The not so ugly American

At the G7 Summit this week, US President Joe Biden announced $ 20 million in additional assistance to strengthen food security in Sri Lanka. The funding aims to support a school nutrition program that will feed 800,000 Sri Lankan children. Former US citizen and current Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was quick to thank his counterpart for the generous gift, tweeting: “I conveyed my sincere thanks to @POTUS for the valuable support shown during these difficult times.”

The irony was not lost on many who recalled that it was president Rajapaksa that had in 2020 cancelled a $ 480 million grant from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact from the US. The MCC compact was finalised in 2019 after extensive consultations between the then Government, MCC representatives and numerous local stakeholders including civil society. 

Sri Lanka identified a public transport modernisation and traffic management system for Greater Colombo as one of the country’s priorities for the MCC grant, and $ 350 million or the bulk of the funding was to be allocated to that project. 

A separate land project – also identified as a priority by the Sri Lankan Government – was allocated  $ 67 million, aimed at expanding and digitising the country’s land registry and increasing the availability of spatial data and land rights information. The disbursement of funds was to take place over a period of five years.

The application for a MCC grant was first made during the tenure of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. These efforts were unsuccessful, mostly because Sri Lanka failed to meet MCC eligibility criteria, which include healthy democratic rights and corruption control indicators during that time. After several years of negotiations, led by Ministers Mangala Samaraweera, Eran Wickramaratne and ably assisted by officials at the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Finance, Sri Lanka secured this outright grant in 2019.

Since that point however there was a concerted, malicious and often borderline ludicrous campaign to vilify the MCC agreement and those who negotiated it. The then joint Opposition, enabled through a few senior diplomats at the Foreign Ministry and selected media outlets, launched a scathing attack on the MCC compact, linking it to defence cooperation agreements that were signed during previous regimes. 

One such defence agreement had been signed by Gotabaya Rajapaksa himself as Defence Secretary. Professional associations including the Bar Association and the powerful Government doctors trade union GMOA backed the conspiracy theories and vicious disinformation campaign spearheaded by the SLPP. The cancellation of the MCC compact was made a central theme for candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s Presidential Election campaign.

Soon after being elected, the President appointed a four member “experts’ committee” headed by Lalithasiri Gunaruwan and also comprising a judge and an architect which within a matter of weeks proclaimed that the US grant was a “threat to national security”. An online tuition teacher became a social media authority on the subject by drawing a “corridor” across a Sri Lankan map claiming the marked region was to become a sovereign US territory under the MCC. 

Having cancelled the MCC agreement in 2020, the Rajapaksa administration went on to cancel other development projects including the Japanese funded Light Rail Transit project and the tripartite agreement between Sri Lanka, India and Japan for the development of the East Container Terminal of the Colombo Port. Each of these projects would have infused valuable foreign reserves into the dilapidated State coffers, and suffice to say that Sri Lanka has not recovered from these tragic lost opportunities.

The MCC compact, if implemented, would have not only been a half a billion dollar outright grant that created thousands of local jobs, but it would have also been a vote of confidence in the stability, transparency and the democracy in the country. Such an indicator would have played a crucial role in attracting foreign investments and enhancing business opportunities. 

All this was not to be and President Rajapaksa must take direct responsibility for these actions. Given the scale of economic crisis the country now faces, the SLPP’s role in rejecting the MCC grant and the Japanese LRT borders on treasonous and incredibly short-sightedness. But one might say that this is the story of the whole Gotabaya Rajapaksa presidency. Political expediency has trumped national interest at every turn, and that will be the SLPP’s enduring legacy as the downward spiral continues.

In the hot seat now, Gotabaya Rajapaksa is discovering that the American is not as ugly as he liked to project during his election campaign. Having brought the country to the brink of ruin, the President must now spearhead the nation’s begging bowl campaign, ingratiating himself to so-called neo-imperialist powers the governments he accused of running charities that were fronts for terrorist organisations. 

He must be held accountable for his actions, and those who aided and abetted these agendas must also be exposed for their role in bringing Sri Lanka to the edge of anarchy and collapse.