Columns

Now we know where we stand, don’t we? Well, some may be sure of it, but I am not sure that everybody in the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna that steers the National People’s Power (NPP) ship itself knows where they stand.

If they do, then they have dumped their Marxist mask that saw them through some bad times and are now unceremoniously clinging to their leader, who seems to be grabbing everything in the waters, hoping to catch some fish.

Actually our northern fishermen are desperately trying to do the same, but President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is too busy trying to build an image as a rising world figure that he has left our northern brethren still trying to find some food for the day to his new friend, a Delhi wallah, to deal with our citizens while he handles those of other countries.

Well, that is the way the cuckoo crumbles, as they say, though I would personally avoid the old saying, for there are far more important things to ponder as the ship of state begins to list to the right.

It was that interview the other day with Newsweek that really made me wonder whether we are worth only a handful of dollars and one single trumpet call when, not too far back, our country was respected in the international arena for its perceptive and steadfast decision-making.

It was not too long ago that our president, while on a visit to Japan, spelt out our foreign policy as one of “balance”. Nothing is wrong with a “balanced foreign policy”. But what is not clear—in fact, not laid out for the country—is what it means, so the people have an opportunity to express their views on a major issue.

An ordinary citizen trying to grasp where this country is heading would want to know what we are balancing, who we are balancing and with what, and how many nations are involved in this balancing act, for this is not a small world and balancing is a delicate task. Surely we cannot be trying to balance the entire membership of the United Nations.

But before the NPP government and its foreign policy architects could answer, President Dissanayake appears to have moved away from balancing his policy to try to hang on to nations that provide succour but never state what it costs.

An important question often asked by the opposition—whoever the opposition might be at the time—is what we have received as a quid pro quo for opening our country’s land, sea and air to these ‘new’ nations that we are playing footsie with.

It was only during the recent budget debate that the Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath proudly claimed that during one year in office, the government entered into 70 MoUs extolling their performance. He was probably implying that before NPP’s time is complete, they would have the whole world and bits and pieces of circling planets in their hands.

The NPP and its followers might well be singing hallelujahs in the same way voters were made to believe, unlike in the past, the law would apply equally to all, politisation would be decimated, and equality would prevail.

Yet what is sadly lacking is that parliament is left in the dark about the contents of those 70 agreements so that the people who elected these record-breaking agreement initiators would also follow the law and parliamentary procedures.

Yet by resorting to their own twisted ways, they deprive the people of this country of learning what their country is sacrificing in the name of modernisation or simply producing more signed papers.

Surely the NPP leader and his duo in the last parliament cannot deny how often they called for—nay, demanded—that the MoUs the government had signed be tabled in parliament as parliamentary procedure required.

Strangely, those who give rapturous speeches selling themselves as the advocates of law and order who will clean up the country of the lawbreakers and the ungodly seem to be equally guilty of violating parliamentary laws and procedures.

Some might well remember that when the government turned to the IMF for financial help, NPP’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake was one of those who, given more time, might have brought the parliamentary roof down, with rhetorical bombast demanding the tabling of the government’s agreements with the IMF, claiming they and the people had a right to know.

That was not the only time that his speeches sounded like roll-over rhetoric instead of considered, well-organised debate. Others might well remember who battered the government for not tabling the agreements President Ranil Wickremesinghe signed with India’s Modi.

But how is it that today those old calls have fallen? Times have changed. Then the NPP triumvirate called on the government to follow constitutional and parliamentary procedures and other laws. Today, the NPP has fallen silent over the demands it made so vociferously.

Why is it that the NPP, which constantly called for adherence to the law, for transparency, and for accountability, seems to have forgotten all three, or perhaps lost its notebook? For it is shocking that the NPP has lost its collective memory.

If not, and they are clear in what they promised during campaigning days, even abroad, would great MoU instigators like our indomitable foreign minister with 70 medals on his chest, so to say, table in parliament for two of the agreements signed?

Surely we are not asking for a whole bagful of the victory medals. Just two is what we ask. Is that too much to ask from a government that has 70 under its belt to display them? After all, we are not asking the government to break the law; oh no, we are asking the government to obey the law by adhering to it.

Whatever Media Minister Nalinda Jayatissa’s views on media big and small are and his habit of flinging hand grenades at the media, one might ask him to throw away some of the piffle we hear in and out of parliament and prove he is balanced (not the same balance as the foreign policy) and urge the president and cabinet to have the two MoUs released.

Could he do so, and if he could, would he? I doubt he would.

Among the 70-odd MoUs, there are agreements that should see the light of day. That is where the catch is. In my opinion, one of them is the deal with the United States signed recently, the old SOFA agreement that President Maithripala Sirisena refused to sign when he heard of it belatedly in 2019.

Today it has been palmed off to Sri Lanka under another name and a few new actors, including the US War Department. I doubt it would be named as a Peace Department, though it sounded like that before the name a couple of years back.

If this crazy US leader cannot wipe out China with a wrecking ball, he will at least take away our Kottu Roti, now making some headway in London.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor, Diplomatic Editor and Political Columnist of the Hong Kong Standard before moving to London, where he worked for Gemini News Service. Later he was Deputy Chief of Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London before returning to journalism.)