Way to go, Prez, but …

Tuesday 21st June, 2022

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has taken swift action to prevent a shady deal some state officials strove to cut with a foreign company, which sought to secure a contract, for a song, to extract ilmenite found in overburden red soil removed for limestone quarrying on a 5,352-acre land belonging to the Sri Lanka Cement Corporation (SLCC) at Aruwakkalu. Last Thursday, the President instructed Minister of Industries Dr. Ramesh Pathirana to look into the matter, and sort it out, we are told.

Thankfully, Dr. Pathirana has remained above suspicion, but he must not allow corrupt officials to mislead him. Had the questionable deal gone through, the state coffers would have lost a large amount of foreign exchange, and several top bureaucrats would have laughed all the way to the bank. We exposed the racket in last Wednesday’s editorial.

President Rajapaksa deserves praise for his prompt action, but let him be warned that the corrupt elements in his government know more than one way to shoe a horse. They are making the most of the country’s desperation for foreign investments to strike underhand deals with foreign firms and fatten their offshore bank accounts.

The SLCC and the Sri Lanka Mineral Sands Ltd., (SLMSL) were to form a joint venture to extract ilmenite on the aforesaid land, but the foreign company and its agents in the garb of state officials here got together and derailed it by making the SLMSL pull out. The SLCC has since come under pressure to allow the foreign company to carry out the project by paying only royalty to the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau (GSMB), which reeks of corruption. Many influential persons including foreign diplomats, SLPP politicians, state officials and their sons are among those who have been trying to have the contract awarded to the company at issue.

According to the project documents The Island has seen, the initial investment is about Rs. 1.9 billion, and the returns thereon during the first six months alone will exceed Rs. 9 billion. No wonder so many corrupt state officials are all out to put the crooked deal through.

The onus is on Minister Pathirana to ensure that the foreign company concerned will pay a substantial amount of forex to the Cement Corporation/the Treasury in addition to royalty paid to the GSMB, and the agreement to be signed will be vetted by the Attorney General’s Department. A meeting of all stakeholders including the Commissioner General of Land should be held to determine how much the company should pay the state so that corrupt officials cannot line their pockets at the expense of poor Sri Lankans, who are undergoing untold hardships for want of foreign exchange.

Crisis and cricket

It is a meritorious deed to provide some entertainment to unfortunate Sri Lankans in these gloomy times. As pumps are running dry at fuel stations, national cricketers have come forward to pump up the hapless public. Their performance on Sunday was truly fabulous. When they completed the highest-ever successful ODI run chase (292) against mighty Australia, very elegantly, the crisis-hit Lanka sent forth a rapturous cry.

What made Sri Lanka’s spectacular win possible, on Sunday, was superb teamwork as well as a brilliant partnership of 170 runs between Pathum Nissanka, who went on to pile up 137, and Kusal Mendis, who retired hurt on 87. It is not only in cricket that team work and partnerships are of the essence; they do matter in politics as well. If only President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe could put on such a partnership and bat for the public with their team going flat out to break the back of the economic crisis. But the only thing they seem to have in common with batsmen, if at all, is the manner in which they try to score; they also run in opposite directions in a bid to score points; politics however is not cricket, and in so doing, they frustrate the country’s attempts to overcome the crisis.

Not even Gnana Akka may be able to predict what is in store for our cricketers where the next few matches are concerned, but victory is not everything in cricket; what matters most is how the game is played.

If what we have seen during the past several days is anything to go by, our cricketers have demonstrated that they are ready to learn from their mistakes and better their performance. They are apparently on the right course, and one can only hope that the country’s leaders will care to emulate them.