It is a simple question but holding a wealth of meaning & essentially answers and distinguishes those that naturally come forward to defend the nation & those who chose not to. Some leaders are born, some are made by circumstance & rise to the occasion but inherently they do so because somewhere embedded inside their being, they regard the nation as their motherland. Just as a mother lovingly raises her child, turning blood to milk, nurturing the child in the formative years and together with the father instilling values, culture & good qualities, the same is passed on from the child to his/her child & the circle continues. It is the handful of people who treat the land as their mother, who come forward to safeguard & protect that land. There is no doubt about this. Sadly, it is those who cherish the land & who come forward to defend it who end up sacrificing their life & are unable to serve the nation further. Those that don’t cherish the land, remain to do more damage. This is the irony & challenges the nation faces. This land should only belong to those who love & defends the land & who cherish the land to be nurtured for the future generations.
When South Indian invaders attempted to take over the land – it was those who regarded this land as their motherland who came forward to defend it.
When Western Christian invaders landed with Bible in one hand & sword in the other – it was again those who regarded this land as their motherland who braved their weapons to engage the enemy & died sacrificing their life to safeguard their motherland.
When JVP, LTTE took up arms against the land, it was brave sons & daughters who enlisted to fight for their land & defeat the enemy. This they did in May 2009 but not without sacrifice. Their proud parents who have lost their loved ones take solace in the fact that their child fought for his motherland & became a son of the soil. Those of us who did not adorn the uniform but also feel for our motherland, every time a soldier’s sacrifice is being commemorated share that pang of pride alongside his parents. It is a feeling that those who don’t love their motherland can never understand. It is those who love their motherland who even living oceans away & return to their home, feel a sense of belonging and feel to take part in acts of kindness & generosity towards others who are less privileged. That thought to help automatically emerges from their love for their motherland. When they depart to return to their other home, they leave with a heavy heart because their real heart is in their motherland. Only those who love their motherland can understand the feelings of such people.
Those who love their motherland always think of ways they can help or ways their motherland can be improved. They don’t think twice about coming forward when the nation needs them. These are the special people who make a nation meaningful. In the past these great sons of the soil created our civilization, built marvels & left us what we term our heritage. This heritage is what tourists arrive to see and it is to protect this heritage that those who love this motherland file cases to safeguard the sites and appeal to fellow citizens to join their cause. From doctors, professionals, lawyers, accountants, engineers, armed forces, police, farmers, teachers to even the roadside cleaner there are those who love this land as their mother & those who regard this simply as a place they were born into.
Who are those who were born on this land & they feel nothing beyond their name on the registration form or birth certificate. They feel no affinity to protect or defend the land they were born in because they feel no emotional attachment. It may be as a result of their upbringing, the environment they grew up in, their schooling or simply because it is not in their DNA. These are the handful who become easy prey to external elements who fish for people to lure to their initiatives to destabilize Sri Lanka. The lack of affinity makes them not care to defend the nation, they are not bothered who takes over the resources & assets, they view these as unimportant as they have no emotional attachment to them. They become the mouthpieces for external forces inside Sri Lanka. There are another lot of chest beaters who claim they love their motherland” but this lot are equally dangerous as those who do not love the land.
Those that feel nothing beyond being born in Sri Lanka, will not line up to join the police or armed forces to protect the sovereignty of Sri Lanka. They may decide to join believing it is their right to join but not with intention to serve the nation. Such people are not bothered to fulfil their duties to the nation, they will only make demands for their personal rights and these demands will be endless. Nothing makes them happy, they simply demand more and more. They do not even feel a pang of guilt that they are not fulfilling their duty to the nation, they simply believe that their birth is sufficient for them to get the maximum out of the country for themselves. Such is the mentality of people who share none of the sentiments felt by people who feel this land is their motherland.
Those who feel for their motherland are today worried – they know their land is under threat. They fear the outcome of the sale of national assets & resources, they foresee the dangers of foreigners taking over the airports, ports & harbors as well as even state buildings. They understand the outcome of illegal immigrants from unmonitored sea-rail-road links with a nation that helped birth & foster 30 years of terror. They realize how education system has been compromised to denationalize our people and programs to make sure children & youth who love this land are not nurtured by teaching false history & bogus reconciliation/multicultural themes’.
Those who love their land are ever ready to defend it, that feeling flows in their blood, their adrenalin pumps when patriotic songs are heard, they take joy when our sons & daughters gain local & international fame (for the right reasons – not those who win accolades for going against the nation) and they worry over the future. These are the unsung heroes & heroines of this land but the divine forces that protect this nation know who they are & will protect them. They must be identified & given more prominent roles because it is only they who can rebuild this nation.
Those who regard this land as only their birthright – should never be given any stake in this land because they have done no service to it, they have not defended it, they have not protected it & they do not care to nurture it for future generations.
Doctor, my feet and ankles are getting swollen. What can I do? What is the most common cause of leg swelling? In older adults is what we call venous insufficiency.” The second most common cause of leg swelling is a reaction to certain medications. When you remove your socks and shoes at the end of the day and detect swelling around your ankles and feet, you need to worry about it. Travelling by plane for long hours and not moving your legs is an acute problem. In some situations, this can be due to DVT, meaning that the deep veins in your calf muscles become clogged up https://youtu.be/9ofc6yBFlos with clots due to a lack of peripheral pumping action in the calf muscles, or may be due to a condition called ‘lymphatic stasis’ meaning that the extra-cellular fluid is not being returned from the dependent areas, It is essential to move your ankles whilst being seated on the plane to prevent such episodes. Today’s discussion concerns leg, ankle, and foot swelling due to more chronic conditions and prevention and control. When your feet, ankles and legs get swelled mildly as a daily event, the most common situation may be drug-induced. Most of you may be on Amlodipine, a calcium channel blocker prescribed for your high blood pressure, especially if given high doses such as 10 mg daily. In such a situation, wearing compression socks or elevating your legs is best to help with swelling from amlodipine. Or, you may be on Gabapentin, a medication used to treat nerve pain from shingles, seizures and restless legs syndrome. You may be prescribed Pioglitazone, also called Actos, or rosiglitazone or Avandia, for type 2 diabetes. Leg swelling is a well-known side effect of these medications. These drugs have a greater risk of having heart failure, too. Talk to your healthcare provider if you experience swelling while taking pioglitazone or rosiglitazone. They may be able to help switch you to a different diabetes medication. If you take Non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs for arthritic pain, the long term may cause water retention, leading to swelling in the legs and ankles. If you have kidney problems, you should avoid taking these drugs. Ladies taking birth control pills also get water retention, which may show up as swelling in the legs or ankles. When taken long-term, steroids are prescribed for asthma, chronic obstructive airway disease, and severe allergic reactions, another cause of water retention and leg swelling. For many people, swelling from a medication isn’t severe and will typically go away once you stop taking it. Depending on the medication, lifestyle changes or lowering your dose may help if it’s something you need to take long-term. Other causes of leg, ankle and foot swellings, or oedema, may be standing or sitting in the same position for too long. Eating too much-added salt in your food can give rise to leg swelling. Being overweight could cause leg swelling. More severe causes of leg swelling come with your kidney, liver or heart disease. If you have had coronary heart disease treated with stents, you must take special precautions to avoid further damage to the heart muscles. If you continue your happy, enjoyable lifestyle, you may have a condition called CCF or congestive heart failure. This is a sign that your heart muscles do not have the strength to pump blood from the heart’s lower chambers efficiently. People with heart failure tend to retain fluid. This appears as swollen ankles and legs because of excess fluid building up. You may notice that your shoes don’t fit and socks appear tight or leave a prominent indent above the ankle. When the right side of the heart (right ventricle) starts to fail, fluid collects in the feet and lower legs. Puffy leg swelling (oedema) is a sign of right heart failure, especially if the oedema is pitting oedema. With pitting oedema, a finger pressed on the swollen leg leaves an imprint. Early symptoms of heart failure are breathlessness on exertion, fatigue, rapid or irregular heartbeat, exhausting exercise, and leg swelling. It would be best if you saw your cardiologist soon, as it is a serious situation, to salvage yourself from your serious situation. Now, let’s discuss how you could get leg swelling due to kidney issues. As the kidney function begins to fall, sodium retention causes swelling in your shin and ankles. In short, any person noting new onset leg or foot oedema should get an immediate evaluation of their renal function after visiting a nephrologist. Damage to the tiny filtering nephrons can result in nephrotic syndrome; declining levels of the protein albumin in your blood and increasing levels in the urine can cause fluid to build up and result in oedema, most commonly around the ankles and feet. Let’s discuss how you could get leg swelling due to liver disease. Cirrhosis slows the regular flow of blood through the liver. This increases pressure in the vein that brings blood to the liver, causing swelling in the legs and abdomen. The increased pressure in the portal vein can cause fluid to accumulate in the legs, called oedema, and ascites in the abdomen. In Stage 3, cirrhosis of your liver, caused by severe liver scarring, may cause more liver damage symptoms, including jaundice, weakness, fatigue, appetite and weight loss, abdominal bloating, and oedema in your extremities. In most chronic illnesses that cause leg swelling, only symptomatic medication is available to make you feel comfortable, and a complete cure is impossible. I advise that preventive measures are best taken, as it is impossible to complicate the process in this day of ‘indulged’ living. I hope this video article is helpful. Goodbye for now, until we meet again
Beijing, October. 18 (Xinhua): Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday announced eight major steps China will take to support high-quality Belt and Road cooperation.
First, China will build a multidimensional Belt and Road connectivity network, Xi said in a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF).
The country will speed up high-quality development of the China-Europe Railway Express, participate in the trans-Caspian international transportation corridor, and host the China-Europe Railway Express Cooperation Forum, the president said.
He noted that China, together with other parties, will build a new logistics corridor across the Eurasian continent linked by direct railway and road transportation.
We will vigorously integrate ports, shipping and trading services under the ‘Silk Road Maritime,’ and accelerate the building of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor and the Air Silk Road,” he said.
Second, China will support an open world economy, with its total trade in goods and services expected to exceed 32 trillion U.S. dollars and 5 trillion U.S. dollars respectively in the 2024-2028 period, Xi said.
He said the country will establish pilot zones for Silk Road e-commerce cooperation, and enter into free trade agreements and investment protection treaties with more countries.
The country will remove all restrictions on foreign investment access in the manufacturing sector, he said.
Efforts will be made to further advance high-standard opening up in cross-border service trade and investment, expand market access for digital and other products, and deepen reform in areas including the state-owned enterprises, digital economy, intellectual property and government procurement, the president noted.
The country will hold the Global Digital Trade Expo annually, he said.
Third, China will carry out practical cooperation for the BRI. The country will promote both signature projects and small yet smart” livelihood programs, the president said.
He vowed more financing support for BRI projects on the basis of market and business operation, noting that the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China will each set up a 350 billion yuan (48.75 billion U.S. dollars) financing window, and that an additional 80 billion yuan will be injected into the Silk Road Fund.
China will carry out 1,000 small-scale livelihood assistance projects, and enhance vocational education cooperation through Luban Workshops and other initiatives, Xi said, adding that more efforts will be taken to ensure the safety of BRI projects and personnel.
The CEO Conference held during the forum saw the conclusion of agreements worth 97.2 billion U.S. dollars, he said.
Fourth, China will continue to promote green development. The country will further deepen cooperation in areas such as green infrastructure, green energy and green transportation, and step up support for the BRI International Green Development Coalition.
China will continue to hold the BRI Green Innovation Conference, and establish dialogue and exchange mechanisms for the solar industry and a network of experts on green and low-carbon development,” Xi said.
He added that China will implement the Green Investment Principles for the Belt and Road, and provide 100,000 training opportunities for partner countries by 2030.
Fifth, China will continue to advance scientific and technological innovation. China will continue to implement the Belt and Road Science, Technology and Innovation Cooperation Action Plan, and hold the first Belt and Road Conference on Science and Technology Exchange, noted Xi.
The country will also increase the number of joint laboratories built with other Belt and Road parties to 100 in the next five years, and support young scientists from other countries to work on short-term programs in China, he said.
China will put forward the Global Initiative for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Governance at this year’s forum. We stand ready to increase exchanges and dialogue with other countries and jointly promote the sound, orderly and secure AI development in the world,” Xi said.
Sixth, China will support people-to-people exchanges. China will host the Liangzhu Forum to enhance dialogue on civilizations with BRI partner countries, the president said.
In addition to the Silk Road International League of Theaters, the Silk Road International Arts Festival, the International Alliance of Museums of the Silk Road, the Silk Road International Alliance of Art Museums, and the Silk Road International Library Alliance that have been set up, China has also launched the International Tourism Alliance of Silk Road Cities, according to Xi.
China will continue with the Chinese government scholarship Silk Road Program, he noted.
Seventh, China will promote integrity-based Belt and Road cooperation.
Together with its cooperation partners, China will release the Achievements and Prospects of Belt and Road Integrity Building and the High-Level Principles on Belt and Road Integrity Building, and establish the Integrity and Compliance Evaluation System for Companies Involved in Belt and Road Cooperation, Xi announced.
We will also work with international organizations to carry out research and training on promoting integrity in Belt and Road cooperation,” he said.
Eighth, China will strengthen the institutional building for international Belt and Road cooperation.
China will work with its BRI partner countries to strengthen the building of multilateral cooperation platforms covering energy, taxation, finance, green development, disaster reduction, anti-corruption, think tank, media, culture and other fields, Xi said.
China will continue to host the BRF and establish a secretariat for the Forum, he said
A series of preliminary agreements have been signed with the China Exim Bank. An intervention with a double value: to recover as much as possible, given that China is Sri Lanka’s main creditor, and to increase ties with the country in an anti-India perspective
Colombo (AsiaNews) – China is trying to take a leading role in the debt restructuring process of Sri Lanka: the China Exim Bank has in fact entered into a series of preliminary agreements to support Colombo in repaying its debt.
Although Beijing is Sri Lanka’s largest creditor – the island nation owes China around billion – it had previously remained in the shadows and initially played an observer role during Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring negotiations, while Japan, France and India – the other major creditors – had formed a common platform for talks with the government.
Sri Lanka’s objective is to have the executive committee of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) authorize the next tranche of financing of approximately 334 million dollars to be disbursed following an agreement reached between Sri Lanka and China.
Sri Lanka is currently grappling with its worst post-independence financial crisis after its foreign currency fell to record lows, forcing the island nation to default on its external debt in May 2022.
According to senior officials of the Ministry of Finance of Colombo, “the agreement will facilitate approval by the executive board of the International Monetary Fund, including the disbursement of the next tranche of financing of approximately 334 million dollars”.
The deal with China Exim Bank covers a total of .2 billion in outstanding debt. Based on this news, a debt rework between Sri Lanka and countries including Japan, India and France is also expected this week, which constitutes a key step towards restoring Sri Lanka’s long-term debt sustainability and will open up the path to a prompt economic recovery.”
Mayantha Tennakoon, an academic and economic analyst, revealed to Asia News that according to official statistics released by the Ministry of Finance, Sri Lanka’s total external debt at the end of March 2023 stood at 36.4 billion.
According to the IMF’s debt sustainability goals, Sri Lanka plans to reduce its overall debt by almost billion. Sri Lanka is asking its foreign creditors for a 30% haircut. Of this, .3 billion was bilateral debt, .3 billion was multilateral debt to institutions such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Fund, and approximately .7 billion was commercial debt consisting primarily from sovereign bonds”
Former British PM promotes controversial Colombo Port City project at investment conference in the Middle East.
LONDON — It is a multi-billion-dollar plan to build a metropolis in the Indo-Pacific which critics fear may one day act as a Chinese military outpost.
Now the vast Colombo Port City project has a new champion — former British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Cameron has been enlisted to drum up foreign investment in the controversial Sri Lankan project, which is a major part of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative — China’s global infrastructure strategy — and is billed as a Chinese-funded rival to Singapore and Dubai.
Cameron flew to the Middle East in late September to speak at two glitzy investment events for Colombo Port City, having visited the waterside site in Sri Lanka in person earlier this year.
His spokesperson said the former PM had had no direct contact with either the Chinese government or the Chinese firm involved. But Cameron’s lobbying for the scheme has drawn severe backlash from critics, who say his activities will aid China in its geopolitical ambitions.
Former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, who was sanctioned by Beijing for criticizing its human rights record, said: Cameron of all people must realize that China’s Belt and Road is not about help and support and development, it’s ultimately about gaining control — as they’ve already demonstrated in Sri Lanka.
I hope that he will reconsider the position he’s taken on this.”
Tim Loughton, another Tory MP sanctioned by China, said: The Sri Lankan project is a classic example of how China buys votes and influence in developing countries and then sends the bailiffs in when those countries can’t keep up the payments.”
Cameron should be working to help wean vulnerable countries off Chinese influence and debt rather than tying them in more tightly.”
At the roadshow
Dilum Amunugama, Sri Lanka’s investment minister who attended the investment events in the UAE last month, told POLITICO he believed Cameron was enlisted to convince Western investors to put their money into the project.
Amunugama was at two events where Cameron spoke — one in Abu Dhabi with an audience of 100, and one in Dubai with an audience of 300.
The main point he [Cameron] was trying to stress is that it is not a purely Chinese project, it is a Sri Lankan-owned project — and that is the main point I think the Chinese also wanted him to iron out,” Amunugama said.
Cameron is in charge of drumming up investment into the Chinese-funded Colombo Port City project | Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP via Getty Images
The Sri Lankan minister said the decision to enlist Cameron was taken by the Chinese company, not the government.”
Cameron’s office said his involvement was organized by the Washington Speakers Bureau, a D.C.-based agency that books guest speakers for corporate events.
His spokesperson said: David Cameron spoke at two events in the UAE organized via Washington Speakers Bureau (WSB), in support of Port City Colombo, Sri Lanka.
The contracting party for the events was KPMG Sri Lanka and Mr Cameron’s engagement followed a meeting he had with Sri Lanka’s president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, earlier in the year.
“Mr Cameron has not engaged in any way with China or any Chinese company about these speaking events. The Port City project is fully supported by the Sri Lankan government,” his spokesperson added.
The spokesperson declined to say how much Cameron was paid for his time. Cameron traveled to Sri Lanka in January and visited the development, but his office said that he did so as a guest of the president and that there was no commercial aspect to that trip.
Mired in controversy
The Colombo Port City project has been controversial since its inception.
It was unveiled in 2014 by China’s Xi and Sri Lanka’s then-president, Mahinda Rajapaksa. Three years later, Sri Lanka handed it over to Chinese control after struggling to pay off its debt to Chinese firms.
Multiple concerns have been raised about the project, including its environmental impact; U.S. warnings it could be used for money laundering; and fears that it will ultimately be used as a Chinese military outpost.
Analysts have warned repeatedly that China is using the project to extend its strategic influence in the region. Beijing has already used the nearby Hambantota port — also funded by Chinese loans — to dock military vessels.
The main developer behind the Colombo Port City Project, CHEC Port City Colombo Ltd, has pumped in an initial $1.3 billion. Its ultimate owner is the China Communications Construction Company, a majority state-owned enterprise headquartered in Beijing.
Golden era no more
As prime minister, Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne famously heralded a golden era” of U.K. relations with China. Since leaving office in 2016, the ex-PM has come under heavy scrutiny over his lobbying activities, including for the now-collapsed finance company Greensill Capital.
The ex-PM has come under scrutiny for his lobbying activities, including for the now-bankrupt company Greensill Capital | David Hecker/Getty Images
For a period Cameron was also vice-chair of a £1 billion China-U.K. investment fund. The U.K. parliament’s intelligence and security committee said this year that Cameron’s appointment to that role could have been “in some part engineered by the Chinese state to lend credibility to Chinese investment.”
Sam Hogg, a U.K.-China analyst who writes the “Beijing to Britain” briefing, said: As the ISC pointed out, China has a habit of utilizing former senior-ranking politicians to give credibility to their companies and projects.
At a time when the Belt and Road Initiative is under intense scrutiny ahead of its 10th anniversary next week, Cameron’s involvement will raise a few eyebrows.”
Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, added: We can’t have a situation where the EU and U.S. are so concerned about the Belt and Road Initiative that they’re pumping billions into alternative projects, while our own former PM appears to be batting for Beijing.”
Former British Prime Minister David Cameron emphasized the pivotal role of Colombo Port City in Sri Lanka’s economic prosperity during his participation in a promotional event in Dubai. The event’s theme underscored the investment opportunities in the “Now is the time to invest in the port city of Colombo, Sri Lanka.”
It is a multi-billion-dollar plan to build a metropolis in the Indo-Pacific which critics fear may one day act as a Chinese military outpost.
Now the vast Colombo Port City project has a new champion — former British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Cameron has been enlisted to drum up foreign investment in the Sri Lankan project, which is a major part of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative “China’s global infrastructure strategy” and is billed as a Chinese-funded rival to Singapore and Dubai.
Cameron flew to the Middle East in late September to speak at two glitzy investment events for Colombo Port City, having visited the waterside site in Sri Lanka in person earlier this year.
His spokesperson said the former PM had had no direct contact with either the Chinese government or the Chinese firm involved.
Dilum Amunugama, Sri Lanka’s investment minister who attended the investment events in the UAE last month, told POLITICO he believed Cameron was enlisted to convince Western investors to put their money into the project.
Amunugama was at two events where Cameron spoke ” one in Abu Dhabi with an audience of 100, and one in Dubai with an audience of 300.
The main point he [Cameron] was trying to stress is that it is not a purely Chinese project, it is a Sri Lankan-owned project — and that is the main point I think the Chinese also wanted him to iron out,” Amunugama said.
Cameron’s office said his involvement was organized by the Washington Speakers Bureau, a D.C.-based agency that books guest speakers for corporate events.
His spokesperson said: “David Cameron spoke at two events in the UAE organized via Washington Speakers Bureau (WSB), in support of Port City Colombo, Sri Lanka.
The contracting party for the events was KPMG Sri Lanka and Mr Cameron’s engagement followed a meeting he had with Sri Lanka’s president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, earlier in the year.
“Mr Cameron has not engaged in any way with China or any Chinese company about these speaking events. The Port City project is fully supported by the Sri Lankan government,” his spokesperson added.
The spokesperson declined to say how much Cameron was paid for his time. Cameron traveled to Sri Lanka in January and visited the development, but his office said that he did so as a guest of the president and that there was no commercial aspect to that trip.
The Colombo Port City project has been controversial since its inception.
It was unveiled in 2014 by China’s Xi and Sri Lanka’s then-president, Mahinda Rajapaksa. Three years later, Sri Lanka handed it over to Chinese control after struggling to pay off its debt to Chinese firms.
Multiple concerns have been raised about the project, including its environmental impact; U.S. warnings it could be used for money laundering; and fears that it will ultimately be used as a Chinese military outpost.
Analysts have warned repeatedly that China is using the project to extend its strategic influence in the region. Beijing has already used the nearby Hambantota port — also funded by Chinese loans — to dock military vessels.
The main developer behind the Colombo Port City Project, CHEC Port City Colombo Ltd, has pumped in an initial $1.3 billion. Its ultimate owner is the China Communications Construction Company, a majority state-owned enterprise headquartered in Beijing.
Before anyone takes out all the denigrative words & phrases in the dictionary, it would be wiser for them to check out where a God is officially referred in the Constitutions of other states that have a shorter history than Sri Lanka. In the name of God the Father, the Son & the Holy Spirit” has been used in legal documents in the Western world & continue to do so. All Treaties began with an invocation of God. The Federal Constitutions of the US all use year of our Lord” & reference to God as Almighty. Likewise all of the majority Muslim nations too make no apologies when declaring their supreme is Allah. Why is it wrong for only Sri Lanka not to seal its Buddhist heritage that is far longer than the West or Muslim nations.
God is mentioned in the Constitutions of the following countries:
Algeria, Antigua & Barbuda (Supremacy of God”), Albania (faith in God”), Australia (blessings of the Almighty God”), Argentina (invoking the protection of God”), Bahamas (respect for Christian values” Supremacy of God”), Brazil (Protectiono f God”), Canada (Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God”), Cook Islands (name of God, the Almighty”), Fiji (blessings of God”), Georgia (proclaim this Constitution before God”), Germany (responsibility before God”), Greece (name of the Holy & Consubstantinal”), Hungary (role of Christianity in preserving nationhood”), Indonesia (grace of God Almighty”), Liberia (gratitude to God for our existence”), Madagascar (belief in God the creator”), Nicaragua (belief in God”), Norway (our values remain from our Christian & humanist heritage”), Papua New Guinea (Christian principles… under the guiding hand of God”), Paraguay (pleading to God”), Peru (invoking Almighty God”), Poland (believe in God”), Russia (belief in God”), Rwanda (trusting in God Almighty”), Samoa (is a Christian nation”), South Africa (May God protect our people”), Sweden (Grace of God Almighty”), Switzerland (in the name of Almighty God”), Ukraine (our responsibility before God”), Vanuatu (faith in God & Christian principles”), Venezuela (invoking protection of God”),
The Irish Constitution invokes God & Jesus in its Preamble & is cited in Supreme Court rulings too. Canada too mentions God in the preamble to the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms.
Bahrain (in the name of God”), Bangladesh (in the name of Allah”), Iran (Islamic Republic”), Kuwait (in the name of Allah”), Mauritiana (Omnipotence of Allah”), Pakistan (sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to Allah”), Philippines (Almighty God”), Tunisia (in the name of God”)
There are 46 majority Muslim countries of which 23 declare Islam as State religion in their constitutions. Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
The official motto of US is In God we trust” since 1956. It appears on all US currency. US is a created country alienating & discriminating those that lived on that land for centuries. Yet, a 2003 poll by US Today/CNN/Gallup claim 90% Americans support inscription In God we Trust”. Govt institution also display it. It appears above the rostrum of the Speaker in the House of Representatives. It is now mandatory in public schools even at State level. Inspite of objections, the US highest court continues to uphold the constitutionality of the phrase in God we trust”. The US likes to show the world it is secular” but when God we trust is on all currency & mandatory on public places – how can it be called secular simply because the word God is not mentioned in the Constitution. Official holidays are all Christian.
In UK – oath taking phrase is I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, his heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God” – even non-Christians have to declare this oath!
Anyone arguing Sri Lanka should not be a Buddhist nation must first explain why it is ok for the above nations to be Christian/Islamic !
The irony is that the very nations that promote the new façade of multiculturalism” have entrenched Christianity/Islam as their State religion but present the notion that they are secular” and use their media to fool the world. It is without a doubt, these states give prominence to Christianity/Islam while other faiths do not enjoy privileges anywhere near those that the non-Buddhists enjoy in Sri Lanka.
The current Israeli-Palestinian issue has brought out the hypocrisies of the countries that promote secularism” multiculturalism” human rights” – all are simply in voice claiming to stand with Israel”. The question is not about who is right or wrong, but when we know innocent people on both sides are dying & suffering, how wrong is it for the powerful western nations to claim to side with just one party! This incident has exposed them badly and strengthens Sri Lanka’s case.
Sri Lanka’s Buddhist heritage is not a religion, it’s not even a philosophy, essentially there is no proper word suited to describe the doctrines that Buddha covered in his teachings – he was the world’s first psychologist, the world’s first doctor, the world’s first teacher, the world’s first economist and many more. All that the western world claims to have invented” was spoken about by Buddha first. This was why his teachings spread to all corners of the world without a need for any sword or forced conversions. It was after forced conversions that humanity began to decline.
It was during the times where people lived by Buddha’s principles that our civilization thrived with great marvels, great leaders with humane & compassionate people. Today, we are living in a capitalist materialistic world where only the fittest can survive. No one cares about the weaker, in fact depopulation agendas specifically target the old, the weak & the poor. Humans have become plagued with barbarian mindsets. These are times that Buddha’s discourses and thoughts provide self-salvation & these are reasons why many across the western world are embracing Buddha, realizing they do not require to convert or pay tithe. There is a path that they are welcome to follow and that path has no discrimination, no agendas. Buddhism is not about simply rituals or ceremonies. Of course the Sinhala civilization that adopted Buddhism merged customs & rituals. Yet, the social contract of pansil” taken by all Buddhists in the morning & evening is the most powerful contract & to be regarded as possessing a far greater role than any piece of paper that declares laws & regulations. The social contract of pansil pledges people in thought & deed and this is what needs to be harnessed extending thereafter to other realms. It is this key factor that is being subtly targeted by tapping weak Buddhists to destroy Buddhism from within & funding external entities to equally destroy Buddhism in a two-prone attack. Why are there so many well-funded initiatives against Buddhism/Buddhists & Buddhist clergy? It is because those that fund them see Buddhism as a threat & wish to nullify this using our own & whatever methods possible (cartoons/trumped up allegations/calculated framing etc).
Nevertheless, when nations that distanced itself from Buddhism is now using it as a soft power diplomatic tool, the power of what is inherent in Buddhism cannot & should not be erased by any new constitution or foreign funded initiatives.
If Buddhism was state religion prior to invader rule & lasted well over 2500 years, even followed by South Indian invaders during their rule, while even the 3 western colonial rulers also accepted its place, shouldn’t the bhoomiputhrayos seal Buddhism as State Religion of Sri Lanka? They most certainly, should!
One of modern history’s major empires is falling apart right now, right before our eyes. Yet precious few in the media have reported on this extraordinary event, much less offered any analysis of its implications for the fast-changing shape of global power.
Over the past 60 years, France has used every possible diplomatic device, overt and covert, fair and foul, to incorporate some 14 African nations into a neocolonial imperium called Françafrique” — a vast region covering a quarter of Africa and stretching for nearly 3,000 miles from Senegal on the Atlantic coast to Chad in the continent’s center.
While the rest of that continent frequently suffered from wars, coups, and chronic instability, Françafrique long enjoyed comparative peace. By dispatching paratroopers from its many African bases (or secret agents for the occasional assassination), Paris provided a rough version of stability — even if at the price of endemic corruption, entrenched autocratic rule, and deep economic exploitation. Recently, however, a rising nationalist consciousness in many of those relatively new countries has begun chafing against that European land’s repeated transgressions of their sovereignty. As French colonial and post-colonial dominance over this vast region moved ever deeper into its second century, unease bordering on open hostility against that country’s presence began to build.
In less than a year, in fact, the sudden withdrawal of French troops from individual African nations has turned into a full-blown retreat from much of the region. As terrorists affiliated with ISIS first became active in 2014, France deployed some 5,000 elite troops for Operation Barkhane in collaboration with six nations of Africa’s arid Sahel region, the strip of territory extending across the continent, largely south of the Sahara Desert.
Yet just last December, French troops left the Central African Republic after Paris decided that the local government there was complicit in an anti-French campaign allegedly steered by Russia.” In February, Burkino Faso’s new military government simply expelled French forces and hailed its new strategic partnership” with Russia. And in August, following back-to-back coups in Mali, that country’s ruling junta grew resentful of the 2,400 French troops stationed there and forced them to withdraw into neighboring Niger, which became the new main base for their operations in the Sahel region. Then, last month, French President Emmanuel Macron was forced to announce that he was pulling his troops and his ambassador out of Niger as well. After seizing power in July, that country’s new military junta had demanded just such a French departure and, to drive the point home, closed its airspace to France. Imperialist and neocolonialist forces are no longer welcome on our national territory,” the junta announced.
Amid such geopolitical upheaval, a most unlikely man from Moscow appeared on the spot in 2017. His name — now all too well known — was Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder and commander of a notorious mercenary army, the Wagner Group. As the French retreated slowly and exceedingly reluctantly from their post-colonial imperium, Wagner began moving in, becoming Moscow’s surrogate in an ongoing great-power contest for influence and control in Africa.
By the time in late 2022 that France’s failing nine-year effort to secure the Sahel was drawing down, Wagner’s forces were already operating secret gold mines in Sudan, running the largest gold mine in the Central African Republic with projected revenues of $100 million annually, and had earned $200 million since 2021 providing security for Mali, a land roiled by Islamist rebels. In March, Washington warned Chad’s president that Wagner mercenaries were plotting to assassinate him and were also preparing Chadian rebels to attack from their bases in the Central African Republic. After the July coup in Niger, cheering crowds were seen waving (as well as wearing) Russian flags. And as 1,500 French troops and that country’s ambassador were being withdrawn, Niger’s new military leaders promptly contacted Wagner for support, expanding Russia’s sphere of influence in the French imperium it was fast supplanting.
The strategic implications of this shift, should it continue, are potentially profound. As the NATO alliance moved ever closer to Russia’s sensitive western border in the 1990s, Moscow reacted early in this century (prior to the invasion of 2022) with repeated interventions in Ukraine, launched special operations to secure its allies in Central Asia, and, above all, engaged in a little understood geopolitical flanking maneuver across two continents.
The thrust of that move started in 2015 when Moscow leapfrogged over the NATO barrier of Turkey to open a massive air base at Latakia in northern Syria. Soon, Russian planes had reduced rebel-held cities like Aleppo to rubble. In 2021, leapfrogging again, this time over the close American ally Israel, Russia began supplying Egypt with two dozen of its advanced Sukhoi-35 jet fighters so its airmen could compete with Israelis flying advanced American F-35 fighter planes, which Washington refused to supply to Cairo. Completing Moscow’s southern push in the region, Russian President Vladimir Putin began building upon their shared interests as oil exporters to try to befriend Saudi Arabia’s functional leader, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, becoming so close by late last year that Western observers began to express concern about the possible loss of a key ally.
The final geopolitical pivot in Russia’s recent maneuvering proved particularly controversial and so initially remained significantly covert: the Wagner Group was used to extend Russia’s influence country by country, deal by dirty deal, across the Sahel. Should this process continue successfully into the near future, Moscow will have flanked Europe (and so the U.S. as well) by forming a geopolitical arc of influence sweeping south through the Middle East and extending west across the whole of the Sahel that stretches from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.
For this maneuver to succeed, however, the end of French neocolonialism proved crucial. To appreciate the historical significance of the impending fall of Paris’s post-colonial empire, it’s important to understand something of its tangled history — otherwise it would be hard to grasp the full import of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s extraordinary role as the man on the spot in extending Russia’s influence into Africa for the first time since the Cold War.
The Hidden History of Françafrique
As the bitter, bloody French colonial war in Algeria was winding down to defeat in 1960, President de Gaulle realized that the age of empire was ending and used his enormous prestige to grant independence to 14 West African nations. Yet his move was far from altruistic. As part of his vision of France as an independent global power, he began working to create a post-colonial sphere of influence by subsuming the new nations into an exclusive French zone called Françafrique.
While de Gaulle’s visionary rhetoric inspired an independent foreign policy, his man of the shadows,” presidential adviser Jacques Foccart, built a full-scale covert apparatus for a post-colonial imperium that became the dark underside of the grand Gaullist state. During his service under Gaullist governments from 1960 to 1997, the shadowy Foccart used the state’s clandestine agency, Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage, to maintain a deft, delicate synergy between metropolitan power in France and covert control of Francophone Africa. As head of de Gaulle’s political party and architect of its secret services, he would become the key link between the French executive and Françafrique’s African leaders, whom he personally selected, befriended, and defended with covert action.
At the moment of independence in 1960, Foccart bound all of those former colonies (except Guinea) to Paris by defense agreements that granted France military bases and the right of armed intervention in each country. In the process, he also developed treaties meant to secure strategic materials (cobalt, copper, oil, and uranium) from those countries, as well as a common currency pegged to the French franc that would ensure control of their economies.
Under this postcolonial iteration of informal empire, French troops shuttled in and out of West Africa, conducting more than 40 military interventions between 1960 and 2002, while maintaining a permanent presence at a half-dozen military bases on the continent. Although the rest of Africa suffered 188 coup attempts from 1956 to 2001, the readiness of the French military to quash any such effort provided Françafrique with what political scientist Crawford Young called an effective inoculation against conspiracies” and so minimized and even controlled coups. Despite vivid personality cults, systemic corruption, and state terror, French complicity in all of the above assured its African allies of an extraordinary political longevity — exemplified by Omar Bongo who ruled Gabon for more than four decades.
With its lucrative oil concessions and its full integration into Foccart’s network, the exemplary state in Françafrique was undoubtedly Gabon — an unbearably poor country of 500,000 people that was surprisingly rich in natural resources. Three years after independence in 1960, as the country’s president lay dying of cancer in a Paris hospital, Foccart picked Omar Bongo, a veteran of French intelligence with no political base, as the ailing president’s running mate in the next election. That ticket then captured 99.5% of the vote, assuring that Bongo, though still just 31 years old, would succeed the president at his death six months later.
As Gabon’s political opposition revived in 1971, Foccart’s office dispatched the infamous mercenary Bob Denard as a technical adviser” to President Bongo. Not surprisingly, when an influential opposition leader arrived home one night from the movies, an assassin stepped from the shadows and killed him, also wounding his wife and child. His body was never recovered.
During the long years of his rule, French officials enabled Bongo’s graft, making him a principal shareholder in that country’s lucrative Elf-Total oil company and facilitating illicit payments to him — estimated at $111 million a year — that were only exposed at the 2003 corruption trial of the company’s chief executive.
When he died in 2009 after a rule of 42 years, London’s Telegraphreported that he had looted revenues from the nation’s 2.5 billion barrel oil reserve to become one of the world’s richest men,” while elevating corruption to a method of government.” His son Ali-Ben Bongo succeeded him as president, inheriting, along with his siblings, 39 luxury properties in France worth $190 million and a country with a third of its population living on two dollars a day.
The son continued many of his father’s policies, including ruthlessly rigging the 2016 election by enforcing a 99% turnout in key districts. In August, however, after one too many rigged elections and amid an eruption of coups across the region that marked the fading of France’s post-colonial power, Ali Bongo was finally toppled by a military coup, ending a dynasty that had lasted nearly six decades.
Advent of Moscow’s Africa Man
To challenge that French post-colonial imperium built by cunning, corruption, and covert skullduggery, Moscow needed an operative who could match Jacques Foccart’s legendary mastery of the dirty business of empire, measure for measure. And it found him in the person of Yevgeny Prigozhin, one of those quixotic, improbable adventurers who, over the past two centuries, have served as the vanguards of new forms of empire.
Who was that extraordinary individual whose personal initiative shook up the world order in Africa, establishing a Russian mercenary troop presence and ties to governments in at least seven African countries? Emerging from Soviet prisons after a 10-year term for a teenage mugging spree, Prigozhin rose, through Vladimir Putin’s patronage, from a hot-dog vendor on the streets of St. Petersburg to a millionaire caterer for Russian schools and troops.
In 2014, his Wagner group of mercenaries first appeared as the shadowy little green men” during the Russian seizure of Crimea and then moved on to Syria where they engaged in a war of atrocities. Between conflicts, his troll army fired off disinformation barrages meant to influence the 2016 presidential elections in the United States. As French influence in the Sahel was challenged by terrorist groups, Prigozhin inserted his Wagner mercenaries into the fissures being opened by the ending of Paris’ post-colonial empire and turned those cracks into gaping holes.
When in 2022, as the first year of the Ukraine war was ending with Russian troops suffering demoralizing defeats at Kharkiv and Kherson, Prigozhin expanded his Wagner Syrian and African franchises to Ukraine, fielding some 50,000 convicts as troops for Putin’s military, a force that took heavy casualties while winning the battle for the devastated Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Instead of celebrating his victory, Progozhin was growing ever more dissatisfied with Russia’s military chiefs.
These are Wagner lads who died today,” he shouted on camera while pointing at a pile of corpses. Those bastards who don’t give us ammunition, we will fucking eat their guts in fucking hell!” Within weeks his war of words had escalated into open conflict in Russia itself. In late June, Wagner’s troops were suddenly on the road to Moscow — smashing through barriers, shooting down Russian aircraft, and raising doubts about Vladimir Putin’s grip on power.
Flailing desperately to survive after defying Putin and halting the advance of his troops on Moscow, Prigozhin returned to Africa, landing in his private jet at Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic where his Wagner Group has gold mines and a security contract. After a private meeting with that country’s president on August 18th, he flew on to Mali and drove out into the desert where he produced what would turn out to be his last video ever. Holding an assault rifle, he proclaimed: The Wagner PMC [private military company] makes Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa more free.” Five days later, his private jet crashed on a flight from Moscow, killing Prigozhin and everyone else on board.
Even though Prigozhin was undoubtedly assassinated (like so many of Putin’s critics), his extraordinary relationship with Africa highlights an overlooked aspect of modern empires in what still passes for the post-imperial age. Despite the oft-cited role of military power in creating and maintaining them, individuals have often emerged from the covert realm to play surprisingly significant parts in the making of the post-modern version of empire.
Instead of the gentlemen adventurers of the British imperial age, our modern analogues are usually, like Prigozhin, covert operatives, often from anything but gentlemanly backgrounds. And count on one thing: as the struggle to shape and control northern Africa continues through what will undoubtedly be countless new chapters, Prigozhin will not be the last of those extraordinary secret agents, those men on the spot, who leave their fingerprints on the crime scenes of world history.
There is no way India, Pakistan and Bangladesh could have existed as one independent nation. They did the right thing by partitioning it ultimately into 3 nations. Similarly, there is no way Israelis and Palestinians can coexist as one nation. A two-state solution was proposed for Israel and Palestine. Though parties have agreed to in principle, they sharply differ on borders. Both sides want more. Due to this greed the two-state solution remains elusive. It costs both sides dearly in terms of blood and treasure. The never-ending Israel-Palestine conflict rages on without an end.
Sanity must prevail to overcome man-made problems in that part of the world and move forward toward beneficial nations for both parties.
Funnily enough Sri Lankans have also been harping on the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine! It is easier said than done. When the problem is someone else’s advice takes the form of philosophical abstracts. But when the problem is yours, the solutions are more practical. Sri Lanka’s internal conflicts have killed approximately 200,000 since 1948. Since 1948 close to 130,000 Israelis and Palestinians have been killed from conflict. Two-state solutions were proposed for Sri Lanka too but were rejected by both parties. Both wanted more land. One side wanted the entire island while the other wanted more than their equitable share. Although Sri Lanka managed to overcome its own terrorist threat, not for long. It came up again in 2019 and given significant global financial support, it is a matter of time since Sri Lanka is also turned into another war zone. Still, most Sri Lankans don’t support the two-state solution. As such how can they expect Israelis and Palestinians to support a two-state solution.
It seems to be the destiny of small nations with large ethnic diversity. They are doomed to suffer poverty, war and hopelessness by the actions and greed of their own people funded and instigated by external parties.
As Israelis and Palestinians fight over a religious shrine holy to both, Sri Lankans fight over religious shrines holy to both major ethnic groups. All parties have only grabbed on to the symbolic significance of those shrines and have forgotten about the substance of why they became sacred in the first place. If giving up certain burdens gives peace and prosperity, they must be given up. That’s what all teachings preach.
Nations never visited by major religious and spiritual leaders do very well in terms of peace and prosperity.
Aba – the mega Sinhala movie Aba, the mega Sinhala movie directed by the versatile filmmaker Jackson Anthony, constitutes an impressive cinematic adventure for both its creators and its audiences.
The film is a historical epic based on an independent and informed reconstruction of the Pandukabhaya story found in The Great Chronicle (the Mahavansa) of the Sinhalese. While providing a valuable opportunity for a delightful engagement of the aesthetic sense of the many local and foreign cinema-goers that it is sure to attract, it will boost the morale of the Sri Lankan people by dramatizing a most plausible explanation of their truly heroic origins, controversial though this may prove. However, I personally believe that Jackson Anthony is as much concerned with maintaining a reasonable balance between the commercial success of his film and its artistic excellence as with ensuring, within permissible limits, the historical accuracy and verisimilitude of the details presented, and that, if this is truly the case, there is nothing blameworthy about it. Aba can legitimately claim the status of epic cinema.
Dealing with the childhood and adolescence (the early years of life from birth to the age of sixteen) of the title hero, the film presents human drama on a magnificent scale. Its production costs are a staggering (for a developing country like ours) 60 million rupees. The filmmaker has gone to great lengths in his attempt to choose the right location for shooting his epic venture, and to construct the appropriate sets so as to create the feel and atmosphere of the 5th century BCE Lanka.
The historical setting is rendered further captivating by the addition of rich fantasy. The drama that is acted out against this backdrop is an imperial conflict (because it concerns a matter of royal succession) that determines the course of the history of a whole country and its people. This central conflict is between Pandu Aba, the royal prince condemned to death even before his birth, and his murderous challengers who are none other than his own uncles. (In media releases before the launch of the film Jackson Anthony was careful to stress the fact that this conflict was not between two ethnic groups, but between two clans or tribes for supremacy.)
To create an authentic representation of the progress of events resulting from this discord the filmmaker uses a very large cast of ordinary people in supporting roles with the main cast comprising well over ten actors of established fame. These epic features of the film are complemented by an enchanting musical score by a reputed musician and fascinating dance sequences by an acclaimed choreographer. Drama in this case involves the precarious survival of Aba the young prince in the face of repeated attempts made on his life by his uncles hell-bent on murdering him in order to thwart the course of destiny predicted for their nephew that he would, on coming of age, kill all of them to become king; but the protection afforded by his natural and supernatural guardians makes possible the successful completion of his education and military training under the Brahmin tutor Pandula. The clash that occupies the whole film is that between Pandu Aba who represents the dominant native tribe the Yakkhas and his uncles, the brothers of his mother who are actually considered as foreign invaders. Pandu Aba’s miraculous survival and his triumphal emergence out of a dangerous childhood into promising adulthood as a patriotic warrior in the end mark the resolution of the central conflict. Historically, the real struggle between the uncles and the nephew starts only after this and is outside the scope of the film Aba. However, the events covered in the film determine the direction of the nation’s history, which confirms the epic character of Aba, the movie. For most non-Sri Lankans the film’s appeal may be almost entirely due to its high cinematic quality, its magical fantasy, spectacle, music, and pageantry.
Local audiences, however, will find something strongly inspiring in it in addition to its unmistakable art. The excellent quality of the film results from the effortless assimilation of its central message into the complex art that it bodies forth. It is because of this that they walk out of the cinemas after the show with their minds imbued with a sense of pride in being native to this country. It is ennobling for us to realize that we have a far more heroic, honourable ancestry than the traditionally claimed ‘Aryan’ roots (though the ‘Hela’ language most probably acquired its Indo-European character as a result of north Indian influence including conquest).
The founders of our nation stood up to foreign invaders from India and prevailed. Pandukabhaya (Pandu Aba) was the heroic warrior prince who saved the country from continued foreign domination and brought the various tribes together to forge a single nation. This, of course, runs counter to the Mahavansa tradition according to which Prince Vijaya from north India was the progenitor of the Sinhalese race. What Jackson Anthony has in effect done is a kind of ‘deconstructing’ (to use the term in an informal sense) of the Pandukabhaya account of the Mahavansa. There cannot be any doubt in the minds of those who have done even a cursory reading of the Mahavansa that its author Thera Mahanama meant it to be a record of what was then popularly believed to be the history of the island from the arrival of the north Indian conqueror to the 5th century CE when the book was composed in fulfillment of a royal commission given by King Dhatusena. It is true that it could be regarded as a work of literature: a poem in the Pali language conforming to the rules of a specific literary genre that originated in India; it can also be described as a historical religious poem that enumerates the services of the pious monarchs of Lanka to the Buddhist church. However, the Mahavansa cannot be dismissed as mere fiction. It is a sophisticated work that grew out of previous similar works and contemporary oral traditions as the author himself hints at the beginning.
When shorn of literary embellishments and other elements of poetic license – determined in part most probably by deliberate design as the work was commissioned by the king in a time of trouble due to external threats to the state, the Mahavansa is revealed to have a solid factual base. With all its shortcomings as history the Mahavansa remains a cherished national monument. In the opinion of a fair number of authoritative scholars the details of the Pandukabhaya legend in the Mahavansa suggest the likelihood that there was a struggle between the native royals and the successors of the conqueror Vijaya, who were Indian aliens.
In prelaunch comments on Aba in the media Jackson Anthony has made his patriotic goal clear: to serve the country of his birth by providing “a cinematic insight into the perennial question that has plagued the Mahavansa”. The question relates to the mystery about the identity of Pandukabhaya’s father. Jackson Anthony the historian explains for us the genealogy of Dutugemunu, the warrior prince from Ruhuna who rid the country of foreign rule in the 2nd century BCE thus: Dutugemunu’s father was Kavan Tissa, Kavan Tissa’s Gothabhaya, Gothabhaya’s Yathala Tissa, Yathala Tissa’s Mahanaga, Mahanaga’s Mutasiva, and Mutasiva’s Pandukabhaya, and poses the question as to who Pandukabhaya’s father was.
The filmmaker’s self-assigned patriotic mission is, as stated above, to stimulate a creative insight into the question through the medium of cinema. Says Jackson Anthony, “In this endeavour we shall strive to reawaken the origins of the illustrious Royal Dynasty of the Ruhuna, which is shrouded in mystery and has been a subject of great debate and controversy. As is fashionable among some academic and scholarly circles, it is inappropriate to consider as myths, the stories or legends revealing the birth of a nation, be they orally carried or recorded.
The enduring historic and human relationships ingrained in those legends, tales or stories, have a timeless and universal value. We are strongly persuaded to believe that our cinematic effort to bring forth this exposition involving an epochal event, (the) birth and the childhood of Pandukabhaya that occurred about 2300 years ago in the history of this nation – will help instill a great measure of positive thinking into our present-day society whose consciousness has been unremittingly ravaged by centuries of colonial bondage and such other disconcerting experiences”.
Although there is a gap of sixteen centuries between the Mahavansa and the film Aba, in terms of topicality in their respective periods they have great affinity with each other. The Mahavansa was composed when the country was facing the threat of foreign invasion. The film Aba has a similar relationship to the current situation in the country embattled with a separatist terrorism. Hence both are of great national significance. In spite or rather because of this, there is the possibility of adverse criticism leveled against Jackson Anthony’s attempt as being an exercise in tribalism, as it is usual in Sri Lanka nowadays for any talk of patriotism to be reviled as an advocacy of racism. However, there is nothing in the film that any section of the Sri Lankan community could take exception to, for it speaks for the whole country.
Turning now to the entertainment aspect, the artistes and the technical staff should be commended for a job well done. Malani Fonseka (as Bhaddakachchayana, the Sakyan princess who is brought to Lanka to be consecrated queen to King Panduvasudeva), Ravindra Randeniya (Brahmin Pandula who trains Pandu Aba), Sabitha Perera (Unmaada Chitthra, the last and eleventh child, and the only girl born to Bhaddakachchayana), Kanchana Kodituwakku (Diga Gamini who secretly visits the well-guarded Chitthra), and Neil Alles (Panduvasudeva, the third and youngest son of King Vijaya’s brother Sumitta, sent to Lanka to succeed Vijaya as the latter had no son of his own to be his heir) – all these act with a clear conception of their roles. Bimal Jayakody and Wasantha Moragoda play convincingly the deeply emotional roles of the two apparently very popular Yaksha generals Chitthra Raja and Kalawela put to death by Panduvasudeva for failure to protect Unmaada Chitthra being secret allies of Diga Gamini. The young duo Saumya Liyanage and Dulani Anuradha – obviously well trained in fighting and dancing – bring to life the roles of Habara and Gumbaka Butha who are entrusted with the task of conveying the royal baby to Doramandalawa, by putting up a spirited performance. Jackson Anthony’s son Sajitha Anutthara plays the title role of Aba, Pandukabhaya. Music is by Nadeeka Guruge, photography by Suminda Weerasinghe and choreography by Chandana Weerasinghe.
The lyrics are by Professor Sunil Ariyaratne. I wish to reserve special praise for Jackson Anthony for his rare creativity and unmatched versatility. The common English idiom ‘Jack of all trades (master of none)’ usually applied to a person who can do many different jobs, but none of them so well, could be given an absolutely positive twist in the case of our Jackson Anthony thus: ‘A Jack of all trades, and master of many’. He is an actor, a director, a singer, a scholar, a scriptwriter, a novelist, a lyricist, an explorer, a traveler, and a communicator par excellence.
Rohana R. Wasala (The original review of Jackson Anthony’s mega Sinhala cinematic creation ABA {2008} reproduced above was first published in the SATmag supplement of The Island on September 6, 2008. The text is unchanged. It remains the same as it was written fifteen years ago.)
China is hosting its third international forum centered around President Xi Jinping’s signature policy, the Belt and Road Initiative, which over the past 10 years has built infrastructure across continents, burdening some smaller countries with debt.
FILE – Russia’s President Vladimir Putin arrives at Beijing Capital International Airport to attend the third Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. Putin landed in Beijing on Tuesday, on his first trip outside th…Show moreThe Associated Press
BEIJING — China is hosting its third international forum centered around President Xi Jinping’s signature policy, the Belt and Road Initiative, which over the past 10 years has built infrastructure across continents, burdening some smaller countries with debt.
The forum brings a flurry of diplomacy to Beijing, including at least 20 heads of state and government, mostly hailing from developing markets in Southeast and South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
Here are some key leaders visiting Beijing and an overview of their countries’ involvement in the Belt and Road projects.
RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN
Russian President Vladimir Putin landed in Beijing on Tuesday, on his first trip outside the former Soviet Union since the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for him in March over his alleged involvement in the mass abduction of children from Ukraine.
Putin’s visit underscores China’s economic and diplomatic support for Moscow amid the isolation brought by its war in Ukraine. In an interview with Chinese state media ahead of his visit, Putin described BRI projects – which the U.S. has called a debt trap” for smaller countries – as China’s desire for cooperation” in the global arena.
Russia has been aiming to redirect trade toward Asia after being shut out by the European Union over its Ukraine war. China-Russia trade soared 30% in the first half of the year and is expected to exceed $200 billion this year, according to the Russian government. One of Russia’s priorities in terms of joint infrastructure projects with China is building the Power of Siberia-2 pipeline, which is set to traverse Mongolia and enable Moscow to sell more natural gas to China.
SRI LANKAN PRESIDENT RANIL WICKREMESINGHE
Sri Lanka, along with Zambia, is one of the countries that have defaulted on their debt to China and other international lenders. The country’s former president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, stepped down in July 2022 amid protests over soaring inflation and a severe economic crisis. Sri Lanka had accessed Chinese financing to build highways, a port, an airport and a coal power plant, raking in $7 billion in debt. As part of its efforts to repay Beijing, Colombo handed it over control of a strategic port, in a move often referenced by BRI critics as an example of China’s debt trap” diplomacy.
Last week, Sri Lanka reached an agreement with the Import-Export Bank of China to cover about $4.2 billion of that debt as part of a broader restructuring plan involving deals with other international creditors including India and Japan.
Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took office last year, is attending the forum as part of his first official trip to China. He is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Xi.
KENYAN PRESIDENT WILLIAM RUTO
One of the key BRI projects in Africa is the Mombasa-Nairobi Railway, extending for 592 kilometers (368 miles) and connecting Kenya’s largest port to its capital. Opened in 2017, China touts the project as a success story, saying it has supported Kenya’s economic growth. But work on a second section of the railway, which was meant to reach neighboring Uganda and serve other landlocked countries halted after Kampala pulled out and opted instead for a partnership with a Turkish firm. Kenya owes about $6 billion to China, according to national data. President William Ruto is expected to explore funding options for the remaining section of the railway during the Belt and Road summit.
INDONESIAN PRESIDENT JOKO WIDODO
In Southeast Asia, one of the most prominent BRI projects has been the construction of a high-speed 142-kilometer (88-mile) railway linking Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, to the economic hub of Bandung. Indonesian President Joko Widodo inaugurated the $7.3 billion China-funded project earlier this month.
He is expected to meet Xi and discuss a plan to extend the railway by about 700 kilometers (435 miles) to the city of Surabaya, as well as new potential investments in renewable energy projects and trade.
HUNGARIAN PRIME MINISTER VIKTOR ORBAN
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is the only E.U. head of state or government to attend the Belt and Road forum. Hungarian media reports last month suggested a Chinese-backed railway project connecting Budapest with Belgrade has hit snags and China would halt funding. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi earlier this month told his Hungarian counterpart the project would continue as planned.
Orban’s participation as the sole E.U. leader at the event comes in contrast with the 2019 edition of the forum when then-Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni attended right as Italy had formally joined the initiative. Italy this year signaled its intention to drop out of the scheme as major China-backed infrastructure projects haven’t materialized, while Italy’s trade deficit with China has more than doubled, to 48 billion euros (around $50 billion), since 2019.
ARGENTINA’S PRESIDENT ALBERTO FERNANDEZ
Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez also arrived in Beijing on Tuesday. Argentina is one of the countries that joined the BRI relatively recently, in 2022, seeking Chinese investment in areas such as railways, nuclear energy, solar and hydropower, agriculture and digital infrastructure. Argentina has asked China to fully finance a new $8.3 billion nuclear power plant.
China’s focus in Latin America lies in green technology and the extraction of minerals, according to experts. Chinese companies are involved in dozens of lithium extraction projects in Argentina and Chile, according to research by Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales in Buenos Aires.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin Photo: mfa.gov.c China will continue to support its financial institutions in actively negotiating with relevant parties, and is willing to work together with relevant countries and international organizations to assist Sri Lanka in addressing its difficulties, easing its debt burden and achieving sustainable development, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Tuesday.
Responding to media questions regarding the help China has provided for Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring and the progress of the debt resolution work, Wang said: “As a friendly neighbor and sincere friend, China closely follows the difficulties and challenges Sri Lanka faces and has been providing assistance within its capacity for Sri Lanka’s economic and social development.”
From last year, Chinese financial institutions have maintained close communication with relevant parties on Sri Lanka debt, actively engaged in bilateral negotiations, timely provided financing support to Sri Lanka, and helped Sri Lanka secure loans from the International Monetary Fund.
Chinese financial institutions, as observers, have participated in the creditors meetings, maintained friendly communication with other creditors, and shared progress on debt resolution.
In late September, the Export-Import Bank of China, as an official creditor, reached a preliminary agreement with Sri Lanka on the disposal of Chinese debt.
Wang said: “We are pleased to see that other creditors are now discussing debt resolution plans for Sri Lanka,” while highlighting China’s stance in providing support to its domestic financial institutions in negotiating with relevant parties over the matter.
“We also call on multilateral institutions and commercial creditors to participate jointly in Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring and share responsibilities fairly,” the spokesperson said.
China and Sri Lanka have long maintained a close relationship of mutual support and understanding, regardless of how the international situation changes.
However, since Sri Lanka fell into an economic crisis, some Western forces have been seeking to undercut China-Sri Lanka bilateral ties with the “debt trap” and other narratives.
Speaking to the Global Times in an previous interview, Ali Sabry, Sri Lanka’s foreign minister said: “I think some media outlets use it to advance their agendas…Chinese investment was and has been very important to us. Sri Lanka had been depressed for 26 years. No investment was forthcoming. Everybody was adopting an empty approach, but the Chinese investment came and propelled the growth in Sri Lanka. Therefore, we are very grateful for that.”
Regarding the country’s economic problems, Sabry said there were multiple factors including bad policies, the pandemic and global geopolitical tensions.
“We are not going to blame somebody else for that and we need to take ownership of that. We had serious policy deficiencies. We are now addressing those issues, overcoming them, and getting back to a sustainable way forward,” Sabry said.
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Indonesian President Joko Widodo or Jokowi welcomed Sri Lanka‘s desire to establish a preferential trade agreement or PTA with Indonesia. Jokowi made the statement during bilateral talks with President Ranil Wickremesinghe on the sidelines of the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China, on Tuesday, Oct. 17.
According to the Palace’s Press Bureau, the trade volume between Indonesia and Sri Lanka declined by 27.5 percent in 2022. Therefore, joint efforts are needed to increase the value of trade between the two countries,” as read in the press statement released by the Presidential Secretariat without elaborating on the details.
PTA is a trade bloc that gives preferential access to certain products from participating countries. This is done by reducing, but not eliminating, tariffs. It is the initial stage of economic integration.
During the meeting, Jokowi also asked Sri Lanka to revoke its policy of banning the import of Indonesian palm oil, underlining that palm oil is the country’s leading commodity produced by paying attention to environmental standards.
I propose the establishment of a special mechanism to reopen access to the Indonesian palm oil market in Sri Lanka,” Jokowi said.
Sri Lanka banned the import of palm oil, including from Indonesia, in April 2021, a decision that then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa said was aimed at ridding the country of palm oil plantations and consumption.
Additionally, Jokowi and Ranil also discussed cooperation in the blue economy and other areas, including the procurement of train cars and electronic passport printing.
The 23rd Council of Ministers (COM) Meeting of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) was held in Colombo on 11 October. Sri Lanka took over the Chair of the IORA from Bangladesh and will be in charge till 2025. India will be the Vice-Chair during this period.
The theme of the Meeting was: Strengthening Regional Architecture: Reinforcing Indian Ocean Identity.” This is significant because the Indian Ocean has to see itself as a distinct geo-political, geo-economic and geo-strategic entity. For that, it has to have an identity and an appropriate architecture to sustain that identity.
The IORA has been striving hard, against the odds, to attain these objectives since its founding in 1997.
Currently, there are 23 Member States in IORA. They are Australia, Bangladesh, Comoros, France/Reunion, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kenya, Madagascar, Malaysia, the Maldives, Mauritius, Mozambique, Oman, Seychelles, Singapore, Somalia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
The IORA has 10 Dialogue Partners: China, Egypt, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
It also has two Specialised Agencies: The Regional Centre for Science and Technology Transfer (RCSTT) based in Tehran, Iran; and the Fisheries Support Unit (FSU) based in Muscat, Oman; and has two Observers, the Indian Ocean Research Group (IORG) and the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (WIOMSA).
The IORA countries encompass about a third of the world’s population; account for about 10% of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP); and 40% of the world’s trade passes through the Indian Ocean.
The IORA consists of coastal States bordering the Indian Ocean. It brings together representatives of governments, businesses and academia to promote cooperation and closer interaction among them.
Objectives
The objectives of the IORA are: (1) To promote sustainable growth and balanced development of the region and the Member States; (2) To focus on those areas of economic cooperation which provide maximum opportunities for development, shared interest and mutual benefits; and, (3) To promote liberalisation, remove impediments and lower barriers towards a freer and enhanced flow of goods, services, investment, and technology within the Indian Ocean rim.
Decisions are consensus-based, evolutionary and non-intrusive. There are no laws and binding contracts. Co-operation is based on principles of sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity, political independence, and non-interference in the internal affairs of Member States, peaceful coexistence and mutual benefit.
The IORA Charter explicitly excludes bilateral and other issues likely to generate controversy that become obstacles or impediments to regional cooperation. Co-operation within the Association does not prejudice the rights and obligations of the Member States within the framework of other economic and trade cooperation arrangements. It does not seek to be a substitute but tries to reinforce, be complementary to and consistent with, the bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral rights and obligations of Member States, in line with an open regionalism approach.
The IORA’s apex body is the Council of (Foreign) Ministers (COM) which meets annually. A Committee of Senior Officials (CSO) meets biannually to review and prioritise IORA’s activities.
The Association has Functional Bodies. These are: (1) Indian Ocean Rim Academic Group (IORAG);(2) Indian Ocean Rim Business Forum (IORBF); (3) Working Group on Trade and Investment (WGTI); (4) Working Group on Women’s Economic Empowerment (WGWEE); (5) Working Group on Maritime Safety and Security (WGMSS); (6) Working Group on Disaster Risk Management (WGDRM) (7) Working Group on the Blue Economy (WGBE); (8) Working Group on Science Technology and Innovation (WGSTI); (9) Core Group on Tourism (CGT); (10) Core Group on Fisheries Management (CGFM).
The other pan-regional grouping in the IOR is the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) which provides a valuable forum for networking and dialogue among the region’s navies. Its working groups promote dialogue on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, maritime security and information sharing and interoperability. It is also encouraging its members to sign up for a Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) that may help reduce the risk of accidental conflicts between naval vessels.
The Annual Budget of the Secretariat is based on annual membership contributions by the Member States.
India’s Commitment
In his statement to the media at the 23rd Foreign Ministers’ Meeting on Wednesday, the Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar spoke about India’s commitment to the IORA.
India’s commitment is to the well-being and progress of nations of the Indian Ocean, including as a first responder and a net security provider. It draws on India’s broader vision of an Indo-Pacific that is built on a rules-based international order, rule of law, sustainable and transparent infrastructure investment, freedom of navigation and over-flight, and sincere respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, Jaishankar said.
At the initiative of India, IORA’s outlook on the Indo-Pacific was adopted by the 22nd Council of Ministers’ Meeting. We will again endeavour to give it practical shape in the days ahead.”
The Indian Ocean is not only a significant body of water but also a crucial economic and strategic corridor, playing a key role in the development and prosperity of the nations around it and beyond it. India’s message of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ or ‘the world is one family’ can act as a binding force for IORA Member States.”
The IORA brings together 23 Member States, including India, with a shared goal of harnessing the immense potential of this region for the benefit of all. India, with its extensive coastline, maritime interests, and historical ties, fully appreciates the importance of fostering collaboration and dialogue in the Indian Ocean.”
Our commitment to the IORA is deeply rooted in the principles of peaceful coexistence, shared prosperity, and regional collaboration. For Member States to grow and prosper, development challenges must be continuously and effectively addressed. In particular, we should cooperate on various aspects of the maritime economy, resources, connectivity and security,” Jaishankar said.
Dangers
Pointing out some dangers lurking in the background, the Indian Minister said: We should be equally clear where the dangers are, be it in hidden agendas, in unviable projects or unsustainable debt. Exchange of experiences, sharing of best practices, greater awareness and deeper collaboration are part of the solutions.”
India views the IORA as a platform for promoting sustainable development, economic growth and prosperity, and stability in the region. As the Vice-Chair of IORA, India will work on consolidating and streamlining efforts to promote cooperation in the realms of the 6 priority areas and 2 cross-cutting themes of the IORA, with particular emphasis on maritime safety and security, and blue economy. We seek to engage our fellow Member States and partners to develop mutually beneficial initiatives.”
Strategic Competition
Strategic competition in the IOR is growing and will likely contribute to an ever more unstable regional order, points out Dr. David Brewster, a Senior Research Fellow with the National Security College, Australian National University, an expert on the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
The IOR also faces a growing list of environmental security threats — including overfishing, loss of fish stocks, climate change and natural disasters that can further exacerbate strategic competition.”
The maritime realm is particularly demanding of regional cooperation. A boat used for illegal fishing can just as easily be used to smuggle arms, drugs or people. The vast size of the Indian Ocean also demands a cooperative response to threats,” he points out.
The construction of naval bases by several external powers is also worrying,” Dr. Brewster says.
The vast distances across the ocean, its diversity and the limited resources of most States inhibit sustained engagement. As a result, the IOR lacks the supporting institutions that can help create consensus on security-related issues,” he says.
A major flaw in the IORA is that it is plagued by limited interest from its members, a lack of resources and limited outcomes that adversely affect its credibility,” Dr. Brewster points out.
Sounding a note of warning, he says: IORA is increasingly attracting interest from extra-regional players that want to build their regional influence. The grouping has or will likely receive cash funding from China, a German political foundation and France. This increased interest benefits IORA, although there is also the possibility that some extra-regional powers may seek to manipulate the grouping for their own ends.”
China has been a major investor in Sri Lanka. In fact, after the brutal conflict with the terrorist LTTE was successfully ended in 2009, China became the main source of foreign direct investments (FDIs) in the country at a time when more traditional sources of investments could not or did not wish to invest in Sri Lanka. Our infrastructure, highways, ports, airports and water supply projects, which required restoration or construction, all benefited from Chinese funding. China stepped onto the plate like a true friend when others hesitated.
Today our investment climate is not the same. The financial crisis, the social unrest of last year, the perceived instability, etc, have all contributed to creating a negative environment and a lack of confidence in Sri Lanka in the investor mindset. The Embassy worked very hard to restore the confidence of the Chinese investor community. We noted that the Sri Lankan economy was gradually regaining its strength. Opportunities to address trade and investor conferences in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and the other provinces were used regularly to convey a positive message about Sri Lanka. TV and print media opportunities were exploited extensively, with major articles appearing in all the key Chinese and English language media, including in Hong Kong and Singapore. Still, some hard work remains to be done with the Chinese financial institutions.
The visits of Foreign Minister Ali Sabry and the Treasury Secretary to Beijing helped tremendously. I am pleased to say that China Harbour and Hunan Construction have committed to invest USD 1.2 billion in the Colombo Port City (CPC). SINOPEC has plans for a multi-billion dollar investment, including in an oil refinery in Hambantota. CZK has declared its intention to establish a major gem trading centre at the CPC. China Great Wall, CIDCA and Wuhan University were exploring a multi-million dollar investment in a high-tech University which can still be resuscitated. Sinopharm had plans to establish a pharmaceutical, mainly vaccine, packing plant in Sri Lanka. Chinese solar and wind power companies have recently expressed considerable interest in Sri Lanka’s renewable energy sector, including solar panel fabrication. Talks are continuing on a complex Light Rail Project. With further effort, we should be able to encourage these corporate giants to locate some of their overseas investments in Sri Lanka.
Electric vehicle manufacturers have begun to evince considerable interest in the assembly and manufacture of vehicles in Sri Lanka, not only for the local market but also to target the regional markets. Chinese tour operators, including the major cruise lines, were beginning to look at Sri Lanka as a desirable port of call in their itineraries. This is an area of significant potential which must be exploited more by Sri Lanka.
Similarly, with the predicted surge in demand for strategic minerals, Sri Lanka should be able to exploit the potentialities of the marketplace more aggressively. According to the Energy Transitions Commission, a think-tank, by 2050 the world will require 15 times today’s wind power, 25 times more solar, a tripling of the grid size and a 60-fold increase in the fleet of Electric Vehicles (EVs). By 2030 copper and nickel demand could rise by 50-70%, cobalt and neodymium by 150%, and graphite and lithium six- to seven-fold. All told, according to the International Energy Agency, a carbon-neutral world in 2050 will need 35m tonnes of green metals a year. Adding aluminium and steel, etc, demand between now and then is expected to exceed 6.5bn tonnes. Sri Lanka possesses high-grade graphite and silica.
I had begun to discuss with Chinese telecom giants to enhance their perception of Sri Lanka as a potential investment hub. The critical thing at the moment is to encourage confidence in our economy and the predictability of our investment climate in the minds of Chinese companies. This will require not only getting the technical message right but also creating a higher comfort level for the investor community at the political level.
The Impact of Chinese Investments on Sri Lanka
Chinese investments in the post-conflict period contributed tangibly to Sri Lanka’s impressive economic performance in those years when our economy became one of the most admired in Asia. Funds poured into our stock market. A number of critical infrastructure projects were launched and completed. The impact of these on the long-term economic stability and development of Sri Lanka as a modern State with a dynamic economy would be crucial. Investments in public goods have resulted in long-term substantial benefits in many countries. The highways linking Colombo with the Bandaranaike International Airport and distant Hambantota Port have considerably improved the speed of transportation of people and goods between those cities, not to mention the savings on fuel and convenience. Today people drive from Colombo to Galle for Sunday lunch. A modern State needs effective and efficient transportation links. The transformation that China itself has achieved after building its stunning 42,000 km of high-speed rail network and the multi-lane highway system which crisscrosses this large country while refining its road and bridge building and tunnelling technology is simply breathtaking.
The entry of Sinopec into the petroleum retail business, petroleum refining and bunkering and the Chinese solar and wind power generation companies into the renewable energy market of Sri Lanka will be a game changer.
Of course, criticisms largely based on political convenience and prejudice have sprouted on occasion, mainly in the Western media. The costs of borrowing and the borrowings themselves have come in for negative comments. This cannot be avoided in the fractious democracy that prevails in Sri Lanka and the Western media which relishes opportunities for pouring scorn on China. I am confident that in the long run, these criticisms will become muted as the benefits of these developments begin to have wider economic and social impact and be appreciated.
Chinese funding for development projects has come mainly from loans, some of it on concessional terms. The long-term sustainability and viability of these developments, especially the CPC and the Hambantota Port, will depend on our ability to generate adequate confidence in the investor community that Sri Lanka is a trustworthy long-term partner and encourages them to invest in Sri Lanka. We need to be more proactive in this area considering that investors have other options and competing States are also seeking to woo the same investors. We need a multifaceted approach to create a better investor-friendly environment which provides assurances of predictability and transparency of our laws and policies, the strength and certainty of our politics, the sympathy of our political and social environment, and the security provided by our investment regime.
The media has an important role to play in this respect. The legal and regulatory structures governing both the CPC and Hambantota Port are rapidly falling into place. Once a critical number of major investments are attracted, it is likely that they will be a catalyst for many other investors from around the world to exploit the opportunities that Sri Lanka provides, including our excellent relations with the West and India, our literate and flexible workforce and our welcoming nature. Considering that Chinese companies (and East Asian) are influenced by considerations other than pure economic advantage in their decision-making processes, e.g. feelings of trust and confidence (guanshi), the cultivation of these aspects will also be important. The Government must continue to aggressively promote a positive image of Sri Lanka as a destination for FDIs.
The Debt Trap – Fact or Propaganda?
The Chinese role in Sri Lanka’s debt is grossly exaggerated and exploited mischievously for political advantage. Research done by the Kadirgamar Institute suggests that it is around 10% of Sri Lanka’s entire debt burden. Some, using complex criteria, have suggested a higher figure. It is likely that the percentage is lower today given the infusions of large dollops of aid by India in the last two years. We have also begun to repay some of the funds borrowed, including to Bangladesh and India.
Sri Lanka’s debt was being effectively managed until the country was devastated by a combination of converging economic storms and China was not responsible for any. The Easter terrorist attack of 2019, the unprecedented and crippling Covid-19 pandemic, the consequent decimation of our tourism industry which had contributed over 10% of our national income and provided employment to over one million, directly and indirectly, the reduction of remittances by expatriate workers, the contraction of the global economy coupled with mismanagement and a culture of borrowing for consumption had all contributed to the unprecedented economic crisis that froze economic activity in the country.
However, due to the stringent remedial measures adopted by the government in the past eighteen months, Sri Lanka is showing signs of recovery much earlier than anticipated and to the surprise of the international community. The IMF has expressed confidence in Sri Lanka’s recovery efforts. The approval by the IMF of a USD 2.9 billion bailout package has contributed to enhancing a positive image of Sri Lanka’s economy. Much more work remains to be done in reforming the economy and more hardship and sacrifices will require to be endured in the short and medium term. A concerted and carefully planned effort needs to be made to further increase exports and attract more FDIs. In this respect, China remains a crucial partner. Sri Lanka also must continue to explain its efforts to the international community.
Sri Lankan Businesses in China
Sri Lankan businesses operating in China can do much better. To begin with, the efforts of the Embassy have generated considerable political goodwill for Sri Lanka in China. Sri Lanka is recognised as a close friend and a strategic partnership is in place. There has also been a steady enhancement of Sri Lanka’s image in the host country as well with repeated articles and reports in the social and print media and TV appearances by Ambassador Dr. Palitha Kohona. These have been very important enabling factors in facilitating the success of our businesses in China and these need to be exploited more by the business community. Unfortunately, compared with other competing countries, we have not been sufficiently active in leveraging our natural advantages, especially our warm political relationship.
China is considered to be the most lucrative consumer market in the world with the Chinese Government actively promoting consumption as a key part of its economic strategy, both domestically produced and imported goods. Imports of consumables exceed USD 750 billion annually and are growing. The Chinese Government promotes import expos designed to encourage importers of foreign goods to access the domestic market. These expos create significant opportunities to showcase our products and enable foreign businesses to interact with and develop local business contacts, if necessary, with government assistance.
While some Sri Lankan businesses operate in China, they are by no means a major factor in the marketplace. While branding is considered important in attracting Chinese consumers, our brands have a long way to go. More effort needs to be made by Sri Lankan brands, especially on social media to popularise themselves. Our tea exporters have made a significant impact on the Chinese marketplace. Sri Lankan rubber products and coconut products are beginning to compete well. While Sri Lankan gems are sought after, it is doubtful whether they are making a sufficient contribution to Sri Lanka’s national income.
While the massive Chinese market can absorb more than what our nascent businesses can supply, there is a disappointing and perceptible reluctance among Sri Lankan businesses to adopt a cooperative approach. They could also benefit from targeted government assistance.
China also applies stringent border controls for products entering the domestic market, including phytosanitary, labelling packaging and coding requirements. Many would consider these to be unreasonable barriers. Rich developed countries have opened up the Chinese market for their products through concerted lobbying and even legal action at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Poor developing countries, with limited diplomatic and legal resources, do not enjoy such luxuries. China itself could assist developing countries which are seeking to access the Chinese market.
While the Sri Lankan Embassy has proactively sought to raise the awareness of Sri Lankan exporters to these challenges, the message is seeping through only slowly. The Embassy has consistently sought to encourage the Chinese authorities to adopt a more sympathetic approach to Sri Lanka. It is also important to recognise that Sri Lankan black tea, our gems, especially the blue sapphires, coconut products, some marine products, rubber products, etc enjoy considerable consumer acceptance and sell very well in China. Our market share can be increased dramatically if these products secure easier access. Sri Lankan seafood will find a ready market in China. But the approval to export a wider range needs to be secured.
Sri Lankan authorities need to recognise the vast opportunities presented by the Chinese marketplace and proactively assist exporters to access the almost limitless possibilities available, including by assisting businesses to participate in the export-import fairs, providing training on entry requirements and using every prospect to improve and promote Sri Lankan products. A comprehensive well thought-out plan needs to be formulated.
The Chinese consumer is more attuned to social media promotions and online buying. The former Ambassador achieved celebrity status in China through his participation in live-streaming sessions and celebrity cooking events. There are lessons to be learned from the way countries like Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, etc promote their products in China.
In addition to the factors discussed above, there appears to be a reluctance among our business community, in general, to engage with the Chinese business community. This psychology, influenced by a history of dealing with the West, appears to condition our business mindset. In China, like in most of East Asia, building personal relations is essential to develop business relations. (Referred to as guanshi). Developing trust and confidence takes time and effort. As one highly respected Australian Diplomat once observed, you have to drink copiously and eat prodigiously, at considerable risk to your health before you begin to make an impact in the East. In the East, personal relations play a much greater role in nurturing business relations than in the West. A bureaucracy like ours, conditioned to engaging other parties through anonymous notes, will find it difficult to develop sustainable and trusting relations.
The language is also a critical factor. The Chinese tend to shy away from foreign languages in general, including English. Being familiar with the Chinese language or obtaining professional assistance readily opens many doors.
Many countries which have concluded bilateral Free Trade Agreements (FTA) with China have done marvellously in accessing the Chinese market. Among them are New Zealand, Australia, the ASEAN countries, and even geographically distant countries such as Chile and Cyprus. The exports of these countries have expanded dramatically in range and value. China is Australia’s largest export destination and biggest source of foreign students despite ongoing political tensions. Australia has an effective bilateral FTA, an investment promotion and protection agreement and a double taxation agreement in place with China.
About the author:
Dr. Palitha Kohona is a former Ambassador of Sri Lanka to China.
Top Opposition spokesperson Prof. G.L. Peiris yesterday (16) dismissed Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe’s attempt to introduce a new system for electing MPs as a politically motivated project to sabotage national elections. Such an exercise couldn’t be justified under any circumstances at a time the Provincial Council and Local Government polls, too, had been put off indefinitely, he said
Prof. Peiris stressed that the government continued to disregard the specific Supreme Court directive given in early March to conduct Local Government polls, and he dared the SLPP to go to court against its dissident MPs in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that endorsed the expulsion of rebel SLMC MP Nazeer Ahamed for switching allegiance to the government.
Prof. Peiris said that the SLPP would not under any circumstances seek a court order against them, having elected UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe as the President at the vote in July last year at the expense of Dullas Alahapperuma, who was fielded by the SLPP.
He said so in response to a media query at the weekly media briefing conducted at the Nawala office of the Nidahasa Jathika Sabhawa. The SLPP rebel group consists of 12 MPs.
The SLPP leader Mahinda Rajapaksa is on record as having said in Parliament, shortly after the SLPP elected Wickremesinghe to complete the reminder of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s five-year term, that he voted for SLPP candidate Dullas Alahapperuma. We are prepared to present everything in court in case they resort to legal action,” Prof. Peiris said, declaring that whoever voted for Wickremesinghe had acted against the interests of the party. They continue to do so,” Prof. Peiris said, asserting that the government’s efforts were geared to postponing elections, at all levels.
Prof. Peiris said that those at the helm of the SLPP should bear the responsibility for defeating their own man. Wickremesinghe received 134 votes against Alahapperuma receiving 82votes. Let the court decide who resorted to treachery,” Prof. Peiris said, questioning the overt and covert moves made by the government to put off national elections indefinitely.
Having being elected to complete the remainder of his predecessor’s term, President Wickremesinghe was making a bid to hold onto Office, the SLPP National List MP said. The former minister alleged that the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa alliance was trying to postpone elections in the guise of introducing far reaching constitutional reforms.
Prof. Peiris stressed that Environment Minister Ahamed’s case had absolutely no relevance as the Supreme Court found fault with him for voting with 2022 Budget vote, contrary to a decision taken by the party.
Commenting on the simultaneous abolition of executive presidency and announcement of early general elections, Prof. Peiris said that such an exercise couldn’t be undertaken in a hurry. The former Law Professor emphasized that the abolition of executive presidency should be included in a brand new Constitution. The lawmaker explained that the executive is related to subjects, ranging from independent commissions to appointment of Governors of Provinces. Hence the responsibility of introducing a new Constitution should be left for the next government, Prof. Peiris said, calling for a consensus on early parliamentary elections.
The ex-Minister declared that the Opposition is of the view that early general election could lead to the formation of a government to undertake a holistic examination of constitutional needs to address current challenges.
Prof. Peiris said that the President’s decision to grant another three-week extension to IGP C.D. Wickremaratne couldn’t be justified. Pointing out that Wickremaratne had been given two three-month long extensions since March this year, Prof. Peiris pointed out, declaring this decision was contrary to the position taken by the Constitutional Council.
Chinese tech giant ‘Huawei’ has expressed its willingness to support an annual study programme aimed at nurturing software and hardware engineers in Sri Lanka.
Speaking in this regard, Simon Lin, Senior Vice President of Huawei Technologies and President of Huawei Asia Pacific, revealed that Huawei has already initiated collaborations with several Sri Lankan universities, not only pertaining to providing academic assistance but also in providing technology and infrastructure.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is on an official four-day trip to China, led the delegation to Huawei’s research and development centre in Beijing today (17 Oct.).
Highlighting the purpose of his visit, which is to discuss Sri Lanka’s future, President Wickremesinghe emphasised the crucial role of both the Chinese Government and Huawei in supporting Sri Lanka’s digital education system and green energy production.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe stressed the need for Sri Lanka to build a competitive digital and green economy to face the challenges of the future, and noted that the foundational work for this transformation is already underway.
The discussions extended to the importance of empowering Sri Lankan citizens with digital technology, which is closely linked to the nation’s economic growth. The Sri Lankan delegation was also briefed on Huawei’s international services and their latest technological advancements.
Additionally, an agreement was signed during this visit, formalizing Huawei’s support for the digitization of Sri Lankan schools.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Sabry, Minister of Transport and Mass Media Bandula Gunawardena, Senior Presidential Adviser on National Security and Chief of Presidential Staff Sagala Ratnayaka were also present on this occasion.
Minister of Ports, Shipping and Aviation Nimal Siripala de Silva says that the government will have to ground state-owned national carrier SriLankan Airlines, if there is no buyer to enter into a joint venture with the government.
Responding to the allegations of staff shortages, salary and debt issues within the airline, during Ada Derana’s State of the Nation” programme, the Aviation Minister refuted the allegations of staff shortages and declared that SriLankan Airlines has the necessary number of staff for running an airline, according to the international norms.
Allegations that we don’t have the necessary staff for operating the airline are not correct. According to the international norms and the practicality of running an airline, we have the necessary number”.
The minister further explaining the exact figures highlighted that, in 2019 we had 311 pilots and we operated 26 aircraft and in 2020 we had 339 pilots and we operated 05 aircraft as it was the Covid-19 pandemic period. In 2021, we operated 13 aircraft with 293 pilots. That was of course a part of the Covid-19 period. In 2022, we had 295 pilots and we operated 19 aircraft”.
As of now, in 2023, we are operating only 15 aircraft with 273 pilots, and as of June 01, 2023, according to the figures, we were operating 16 aircraft and we had 262 pilots”, the Minister added.
Minister de Silva claimed that in comparison to these figures, it is very clear that the number of pilots for the number of aircraft that SriLankan Airlines are flying is quite enough.
Therefore, the allegation that we don’t have the necessary number of pilots is wrong”.
The Minister also commented regarding the Engineering staff, pointing out that In the same way, with the same Engineering staff, we have operated more aircraft during 2019. So, why can’t they do it now?”
But that is not the fact. The fact is something else. It is because of trade union actions. Pilots refuse to fly during their off days and the engineers also went on a go-slow campaign”, he expressed.
However, the minister alleged that those actions are also the cause for the downfall of the airline, which was making a profit in the last few years.
Meanwhile, the minister was also inquired regarding certain reports alleging that the government is planning to sell off SriLankan Airlines by the end of 2024.
In response, Minister de Silva denied these claims, emphasizing that it not possible under Sri Lankan law, while adding that that if the airline is sold, it will lose landing rights in many important destinations.
We are not going to sell. We can’t sell the airline in terms of the Sri Lankan law. Then we will lose our landing rights in many important destinations”.
So what we’re going to do is we want to retain 51% with us and to divest 49% of the shares of SriLankan Airlines, so that it will be a joint venture”, he said.
Around 08 months ago, I carried a Cabinet paper and requested the Cabinet to approve such a divesture. Reaching into an agreement, a joint venture and we’ll run this airline because we’re in debt.”
Speaking further in this regard, the Minister said, we have a debt of USD 1.2 billion. That is to the international market we have taken about USD 175 million from the sovereign bonds and about another USD 100 million we owe to the lessors of the aircraft because we don’t own a single aircraft”.
All these aircraft have been leased out from the lessors”.
The Minister further stated that SriLankan Airlines owes money to even the Airport and Aviation Authority, and to the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) for the jet fuel they have used.
Therefore we can’t run this airline because we need a capital injection here. We have to put at least USD 500 million capital to make this airline a viable airline. The government has no money to do that and the government does not intend to do that, because we feel the correct policy is to go into a joint venture and get the necessary capital and ensure that the airline is run smoothly.”
That is the formula we have at the moment”, he said, adding that we have not yet called for Expression of Interest (EOI) from the buyers or from anybody who wants to come and invest here. But there are a lot of inquiries from us, but we can’t negotiate with them because now the Treasury is the owner of the airline. It is a Treasury-owned company.”
The Minister said that when he presented the Cabinet paper, the Cabinet thought it prudent to refer it to the Treasury and the Treasury has taken the view, in consultation with the World Bank and the IMF, to appoint an independent transaction advisor.
That advisor has been selected by the World Bank and that advisor is working on that. But I am pressing on him and Mr. Suresh Shah, who is in charge of this privatization process. So, I told him that ‘I can’t wait anymore. I need this joint venture to be done soon’.”
Nimal Siripala de Silva said that he has been promised that they will get all the papers ready by the end of this month, and will publish it in international media, so that anybody interested can apply and we will appoint necessary committees and we will get the best proposal”.
He added: Till the airline goes into a joint venture as we have envisaged, we have to run this airline. So for that purpose, we need to get some more aircraft. But have advertised to get some more aircraft”.
However, the Aviation Minister emphasized that it is very difficult to obtain Airbus A330 aircraft at present, as there’s a shortage in the market.
Therefore we are being affected by this international situation also”, he added.
Minister de Silva also stated that the Chairman and Board of Directors of the airline are trying their best to make this a viable business venture, for which the government need the cooperation of trade unions, pilots, engineers, cabin crews and all others.
If they don’t cooperate, it’s not the government that will suffer. They will suffer because we will not be able to go on the venture we have proposed”.
So if there is no taker, then we will have to ground this aircraft at some time or other”, he added.
Therefore, I always appeal to the trade unions and workers to be cautious and cooperate with us till we embark upon this process”.
Colombo Additional Magistrate Pasan Amarasinghe yesterday (16) ordered the remand of six suspects, including the alleged mastermind of the Easter Sunday attacks, who had relations with Sri Lankan millionaire businessman Ahmed Lukman Thalib, who is said to have provided finances to the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda, until instructions are received from the Attorney General.
The Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) informed the Court that this investigation is being conducted in accordance with a notification made by the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) that the suspects of the Easter Sunday terror attacks were in contact with Ahmed Lukman Thalib, according to their telephone records.
Accordingly, the Magistrate ordered the remand of the suspects.
The TID requested permission to detain three of the six suspects of the Easter Sunday terror attacks (suspects 11, 12 and 15), for 72 hours for questioning.
Apart from this, the TID also requested the court to obtain a statement from the suspects 18, 19 and 20 in the prison.
Ahmed Lukman Thalib was arrested by the Australian government in 2021 for providing financial facilities to Al-Qaeda and he is currently in the custody of the Australian government.
The TID informed the court that according to the phone analysis reports called in connection with 700 phone calls during the investigations made on him, facts have been revealed that the mastermind of the Easter attacks and other suspects had maintained relations with him.
The TID also informed the court that they will investigate these six suspects in accordance with Section 7(2) of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).
These suspects, who are the main accused in the case being heard in the Colombo High Court regarding the Easter Sunday terror attacks, were also jailed in connection with this case.
In addition to the Sri Lankans who had relations with him, Interpol has uncovered facts regarding seven Maldivian nationals and two Australian nationals who maintained ties with Thalib. It was revealed in the court that Thalib has also worked as the main partner of a Sri Lanka-based gem company, while providing finances to Al-Qaeda. The United States of America imposed sanctions on him in 2020, accusing him of providing financial support to Al-Qaeda.
Test Match cricket is the pinnacle of the game of cricket.
Cricket was introduced by Great Britain who embody the great game with its history, culture and heritage in regard to Test Match cricket in particular.
Unfortunately, money speaks in the world today and based on this factor, India dominates the revenue regarding international cricket both in Test Match cricket and One Day cricket, including the International Cricket Council, which is based on the revenue India generates both through TV, and the viewing public who come to watch a cricket game through the gates. Therefore, India which dominates the great game of cricket based on the revenue it generates focuses very much on limited over cricket, particularly twenty overs cricket matches. This in my view is destroying the great game of cricket especially Test Match cricket, which is the real game of cricket or the pinnacle of the game.
Test Match cricket over the years has produced many great players, such as Dr. W.G. Grace, Sir Jack Hobbs, Sir Walter Hammond, Sir Leonard Hutton, Sir Alec Bedser and Sir Donald Bradman to name a few distinguished cricketers who graced the great game of cricket in the past. In modern times the great batman of our time was Master Blaster Sir Vivian Richards of the West Indies who was a cricketer with no fear as he never used a helmet when batting against high quality fast bowling. He played every stroke in the book even though he might not have pleased the purists of Test Match cricket as he was an eye player who was not orthodox or did not play according to the M.C.C. coaching manual. Nevertheless, Sir Richards embodies true batsmanship without fear. Nowadays batsmen use total protective equipment as they are not confident of their safety when facing high quality fast bowling unlike Sir Vivian Richards. This in my view is due to the lack of correct technique of a modern-day batsman. This is predominantly because of the focus of One Day cricket ahead of Test Match cricket, which is the genuine or true game of cricket, as it is a test of technique, concentration, physical fitness and the psychology of a payer’s mental strength in particular.
The batsman who brought technique, especially regarding quality defensive batting was Sir Jack Hobbs of Great Britain. He also ensured that side on cricket was the correct method or approach adopted when batting particularly on uncovered wickets during his playing days when he played in Great Britain predominantly, and Australia in the Ashes Test Match cricket series.
In conclusion, if India dominates the game of cricket peculiarly with their position and role they posses in regard to the International Cricket Council in ten years’ time the great game of Test Match cricket, which is the truest test between bat and ball will be destroyed to twenty over a side limited overs One Day cricket. This will be a very unfortunate and a sad time for the purists of the great game, especially who value and cherish Test Match cricket as the true test of the great game of cricket.
Colombo, October 16 (Counterpoint): The Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe is currently on his first-ever visit to China since he assumed office as President Sri Lanka in July 2022.
Expectations are high in Sri Lanka as China has promised debt relief measures though without revealing any details.
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Geopolitically interested external forces India and the US are watching the proceedings with anxiety as Sri Lanka and China appear to be bridging the gulf created by Colombo’s decision to default on loan repayment and approach India and the IMF for relief, by-passing China, the single largest bilateral creditor.
Much is expected from the visit, though it is not a State Visit. Officially, the Lankan President is to participate in the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation that is to take place in Beijing on October 17 and 18.
Nevertheless, the visit is taking place in an important economic and geopolitical context. Sri Lanka badly needs debt relief from China to pull itself out of the financial woods. It also has to balance its responses to geopolitical pressures from rivals India and China.
Debt Issue
To take the bread and butter issues first: In November 2022, Sri Lanka owed Chinese lenders US$ 7.4 billion – nearly a fifth of its public external debt, according to calculations by the China Africa Research Initiative (CARI).
But despite fervent appeals from Sri Lanka since the beginning of the foreign exchange crunch in 2021, China did not join the international effort to help Sri Lanka by giving financial assurances and offering to take a haircut. China plainly said that it did not believe in this kind of relief and asked Sri Lanka to put its messy financial house in order. It offered further credit and a buyer’s credit totalling about US$ 2 billion instead of giving debt relief.
But other international creditors wanted China to take a haircut in line with them. They would not allow a separate Sino-Lankan deal as that would not be fair.
While the tug of war was going on, China last week, on the eve of the visit of Wickremesinghe, announced that it had reached a ‘tentative’ agreement with Sri Lanka on debt restructuring. The announcement also came on the eve of the IMF/World Bank meeting in Morocco.
According to the Sri Lankan Finance Ministry, it had reached an agreement with the Export-Import Bank of China covering about US$4.2 billion of outstanding debt.
According to Reuters, the EXIM bank deal will help Sri Lanka get past the first review of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) program, and secure a second IMF tranche of about US$ 334 million.
Sri Lanka began negotiating with creditors including China, Japan and India last September parallel to moving forward on a US$ 2.9 billion IMF bailout.
Observers expect to get details of Sri Lanka’s deal with the EXIM bank of China during the visit of the President to Beijing.
According to the former Sri Lankan Ambassador to China, Dr.Palitha Kohona, Wickremesinghe is also expected swing deals to bring Chinese investments to the Chinese-built Colombo Port City, a US$ 1.4 billion project which is still to get any investments from anywhere.
Dr.Kohona said that the China Harbour Engineeing Company, which built the Port City, will itself invest more than a billion dollars in it. China is also expected to build the Central Highway linking Kandy with the north and south of the island.
Meanwhile, China’s flagship but controversial project, the Hambantota International Port (HIP), is beginning to look up. Recently it set a new record for oil and gas throughput. HIP has increased its bunker supplies nearly six times more than its 2022 volumes in the current year.
As of June 2023, the port completed over 500,000 metric tons of oil and gas throughput, successfully achieving the target set for the first half of the year, according to a company release.
With MV Swarna Godavari rom India, recently unloaded 31,500 metric tons of VLSFO in the port’s oil jetty. The total throughput was brought up to 520,000 metric tonnes, surpassing the milestone set by HIP’s Energy Services Department (ENS) and creating a brand new one.
The number was achieved through 143 vessel calls from January to June this year, as opposed to just 50 vessels that called during the corresponding period in 2022.
HIP’s bunkering partner is Sinopec Fuel Oil Lanka (SFOL).
China recently entered the fuel distribution market in Sri Lanka, joining the local Ceypetco and the Lankan Indian Oil Corporation. Australia’s United Petroleum and US-based RM Parks, in collaboration with Shell, are slated to join soon.
Sinopec has been granted a license to operate 150 service stations for 20 years in Sri Lanka, in addition to being able to invest in 50 new locations.
Lanka to Joint RCEP
In an exclusive interview with China Media Group (CMG), on the eve of his departure to China, Wickremesinghe said: We do what is good for us and stop doing what isn’t. We can benefit from cooperation with China. Indeed, if we could join the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), we would have access to the world’s largest market. We once hoped to establish the South Asian Free Trade Area, but it failed to materialise.”
India had earlier refused to join RCEP not being part of a group dominated by China.
Geopolitical Scenario
In the geopolitical sphere stiff competition between China and India is continuing and intensifying. India had taken a lead by giving Sri Lanka US$ 4.5 billion to tide over the financial, food and fuel crisis.
During the visit of President Wickremesinghe to New Delhi in July, agreements were signed on establishing grid connectivity between Madurai in India and Mannar in Sri Lanka. Other agreements were to build a road bridge across the Palk Strait and ply a passenger ferry between Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu and Kankesanthurai in Jaffna. The first sailing took place last week.
India, Japan and Sri Lanka are expected to jointly develop the Trincomallee habour and its hinterland to compete with the Chinese built and run Hambantota harbour.
The visits of Chinese survey vessels to Sri Lankan ports have raised the hackles of the security Estabishments in New Delhi and Washington. Some vessels have already docked in Sri Lankan ports despite Indian objections.
The upcoming visit of the research vessel Shi Yan 6” appears to be particularly problematic as the US too has raised a red flag. The Sri Lankans have been trying to evade criticism by saying that they are preparing a Standard Operating Procedure” that would apply to all such controversial visits.
The Sri Lankan case is that the Shi Yan 6” is a vessel that is slated to do joint oceanographic research in collaboration with the Sri Lankan National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA). The Oceanography department of Ruhuna University, which has a collaboration with a Chinese university, will also be involved in joint research. However, for India and the US, these vessels are spy ships” that will use the data collected for strategic/military purposes.
Shi Yan 6” is yet to arrive in Sri Lanka. It is expected to dock at the end of October if Colombo and New Delhi agree.
India and the US do not want any non-trade Chinese activity in the Sri Lankan seas or the Indian Ocean as a whole. Recently, the Indian Foreign Minister S.Jaishankar made this clear in his address to the Indian Ocean Rim Association Ministerial (IORA) meeting in Colombo. He portrayed India as the numero uno in the Indian Ocean.
He warned about Chinese machinations in the Indian Ocean Region when he said: We should be clear where the dangers are, be it in hidden agendas, in unviable projects or in unsustainable debt.”
He urged the exchange of experiences, sharing of best practices, greater awareness and deeper collaboration” between the 23 IORA members.
Sri Lanka is the current chair of the IORA and India is the Vice-Chair.
United National Party Chairman, former Minister, and Member of Parliament Vajira Abeywardena emphasized that the present Government is dedicated to elevating Sri Lanka’s global standing by ensuring the public’s access to accurate information, drawing inspiration from the significance of the Media Development Authority Act of Singapore in their developmental journey. The Member of Parliament further highlighted that while everyone enjoys the freedom of social media, regulations will be introduced to deter its misuse for personal attacks or vengeful actions.
MP Abeywardena expressed the following insights during a press conference held yesterday (16) at the Presidential Media Centre under the theme ‘Collective path to a stable country’.
He highlighted that the establishment of the Commission on the Safety of Online Systems will serve as an experimental platform for both journalists and citizens. He further noted that individuals spreading defamatory or false information through online systems will face legal consequences and the commission itself does not possess punitive authority.
Expressing his views further Abeywardena said: With the advancement of communication worldwide and in Sri Lanka, people have witnessed various outcomes. However, it’s clear that communication can also be used to mislead and insult citizens. Consequently, those responsible for social media platforms have been striving to establish regulations. In Sri Lanka, there is an ongoing debate about the necessity of such regulations.
The landscape of electronic media in Sri Lanka has undergone significant changes since 1978. Initially, there was limited television coverage in the country. It was only with the establishment of ITN by Shan Wickremesinghe, the brother of President Ranil Wickremesinghe, that television expanded. However, it later came under Government control. After 1978, the Government introduced numerous radio and television channels to replace the sole radio station. The regulation of all television media was governed by Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation Act, which lacked comprehensive press development provisions.
In contrast, developed countries across the globe have implemented regulatory frameworks to ensure the accuracy of information and the responsible conduct of media outlets. For instance, the Info-communications Media Development Authority Act of Singapore has played a pivotal role in Singapore’s development.
Today, especially the younger generation faces considerable discomfort due to the messages disseminated through social media platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube. Instances of such platforms negatively impacting young lives, even to the point of suicide, highlight the urgent need for rules and regulations.
It’s important to emphasize that controlling the harmful aspects of information channels, such as Facebook, ensuring the dissemination of accurate information and enforcing laws against those spreading false information are vital for the progress of an educated and developing society.
To strengthen Sri Lanka’s position in Asia and on the global stage, it is essential to enhance the role of the media. A crucial step in this direction would be for all media organizations in Sri Lanka to study the Media Act of Singapore. This Act grants full authority to regulate broadcasting services, including the power to grant licences, revoke them and impose penalties for disseminating inaccurate information. Such measures have contributed to the transformation of countries like Singapore into influential nations worldwide.
Beyond the realm of politics, there is a pressing need to change the culture of spreading falsehoods in Sri Lankan politics. It’s vital to recognize that the media’s responsibility lies in revealing the essential truth, not concealing it.
For instance, it’s imperative for journalists and citizens alike to understand that regulations aim to strengthen the media, not control it. Providing accurate information is a valuable process that benefits the entire nation. To reinforce this, all institutions must unite, offering ideas, suggestions and methods to combat false statements in the media.
Recent actions by our neighbouring country, India, which banned 58 mobile phone applications, including Tiktok, illustrate the importance of such regulations.
Politicians often reference countries like India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and China as examples of advanced nations, yet they tend to overlook the regulations that underpin their development. In contrast, these countries have comprehensive legal systems and constitutions that have established the necessary rules and regulations to enable them to stand strong on the world stage. As Sri Lankans, it is vital to bring order to the currently disorganized media culture to foster its development and elevate the nation’s intelligence.
One of the primary objectives of the new Broadcasting Regulatory Commission (BRC) Bill and the Online Safety Bill is to prevent defamation, false accusations and the destruction of individuals. It is important to note that these regulations aim to create a strong presence for Sri Lanka, both domestically and internationally. The established commission cannot administer punishments; this authority lies with the Magistrate Court or other relevant courts. These new rules and regulations will not only produce responsible journalists but also responsible citizens. They also contribute to the reduction of animosity between nations and affirm the people’s right to access the truth.”
The Neurosurgery Unit of Anuradhapura Teaching Hospital has successfully carried out an awake brain surgery, for the resection of a brain tumor, while the patient was not only awake and fully conscious, but had also drawn a picture during the operation.
The awake brain surgery, also known as ‘awake craniotomy’ is a type of procedure performed on the brain while the patient is awake, and able to talk to the operative team and make movements.
It is reported that this is the third such successful surgery performed by the same medical team, while the first awake brain surgery performed within a government hospital in Sri Lanka was also carried out at the Anuradhapura Teaching Hospital.
The surgery was carried out for the resection of a tumor in the left frontal lobe of the patient’s brain while he was under minimal sedation without providing general anaesthesia, according to the doctors.
The drawing of the picture by the 36-year-old patient, who is a sculptor by profession, was to help doctors avoid parts of his brain that control speech, motor and sensory as they remove the tumor.
The brain tumor patient, who is a resident of the Nochchiyagama area, had been discharged from the hospital without any complications after the completion of the surgery, hospital sources said.
The surgery was performed by a medical team comprising of Dr. Madushanka Gomez and Dr. Rohan Paris, the Neurosurgeons of Anuradhapura Teaching Hospital, and the Anesthesiologists Dr. Levan Kariyawasam and Dr. Vishakha Kerner.
‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’
e-Con e-News 08-14 October 2023
‘War is robbery, commerce is generally cheating’
– Benjamin Franklin (who described people as ‘tool-making animals’)
The IMF & World Bank’s ‘tough love’ and sweet hemlock about eliminating ‘corruption’ & ‘transparency’ mainly aims to sabotage a national movement focused on economic self-reliance & self-determination. The IMF’s critics meanwhile fail to place the IMF & World Bank plans in a history of interference in & deindustrialization of Sri Lanka’s economy from 1948 itself, nestling deep in the soul of Soulbury independence. Corruption after all is another word for commerce, no? What’s an economy dominated by merchants & moneylenders, and the parliamentary representatives they finance, supposed to do?
Almost 3 decades after terrorists blew up the Central Bank, this repository of the highest number of PhDs per square foot here, is now blowing up the country. The Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL, designed by a US Federal Reserve operative) is now plundering ‘half of the future incomes of the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) & Employees’ Trust Fund (ETF)…’
‘No other country has exclusively targeted pension funds in DDR (domestic debt restructuring) because no civilised administration would plunder the only means of survival of their workers after their retirement,’ declares Dhanusha Pathirana, ‘economic analyst’, who fingers the hidden hand of local capitalists in this great DDR robbery. We shall have to wait to find out what exactly the EPT/ETF has so far invested in. But Hamilton Reserve Bank lawsuit in New York claims Sri Lankans are robbing elderly US citizens pensions who generously invested in Sri Lankan bonds! Yet what did these bonds invest in?
Meanwhile, CP Chandrasekhar, Amali Wedagedara & Charith Gunawardena of the newly minted Institute of Political Economy (IPE) argue that the IMF ‘structural adjustment reforms have also destroyed opportunities for growth in local manufacturing industries & agriculture sectors.’ But what would these ‘opportunities’ have amounted to in terms of actual industrial transformation? They do not describe. Instead, they lament the effect of IMF games ‘on Sri Lanka’s Poor’. ‘Poor’ however is a 16th century Elizabethan construct to disguise the eviction of England’s rural population – ‘Sri Lanka’s Impoverishment’ is after all what they long seek (see ee Focus)
ee Focus also begins aWenhua Zongheng series on the attempts by China to assist in Africa’s industrialization. Who in this world at this time can show us how they themselves have struggled to achieve modernity? Finally, eeexamines Shenali Waduge’s reminder that ‘Sri Lanka Needs a Happy-Economic Model & So Does the World’. We glimpse at the first major critic of modern (machine) capitalism during its first crisis – Simonde de Sismondi. Only a few analysts (as Marx, Lenin, Luxembourg earlier) have been sharp to link the great Sismondi to the present national movement’s dominant romanticism, anarchism etc. Nationalists may surely object to such ideological fore-genes!
Nevertheless, ee invokes the Communist Party of Sri Lanka’s siren for socialist & nationalist forces to unite, and begins to serialize Idirimagen Idiriyata, the CPSL’s ‘Alternative Development Program’.
• Almost 70% of the country works in the informal sector, with only 8% doing formal-sector jobs. So warns the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) report Sri Lanka: State of Economy 2023. But what’s the problem? Workers in the informal sector ‘have no social protection and, as a result Sri Lanka should look at creating more good jobs that will guarantee social protection like EPF/ETF. In addition good jobs will provide adequate remuneration, rights at work’. No kidding! But can IPS recommend a modern industrial plan that could provide such ‘formal-sector’ ‘good jobs’ , or do they wish more of the same shill-and-be-shilled: consumer services? Selling more workers ‘West’ (which includes US-occupied Korea & Japan)?
The white man (the IMF’s master) is at the same time adding fuel to the carnage in West Asia. That should make working there more lucrative no doubt. And as for the prices of that fuel, wonder what all the IMF forecasts & prognoses will be now? The IMF etc however, carries on regardless. They demand ‘rule of law’ and yet oppose ‘elections’. ee estimates bourgeois elections as an expensive (capitalist-media-driven) fraud but but but…
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• Elections Threaten US Plans – Last week, after the IMF grandly ‘suspended’ their ‘plan’, they released their 139-page Governance Diagnostic Assessment (GDA), which makes 16 demands. One demand involves the government abolishing the Strategic Development Projects Act. It’s for noble reasons no doubt: They want ‘an explicit & transparent process’ to evaluate proposals & costing of investment promotion conditions.’ That’s it? And whose projects would qualify now? MCC?
Another interesting IMF ‘priority’ demand: ‘Corruption risks around state-owned land, estimated at approximately 80% of the country, are particularly severe due to the combination of lack of clarity around titles, the absence of a property registry, and ambiguity in processes for the divestiture of state property.’ Alright? What land does the IMF wish to sell? And what’s the hurry?
And so another team of officials from the IMF is expected next week to hold ‘extensive discussions’ on the ‘suspended’ ‘2nd tranche of the Extended Fund Facility’. Hasn’t their previous chatter been ‘extensive’? Has anyone counted the number & cost of the suits leaving & entering Sri Lanka whose sole purpose is to help Sri Lanka’s debt-ridden economy? Look at the number of ADB Executive Directors who arrived last week! The problem it turns out is, elections? And the IMF is full of democratic doom&gloom: ‘full economic recovery is not yet assured.’ And the economists echo: ‘The most serious threat to the continuity of the IMF program arises from the elections next year.’
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• Just to warm things up further: ‘Civil society groups & lawyers organized a human chain’ on October 4, for ‘10km on the main road from Jaffna town to Maruthanarmadam in the Northern province’, claiming a Mullaitivu judge was threatened to resign and flee the country.
On Oct 11, India launched a ferry service connecting Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu with Kankesanthurai in SL’s Northern Province ‘to enhance connectivity’.
On Oct 15, President Ranil Wickremesinghe began his visit to China. He will address the 3rd Belt & Road Forum, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI).
The President will return to a 20 October that has been declared ‘aday of total shutdown’ for Tamil political parties to ‘unite in Jaffna to urge international powers to intervene over the continuous deprivation of justice & protection for Tamils under Sri Lanka’s Sinhala Buddhist dominance’. These same international powers (including India) now certainly promoting justice & protection in Palestine, no doubt?!
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• The IMF claims it was ‘caught off guard’ by the ‘debt deal’ Sri Lanka struck with China this week, which the media calls ‘tentative’, and ‘in principle’. China called on ‘multilateral institutions & commercial creditors to take part in Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring based on fair burden-sharing’.
In Morocco, ‘the IMF & creditors like Japan, the US & India’ held talks on a debt restructuring plan ‘without the participation of China, which would include safeguards to prevent favourable payment terms to China’!
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• On October 13, ‘Sri Lankan Civil Society Initiative on Anti-Corruption Reform for Economic Recovery’, hosted ‘Pathways to Debt Sustainability & Governance Reform’ – ‘a closed-door event alongside the IMF Annual Meetings in Marrakesh, Morocco’. Civil Society? Closed door? Corruption? Well, here we go:
‘IMF Senior Mission Chief for Sri Lanka Peter Breuer, US-funded Verité Research Executive Director Dr Nishan de Mel, Transparency International SL Executive Director Nadishani Perera & Global Sovereign Advisory Senior Research Analyst Theo Maret spoke on a panel moderated by Thomson Reuters Emerging Markets Correspondent Jorgelina do Rosario.
Since it was a ‘transparent, closed-door’ event, we do not know what transpired. But they discussed the 2 recent governance diagnostics on Sri Lanka by civil society & the IMF and how the ‘IMF, the government, & the country’s creditors’ (where’s civil society here?) could achieve the ‘restructuring’ of Sri Lanka’s debt.
The ‘Civil Society Governance Diagnostic Report on the Anti-Corruption Landscape of Sri Lanka’ was released in mid-September, with ‘34 governance reform recommendations for Sri Lanka aimed at addressing the root causes of Sri Lanka’s current crisis’ .
In late Sept, after its grand suspension to cause middle-class hearts to flutter & demand a crackdown on unions, etc (few people even know what the IMF is doing in Sri Lanka, according to a USAID CPA Survey) – the IMF released its governance diagnostic on Sri Lanka – the first ever IMF governance diagnostic in Asia – making its 16 demands. Dollar-rich ‘civil society’ and the dollar-printing & un-civil IMF wish to improve ‘rule of law, transparency & accountability’.
The 139-page-long report on ‘Sri Lanka: Technical Assistance Report – Governance Diagnostic Assessment’ unveils the country’s corruption at ‘high places’.
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• On October 10, the ‘Intergovernmental Group of 24 on International Monetary Affairs & Development (G24) called on the IMF ‘to remain a quota-based institution in order to bolster the voice & representation of emerging market &developing economies, who now account for a larger share of world GDP. And also wants: ‘correcting regional underrepresentation in the IMF’.
On October 11, quite blasé to the fires blazing in West Asia, the IMF & World Bank & its allies released the Marrakech Principles for Global Cooperation, muttering their old mantra: ‘strengthening governance, the rule of law, trade, and the business environment to attract new investment and generate jobs. And here is the key: ‘catalyzing private sector finance’.
And while they make no mention of their escalating wars (IMF calls Israel’s economic performance ‘impressive’) they said thus: ‘Addressing fragility by effectively utilizing mechanisms for supporting fragile & conflict-affected states and jointly addressing global sources of food & energy insecurity’.
On 7 September, US Undersecretary for International Affairs Jay Shambaugh had acknowledged (a 1st time for the US) the imbalance in IMF governance, by giving ‘a bit more information on what it would take for the US to accept an increase of China’s IMF quota shares’. China is quite aware that the IMF is rigged, and demands that all multilateral institutions like the IMF & World Bank also restructure. These demands by China, the Anglo media steadfastly refuse to mention.
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• The manoeuvrings that Sri Lanka’s foreign policy officials (80% dedicated to meeting India’s concerns, apparently) have to squirm in, to obtain a more favorable deal from the white man, is truly cringe-worthy. Midst all manner of media buzz about a Chinese ‘spy ship’, a US naval ship Brunswick sailed unheralded by the anglomaniacs into the port of Colombo for an extended visit until Oct 15, to see ‘some of the tourist attractions in the country’. The oceanic floor alone must bore them?
Meanwhile, the Island headlined: ‘Govt finally allows Chinese ship visit… Chinese research vessel Shi Yan 6 would arrive in Sri Lanka in late November, Foreign Minister Mohamed Ali Sabry said on Monday (9). The Foreign Ministry had granted approval for the arrival of the ship, he added. The ship is expected to arrive in Sri Lanka on 25 Nov. Initially, they wanted to come in Oct. We asked them to come in Nov. They again asked if they could come in late Oct. We have maintained our position that they must come in late Nov. This is the situation, now.’
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‘It appears that the main reason why State District Court of New York
got involved is simply that someone, somewhere in the US government
took particular exception to how Hamilton Reserve Bank’s lawyers
presented the US position on sovereign debt restructurings.’
– ee Economy, SL’s US Cavalry is Here: Too bad they didn’t bring any big guns
ee knows little about financial finagling, but it appears the US, England & EU want Sri Lanka to acknowledge its finances are going to be officially determined elsewhere: eg, the US Court in Southern District of New York (SDNY), in media-blindfolded Manhattan. The Financial Times does not tell us what the US government found exceptional about HRB’s take on US interference in Sri Lanka. ee keeps also wondering why the media keeps teasing readers about this ‘London Club’, who are obviously involved in Sri Lanka’s debt jugglery. Yet they don’t go into much detail:
In September, London Club came up again when France & England joined the US at the SDNY court to support Sri Lanka’s request for ‘a 6 month freeze on any litigation’ on its debt, by filing an ‘amicus brief’. Occupied-Japan’s Nikkei-owned Financial Times of London then went on to say such briefs are usually filed ‘by people, organisations or countries that aren’t themselves party to any legal case, but have a strong opinion on how it should go. France is naturally interested in the Sri Lanka lawsuit as it hosts the so-called Paris Club, where government-to-govt debts are restructured. England is part of the Paris Club, but presumably cosigned the amicus brief because it historically oversaw the London Club, the less formal group for private creditors to negotiate with sovereign borrowers.’
On 4 October, EconomyNext reported on Ranil Wickremesinghe at Germany’s Berlin Dialog: ‘Sri Lanka also has to talk with private creditors. We have to talk with the Paris Club, plus India, then we’ll talk to China and then go back to the London Club.’
So other than wishing to affirm we all know that the Sri Lankan economy has been taken hostage by Manhattan & London bankers & their lawyers… what else?
On 12 Oct: ‘Sri Lanka’s private creditors have sent a proposal on how to restructure $12billion of overseas debt, including a new type of bond designed to ease repayments in case of future economic pressure.’ The article rather mysteriously, or designed to create mystery, quoted: ‘2 sources with direct knowledge of the matter’. Further on it adds: ‘Representatives for the government did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson representing the creditor committee did not reply to a request for comment.’ So who is this ‘Creditor Committee’?
One article credited this story to Reuters and another to Channel NewsAsia, owned by Singapore national public broadcaster Mediacorp, with headline: ‘SL bondholders sent $12bn debt rework proposal to government – sources’.
‘The proposal sent on Oct 2 provides a write-down, or haircut, on both capital & interest, added the sources who declined to be named because the talks are private. The proposal foresees new ‘step-down’, ‘Macro Linked Bonds, which will automatically lower coupon payments starting in 2027 if Sri Lanka fails to meet some of the economic targets linked to its IMF program’. – see ee Economy.
• Gaming Sri Lanka’s Debt – The London Financial Times suggests the Hamilton Reserve Bank lawsuit relates to ‘collective action clauses that allow all of the country’s bonds to be aggregated for voting purposes’. This apparently means a ‘majority’ decides on the terms. The HRB bond however, ‘lacks aggregation features and has long been flagged as vulnerable to ‘holdout’ creditors’. FT observes: ‘Delays by official creditors create a window for private creditors to exclude themselves from a bond workout… The long delays caused by official sector squabbling are creating new strategic options for private creditors.’
Colombo, October 15: Speaking at the Sitawaka-SisuArunalu programme held at the Rajasingha Central College, Hanwella, on September 25, President Ranil Wickremesinghe called for a fresh analysis of the achievements of Rajasingha the First, a courageous and patriotic” King of Sitawaka, a 16th.century principality in South Central Sri Lanka.
Rajasingha the First or Rajasingha I, ruled Sitawaka from 1581 to 1593. But even before inheriting the throne, when he was Prince Tikiri Bandara, he had become famous because of the crushing defeat he inflicted on the Portuguese in the epic battle of Mulleriyawa in 1559.
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Rajasingha was only continuing the anti-Portuguese policy of his father King Mayadunne (1521-1581). Mayadunne carried out a long-drawn battle against the Portuguese with the help of the Zamorin of Calicut in Kerala.
The Zamorin, also known as Samudiri, was a sworn enemy of the Portuguese. Several times, he had sent his navy composed of Moplah Muslims and led by Muslim commanders, to Sri Lanka, to help Mayadunne fight the Portuguese, the common enemy.
Like Mayadunne, the Zamorins were also tormented by the Portuguese who, after landing in Calicut in 1498, demanded iniquitous trading concessions which not only abridged the power of the local ruler but also ate into the businesses of the Moplahs who were a leading trading community in Kerala. Since they were seafarers too, the Moplahs also functioned as the naval arm of the Zamorins.
In the 16th.Century, Sitawaka had acquired a reputation for resolutely opposing the Portuguese who were trying to dominate the Western coastline that was the principal entry point for Europeans.
Vijayabahu VI (1513-1521), was the ruler of Kotte, a coastal principality in which the ports of Colombo and Negombo fell. The Portuguese demanded a monopoly over the purchase of cinnamon from the royal stores at a fixed price. This led to armed clashes between the King and the Portuguese in which Vijayabahu VI was invariably defeated. He was thus forced to accept a grossly unequal trade deal.
In Kotte, the Moplah Muslims from Kerala were an important trading community. The Portuguese’s demand for monopoly over cinnamon trade hurt the Moplahs’ business. But they were staunch allies of the King of Kotte and had very good relations with Sinhalese traders which they used to their advantage.
In 1521, following the death of Vijayabahu VI, Kotte broke into three units with the three sons of the King getting one part each. Mayadunne got Sitawaka; Bhuvanekabahu VII got Kotte on the coast, and Pararajasinghe got Raigam in the South.
Having the ports of Colombo and Negombo in his domain, Bhuvanekabahu VII had to face the brunt of Portuguese ambitions. In 1522, the Moplah traders of Kotte prevailed upon Bhuvanekabahu VII to renege on the deal entered into with the Portuguese by Vijayabahu VI. The Moplahs told the King that the Portuguese were selling Lankan cinnamon in Europe and West Asia at a 300% profit after buying them from the King at a fixed price.
But the weak Bhuvanekabahu VII took a softer line. All he wanted was to keep 40 Bahars (I Bahar=226.8 kg) of cinnamon for the Kingdom’s trade with East Asia. The Portuguese flatly refused to accept any dilution of their monopoly. Bhuvanekabahu VII retaliated by giving the Portuguese poor-quality cinnamon and delaying deliveries.
In 1525, the Moplahs sought military help from the Zamorin of Calicut. A naval force under Ali Hasan was despatched by the Zamorin. Fearing the arrival of Portuguese reinforcements from Goa to attack him, Bhuvanekabahu VII betrayed the Moplahs and attacked Ali Hasan’s fleet in the port.
This shocked the Moplahs and also proved unpopular among the Sinhalese, especially the cinnamon dealers, who had cordial ties with the Moplahs in contrast to antagonistic relations with the Portuguese.
Betrayed by the Kotte Kind and pursued by the Portuguese, the Moplahs fled to Sitawaka, where they were welcomed by Mayadunne. This was applauded by the Sinhalese of Sitawaka for whom Mayadunne was a defender of the Sinhalese against the Portuguese.
But popular support for him boosted Mayadunne’s ambition of taking over Kotte from his elder brother Bhuvanekabahu VI. In 1528 he sought help from the Zamorin of Calicut to drive the Portuguese out of Kotte to deny Bhuvanekabahu VII his main prop. When the Zamorin’s navy comprising Moplahs arrived, Mayadunne declared himself Chakravathi” in anticipation of conquering Kotte.
On his part, Bhuvanekabahu VII sought the help of the Portuguese in Goa, who sent 10 troop ships. Fearing defeat at the hands of the superior Portuguese, Mayadunne made peace with Bhuvanekabahu VII. With no brief to stay on in Sri Lanka, the Portuguese troops left.
But trouble arose again in 1533 when the Portuguese tried to force a revised trade deal on Bhuvanekabahu VII. They wanted to burn all the poor quality cinnamon given to them by the King so that these did not fall into the hands of the Moplahs. They also demanded that the King agree to a lower selling price.
When the weak King agreed to these terms, the Moplah traders appealed to Mayadunne to attack the Portuguese. To beef up the King’s forces, they got the Zamorin of Calicut to send a force. The Zamorin sent 4000 men under Ali Ibrahim.
To counter this move, Bhuvanekabahu VII sought Portuguese help. But by the time the 11 Portuguese vessels arrived from Cochin in 1537 under Martin Affonso de Souza, Bhuvanekabahu VII and Mayadunne had made up. The Kotte ruler sent back the Portuguese duly compensated.
However, on his volition, the Portuguese commander Martin Affonso de Souza pursued the Moplah fleet up to Mangalore on the Karnataka coast and pulverized it.
Back in Sri Lanka, the peace deal between Mayadunne and Buvanekabahu VII proved to be ephemeral. Mayadunne was itching to fight with Buvanekabahu VII as the latter’s trade deal with the Portuguese continued to irk him and his Moplah Muslim subjects. He again sought military assistance from the Zamorin, who sent 8000 Moplahs in 50 ships under the joint command of Kulhena Marakkar, Payichchi Marakkar and Ali Ibrahim.
En route, the Moplahs attacked Catholic converts on the Kerala coast, an act that infuriated the Portuguese.
Political map of Sri Lanka in the 16 th.Century
As in the past, Bhuvanekabahu VII sent for Portuguese troops from India. 650 Portuguese in 25 ships under Affonso de Souza set sail for Sri Lanka. On February 25, 1538, de Souza defeated the Moplah fleet. But that was in vain because Bhuvanekabahu VII and Mayadunnee had patched up by then.
Before long, Bhuvanekabahu VII was convinced that Mayadunne was eying the Kotte kingdom, having already assumed the title of Chakravarthi”. To press his claim, Mayadunne sought the Zamorin’s help and to thwart Mayadunne, Bhuvanekabahu VII, sought Portuguese help.
A Portuguese fleet under Miguel Ferreira arrived at Negombo and destroyed the ships of the Calicut navy anchored there. Ferreira’s fleet then came to Colombo and brunt all the Calicut ships there.
In 1539, a Zamorin’s force joined the Sitawaka army when it attacked Kotte. The attack was repulsed by the Portuguese under Miguel Ferreira. But this time, Ferreira wanted the defeat to be meaningful. He demanded that Mayadunne hand over the Moplah generals including the legendary Kulhena Marikkar and Payichchi Marikkar.
Mayadunne said that it would be unethical to hand them over as they had been given refuge. He offered compensation in lieu of surrender. But Ferreira would have none of it. He insisted on having the Marakkars, dead or alive.
Left with no option, Mayadunne beheaded the Marakkars, and sent their heads to Ferreira. This ended the Zamorin’s alliance with Mayadunne and other Sri Lankan Kings.
The Portuguese gained the upper hand in Kotte, especially after the installation on the throne of Dharmapala, Bhuvaneskabahu VII’s grandson who had converted to Catholicism. Feeling highly insecure, Mayadunne agreed to become a vassal of the Portuguese King.
However, Mayadunne’s successor in Sitawaka, Rajasingha I, continued to fight the Portuguese. He dealt a crushing blow to the Portuguese in the battle of Mulleriyawa in 1559. But he could not push the Portuguese out of Sri Lanka.
The reasons were: (1) Absence of naval power to intercept the enemy at sea; (2) Inability to import manpower from India after the Zamorin walked away in 1539; (3) Deficiency in the quality and quantity of firearms.
The Portuguese were superior on all three counts. Additionally, they had the ports of Kotte like Colombo under their control having installed a puppet, Dharmapala, on the throne there.
