Sky’s no limit to clinch billion dollar credit line
Opposition demands India’s MRCC agreement be revealed in full
Returning as the conquering hero who has brought home the Golden Fleece, Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa tells reporters at the airport last Friday that thanks to India’s billion dollar credit line, the Lankan people can celebrate their New Year next month with the essential items freely available in the market.
Does he expect three rounds of ‘hip-hip hoorays’ followed by a chorus of ‘Basil’s a jolly good fellow’ repeated thrice, as the bringer of Avurudhu cheer to a people brought down to their knees by Government-made disasters?
Or has this nation so lost its basic values that, though neck-deep in debt to the world and fast sinking, it can still find joy in its last grasping breaths to celebrate an annual ritual in grand style on further borrowings and hail the purveyor of Avurudhu items on loan as the new Avatar of the mythical Avurudhu Kumaraya?
And that’s not all we have to be thankful to India. To overcome the carbonic fertiliser shortage, experienced after the overnight policy shift in agricultural methods went terribly awry, the Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa said that India’s Prime Minister, Modi, had assured Lanka that India would provide adequate quantities of nano fertiliser.
Finance Minister Basil declared:’ ‘’Modi is an organic farming enthusiast and he was impressed by the interest shown by President Rajapaksa in green agriculture. India had again shown that it stands by Sri Lanka in difficult times. India gave Sri Lanka a loan of USD 1 billion to purchase food and other essential items for the upcoming Sinhala Tamil New Year. Modi told me that India will help Sri Lanka with its economic and social needs’.
But before we get down on all fours and thank Modi for his grace, were there any conditions, some invisible string attached to Narendra Modi’s largess on loan, to India’s credit line generosity? Some secret clause of reciprocity involved that went beyond the repayment of the one billion dollar debt in three years, something hidden beneath the restriction that all goods must be bought from India which would help her producers and boost her economy?
At the Katunayake airport last Friday 18th March, the belittled, disparaged, much mocked Finance Knight of his brother’s Round Table, Basil Rajapaksa negated, in one fell swoop, all the vicious canards and calumnies hurled at him in malicious disdain, when he revealed his true negotiating genius to the distraught nation. He told reporters he had secured this one billion dollar credit lifeline from India unconditionally. He said: ‘There are no conditions attached to the one billion dollar credit line that India has granted to us. Only that it has to be paid in three years by instalments.’
Phew! What a relief. Remembering the Trinco oil tanks and other deals done in India’s favour to obtain the USD 500 million Indian credit line earlier in January, the people had been dreading what next the Finance Minister would barter to clinch the new billion dollar Indian credit line he so desperately sought? Now, at least, they could spend the weekend, standing in line at the numerous queues for fuel, gas and other essentials without having to fear that another collection of vital public assets was on the block to be bartered for Avurudhu tucker?
The official word was: India’s sacred cow had not demanded its poonac fodder to yield milk from its cornucopian udder to the malnourished Lankan suppliant. Or had she?
Strings can take many forms, sizes and shapes. It can tie a Gordian knot or can be so thin to be finely woven into a tapestry of a master design, so fine that only a discerning eye can notice its binding presence.
On Tuesday, SJB’s MP Harin Fernando held a media conference to make his explosive claim that India plans to set up a series of monitoring stations on the Lankan coastal belt with its coordinating centre to be based right in the heart of Lanka’s Naval Headquarters.
He charged that a Memorandum of Understanding with the government of India and an agreement with Bharath Electronics of India to be signed for the establishment of Maritime Rescue Coordinating Centre (MRCC), and a grant of USD 6 million for it, had received Cabinet approval on Monday.
Sri Lanka Cabinet spokesman Ramesh Pathirana would only confirm on Tuesday that approval has been given to build a MRCC in Sri Lanka with a grant of $6 million from India. He said, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who is also the Defence Minister has presented the proposal and a MoU is to be signed between the Lankan government and an Indian Government-owned aerospace and defence electronics company, Bharat Electronics.
Pathirana, however, denied selling of national resources to India and said the agreement will focus on increasing bilateral relations and training programme between India and Sri Lanka. He said the agreement would be submitted to Parliament before it is signed.
The setting up of a Maritime Rescue Coordinating Centre in Lanka seems at first glance to be an innocuous project, with the word ‘Rescue’ in its appellation suggesting a worthy humanitarian venture to save souls stranded at sea. Now it turns out that, despite the solid assurance given by Basil Rajapaksa on his return from India that no conditions were attached to India’s billion dollar munificence, not even the sky has been the limit for Lanka to gain it.
MP Harin Fernando made the startling claim that on the table waiting to be signed in return for the credit line, the MRCC agreement also envisaged the lease of Lanka’s airspace to India under the guise of a security system.
The Government has neither confirmed nor denied this shocking allegation. If true, however, - apart from providing rich material to a copywriter promoting Lanka as a tourist destination to pen the slogan, ‘Sri Lanka: The tropical paradise isle, set in the Indian Ocean under a blue Indian sky’ - it will generally be held to violate the international legal principal of a state’s territorial integrity and exclusive sovereignty over its immediate airspace.
Yet, in this particular case, it will not apply. It will be covered by the recognised exception which holds that ‘a state can lease part of its territory to another state on certain terms and conditions of the lease or pledge it to another foreign power as collateral for a loan.
But how will it affect a government vis-àvis the people who had elected it to office? Can a government, though constitutionally empowered to act on behalf of the people whose sovereignty is inalienable, keep its disposal a secret from the people? Or part with it without the people’s consent?
It behoves the Government to either confirm or deny whether this is truly the case, whether the people have been denied even the sky overhead. The best way to do it is to lay the MRCC and other agreements with India before Parliament and the people. And, thereby, lay the nation’s fears to rest.