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What is going on in good old Sri Lanka — that paradise isle in which the loquacious Trump is trying to plant his military boot print? More and more the country’s politics, not to mention its governance, is beginning to look like a pot of over-boiled noodles mixed with equally sticky string hoppers.

Anybody who could neatly separate the two should have been offered a presidential award and a roundtrip air ticket to Manchester from where to watch a presidential progeny walk on stage to receive a certificate at a “graduation ceremony” last week.

Unfortunately, for anybody who comes up trumps in such an arduous endeavour, it would be too late to head out to Manchester. The ceremony is over so he would have to claim another prize — perhaps a presidential pardon like Gnanasara Thera, who, having being released from his cell (hospital bed or a localised asappuwa), vowed that hereafter he would spend his time preaching the dhamma, follow the vinaya and engage in other activities, both religious and cultural.

US troops taking part in tsunami rehabilitation work in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami. Pic courtesy US Marine Corps/Staff Sgt. Mikey Niman

It is surely a tough call to accept such pledges when they flow from the mouths of some monks and politicians. Certain monks want to wield political power, while politicians want to renounce their past and wear a clean sil reddha.

Gnanasara Thera has already broken the pledge he made on release telling his gathered flock in Kandy how to tame a multicultural and multi-religious society which has been the pride of this country for centuries and also govern this country if it was handed over to the yellow (and a few other colours too) robed religious fraternity. Such monks try to convert Sri Lanka into a deplorable theocracy.

If a monk who did not take more than one month to throw his pledges of ahimsa, nonviolence and tolerance into the Kandy Lake, not far from the Dalada Maligawa where the sacred tooth relic of the Buddha is preserved and worshipped with great sanctity, politicians twisting their tongues and swallowing their promises to the people is certainly not an uncommon or rare occurrence.

If sections of the Buddhist clergy can desecrate the name of the Buddha while living in or during visits to the sacred city of Kandy, how very simple it is for politicians, who vow to respect the country’s constitution and adhere to it, to break those vows with impunity.

Consider, for instance, the current tussle over bilateral agreements with the US. One of the agreements has been done and dusted, while two sides of the political coin quarrel over two others that many think are detrimental to the sovereignty and integrity of Sri Lanka.

Even US Ambassador Alaina Teplitz paid a call on the Mahanayakes to say what nice people the Americans are, though they, occasionally, drop a bomb here and there and kill a few innocent civilians of other countries.

I mean how concerned President Trump was that he might kill 150 people if he ordered an attack on the Iranians and so called it off. How considerate of him, really!

The pro-US politicians in our midst and the lickspittles in official circles such as the Foreign Ministry might owe their allegiance to a whacky president in the White House who has no qualms about antagonising even longstanding allies of the US and drive a carriage and six horses between healthy relations pursued by other nations.

What the Sri Lanka people want to know is what deleterious impact any new arrangement will have on their home country. What happens to Washington or the US as a whole is certainly not their immediate concern.

Prime Minister Wickremesinghe told parliament on Wednesday that there is no SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) with the US, that it is still being negotiated.

“SOFA is not a mutual defence agreement or a security agreement. It does not authorise specific exercises, activities, or missions. SOFA is a peacetime document, and does not address the rules of war, laws of armed conflict, or laws of the sea.”

Certainly it is a peacetime document as far as we are concerned. But is it so for the other intended signatory that is preparing for war and trying to bring big power rivalry into our part of the Indian Ocean which could well end in armed conflict. Sri Lanka has no external enemies in the region unlike some of the countries in Southeast Asia and East Asia which have territorial disputes and rely on the US to provide a nuclear umbrella.

The question is whether being a signatory to what is currently a peacetime document will remain so in the event of an armed conflict in the central and eastern Indian Ocean and drag Sri Lanka into it.

Prime Minister Wickremesinghe refers to SOFA in isolation. But surely its impact even without the contentious clauses should be considered along with Acquisition and Cross Services Agreement (ACSA) which are two peas in the same pod and possibly a third — the Millenium Challenge which could lead to alterations to the land ownership.

Mr Wickremesinghe says SOFA does not, for instance, address the laws of war etc. It used to be said that if one quacks like a duck, walks like a duck and looks like a duck it is a duck. The signed agreements and the ones under discussion will collectively enmesh Sri Lanka in war if the growing rivalry in the Indian Ocean leads to conflict.

In that context the prohibition on Sri Lanka officials boarding or inspecting US vessels and aircraft is a dangerous precedent to concede to a nuclear power.

If ACSA was renewed in 2017, should not this new arrangement have been tabled in parliament? Was it? All these ‘arrangements’ are supposedly done for the good of the Sri Lankan people. But one hardly hears of them unless something happens to unearth them from the hamas petti of ministers and officials who would rather keep them secret, like, for instance, the secret negotiations between the US embassy and the Foreign Ministry, with the Defence Ministry, which the prime minister refers to as the line ministry, being kept in the dark.

So when did the Defence Ministry come to know of the ongoing negotiations between the US embassy and the Foreign Ministry? Was it not after it was raised in parliament by Dayasiri Jayasekera somewhere in January this year and later by other MPs? Why were the Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera and the then Foreign Secretary Prasad Kariyawasam piling pressure on the Defence Secretary to get it done quickly?

The country came to know when the Political Editor of the Sunday Times gave a detailed account of what has been going on behind the backs of the people and kept close to the chests of political acolytes and obsequious officials particularly in the Foreign Ministry.

President Sirisena, having returned from China with a handful of agreements including one relating to defence and security, instructed Foreign Minister Tilak Marapana who was in Washington not to engage in any negotiations concerning these “peacetime documents”.

Later President Sirisena said he would not agree to any bilateral pacts with the US unless he approved of them. Quite rightly he as Defence Minister and head of the armed forces had the right to read the script.

But Wickremesinghe says the negotiations are continuing. The country is heading for dangerous and what could turn out to be turbulent waters with the two leaders of a divided government pulling in directions that are polar opposites.