The Island Editorial

Yen for yuan

Monday 02nd November 2015

 

The Rajapaksa government was notorious for ruffling the eagle’s feathers. The Rajapaksas and their lackeys would tuck up their sarongs and hurl abuse at Washington at the drop of a hat as if the biggest threat to this country had come from the US. But, some of those vociferous critics were American citizens themselves though they pretended that they had nothing to do with the US! The empire struck back in the end and they did not know what hit them! The big guns of the UNP, before the last presidential and general elections, did to China what the Rajapaksas had done to the US and other western powers.

The practice of politicians using foreign powers as bogies to project themselves as patriots is not of recent origin. That is the name of the game in Sri Lankan politics. The JVP saw an American conspirator behind every bush in the late 1960s and took up arms to ‘save’ the country in 1971. In the late 1980s, the JVPers, claiming to fight against Indian expansionism graphically portrayed India, in their propagandistic material, as a massive octopus with its tentacles spread all over Sri Lanka. The country was plunged into a bloodbath in the name of a struggle to thwart an Indian invasion. Strangely, only a single JVP politburo member survived a bloody crackdown under the Premadasa government and he fled to India, of all countries, to avoid capture and a painful death here! The UNP-led Opposition employed similar propaganda methods to vilify China before the last two elections; its propagandists used the image of a ferocious dragon swallowing Sri Lanka and succeeded in instilling some fear into the gullible voters.

UNP politicians including its present-day MPs, while they were in the Opposition, also let out howls of protest against the Chinese Port City project and gave the impression that it would be scrapped posthaste once they captured power. Their antipathy towards China and partiality to America were such that one thought they would, in a bid to appease their western masters, go so far as to adopt, as the national symbol, the griffin (the mythical creature with foreparts of an ‘eagle’ and body, hind legs and tail of a ‘lion’)!

But, today, the UNP-led government has swallowed its pride and is going hat in hand to Beijing, seeking funds just like its British counterpart, and falling over itself to please the Chinese. Given Sri Lanka’s current economic difficulties their yen for yuan is understandable. Their western allies will proffer unsolicited advice and offer help purportedly to bring about reconciliation, but never will they loosen their purse strings. There is nothing called a free lunch. The go-ahead for the resumption of the Port City construction is, therefore, only a matter of time. This controversial, mega development scheme is, to all intents and purposes, the be-all and end-all of the government’s ambitious megapolis project which looks a Barmecide feast for JHU heavyweight, Champika Ranawaka, who has been effectively confined to the Western Province. A professional electrical engineer, he has now had to tackle issues like stray cattle on Colombo roads instead of crucial matters, at the national level, related to power and energy!

Moreover, the UNP MPs who maniacally tilted at windmills, claiming to prevent Sri Lanka from becoming a Chinese colony and successfully used Chinese whispers to turn public opinion against the Rajapaksas they condemned as Chinese puppets, are currently on a junket in Beijing, courtesy of the Chinese government. People may have thought those politicians would not touch anything Chinese with a barge pole. But, they are shamelessly smooching with the dragon just like the famous donkey in Shrek. Curiously, politicians who are at daggers drawn in Parliament, Provincial Councils and Local Government institutions readily sink their ideological differences on the question of foreign junkets. At this rate, if the Port City project were to be put to the vote in Parliament it would be passed unanimously. Eagle-worshipping politicians may bellow rhetoric and issue threats, but the dragon has the last laugh!