Features
Sumathy’s Ingirunthu : (Here and Now)
The Malaiyaha and Memory of the World 1823-2023
by Laleen Jayamanne
Continued From Yesterday
When Sivamohan was growing up in Jaffna in a Christian home (prior to the civil-war), her three sisters and mother listened to and also sang African-American Gospel music (what we then called Spirituals). She also said that her mother read poetry to her as a child, about the experience of slavery there, suggesting the source of that music. An awareness of the Blues came a little later, she said, perhaps, as I thought to myself, brought back by her older sisters (Nirmala and Rajani) returning from College, radicalised by their experiences in the US during the anti-Vietnam war and the Civil Rights Movements of the late 1960’s. Sivamohan’s autobiographical impulses, obliquely folded into this her first film, are important for me to acknowledge here, because they are undoubtedly a condition of its possibility, an integral part of its politics. A feminist politics too, which introduced the new idea that the ‘personal is also political.’ This scene in the restaurant therefore, is not a purely functional sociological scene locating the Researcher in Colombo. It’s edited with a feel for the mannerist rhythms of Georgia (just like Ray Charles’ iconic performance of it seen on You-Tube), which cut across time and space and connect with the feelings of loss and homesickness of the homeless Malaiyaham people of Lanka. Song can do this, especially the Blues.
On the estate, the Researcher is keen to hear about the history of a legendary militant female estate worker by the name of Meenakshi Amma, in the spirit of recovering a female oral-history of political struggle in the 1930s. As she enquires about her from the social worker on the estate, the film abruptly cuts to a surprising musical interlude of a young Meenaskshi Amma singing a song to ‘Lanka Matha’, (“Mother Lanka”) amidst tea bushes, surrounded by a few women dressed as they did in the archival photographs. The actress playing Meenakshi Amma is in a contemporary bright orange handloom sari and red blouse. It’s a startling interruption and moving in its intensity when the other women (young and old) join in chorus, one beating a hand drum and others carrying long poles, stretching out their right hands in a gesture of supplication (‘Aren’t we also yours?’) to Lanka Matha, even as they move slowly in a solemn procession through the tea bushes, to the pulse of the drum.
Meenashi Amma
There is another allegorical scene, equally startling for a different reason. A white manager of a plantation arrives on a white horse to examine if the male workers have pruned the tea bushes to the exact specification of 15 inches, no more, no less. As he gets off the horse, the overseer (or Kankani) swiftly opens up a black umbrella to shield the white master from the sun–though he wears a wide brimmed hat. With mounting melodramatic fury he shouts at the bent workers pruning with sharp knives, ordering them to prune at an exact 15 inches. As he yells at them, ‘Imbecile, Imbecile,’ one of the workers lunges at him with his knife which cuts to the master’s blood splattered face, then to drops of blood on unpruned tea leaves and then to what appears to be a totally severed white arm lying on the earth. There are no cries. The allegory cuts
deeply through its restrained melodramatic articulation, to an entire field of perfectly pruned brown tea stumps, concluding a melodramatic scene with an intensive epic-memory of the world, which includes the bloodied earth itself.
The Burning Tea Bush
However, the most startling disjunction happens when (at the ending of Meenakshi Amma’s collective song) the film cuts to Peter sitting, playing his accordion, beside a burning tea bush. It’s also an allegorical scene because the crackling flames don’t seem to burn up the tea bush. So, it evokes for me a biblical resonance with God manifesting through a burning bush, to address Moses at his most troubled moment in the desert when leading the exodus of former Jewish slaves to the promised land. A fiery image in a Tarkovsky film flashes by in memory. Burning a tea bush is illegal, a punishable offence, but it continues to burn and crackle without turning to ashes, while the accordion music floats in the night-time air. Here, Peter playing his accordion beside the fiery tea bush, becomes an iconic chorus powerfully crystalising many sensations, emotions and thoughts stirred up by the film; a memory of the world for sure.
That Ingirunthu could weave this heterogeneity of autonomus, intensive, poetically allegorical scenes and story lines of a marginalised community into a coherent whole of sorts, is a sign of the film’s inclusive, modern, epic-narrative vision. It is not a plotted film where all lines converge on a narrative resolution as a drama would. As Blackburn said, ‘the tension and obstacles to resolution’ of dramatic conflicts offer us a kind of creative opportunity rarely seen in films. The two sequences, of Meenakshi Amma’s song and Peter at the burning bush playing his accordion, offer startling poetic allegorical images, within a film which is about the epochal political history of exploitation of Malaiyaha labour, presented variously as a chronicle with archival documents, as well as enactments of everyday life through ethnographic observation and dramatized scenes. Epic vision and narration are inclusive of the lyric and the dramatic, as Brecht has shown us. They have the aesthetic amplitude to shows us this bitter earth, its life, even the most insignificant, as well as the buried layers of violence and the collective struggles to change them.
The Bindunuwewa Massacre
The July ‘83 race riots and the government-led programme’s effects infiltrate the estate in one strand of the narrative which is constructed with thriller overtones. The police and army presence gradually increases with interrogations and incidents. There is also physical infighting among various political and union factions. The newspaper montage in all three languages of the massacre of 26 Tamil male inmates at the Bindunuwewa ‘open’ rehabilitation camp for Tamil political prisoners, sends shock waves across the community, because one of them was of Malaiyaha origin. Sarasa’s young brother has been arrested and interned in a camp. The Tiger separatist politics of Jaffna and the ongoing civil war, appeared not to concern a few of the disaffected youth but create tension and fear on the estate. In an unusual framing, a young man gives a speech in a rhetorical mode, to no one in particular, saying ‘there are no tigers or lions here.’ The close-shot cuts to an informal group discussing the massacre and the murder of two political activists in a fight at the funeral of the victim of the massacre.
The meeting breaks up for them all to attend the funeral. In an extraordinarily tense sequence, we are shown, in a long-wide shot, not the funeral, but each of the adults of the community, dressed neatly in white, walking briskly through the layam to the funeral, in pairs and singly, silently. One feels the entire presence of the community gathering for this funeral which we are not shown. (Whereas we were shown the small Christian procession of mourners holding little crosses and a wreath, carrying Esther Valley’s mother’s coffin, across the landscape, singing a hymn.) Rituals for the dead when presented on film often create a profound sense of a community, give it a collective vitality, united in grief.
Hindu Kovil Festival
Similarly collective, the very large excited crowd enjoying the Hindu religious festival and dance parade at the Kovil is presented at first, in the observational mode of an ethnographic gaze. We see the intensity of the devotional ritual within the inner sanctum of the Kovil. Then the camera moves into a complex participatory mode, following a thriller-political plot line connecting Esther Valley with a figure trying to get her to identify a photograph by bribing her with a necklace. Refusing in fear, she runs away from him into the crowd. Then the participatory camera moves closer in to take in the transsexual dancers, one in traditional attire and three striking, tall figures in contemporary dress.
Moving closer to them, the camera and editing begin to move with them, fascinated by their thoroughly global dance moves, while the dancers’ intense focus is rather more internal, somewhat like those of Tamil women dancing at Kataragama. The fact that this complex celebratory scene of the festival was filmed without getting official permission makes its intensity and aesthetic richness, all the more remarkable. Getting a glimpse of Sarasa beautifully dressed in a shiny light blue sari and bejewelled, is an added bonus after having seen this graceful woman mostly in her drab work attire, carrying one child and holding the other by hand, walking tall with her basket and pole.
Sarasa
The relationship between Sarasa and her husband (marked by accelerating violent assaults on her), leads to an accidentally caused fire which becomes a conflagration. As their house burns Esther Valley and others run into the layam to rescue the children and the whole image is consumed by flames. A brief shot of a small figure rugged up to ward off the night time chill stands nearby looking towards us in a mid-shot. It’s held long enough to make one wonder if that was the director Sivamohan herself, who determined the conflagration in the layam as a narrative climax but has undercut its melodramatic effect.
Instead of ending there or perhaps with its aftermath, refusing to answer ‘what happened?’, the film cuts to the day after. The final scene is of a quiet morning showing the estate and its long winding road down which a well-dressed young woman in a salwar kameez, walks briskly. We follow her on to the main road which is also empty with just two stray dogs and a distant car. As she comes closer, we seem to remember her as perhaps a minor figure who appears in a scene or two with the Researcher. And so, in the here and now of this ending, this young woman, detached from the several story lines we have followed, walks away from the tea estate with a brisk purposiveness.
Cinema and Belief in this World
Within the estate there is a large ample intersection shaded by trees, with a shrine, where four streets meet. And we see in a mid-long-shot, young children neatly dressed in white uniforms or blue trousers and white shirts, wearing socks and shoes, walking happily to school in clusters, while the women go to work with their baskets and poles. We have seen a well-run creche where pre-schoolers play with wooden toys that help their hand-eye coordination and recognition of basic shapes and colours. One is left wondering if the younger generations who are getting educated will create a day when there are no more men and women willing to work on these tea estates, under the conditions we have observed up close.
This thought is not entirely fanciful any more than those two allegorical scenes of Meenakshi Amma singing amidst the tea bushes with her group of workers or Peter playing his accordion beside the crackling tea bush on fire, are fanciful. After all, we have been made receptive by MGR’s unexpected star appearance, singing a song about his mother-land, (carrying of all things a small suitcase), at the very opening of the film, to expect from cinema something in addition to and more than the representation of reality, a simple mirroring of what is. We will remember here MGR’s cinematic appeal, which surely must have helped this Tamil man born in Lanka in becoming the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.
Film creates (as Deleuze the French philosopher who loved the cinema said) a capacity to restore our belief in this world, that is belief in its as yet unactualized potential. Following Jean Luc Godard, he also said that, ‘film is a form that thinks’. Ingirinthu, with its political sophistication and ethico-aesthetic values is able to achieve this. My effort here has been to work through the implications of Anne Blackburn’s two ideas cited at the beginning. In doing so, I have explored some of the intricacies of the work that has gone into creating this specific feeling of ‘belief in this world’, by Sivamohan and all her collaborators, especially the (non)actors, most of whom were from the estate.
Ingirunthu is a carefully and deeply researched film, with Sivamohan spending time with the Malaiyaha people over a considerable period of time, getting to know them, sometimes staying with them and building trust. Both in terms of the choice of the marginalised Malaiyaha people as her subject, and in its experimental aesthetics it is (in my opinion) a singular, pioneering work within the history of Lankan cinema. The 200th anniversary of the arrival of the Malaiyaha folk to this Island of Dhamma, Sri Lanka, seems a fitting time to revive and celebrate this film and their survival skills, with public screenings and discussions.
by Dr Gotabhya Ranasinghe
Senior Consultant Cardiologist
National Hospital Sri Lanka
When we sought a meeting with Hon Dr. Ramesh Pathirana, Minister of Health, he graciously cleared his busy schedule to accommodate us. Renowned for his attentive listening and deep understanding, Minister Pathirana is dedicated to advancing the health sector. His openness and transparency exemplify the qualities of an exemplary politician and minister.
Dr. Palitha Mahipala, the current Health Secretary, demonstrates both commendable enthusiasm and unwavering support. This combination of attributes makes him a highly compatible colleague for the esteemed Minister of Health.
Our discussion centered on a project that has been in the works for the past 30 years, one that no other minister had managed to advance.
Minister Pathirana, however, recognized the project’s significance and its potential to revolutionize care for heart patients.
The project involves the construction of a state-of-the-art facility at the premises of the National Hospital Colombo. The project’s location within the premises of the National Hospital underscores its importance and relevance to the healthcare infrastructure of the nation.
This facility will include a cardiology building and a tertiary care center, equipped with the latest technology to handle and treat all types of heart-related conditions and surgeries.
Securing funding was a major milestone for this initiative. Minister Pathirana successfully obtained approval for a $40 billion loan from the Asian Development Bank. With the funding in place, the foundation stone is scheduled to be laid in September this year, and construction will begin in January 2025.
This project guarantees a consistent and uninterrupted supply of stents and related medications for heart patients. As a result, patients will have timely access to essential medical supplies during their treatment and recovery. By securing these critical resources, the project aims to enhance patient outcomes, minimize treatment delays, and maintain the highest standards of cardiac care.
Upon its fruition, this monumental building will serve as a beacon of hope and healing, symbolizing the unwavering dedication to improving patient outcomes and fostering a healthier society.We anticipate a future marked by significant progress and positive outcomes in Sri Lanka’s cardiovascular treatment landscape within the foreseeable timeframe.
by Fr. Emmanuel Fernando, OMI
Jesuit Fr. Aloysius Pieris (affectionately called Fr. Aloy) celebrated his 90th birthday on April 9, 2024 and I, as the editor of our Oblate Journal, THE MISSIONARY OBLATE had gone to press by that time. Immediately I decided to publish an article, appreciating the untiring selfless services he continues to offer for inter-Faith dialogue, the renewal of the Catholic Church, his concern for the poor and the suffering Sri Lankan masses and to me, the present writer.
It was in 1988, when I was appointed Director of the Oblate Scholastics at Ampitiya by the then Oblate Provincial Fr. Anselm Silva, that I came to know Fr. Aloy more closely. Knowing well his expertise in matters spiritual, theological, Indological and pastoral, and with the collaborative spirit of my companion-formators, our Oblate Scholastics were sent to Tulana, the Research and Encounter Centre, Kelaniya, of which he is the Founder-Director, for ‘exposure-programmes’ on matters spiritual, biblical, theological and pastoral. Some of these dimensions according to my view and that of my companion-formators, were not available at the National Seminary, Ampitiya.
Ever since that time, our Oblate formators/ accompaniers at the Oblate Scholasticate, Ampitiya , have continued to send our Oblate Scholastics to Tulana Centre for deepening their insights and convictions regarding matters needed to serve the people in today’s context. Fr. Aloy also had tried very enthusiastically with the Oblate team headed by Frs. Oswald Firth and Clement Waidyasekara to begin a Theologate, directed by the Religious Congregations in Sri Lanka, for the contextual formation/ accompaniment of their members. It should very well be a desired goal of the Leaders / Provincials of the Religious Congregations.
Besides being a formator/accompanier at the Oblate Scholasticate, I was entrusted also with the task of editing and publishing our Oblate journal, ‘The Missionary Oblate’. To maintain the quality of the journal I continue to depend on Fr. Aloy for his thought-provoking and stimulating articles on Biblical Spirituality, Biblical Theology and Ecclesiology. I am very grateful to him for his generous assistance. Of late, his writings on renewal of the Church, initiated by Pope St. John XX111 and continued by Pope Francis through the Synodal path, published in our Oblate journal, enable our readers to focus their attention also on the needed renewal in the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka. Fr. Aloy appreciated very much the Synodal path adopted by the Jesuit Pope Francis for the renewal of the Church, rooted very much on prayerful discernment. In my Religious and presbyteral life, Fr.Aloy continues to be my spiritual animator / guide and ongoing formator / acccompanier.
Fr. Aloysius Pieris, BA Hons (Lond), LPh (SHC, India), STL (PFT, Naples), PhD (SLU/VC), ThD (Tilburg), D.Ltt (KU), has been one of the eminent Asian theologians well recognized internationally and one who has lectured and held visiting chairs in many universities both in the West and in the East. Many members of Religious Congregations from Asian countries have benefited from his lectures and guidance in the East Asian Pastoral Institute (EAPI) in Manila, Philippines. He had been a Theologian consulted by the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences for many years. During his professorship at the Gregorian University in Rome, he was called to be a member of a special group of advisers on other religions consulted by Pope Paul VI.
Fr. Aloy is the author of more than 30 books and well over 500 Research Papers. Some of his books and articles have been translated and published in several countries. Among those books, one can find the following: 1) The Genesis of an Asian Theology of Liberation (An Autobiographical Excursus on the Art of Theologising in Asia, 2) An Asian Theology of Liberation, 3) Providential Timeliness of Vatican 11 (a long-overdue halt to a scandalous millennium, 4) Give Vatican 11 a chance, 5) Leadership in the Church, 6) Relishing our faith in working for justice (Themes for study and discussion), 7) A Message meant mainly, not exclusively for Jesuits (Background information necessary for helping Francis renew the Church), 8) Lent in Lanka (Reflections and Resolutions, 9) Love meets wisdom (A Christian Experience of Buddhism, 10) Fire and Water 11) God’s Reign for God’s poor, 12) Our Unhiddden Agenda (How we Jesuits work, pray and form our men). He is also the Editor of two journals, Vagdevi, Journal of Religious Reflection and Dialogue, New Series.
Fr. Aloy has a BA in Pali and Sanskrit from the University of London and a Ph.D in Buddhist Philosophy from the University of Sri Lankan, Vidyodaya Campus. On Nov. 23, 2019, he was awarded the prestigious honorary Doctorate of Literature (D.Litt) by the Chancellor of the University of Kelaniya, the Most Venerable Welamitiyawe Dharmakirthi Sri Kusala Dhamma Thera.
Fr. Aloy continues to be a promoter of Gospel values and virtues. Justice as a constitutive dimension of love and social concern for the downtrodden masses are very much noted in his life and work. He had very much appreciated the commitment of the late Fr. Joseph (Joe) Fernando, the National Director of the Social and Economic Centre (SEDEC) for the poor.
In Sri Lanka, a few religious Congregations – the Good Shepherd Sisters, the Christian Brothers, the Marist Brothers and the Oblates – have invited him to animate their members especially during their Provincial Congresses, Chapters and International Conferences. The mainline Christian Churches also have sought his advice and followed his seminars. I, for one, regret very much, that the Sri Lankan authorities of the Catholic Church –today’s Hierarchy—- have not sought Fr.
Aloy’s expertise for the renewal of the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka and thus have not benefited from the immense store of wisdom and insight that he can offer to our local Church while the Sri Lankan bishops who governed the Catholic church in the immediate aftermath of the Second Vatican Council (Edmund Fernando OMI, Anthony de Saram, Leo Nanayakkara OSB, Frank Marcus Fernando, Paul Perera,) visited him and consulted him on many matters. Among the Tamil Bishops, Bishop Rayappu Joseph was keeping close contact with him and Bishop J. Deogupillai hosted him and his team visiting him after the horrible Black July massacre of Tamils.
Sri Lanka-Singapore Free Trade Agreement
By Gomi Senadhira
senadhiragomi@gmail.com
“You might tell fairy tales, but the progress of a country cannot be achieved through such narratives. A country cannot be developed by making false promises. The country moved backward because of the electoral promises made by political parties throughout time. We have witnessed that the ultimate result of this is the country becoming bankrupt. Unfortunately, many segments of the population have not come to realize this yet.” – President Ranil Wickremesinghe, 2024 Budget speech
Any Sri Lankan would agree with the above words of President Wickremesinghe on the false promises our politicians and officials make and the fairy tales they narrate which bankrupted this country. So, to understand this, let’s look at one such fairy tale with lots of false promises; Ranil Wickremesinghe’s greatest achievement in the area of international trade and investment promotion during the Yahapalana period, Sri Lanka-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (SLSFTA).
It is appropriate and timely to do it now as Finance Minister Wickremesinghe has just presented to parliament a bill on the National Policy on Economic Transformation which includes the establishment of an Office for International Trade and the Sri Lanka Institute of Economics and International Trade.
Was SLSFTA a “Cleverly negotiated Free Trade Agreement” as stated by the (former) Minister of Development Strategies and International Trade Malik Samarawickrama during the Parliamentary Debate on the SLSFTA in July 2018, or a colossal blunder covered up with lies, false promises, and fairy tales? After SLSFTA was signed there were a number of fairy tales published on this agreement by the Ministry of Development Strategies and International, Institute of Policy Studies, and others.
However, for this article, I would like to limit my comments to the speech by Minister Samarawickrama during the Parliamentary Debate, and the two most important areas in the agreement which were covered up with lies, fairy tales, and false promises, namely: revenue loss for Sri Lanka and Investment from Singapore. On the other important area, “Waste products dumping” I do not want to comment here as I have written extensively on the issue.
1. The revenue loss
During the Parliamentary Debate in July 2018, Minister Samarawickrama stated “…. let me reiterate that this FTA with Singapore has been very cleverly negotiated by us…. The liberalisation programme under this FTA has been carefully designed to have the least impact on domestic industry and revenue collection. We have included all revenue sensitive items in the negative list of items which will not be subject to removal of tariff. Therefore, 97.8% revenue from Customs duty is protected. Our tariff liberalisation will take place over a period of 12-15 years! In fact, the revenue earned through tariffs on goods imported from Singapore last year was Rs. 35 billion.
The revenue loss for over the next 15 years due to the FTA is only Rs. 733 million– which when annualised, on average, is just Rs. 51 million. That is just 0.14% per year! So anyone who claims the Singapore FTA causes revenue loss to the Government cannot do basic arithmetic! Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I call on my fellow members of this House – don’t mislead the public with baseless criticism that is not grounded in facts. Don’t look at petty politics and use these issues for your own political survival.”
I was surprised to read the minister’s speech because an article published in January 2018 in “The Straits Times“, based on information released by the Singaporean Negotiators stated, “…. With the FTA, tariff savings for Singapore exports are estimated to hit $10 million annually“.
As the annual tariff savings (that is the revenue loss for Sri Lanka) calculated by the Singaporean Negotiators, Singaporean $ 10 million (Sri Lankan rupees 1,200 million in 2018) was way above the rupees’ 733 million revenue loss for 15 years estimated by the Sri Lankan negotiators, it was clear to any observer that one of the parties to the agreement had not done the basic arithmetic!
Six years later, according to a report published by “The Morning” newspaper, speaking at the Committee on Public Finance (COPF) on 7th May 2024, Mr Samarawickrama’s chief trade negotiator K.J. Weerasinghehad had admitted “…. that forecasted revenue loss for the Government of Sri Lanka through the Singapore FTA is Rs. 450 million in 2023 and Rs. 1.3 billion in 2024.”
If these numbers are correct, as tariff liberalisation under the SLSFTA has just started, we will pass Rs 2 billion very soon. Then, the question is how Sri Lanka’s trade negotiators made such a colossal blunder. Didn’t they do their basic arithmetic? If they didn’t know how to do basic arithmetic they should have at least done their basic readings. For example, the headline of the article published in The Straits Times in January 2018 was “Singapore, Sri Lanka sign FTA, annual savings of $10m expected”.
Anyway, as Sri Lanka’s chief negotiator reiterated at the COPF meeting that “…. since 99% of the tariffs in Singapore have zero rates of duty, Sri Lanka has agreed on 80% tariff liberalisation over a period of 15 years while expecting Singapore investments to address the imbalance in trade,” let’s turn towards investment.
Investment from Singapore
In July 2018, speaking during the Parliamentary Debate on the FTA this is what Minister Malik Samarawickrama stated on investment from Singapore, “Already, thanks to this FTA, in just the past two-and-a-half months since the agreement came into effect we have received a proposal from Singapore for investment amounting to $ 14.8 billion in an oil refinery for export of petroleum products. In addition, we have proposals for a steel manufacturing plant for exports ($ 1 billion investment), flour milling plant ($ 50 million), sugar refinery ($ 200 million). This adds up to more than $ 16.05 billion in the pipeline on these projects alone.
And all of these projects will create thousands of more jobs for our people. In principle approval has already been granted by the BOI and the investors are awaiting the release of land the environmental approvals to commence the project.
I request the Opposition and those with vested interests to change their narrow-minded thinking and join us to develop our country. We must always look at what is best for the whole community, not just the few who may oppose. We owe it to our people to courageously take decisions that will change their lives for the better.”
According to the media report I quoted earlier, speaking at the Committee on Public Finance (COPF) Chief Negotiator Weerasinghe has admitted that Sri Lanka was not happy with overall Singapore investments that have come in the past few years in return for the trade liberalisation under the Singapore-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement. He has added that between 2021 and 2023 the total investment from Singapore had been around $162 million!
What happened to those projects worth $16 billion negotiated, thanks to the SLSFTA, in just the two-and-a-half months after the agreement came into effect and approved by the BOI? I do not know about the steel manufacturing plant for exports ($ 1 billion investment), flour milling plant ($ 50 million) and sugar refinery ($ 200 million).
However, story of the multibillion-dollar investment in the Petroleum Refinery unfolded in a manner that would qualify it as the best fairy tale with false promises presented by our politicians and the officials, prior to 2019 elections.
Though many Sri Lankans got to know, through the media which repeatedly highlighted a plethora of issues surrounding the project and the questionable credentials of the Singaporean investor, the construction work on the Mirrijiwela Oil Refinery along with the cement factory began on the24th of March 2019 with a bang and Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and his ministers along with the foreign and local dignitaries laid the foundation stones.
That was few months before the 2019 Presidential elections. Inaugurating the construction work Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the projects will create thousands of job opportunities in the area and surrounding districts.
The oil refinery, which was to be built over 200 acres of land, with the capacity to refine 200,000 barrels of crude oil per day, was to generate US$7 billion of exports and create 1,500 direct and 3,000 indirect jobs. The construction of the refinery was to be completed in 44 months. Four years later, in August 2023 the Cabinet of Ministers approved the proposal presented by President Ranil Wickremesinghe to cancel the agreement with the investors of the refinery as the project has not been implemented! Can they explain to the country how much money was wasted to produce that fairy tale?
It is obvious that the President, ministers, and officials had made huge blunders and had deliberately misled the public and the parliament on the revenue loss and potential investment from SLSFTA with fairy tales and false promises.
As the president himself said, a country cannot be developed by making false promises or with fairy tales and these false promises and fairy tales had bankrupted the country. “Unfortunately, many segments of the population have not come to realize this yet”.
(The writer, a specialist and an activist on trade and development issues . )
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