Dead dodo disposed

Saturday 19th December, 2020

The US has terminated the much-touted 480-million-dollar Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact with Sri Lanka. In fact, there was no need for the discontinuation of that agreement; it was dead as a dodo following Colombo’s refusal to sign it.

Opinion is divided on the MCC grant. Some observers think the US was acting out of altruism, and Sri Lanka should have grabbed the offer with both hands as it is desperate for foreign exchange. Others who are capable of seeing through the wiles of the US view the compact as a Trojan horse.

The MCC Board of Directors would have us believe that the controversial compact was intended to assist Sri Lanka in addressing two of its ‘binding constraints’: inadequate transport logistics, infrastructure and planning, and lack of access to land for agriculture, the service sector and industrial investors. Why is the US so keen to solve problems here?

The war was Sri Lanka’s biggest problem, and why is it that the countries which sought to prevent it being finished are so concerned about other issues, especially those related to land? Their love for this country cannot be genuine.

It is not out of altruism that the world powers evince an interest in helping the countries situated in strategically important locations in the world. Unfortunately, Sri Lankan rulers have not learnt from the blunders of their predecessors, who fell for the devious strategems of the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English, and entered into disastrous deals, including ill-conceived pacts, with those colonial powers.

It was a huge mistake for the Rajapaksa government (2005-2015) to be lured into involving China in land reclamation and port development projects here and to antagonise India and the western bloc in the process. (India was invited to build the inland port in Hambantota, but it showed no interest, and China grabbed the opportunity.) The yahapalana government blundered by leasing out the Hambantota Port to China for 99 years and allowing a bigger area than the one in the original Port City plan to be reclaimed from the sea, having suspended the project to spite China and please the western powers.

The MCC should not be viewed in isolation, for it is linked to the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA). Taken together, they can be seen as part of the Indo-Pacific strategy of the US, which is maniacally focused on countering China’s Belt and Road initiative.

The MCC directors have said it was the Sri Lankan government (2015-2019) that identified ‘most binding constraints that prevent private sector led growth in Sri Lanka’. One may get the impression that the controversial land project was the brainchild of the yahapalana government and not the US, and, therefore, cannot be inimical to Sri Lanka’s interests. But the fact remains that the same administration co-sponsored the US-crafted UNHRC resolution against this country at the behest of Washington. The yahapalana leaders were ready to do anything to be in the good books of their western masters.

Big powers no longer resort to sheer force to grab resources such as land in other countries. Their methods are sophisticated. Instead of using bullets as the first resort, they employ baits which come in the form of grants, loans and even bribes. They also use various fronts to acquire land and other vital resources in other countries.

Government backers are cock-a-hoop at the discontinuation of the MCC compact. But the problem is far from over. The US move looks a tactical withdrawal. Now that the grant bait has failed to work, the US is likely to use the human rights harpoon. The government had better brace itself for another turn of the screw in Geneva come March 2021, and other such hostile actions.