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The Greeks have a saying for it: Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. And in the countdown to the presidential election, the party that would emerge triumphant at the hustings, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, turned the old adage on its head; and, draped top to toe in the Lion flag of patriotism, refused point blank to even furtively cast a curious glance at the 480 million dollar American stallion, let alone examine its two sets of ivory.

RAMBUKWELLA: Will never sign

Instead the decision was made on the crest of chauvinism’s tidal wave not to touch America’s Millennium Challenge Corporation’s freebie with a barge pole and to reject outright the US$ 480 million package and send it back pronto marked ‘Return to Sender’.

Whipping up the jingoistic frenzy to fever pitch in the run up to the hotly contested election, were the party’s usual alarm blowers, the indomitable pair Messrs. Weerawansa and Gammanpila who ominously warned not even to meddle with the strings that tied the package, lest it let loose some American made virus designed to swamp the very sovereignty of Lanka.

With all the blooming bluster they could readily muster, they made the outlandish claim that if the US$480m gift was accepted, it would be tantamount to a sellout of Lanka’s sovereignty; and that thereafter a visa issued by the American Embassy would be required to visit the Jayasri Maha Bodhi at Anuradhapura and a letter by the American Ambassador granting permission needed to lay flowers at the Sri Dalada Maligawa in Kandy.

To an intelligent electorate such rabid fantasies would have been the warped outpourings of a tortuous mind but to Lanka’s vast herd of voter buffaloes, some of whom prefer playgrounds to graze in than a ready supply of oxygen to breathe, such rants would have been pure poonac to slurp, regurgitate and sate their patriotic lust. Especially when told that, if elected, the first executive action would be to tear up the MCC agreement and, returning it to sender, tell the bally Americans what they can do with the shredding.

The election result showed that the duo’s efforts had been successful, far beyond their expectations; and with the resounding triumph of the SLPP presidential candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa, it was firmly believed that the MCC agreement — as the duo had claimed it would be — was dead as a dodo; and the US$480 million dollar gift that came with it had been spurned out of hand.

Yet, notwithstanding, what was successfully played to the galleries’ applause, the sane posture adopted by Rajapaksa and even his rival Premadasa was that they would consider the MCC gift after the election had been done with, and if it was found to be not inimical to the nation’s interest, it would be accepted. Thus a few days after the polls had closed, the winds began to blow, once more, in a north westerly direction, forcing both Weerawansa’s and Gammanpila’s much oiled weather-cocks to swiftly turn in the same direction.

GUNAWARDENA: Will negotiate and sign

After having assembled a tapestry featuring fearsome vistas of a landscape under siege and hanging it on hamlet walls, so damning that  no political party thereafter wanted to be even seen dead holding a copy of the agreement of the Millennium Corporation Challenge, without running the risk of being branded a traitorous outfit; after their repeated rhetoric and the throbbing boom of their jingoistic drum made the island’s long dormant though simmering patriotic volcano blow its top and spew its ash to cover and bury Sajith Premadasa’s much vaunted hopes of winning the presidency whilst its passionate flow of red hot molten lava served to carry on its crest the roaring ambitions of Gotabaya Rajapaksa to the uplands of presidential power in no small a measure, the diabolical duo, sniffing change in the air, began humming a different tune, timed to a more sober tempo, one in step with the changing times..

What was as black as coal, now suddenly seemed to them both to have fifty two shades of grey.

Exactly three weeks after the election, Gammanpila, soon followed by Weerawansa, has a change of heart towards the MCC. After having lit the patriotic flame by brandishing the MCC‘s US$480 million gift as the forbidden fruit the Yankee snake was tempting Lanka’s leaders to eat which would lead to the loss of Lanka’s Eden, he was now intent on dousing the fire, lest it gets out of hand and boomerangs on the arsonist.

On December 8, Gammanpila holds a media conference to announce his U-turn. “I am no hypocrite”, he declares. “I am not stupid either to oppose everything that comes from the United States.” He then stresses that the MCC project is not bad at all as he had thought it to be. Now, despite his scaremongering, he finds the MCC to be seventy percent good. He is all for the transportation project for which seventy percent of the grants were allocated. He only has misgivings about the land project which constitutes thirty percent of the MCC agreement. He is only against that. But he does not spell out specifically why  he is against it, in the same manner he had not spelt out why he was against the MCC offer in toto then, or why he is in favour now of the road project which constituted 70 percent of the ‘all or nothing’ offer.

His comrade in spirit, Weerawansa, on the other hand, came before the TV cameras and appeared to be crestfallen. He said that ‘Lakshman Yapa had said that my opposition to the MCC agreement was my personal opinion and did not reflect the government’s opinion. But I have expressed my opposition to the MCC agreement on the same stage as the President and he had not told me to refrain from expressing my opinion.’

‘I brought this up at the cabinet meeting; but I was told by the President that he had appointed a committee comprising of illustrious people to review this agreement and to forward a report to the cabinet. Because there are illustrious people in this committee I need not get excited. But I will not say that the government is for the MCC.’

On December 19, Cabinet Spokesman Bandula Gunawardena said, the proposed Millennium Challenge Corporation agreement was suspended while a four-member committee was appointed to review the MCC and submit recommendations to the Cabinet.

On February 17, the preliminary report of the four-member Committee appointed to review the proposed Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact was handed over to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa at the Presidential Secretariat and it was announced that the final report on MCC is expected to be completed within four months.

Enter State Minister for Investments and Government media spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella. Addressing the media at the Prime Minister’s office last Thursday, he declared that the government had decided not to sign the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) agreement with the US.

He gave reasons for the government’s decision not to go ahead with the agreement. The agreement was he said,

detrimental to the country’s sovereignty and

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in the run-up to the presidential election had assured in his manifesto that he would not go ahead with the agreement.

But did the SLPP manifesto make any mention of the MCC? Wasn’t Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s stance that he would study the MCC agreement and would only sign if it was ‘not inimical to the nation’s interests’?

Rambukwella, echoing the Gammanpila jingoistic jingle, said, ‘the government will never obtain money by betraying the country. With proper governance the country can be put back on the right track.’

To put him on the right track, enter Cabinet spokesman Minister Bandula Gunawardena. Speaking to the media last Friday, the day after Rambukwella had declared  the Government will not sign the MCC, the senior Minister said, ‘the government will sign the proposed US Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact after re-negotiating what was agreed upon during the previous Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration.’

Bandula Gunawardena said that about 30 percent of the Compact, which pertained to a land project was harmful to Sri Lanka and the Cabinet of Ministers had decided not to proceed with the agreement in its present form. But after negotiations, which would not be a difficult thing to do, it could be signed, he said.

But, despite Gunawardena’s optimism that severance of the MCC Compact is possible, it is doubtful. The gift on the table is on the condition ‘you take all or you get nothing’.

Gunawardena also claimed that the outright development grant assistance of US$480 million that the MCC Compact offered was not a huge amount to be crying over.

On November 10 last year, amidst demands by the likes of Gammanpila and Weerawansa – by those who had not read it nor had the expertise to analyse its implications — to tear the MCC agreement to shreds claiming it will destroy Lanka’s sovereign status, the SUNDAY PUNCH commented: ‘But without any person stating whether or not the MCC agreement is intrinsically bad news for Lanka why should the nation forego the opportunity to develop its infrastructure with a free gift from the Americans valued at $480 million. Of course, the Americans have an ulterior motive which is why there is nothing called a free lunch in any parlance. The Americans are building up a network, the Asian and Pacific Strategy to counter the growing Chinese threat in the region with its Road Belt. If we reject every proposal merely because the offerer has an ulterior motive in making it, then every aid grant and every loan agreement will have to be rejected out of hand. No man nor country gives anything without some self-interest motivating his or her action.’

The SUNDAY PUNCH stated: ‘If the country feels that it is presently beseeched by a Chinese monopoly, perhaps considering that Lanka is a highly aid dependent country it should seek safety and strength in numbers. If the Americans come with their fistful of dollars seeking a piece of the action, if the Japanese come with their yen, if the Indians come with their rupees, then if the necessary sovereignty safeguards are taken, why not exploit the strategic position the nation geographically occupies and let the country be developed by the dollars, the yuans, the yens, and the rupees and let the prosperity flow.’

Twenty days later, while on his first state visit to India in late November last year, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa told the Hindu newspaper: ‘I want to tell India, Japan, Singapore and Australia and other countries to also come and invest in us. They should tell their companies to invest in Sri Lanka and help us grow.’

US$480 million may be peanuts to Higher Education Minister Gunawardena, who a few years ago announced that, according to his calculations, a family of four in Lanka could exist comfortably on a paltry Rs. 2,500 a month and still have spare money left for entertainment.

But 480 million dollars is 480 million dollars and is not chicken feed to a country already hocked to the full and have hardly any money left in the national kitty to keep the wolf from the door, let alone increase its debt and spend on infrastructural development. Prime Minister and Finance Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa on his visit to India last month begged Indian Prime Minister Modi to grant Lanka a three year moratorium on all loans taken from India and said he will be asking other lender nations to do the same for the nation’s coffers were so pathetically bare.

The task before the Government is how to accept Uncle Sam’s offer and make it palatable to the people, brainwashed to believe its inviolate sovereignty will be raped if it is accepted. How to make the MCC Compact which had been rubbed in the mire, come up smelling roses is the challenge the Government faces today? How to cleanse the MCC of the black grime it was tarred with and drape it in the saviour’s white clothing and make it politically palatable and fit for patriotic consumption? It is the millennium challenge awaiting the Government.

On with the task. When the ‘haves’ dole out their riches, the ‘have nots’ should take the offering. For the ‘have nots’ cannot be chooses.

As the Greeks say, ‘do not look a gift horse in the mouth’. Embrace it. As a Sinhala saying goes: ‘When the gods wish to give, they come home and give.’ Open the door and let them in. Unless, of course, a mandatory condition of this new found American generosity is that Lanka must also take with the 480 million US buck freebie, a Made in US, suspicious looking, riddled with holes SOFA as well.

MCC: THE LOWDOWN Exactly what is the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)?  To put it simply, the MCC was created by the US Congress as an independent foreign assistance agency with the aim of fighting against global poverty. Already, it has donated 13 billion dollars to 29 countries. Top recipients of American benevolence had been Indonesia which had received 600 million dollars, Mongolia with two grants of 284 million in 2007 plus another grant of 350 million dollars, Nepal has received 500 million dollars and the Philippines 433 million dollars. The strategic importance of Lanka to the Americans can be measured by the size of the grant she is offered which is 480 million dollars. And, by the way, none of these countries have been invaded and their sovereignty strangulated as a result of accepting this piece of American largess But this gift is not summa money. It comes with strings attached as to the manner in which the money given is to be used. It is not given to refill a bare larder or to be spent on purchasing another fleet of luxury cars for the new Parliament’s MPs in May. Or even to build another power plant.  As it does with other countries it gives money to, the MCC decides the areas money should be spent on. The MCC grant to Lanka will focus on two projects. One is the land project with a budget of US$67 million, it will focus on five activities. One is to compile a complete inventory of all state lands. The second is to improve the evaluation system of all lands. The third is to build on the Government’s e-Land Registry initiative and to improve the Deeds Registry by digitising existing records. The fourth is to improve tenure security for all land holders by moving properties from the Deeds system to the Title Registration system. The fifth activity is the funding of research in support of measures to improve land administration policies. The other project of the Millennium Challenge Corporation is transport. The cost of this project is $350 million. Basically, it is to upgrade approximately 131 km of interprovincial roads in the Central Ring Road Network connecting the Central, Sabaragamuwa, and Uva Provinces with ports and markets in the Western Province. At a meeting held on April 26th last year in Washington D.C. the US Government decided to assist the Sri Lanka Government in addressing two of the country’s binding constraints to economic growth: (1) inadequate transport logistics infrastructure and planning; and (2) lack of access to land for agriculture, the services sector, and industrial investors and to increase the relative efficiency and capacity of the road network and bus system in the Colombo region and to reduce the cost of transporting passengers and goods.

HILLARY: I believed his lie Oval Office sex with Monica to beat White House stress Former US President Clinton’s amazing kiss and tell confession Former American President who had earlier confessed that he had engaged only in fellatio with White House intern Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office revealed to the American nation this Friday that he had gone the whole six yards and had full sexual intercourse with her. The affair took place between 1995 and 1997. He was 50 then. She was only 23. Only 5 years older than Clinton’s only daughter Chelsea. It happened because Clinton needed a stress reliever to beat work tension. In what will soon be ranked as one of the best excuses a man could tell his wife and hope to get away with only if he happened to be the President of the United States of America, Clinton says ‘It was one of the things I did to manage my anxieties’. CHELSEA: Daughter saved marriage The quote will join Clinton’s famous quote, the blatant lie he told to the American people on national television in 1998 when the scandal first broke: ‘I did not have sexual intercourse with Monica Lewinsky’. The confessions came in an interview featured in a new documentary series aired on Hulu Channel about his wife Hillary Clinton, called ‘Hillary’, where she candidly reveals that in the aftermath of the scandal the couple underwent ‘painful’ marriage counselling. He even speaks about how, at the time he met Lewinsky the pressure of the job made him feel like a boxer who had done 30 rounds and he looked at Lewinsky as ‘something that will take your mind off it for a while.’ He explains how he treated Monica simply as a sex object, a stress reliever. He says, ‘You feel like you’re staggering around, you’ve been in a 15 round prize fight that was extended to 30 rounds and here’s something that will take your mind off it for a while, that’s what happens. Bill offers an apology to Lewinsky in the documentary and says he felt ‘terrible’ that her life was defined by their affair. But the only words of support he extends to her is to tell her, ‘at some point when things don’t return to normal you’ve got to decide how to define normal’. He has the crass to suggest to the infamous former intern that she ‘should just move on. Or in other words: ‘Get a life, baby.’ The scandal led to Bill being impeached in 1998. But he, like present president Donald Trump did this year in his first year, survived the trial in the Senate and remained in office during his second term. STRESS RELIEVER; President Clinton and intern in the Oval Office. He was 50 then. She was only 23 As Britain’s Daily Mail reports after having sneaked a peak at the documentary before it was aired: ‘The last time Bill spoke about the scandal was in 2018 and it backfired spectacularly because he said that he did not owe Lewinsky a private apology. This time he went through in great detail, at times appearing emotional as he talked about the moment he finally came clean to his wife. His hand was forced in 1998 when it became apparent he had lied to a grand jury investigating his personal affairs by denying the affair. Bill had also denied it to Hillary and she had believed him. He said in the interview: ‘I went and sat on the bed and talked to her. I told her exactly what happened, when it happened. I said I feel terrible about it. We’ve been through quite a bit in the last few years. I said I have no defence, it’s inexcusable what I did’. Hillary told Bill that he was the one who had to tell their daughter Chelsea, who was 18 at the time. He thought it was worse than telling his wife and he said that doing so was ‘awful’. Asked why he took such a risk with his family, his marriage and his country, Bill said he wasn’t thinking about those things when he cheated. Instead, the pressures of being in the White House led him to seek a distraction. ‘Because there, whatever life — not just me. Everybody’s life has pressures and disappointments, terrors, fears of whatever. Things I did to manage my anxieties for years. I’m a different, totally different person than I was, a lot of that stuff 20 years ago,’ he said. And what kept his marriage together? His wife Hillary explains. ‘’The family went to Martha’s Vineyard for a vacation and when we returned had decided to stand by my husband and fight his impeachment. On the helicopter ride there my daughter Chelsea took us both by the hand.’’ An emotional Hillary says in the film: ‘When she did that, oh my gosh, I thought that’s just so incredible, so strong and so wise’. Well it was all’s well that ended well for Bill Clinton. But not so much for the legacy he will leave behind one day. A president charged with sexual misconduct at work in the Oval Office and impeached by Congress. A bare faced liar who only owned up when he was found out. A man who, at the age of 50, had sexual intercourse with a girl aged 23 and who worked for him as a trainee. And if that weren’t enough to condemn him a cad, a man who twenty five years after the affair had ended, now engages in a kiss and tell confession and brags that he went the whole hog with her just to relieve himself of the stress his job gave him. That the young girl whose name he tarred and whose life he ruined by the notorious White House sexecapde, was nothing more to him than a walking, talking, living, willing stress jerking rubber doll.