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High Noon at nation’s crossroads as masses decide Lanka’s fate WHO WILL BE YOUR MISTER RIGHT: Will the Bud Bloom in a Swan Lake? Next Sunday morn, the smoke signals that have been emitting from the countryside’s rocky outcrop would have finally made clear its message and the distant drums that had been indistinctly beating what destiny holds for this nation would have come closer home and made its sonorous import clear after the island citizens had engaged in the tribal right of choosing its leader and caparisoning the chosen one with the highest power of the land. The previous day, Saturday, approximately 15 million would have trekked to the polling stations to mark a cross against the name of the person they wished to see enthroned in Presidential Office. Little would they have realised when they marked the cross they were also marking a cross not only against their own future but also the future of their children and their children’s children. Unlike presidential elections in the past, this year’s presidential poll is not an election between the two main candidates, the result of which would have had a consequence for only five years or ten years at the most. This year’s presidential election is a choice between two forms of Government. Two roads lie before the voters, each one beckoning them to take it. One road says, ‘come take me, you have been down this road before. Though the destination is only arrived at after a tortuous route, still it will be softer and familiar and more pleasant ground you would be treading on’. The other road says, ‘‘take this road, it will take you to a destination sooner than you think for you will all be marching to a single drum, to a single step, to a single beat. With discipline enforced with silence maintained and with blinkers on, there will come order which will take us to our goal.’’ Both roads promise arrival at the same destination, only the way is dramatically different. One is familiar, the other unknown. Which road one takes will determine the future course of this country.  And the consequences of the decision each one of the voters make for himself and country will be felt not only for five or ten years but perhaps for a generation or two or even worse. Vote wisely. For you will be voting not only for yourself but also for your progeny.

As the Americans themselves would say: there ain’t no such thing as a free burger.

So, why is Uncle Sam spreading a cool 480 million dollars or 86.4 billion local bucks on a grand luncheon buffet for the Lankans to feast upon gratis? And even more surprisingly, why are the Lankans, who would queue for a cold if given free, en masse, refusing it? And, sending their regrets even before the Americans have sent their invites?

Why are they giving the thumbs down to an 86 billion buck cash gift, saying a rude no to this manna from heaven to develop this country and slamming the door to opportunity which never knocks twice, why do they fight shy of not daring to take the mega billion challenge offered by America’s Millennium Challenge Corporation?

The Greeks are famed for not looking a gift horse in the mouth. Is it that the Lankans have looked at this 86 billion buck gift even before it has been given and found it wanting to fund their castles in the air and thus reject it. Or is it that they have not even looked at it or looked at it and not understood it and spurn it out of hand?

Would they do the same if this bounty had come on a slow boat from China?

What is the MCC? For what it’s worth before passing judgement and being beggared further, it’s wise to consider what this so called darkly ominous MCC is all about and whether there are grounds to give the Millennium Challenge the heave-ho.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) was created by the US Congress as an independent foreign assistance agency with the aim of fighting against global poverty.

Already the Corporation has dished out 13 billion dollars to 29 countries. In Asia alone, 5 countries have been granted over 2 billion dollars, with Indonesia heading the field as being the biggest recipient of American benevolence with a singular grant of 600 million dollars. Mongolia, however, has been twice lucky to have received a grant of 284 million dollars in 2007 plus another grant of 350 million dollars in 2018. The other three countries are Nepal with a grant of $500 million, the Philippines with a grant of $433 million and Vanuatu receiving a grant of $65.7 million.

Now the new kid on the Asian block is Lanka, waiting in line to be served with the $480 million bonanza. But it must be remembered it’s not summa money to be splashed out in one go leaving Lankans to spend as they please but will be granted in stages spanning a period of five years as and when the contemplated objectives are achieved. No single dime will jingle in a local piggybank, and the Treasury will not see or get $480 million on a platter but instead the monies will be channelled through a specially set up MCC private company established in Colombo for that purpose.

The MCC grant to Lanka will focus on two projects. One is the land project with a budget of $67 million, it will focus on five activities.

First is to create a map that shows the boundaries and ownership of land parcels and a complete inventory of state land. The information will be fed into the Government’s e-State Lands Information Management System (eSLIMS), where the information will be available at one’s fingertips. The budget for this is $23 million.

The second is to improve the valuation of all lands in Lanka by improving data collection in support of a computerised mass appraisal system. The budget is $6.5 million.

The third is to build on the Government’s e-Land Registry initiative and to improve the Deeds Registry by digitising existing records. The budget for this is $11. 4 million.

The fourth is to improve tenure security for all land holders. This would be done by moving properties from the Deeds system to the Title Registration system, expanding the Government’s Bim Saviya programme. The budget is $19.3 million. This of course has raised fears among the Lankan legal fraternity as posing a deadly threat to their bread and butter: The drafting and attesting of deeds. The Bar Association’s fears, raised in August this year to the Prime Minister, were revived again this week when it issued a letter urging the Government to kick the whole MCC offer and told the President to inform the MCC that there is no deal.

One wonders whether the parochial needs to protect the lucrative professional interests of their members which will be adversely affected by the simplification of the title deeds procedure by the Bim Saviya programme which the MCC intends to nourish and fast track has made the Bar Association of Sri Lanka throw the baby with the bath water when they condemn the entire MCC challenge offer purely because of their distaste to one clause.

The fifth activity of the land project is the funding of research in support of measures to improve land administration policies. The budget is $6.7 million.

The other project of the Millennium Challenge Corporation is transport. The cost of this project is $350 million. Its aims are to improve urban and rural mobility in the Western, Central, Sabaragamuwa and Uva provinces. First it will focus on easing traffic congestion and improve public transportation in Colombo metropolitan region. Secondly, the project will seek to improve connectivity between the Central parts of the country with the ports and markets in the Western province. For this, $160 million dollars will be spent on Advanced Traffic Management System for the Colombo municipal region.

According to the MCC fact sheet, ‘ATMS involves civil works improvements to 132 junctions in greater Colombo and a traffic management centre where implementation of effective traffic control strategies are coordinated along approximately 205 kilometres of existing road networks. The $50 million bus service modernisation activity would improve bus services in greater Colombo. Bus service accounts for 45 percent of all passenger miles travelled in greater Colombo and disproportionately serves low-income people.

$140 million have been earmarked to upgrade approximately 131 km of interprovincial roads in the Central Ring Road Network connecting the Central, Sabaragamuwa, and Uva Provinces with ports and markets in the Western Province. Thus then is the basic two pronged plan, one dealing with land and the other dealing with transport at a total cost of $480 million that the MCC of the US Government has approved for Lanka at a meeting held on April 26th this year in Washington D.C.

The five year grant, it says, is to assist the Sri Lanka Government in addressing two of the country’s binding constraints to economic growth: (1) inadequate transport logistics infrastructure and planning; and (2) lack of access to land for agriculture, the services sector, and industrial investors.

So the goal of the land project, it says, is to increase the availability of information on private land and underutilised state lands. It’ll be a map of the land, the government is lawfully entitled to and which may be disposed of by the government.

The transport project’s goal will be to increase the relative efficiency and capacity of the road network and bus system in the Colombo region and to reduce the cost of transporting passengers and goods.

And it will all come from Millennium Challenge Corporation with love. On the face of it, it seems above board. So where’s the rub? Surely this looks and sounds far too good to be true that it has got Lanka busy giving this American gift horse the twice over and counting its teeth.

The JVP’s position concerning the signing of the MCC is to issue a warning shot to the Government not to rush in where angels fear to tread. In a statement issued on November 5, it told the Government not to act in haste before the presidential election.

Also it said there was a need for a proper dialogue done in a transparent manner before the agreement is signed.

JVP MP Bimal Ratnayake said at a press conference, they wonder whether there were ulterior motives: “Parliament and the people are unaware of what the MCC contains. It is serious situation, if it is signed before the presidential election. Agreements with a country like the United States should be signed in a transparent manner. Even though it is a grant or a loan, it should not be signed at this juncture.”

On November 6, Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera said the MCC agreement which had received cabinet approval last week will be presented to Parliament, most probably, after the presidential election.

According to some, there is a lot of criticism on the clauses involving land administration. But rather than painting their objections with a vague brush on their political canvas describing the agreement in an airy fairy sort of way as being generally against the national interest, none had still identified those offending clauses and stated the grounds on which they offend. These are the sort of opinions arrived at without thought that has led to the notion that it is a carefully engineered American trap designed to snare naïve Lanka under a star-spangled banner.

But most surprisingly, the first to come out from the dressing room and take up the mega Millennium Challenge and to bat most exuberantly for it, was no other than the guardian of Lanka’s national heritage, the Jathika Hela Urumaya Leader Patali Champika Ranavaka who smashing for a six the bouncer that the MCC was against the national interest, declared positively that ‘it posed no threat to Lanka’.

Addressing a press conference on November 4, Champika challenged any factions which were so critical about the MCC to show any clause included in the MCC that was detrimental to the country.

He said, this grant of $480 million is to upgrade our transport system and to improve land administration. “Many are saying that the economic corridor is an American trap but I invite anyone who says so to prove it. In fact, not only the American corridor to Trinco but also three other corridors were designed by our own people some years ago and this has nothing to do with the Americans. It is unacceptable that individuals including some prominent people are making some false remarks on this treaty and by such remarks deceiving people in to believing that the agreement is evil.”

He said, “It is sheer illusion that some parties are attempting to convince people that the MCC is extremely detrimental. We ask people not to be deceived by these baseless allegations.”

But conspiracy theories abound fast and far and have that devilish lure about it that is so deliciously difficult to resist its temptation. And to do naught but to yield to it. Listen to what Udaya Gammanpila has to say about the MCC agreement. He talks as if he had just returned from a one-to-one briefing from the top brass at the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia in the USA.

He says, “The MCC is a very dangerous agreement to the country. The CIA has found that Premadasa is going to lose the presidential election. That is the reason the US Government was trying to get the agreement signed hurriedly before the election. We will not accept such agreements signed. Gotabaya Rajapaksa will tear the agreement when he comes to power”.

Wow. Privy to American intelligence and how the CIA works at such a high level of espionage. Now sneak a peek at what Wimal Weerawansa’s conspiracy theory is.

He says, “The Government’s life span is very short now. During that short period, they are trying to sign the MCC agreement which is damaging to the country. In the event the Agreement is signed we will have to dance to the tune of the Americans”.

The usual accusers Wimal Weerawansa and Udaya Gammanpila, the diehard chauvinists, who will not accept anything from America without first yelling: it’s a sellout, it’s a sellout against the government for selling Lanka’s sovereignty for a mess of pottage from Uncle Sam, have also not failed their calling when they jingoistically demand the burning of the government at the stake for selling sovereignty cheap to get the MCC bounty in return.

They make this tribal call with their heads laid in ostrich fashion without realising that sovereignty has already been sold under the last regime to the Chinese with the grant of rights to build the port city not to mention the Hambantota sea port and the Mattala Airport. And when it comes to the Americans and the grant of land to them — as claimed by Anura Kumara in Anuradhapura on Wednesday at the JVP rally — ‘how former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who presently pretends to be perturbed over the MCC agreement and leased out over five thousand acres of land in Somawathiya, 2000 acres in Polwatte, and some hundreds of acres in Iginimitiya to American companies for a song.

Anura Dissanayake claimed that “former Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa had planned to sell all 14 islands off Kalpitiya on the eve of the last presidential election. Two islands were sold to two companies in Denmark and India.”

But despite the conspiracy theories advanced by Gammanpila, and the tears shed by Weerawansa over presumed loss of sovereignty, what is the thinking of the two who matter? Two out of whom one will be president of Lanka by next Sunday.

Sajith Premadasa, UNP Presidential candidate, calling on the Asgiriya Mahanayake Thero saying that all agreements signed with foreign nations will, if he is elected, be reviewed by him after November 16. He further told the prelate that if any of these agreements or if any item of any agreement is found to be detrimental to the nation, he will reconsider them and amend them accordingly.

On November 6, Sajith Premadasa reiterated his position that he will not sign the MCC agreement before the election. He said so in a letter addressed to the Ven. Kashyapa Thero, who was engaged in a fast unto death against the MCC agreement, who having read Sajith’s missive immediately gave up his one day hunger fast unto the death and left to his temple.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the Pohottuwa candidate, has still not expressed his view on the MCC matter, though one of his supporters MP Bandula Gunawardene stepped in to speak to him. Gunawardena told journalists that Rajapaksa had in a letter to the fasting monk, Ven. Kashyapa thero stated that he would void international agreements signed by the current government after the Presidential Election has been announced.Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s co-media spokesman, MP Dullus Allahapperuma stated that Gunawardena had given a clear answer to the question but the question remained since the MCC had not been signed yet and there were no signs that it will be signed before the presidential election would Gotabaya Rajapaksa if he wins the election, review the MCC agreement and decide to sign it.

But without any person stating whether or not the MCC agreement is intrinsically bad news for Lanka why should the nation forego the opportunity to develop its infrastructure with a free gift from the Americans valued at $480 million. Of course, the Americans have an ulterior motive which is why there is nothing called a free lunch in any parlance. The Americans are building up a network, the Asian and Pacific Strategy to counter the growing Chinese threat in the region with its Road Belt. If we reject every proposal merely because the offeror has an ulterior motive in making it, then every aid grant and every loan agreement will have to be rejected out of hand. No man nor country gives anything without some self-interest motivating his or her action.

If the country feels that it is presently beseeched by a Chinese monopoly, perhaps considering that Lanka is a highly aid dependent country it should seek safety and strength in numbers. If the Americans come with their fist full of dollars seeking a piece of the action, if the Japanese come with their yen, if the Indians come with their rupees, then if the necessary sovereignty safeguards are taken, why not exploit the strategic position the nation geographically occupies and let the country be developed by the dollars, the yuans, the yens, and the rupees and let the prosperity flow.

The government must also take the blame for not presenting to the people the benefits that flow from the MCC offer. The MCC deal has been on the table for the last 6 months but the Government has kept its content to itself. It has failed to take the masses into its confidence, then failed to explain why $480 million given free would greatly improve Lanka’s infrastructure in both land administration and the transport sector. Instead they have sprung it on the people like a jack bursting out of its box on the eve of a Presidential Election, giving rise to suspicion that the Government had something to hide, something bitter to force down the throat of the masses and make them swallow it whole.

Take the case of the fasting-unto-death Ven. Kashyapa Thera. He began his death fast over the MCC agreement on November 5, vowing it is better to die than live under the provisions of the MCC deal. A few hours into his fast, he received letters from the two presidential candidates Rajapaksa and Premadasa stating that the MCC agreement would not be signed until after the election. The monk immediately gave up his fast and went to his temple. The Prime Minister’s Office then sent a copy of the MCC agreement to him, asking him to read it and to see whether anything in it was detrimental to Lanka. What could and should have been done long before his fast was undertaken is done after the worst had passed. Not only should the Government have enlightened Kashyapa Thera but the entire nation too by conveying to all the benefits of the agreement long before it comes up for final Presidential assent.

It is not the MCC that Lanka has to worry about. It is only the first facet of the American trilogy. It is the facilitator before the arrival of the other two: The Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA) and Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that the Lankan Government has to be concerned of.

The American Ambassador to Sri Lanka Alaina Teplitz, at a meeting with the Malwatte Mahanayake on May 24th dismissed popular reports that the US was planning military base. She, however, confirmed that if agreement about SOFA was reached between the two nations, the arrangement would be “to allow US forces to tour the country to conduct combine security operations”. She further added that “such steps were very important to strengthen the security of the country as well as to strengthen other sectors”.

Today Lanka has many suitors wooing for her hand. She owes it to her geographically strategic position on the world map, where the world’s maritime powers want to anchor their ships in her habour. The MCC agreement is merely a bauble to persuade her to cast her favours in the direction of the wooer. And should Uncle Sam courting her hand, beg her to dance the MCC tango with him, no doubt she should accept. But should he point to the sofa and coo to her in her ear that it is best that they both retire there after the MCC dance, she should know that the time has come to make her excuses and leave the Ball.