Ceylon Today Editorial

HOW DEEP IS LANKA IN THE GLOBAL LEAGUE?

21 May 2017

There's no argument about the fact that President Maithripala Sirisena has a heck of a lot on his plate...too much perhaps for one man to handle considering the fact that at Cabinet level or otherwise he has hardly any SLFP men worth their salt who can step in as effective advisors. The wretched unpalatable fact he also has to live with is that he is vexed with the option of having to trust, at least to some extent, his SLFP Ministers in Government and in Provincial Councils. An empirical analysis would reveal the fact that it's the UNP side of the Government that has men of comparatively higher intelligence and knowledge. Detractors argue that the UNP is elitist in a bid to drag it down in the eyes of the common masses, but then by the rule of logic that stupid criticism in itself condemns these critics because to drag another down one already has to be below that person's level. Detractors planted by the Opposition in Sirisena's administration have from day one been trying to drag him and the government down – it's the country that has suffered through this selfish strategy of the guttersnipe class.

There's this avalanche of attempts to drag down the Government that's been going on from the moment it took office. The President has to unfortunately contend with the truth that the Opposition's malice will only worsen in the weeks and months ahead.

We now come to the pith and cortex as it were of the manifold crises that all of this portends for Sri Lanka over the next few years and more. The pith is the domestic component of this catalyst for crises while the cortex is the foreign/regional geopolitical elements converging in our immediate Indian Ocean region, and because of several bilateral agreements and MoUs, will make it obligatory on the part of this Government to commit itself and the nation to emerging big power conflict situations in areas to the east and west of the Indian Ocean. Former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed had the former in mind when he said recently in Colombo that it was high time for Sri Lanka to take the lead in Indian Ocean affairs.

We draw attention to this because President Sirisena in his short address to the nation at the War Heroes Commemoration ceremony in the Parliament premises on Friday, manifesting much foresight, came out with a mild reminder to the armed forces to be poised to answer any sudden call to service either in the domestic or regional theatres. This is the Government's rationale for planning to convert the armed services into fighting machines capable of meeting such demands in a major regional conflict situation.

What he was essentially telling the armed forces was that Sri Lanka has majored into a proactive member of the global, especially regional, comity of nations and needs to have armed services as elite and technologically advanced as any potential enemy who decides to strong-arm us or sees fit to challenge our sovereignty and national integrity in any manner. With our ports and airports speedily coming under supposedly commercial control of China and India, access to these ports can swiftly be converted, surreptitiously, into military enclaves, with objectives inimical to Sri Lanka's broader regional and global commitments to uphold national security interests of other nations, including India.

The potential militarist significance of the Palaly Airport being modernized to meet regional airport standards has not been lost to military attaches at foreign missions in Colombo just as the significance of the larger portion of the Trincomalee Oil Tank Farm has not been lost on them.

Analysts were quick to pick up the significance of Indian Premier Modi's visit to Sri Lanka, touted as Vesak Visit, but as Minister Amunugama let slip in China a few days ago, "Was a grand success that enabled both countries to finalize a number of projects including the Trincomalee Port Project" as pti reported from Beijing.

In tandem with India, the Government could well be taking out insurance for the future security of the country's sovereignty and security as well as committing itself deeper to Indian security fears.

Viewed against the backdrop of this overall emerging domestic and global scenario, it's no wonder then that President Sirisena's government has decided to strengthen the armed forces, introduce state-of-the-art military technology to their armouries, give them intensive foreign training and go in for a blue-water Navy, which mean transforming our Navy into a maritime force capable of operating globally; essentially across deep waters of open oceans. Some countries define this as being a Navy possessing maritime expeditionary capabilities.

It is this wider regional role to which we are morally committed that the President had in mind when he alerted the forces to be primed for an emergency, domestic or regional.

The Nation Editorial

Do not live in the past, learn from it…

21 May 2017

May 18 is a special day for Sri Lanka because that was the day that the guns were silenced eight years ago.

Many things have happened over the years, some positive and some negative. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka has also faced international pressure in terms of allegations of war crimes, to which a mechanism is yet to be formed.

But even today, there are those extreme elements which look at the slightest of opportunities to trigger some sort of unrest even if it is on Facebook. Eight years have gone by and the powers that be are still grappling to seek a way out of the problem.

There are many problems to be looked into. The issue of the disappeared is one of them. The families continue their search even after eight years have gone by. They need answers. Some may look at these protests as politically motivated. But still, they are mothers, and they need all the support to bring out their grievances out in the open and grab the attention of the authorities.

Then there is the issue of those detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). The TNA has constantly held discussions with the government on the matter. While some steps have been taken on the matter, the overall progress is indeed slow. While the country has made strides over the years, the reconciliation process continues to move at a moderate or slow pace. This is understandable. It is hard to reconcile communities that were divided by war, ethnicities, regions, and mistrust, overnight.

On the other hand, there are also the extremist elements at work which need to create a bit of drama whenever they could.

The key question here would be how the government would deal with such elements to avoid obstacles.

Some continue to live in the past and try to remind the world of what happened. It is a well-known fact that digging the past would only aggravate the current situation. Sri Lanka should also be mindful of the pro LTTE network that is still very much active in other parts of the world. Even though there is very little or no impact by these groups on Sri Lanka, their influences cannot be ruled out in this day and age of social media. Why live in the past?

The country needs to move forward if people are to leave behind the bitterness the conflict had created. We should not live in the past.

At the same time, we should not forget the lessons we learnt through the mistakes made in the past. Those mistakes cost us 30 years of bloodshed. Do not live in the past, learn from it.

Sunday Times Editorial

Sri Lanka and New Economic World Order

21 May 2017

China hosting a mega event this week not only announced that it has arrived on the world scene as a major economic power-house, but telegraphed its vision for the next 30 years and more. With the US now on reverse gear advocating nationalism and protectionism, China has become the new face of internationalism. How the roles have reversed.

In an article on Page 8 (ST 2), a Sri Lankan-born UN diplomat lucidly explains China’s ambitious US$ 124 billion plans aimed at linking Asia with Europe and Africa, by road, rail and sea. The ‘One Road; One Belt’ initiative was attended by leaders of 29 countries, including Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister, 1,500 delegates from 130 nations, NGOs, the IMF, World Bank and the UN Secretary General.

To calm any unease that this was the Chinese dragon romping through the world stage, China’s President said; “We will not interfere in other countries’ internal affairs. We will not export our system of society and development model, and even more, will not impose our views on others”.

India was not impressed. For one, the road link cuts across disputed Kashmir. India boycotted the forum while the US and several European nations sent low-level representation, clearly smarting that they are being slowly, but surely upstaged by China.

The world is witnessing the re-emergence of two former Communist giants of the past — Russia and China which split on dialectic Marxism only to re-emerge as economic superpowers through free market policies they once derided as “Capitalist pigs”.

For the new Chinese initiative to be altruistic, is too good to be true. Those dealing with the Chinese negotiators on the Port City project and the Hambantota harbour know only too well how they drive a hard bargain and exploit the weaknesses of corrupt local politicians in developing countries when doing business.

Parallel to the ‘One Road; One Belt’ initiative, China has invested US$ 100 billion in an Investment Bank and the BRICS Development Bank to break the monopoly of the West-dominated IMF and World Bank and their grip over countries like Sri Lanka.

With the anticipated inflow of funds not forthcoming from the West despite a new Government more amenable to it here in Sri Lanka, it is becoming clearer that this country’s economic future rests on the broad shoulders of India and China. By accident or design, the previous Government recognised this fact, but played its cards wrong.

This Government will need to learn from past mistakes and look to the future as this ‘New Economic World Order’ unfolds.

Plantation workers are Sri Lankan citizens of recent origin
Indian scribes accompanying their Prime Minister last week to Sri Lanka were only half-joking when they said that their leader of over a billion people at home also loves to meet their diaspora overseas when he travels. This might have been after he got a rock-star reception in the United States.

And so, the story goes, that his office must have contacted the High Commission in Colombo and asked it to organise a similar event here; except that that there’s no real Indian diaspora in this country. The next best thing was to arrange a mass meeting in the central highlands where a sizeable crowd could be mustered of those categorised as “Tamils of recent Indian origin”.

No wonder, the Indian PM told the cheering crowd at Norwood estate in Dickoya last week; “We rejoice at the success of the Indian origin diaspora as they leave a mark across the world, near and far”.

The ancestors of these plantation workers were brought to this island from southern India as indentured labour by the British planters because the Kandyan peasantry whose lands were plundered under a Waste Lands Ordinance refused to work for the colonisers. It was an age when Africans were taken as slave labour to the cotton fields of America, but they have no allegiance any more to their country of origin.

The plantation workers here are now fully-fledged Sri Lankan citizens with voting rights. Their long struggle for citizenship has its roots in the Citizenship Act of 1948 which made them “stateless”, but that Act was modelled on the Indian Citizens Act which debarred Nepalis from citizenship in India.

If their line-rooms had portraits of Mahatma Gandhi it is understandable. And the Indian tri-colour displayed at Dickoya would have prompted the visiting dignitary to say; “India beats in your heart”, but it also raised concerns whether India was stirring the pot for a permanent fifth column here.

In an era of dual-citizenship, and a foreign citizen signing local currency notes, having allegiance to two countries may — or may not — be an issue as it was before. Parliaments still insist on allegiance to one country, but even Ambassadors are now allowed to represent a country while also being a citizen of another.

Minister Mano Ganesan, a frontline leader of the plantation workers sidelining the traditional ‘hereditary mafia’ that led them for decades, put things in perspective while addressing the crowd, “Our loyalty to our Motherland Sri Lanka is not a divided loyalty — we are only a bridge between the two countries”.

They were classed as ‘Tamils of recent Indian origin’ to distinguish them from the North and East Tamils whose ancestry dates further back to India, and who, in fact, looked all along at the plantation workers as people of a lesser god. To the eternal credit of the plantation Tamils, they had no truck with the North/East separatist movement of recent times.

It is, therefore, the bounden duty of the Government to embrace these Tamils not as those of recent Indian origin, but of recent Sri Lankan citizenship. They are the ‘natural increase’ of those people who opted to remain in Sri Lanka under the Sirima-Shastri Repatriation Pact. Young people in the plantations do not want to be ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’ anymore and prefer city jobs with technical skills or in supermarkets and foot massage centres. Labour is going to be an issue in the plantations unless the industry ventures into some form of mechanisation. Importing indented labour once again, as is feared with new Economic agreements repeating colonial history, is not an option.

Sunday Observer Editorial

One war, many memories

21 May 2017

The battlefields of the Vanni, in May 2009, were the site of a military victory between state armed forces and the forces of an ethnic minority secessionist insurgent movement. Histories - scholarly, popular, apologetic and triumphal – are being written about the war that ended on May 18, 2009, with the overrunning of the final enclave held by the Liberation Tigers of Thamil Eelam.

Stories of valour are the inspiration of nations and communities, while stories of loss and defeat help in social reflection, community solidarity and revival. All wars have produced many such narratives.

Days of ‘remembrance’ are rituals that punctuate such narratives with their symbolism and public discourse - speeches, reflective commentaries and community recollections. Most importantly, such days are moments of emotional solidarity with those grieving human loss – Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim and other citizens.

Last Friday, President Maithripala Sirisena, in his speech at the Remembrance Ceremony of the Armed Forces, emphasized both, the need for a nation’s military strength as well as the need that is expressly symbolised by the remembrance of this particular war – the need for inter-ethnic reconciliation after a war over inter-ethnic problems.

The ethics and political professionalism of a governmental leadership that directed the armed forces in the final years of this war may be questioned. After all, the Rajapaksa regime – while thriving on massive corruption partly benefiting from armaments – adopted a crude, simplistic strategy of ultra-nationalist ethnic mobilization that focused on the military defeat of the insurgency without any political management of the motivations of those Sri Lankan citizens active in the insurgency or who supported it. The resultant defeat of an insurgency fought by and supported by a section of the citizenry, while certainly being a heroic success for the Sri Lankan armed forces, is more a challenge to the nation as a whole rather than simply a ‘victory’.

That is why Remembrance Day is one of remembering the human sacrifice and bravery rather than a celebration of a victory.

For our men and women of the armed forces, police and civil defence, any battle successfully concluded – whether it is defensive or offensive – is a victory: a moment that celebrates sacrifice, bravery, professionalism, determination and commitment to duty. Such achievements are high points in their function as members of the institutions that defend the nation and its law and order.

For national leaderships and for society as a whole, a war is more than just the sum total of battles. It is, on one side, the failure of civilian politics in resolving the problem. On the other, it is complex task of managing society engaged in large scale violence of which the outcome must result in, at least, the groundwork for a peaceful future, hopefully not too constrained by the massive social and economic triage caused by the violence.

In the Sri Lankan case, the task is doubly difficult because it was an ‘internal war’ that pitted the state against a section of its own citizens – not just a handful of marginalized individuals, but a large social and political movement that represented an ethnic community, or a section of a community.

Today, the effort to bring together the ethnic communities on both sides after their militaristic mobilization during those final, bloody, years of war is an almost impossible challenge as compared with a situation of a negotiated end to the fighting. On both sides are ethnic communities harbouring enmities arising from immediate human loss, losses that are attributed, due to their ethno-nationalist mobilisation, to the rival ethnic community.

The minority community, whose insurgent secessionism was violently defeated without alternate remedy, lies distraught, demoralized, hugely incapacitated by military destruction, embittered. Many remain almost inanimate, unable to recover from the shock of loss of life and limb, and also lacking an alternate inspiration to the ethno-centric secessionism that motivated them. Some in their midst may even attempt to revive those old aspirations of ‘independence’. Others may indulge in opportunism and crime in desperation for survival.

Thanks, however, to the continuation of Sri Lankan democratic practices of elections and representative governance, many in the Tamil minority have seen the value of working within existing frameworks to re-establish social foundations for the future.

The majority community, meanwhile, has been misguided by the many propaganda misrepresentations of the ultra-nationalist mobilization during the Rajapaksa regime. This has served to worsen attitudes among the Sinhalese who have suffered from the secessionist insurgency, not just in terms of individual human loss but also economic hardship due to the stagnant economy. The social bitterness and fear arising from the war that permeates Sinhala society will also take time to fade.

The Northern Provincial Council, fractious though it may sound to those in the southern provinces, is a success in stable post-war governance – a success in representing Northern provincial needs and interests in an articulate manner that exploits civilian institutions to the maximum, thereby avoiding the failures that, at one time in the past, led to war. How the central government as well as the other provinces respond to the Northern Province will dictate the future success of devolution as the means for national unity and, genuine, nationwide prosperity.

If President Sirisena, as head of state, remembered the heroism and loss of the war, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s crucial meeting with political and social leaders of the Northern Province last week addressed the challenges of the post-war future.

Such parallel action is an essential ingredient of comprehensive political management. How quickly the National Unity coalition regime can pick up the tatters of a nation left behind by the Rajapaksa ‘government’ will be decided not just by the politicians but by all communities, community leaderships and by citizens eager to put the past behind and build the future.

Sunday Island Editorial

Shoddy building, flouting rules

21 May 2017

Megapolis Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka estimated after last week’s collapse of the seven-storey reception hall in Wellawatte that there are 10,000 illegally built homes and offices in Colombo and said that action would be taken to demolish them. Fortunately there was no wedding taking place in the hall at the time of the tragedy. The toll of dead and injured would have been much higher if that was the case. The minister promising action now is well and good. But the big question is why had nothing been done all this time? It is common knowledge that corruption is widespread within the Colombo Municipal Council and the Urban Development Authority and a myriads of building rules and regulations are routinely bent if the law breaker "sees to the trouble" of the officials tasked to enforce them. Money changes hands and illegal constructions are dime a dozen in the capital city with astronomical land prices fuelling a perhaps unsustainable property boom.

It wasn’t long ago that the landslide at the Meetotamulla garbage dump occurred and we said in this space that it was a tragedy waiting to happen. There was an outpouring of public sympathy for the victims. Compensation and alternative accommodation was pledged and there has been some progress in alleviating the distress although all that was promised has not yet been delivered. But has any action against those responsible for the failures that led to the tragedy? As far as the public is aware, nothing worth talking about has happened and nobody has resigned or been sacked. The concerned officials and politicians remain ensconced in their position, paid by taxpayer funds with neither blame nor punishment apportioned. The passage of time dims public memories and nobody but the victims will remember what they have gone through and indeed are going through. A viable solution to Colombo’s garbage problem has not yet been found and it is anybody’s guess whether we are on the way to finding that solution.

The government must urgently appoint an independent authority with the necessary muscle to inquire into public complaints of infringement of building and planning rules and regulations as construction proceeds. It is useless allowing the UDA and the CMC to go into complaints of their own failures. Neither of these authorities has demonstrated the necessary will nor the ability to tackle these matters as the poison is too often within themselves. Neighbors are well aware of the flouting of building and planning requirements as constructions proceed but often get no redress to their complaints from the concerned authorities. If an ombudsman to whom they can go is appointed, the situation can improve, we believe. This is a proposal that deserves serious consideration.

Clean or dirty energy?

In a signed article we publish today, Mr. Asoka Abeygunawardhana, the Chairman of the Strategic Enterprises Management Agency (SEMA) has questioned the Ceylon Electricity Board’s endeavor to build coal power stations to generate 2,700MW of electricity between 2018 and 2037. These plans have been submitted for approval of the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL). The SEMA Chairman says that "this strategy goes against the very foundation of the government’s development strategy for the country." What the PUCSL will say about the proposals made is yet an open question. But the decision to scrap plans for the proposed Sampur power plant near Trincomalee, with the project to be built by India at an advanced stage, was significant. The fact that LNG is a far superior alternative to coal is a given. But Sri Lanka urgently needs additional generation capacity and the time that was lost by the decision not to go ahead with Sampur is vital. Yet that decision was taken nevertheless to go for an LNG plant instead likely to be located near Colombo.

It is now accepted fact that coal power, despite its price advantages, is a pollutant and no country in the developed world will build new coal power stations in the future. Countries like China and India, both coal producers unlike us, that had planned a large number of coal stations are gradually applying the brakes on those initiatives and will focus more on solar power and other forms or renewable energy in the future. The technology for solar power is becoming cheaper and there are other options as well. As far as Sri Lanka is concerned, we have little or no further potential of large hydroelectricity schemes. While a few mini-hydro schemes are possible, the potential for large schemes have been nearly exhausted. We are unlikely to go for nuclear power in the foreseeable future for many reasons but industries like Tokyo Cement are producing their own power using paddy husk. We are also producing some wind power, though yet on a relatively limited scale, but new projects are in the pipeline. The potential for dendro power, with gliricidia an easy to grow raw material given our climatic condition, exists.

There have been some hopeful signals about natural gas reserves in the Gulf of Mannar and if these are realized, that could be another savior. The major factor, of course, is whether with rising consumption we can get our power supply to match demand in the short term. Polluting coal and expensive fossil fuel generated electricity is the quick fix. We will be at risk of falling between these stools with climate changes we already see making us more prone to drought in the future. Although the Sampur coal station was aborted, there are allegations that a coal and diesel ‘Mafia’ exists in the CEB and these vested interests are not letting up on their attempts to drive us into dirty power. How true these allegations are we do not know, but they are being openly made by the Chairman of the Strategic Enterprise Management Agency of the government.