Festina lente!

Friday 18th November, 2022

Sri Lankan politicians who are given to moronic thinking and self-promotion do not heed the oxymoronic, classical adage, festina lente, (‘make haste slowly’) when they enter into pacts with other nations. The incumbent government is in a mighty hurry to implement the Sri Lanka-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (SLSFTA) as if it were the panacea for all our economic ills.

The UNP-SLPP combine has got its priorities mixed up, and the success of its crackdown on Aragalaya seems to have lulled it into thinking that it can bulldoze its way through. Has it forgotten why the SLSFTA had to be shelved about four years ago? Or, how does it propose to sort out the issues that have stood in the way of its implementation?

One of the main reasons why the SLSFTA has run into stiff resistance here is that it contains some provisions that are thought to jeopardise the interests of Sri Lankan professionals, among others. One may recall that in early 2018, the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) went so far as to resort to trade union action against the SLSFTA as well as the proposed Economic and Technological Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) with India.

It may also be recalled that at a forum organised by the Organisation of Professional Associations (OPA), in Sept. 2018, the then Minister of Development Strategies and International Trade, Malik Samarawickrama, who is one of the architects of the SLSFTA, admitted that the OPA had been left out of the consultation process anent the controversial pact. He said it was a mistake, but nobody was convinced, for the OPA is an umbrella organisation for 52 professional associations representing 32 disciplines and has over 50,000 members. Samarawickrama made another futile attempt to have his audience believe that the SLSFTA, which had become operational in May 2018, had not been signed in secret.

The SLSFTA also provides for the disposal of foreign waste here. This is why many Sri Lankan environmental groups fought tooth and nail to prevent the implementation of the pact. This country has already become a dumpsite for foreign garbage, and how bad the situation will be if waste imports are legalised through a trade pact is not difficult to imagine.

Sri Lanka cannot afford to be a hermit kingdom in the modern world and has to sign various pacts with other countries, but its rulers must ensure that its interests are safeguarded. The SLSFTA has to be amended with the views of the OPA, the Opposition, the business community, public officials, and other experts being taken on board if it is to be implemented. Festina lente!

The government must not be allowed to use the current economic crisis as an excuse to commit the country to international pacts that are detrimental to its interests, according to the whims and fancies of the powers that be. What it has undertaken to do purportedly to achieve economic recovery is tantamount to reducing a person to penury and forcing him or her to sell his or her organs to repay debt. Beggars are no choosers, as it is popularly said, but that does not mean they must be forced to dispose of their organs by way of debt repayment.

There is reason to believe that the government’s attempt to implement the SLSFTA is only a trial balloon, and its real intention is to sign the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) with the US, to enable the stationing of American boots here. Sri Lanka is like a damsel in distress in a rough neighbourhood with musclemen trying to take advantage of her on the pretext of helping her.

It has now become abundantly clear that the incumbent government, under President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s stewardship, is doing what the people punished the Yahapalana leaders for, at the 2020 general election. Gotabaya Rajapaksa secured the presidency, and the SLPP obtained a huge parliamentary majority by promising to undo what the previous UNF administration had done from 2015 to 2019. If people had desired an extension of the Yahapalana rule, they would have elected UNP presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa and voted the UNP/SJB into power, in 2019 and 2020, respectively.

The public must be given an opportunity to endorse or reject the country’s reversion to the Yahapalana rule and/or government undertakings that are at variance with what the SLPP promised in its policy programmes. The need for a general election to be held soon after the finalisation of the IMF bailout package cannot be overemphasised. That will be the most democratic way of allowing the people, especially the resentful youth, to decide whether the government is on the right path, and deserves a fresh mandate to govern the country.The current leaders in their twilight years must not be allowed to do what is good for them and/or their kith and kin alone on the pretext of resolving the economic crisis; they must be made to safeguard the interests of the country’s youth and generations to come, or depart.