issues at hand couldn’t be addressed without taking into consideration India-US partnership against China, he said.