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MS redirects foreign policy but doesn’t go offroad on Silk Route
President Maithripala Sirisena’s description of Sri Lanka’s foreign policy as “absolutely non-aligned” is highlighted in the Annual Review of World Affairs published by the prestigious London-based International Institute of World Affairs (IISS).
In a four-page review of Sri Lanka in its 2015 Strategic Survey released late last month, the Institute devotes about a third of the space to look back at the country’s foreign policy under Mahinda Rajapaksa and the re-shaping of it begun by the Sirisena administration.
Calling it the “End of Rajapaksa’s presidency”, IISS says that President Sirisena had “wished to reorient rather than radically change Sri Lanka’s foreign policy.”
While IISS argues that India was relieved at Sirisena’s electoral victory because of Rajapaksa’s pro-China tilt, and the West also welcomed it, and was ready to engage with the new administration after years of strained relations with the Rajapaksa government, Sirisena did not turn his back on China, which had bankrolled Sri Lanka, particularly in its postwar development effort.
The institute says that Sri Lanka had borrowed heavily from China during the Rajapaksa years, and some projects were under scrutiny during the early days of the Sirisena presidency, as part of the new government’s anti-corruption drive. But this did not lead to the termination of any project.
IISS claims that, when construction and investment slowed down due to the investigations, the newly elected president travelled to China to reassure the Chinese leadership.
“Sirisena recognised that Sri Lanka Central Bank’s forecast of 7% growth for 2015 compared with 7.4% in 2014, would only be achievable with continuing Chinese investment in infrastructure and tourism,” concludes the report, which also deals with some of the reasons for Mahinda Rajapaksa’s defeat and the early measures taken by his successor to reassure the Tamil community on reconciliation.