Editorial

Sans the pomp and pageantry, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appeared in a business suit lest someone objected to a “Stranger in the House”, and delivered a business-like address to open the new Parliament elected on August 5 by the sovereign people.

He began by outlining his vision and mission with what have been his twin platforms — emphasis on Buddhist values and national security. Then followed a gamut of other areas he will focus upon; tackling the underworld, introducing a new political culture through a new Constitution etc. He went on to explain why he was paying special attention to the rural economy, rural hospitals, rural schools — the rural heartland that gave him and his party an unprecedented majority earlier this month.

Last week, we referred to the need to rewire, or reboot Government — the need, the urgency and the difficulty in sorting out a public service that is not the efficient engine it is meant to be. President Rajapaksa seems to have identified the need for this. He has served as secretary of a Ministry and knows how the public service works — or doesn’t work. In an address that was largely economy-centric, he referred to thinking “out of the box” to meet the challenges ahead.

He spoke of a new Constitution and how much “out of the box” thinking will go into that can be disconcerting. There was some reassurance at the first post-Cabinet news conference when the Government spokesmen said the Independent Commissions, the Right to Information law and such democratic gains of the recent past would not be tampered with.

The opening of Parliament address, whether it was the Throne Speech of yesteryear or the Statement of State Policy now referred to as a Policy Statement is always a ‘wish list’ of every Government. At the end of their term many things on that list remain unfulfilled.

That Thursday’s address was made in the backdrop of a lengthy countrywide power cut underlined the challenges the new Government faces. While an inquiry is pending, speculation is rife that it was an act triggered by the ‘energy mafia’ some of whom are part and parcel of this very Government. Special Police units have been now placed at the Electricity Board when the integrity of the very Police is in question. There would be a limit to calling out the forces every time the public service plays truant.

Likewise, the President said that no foreign fishing vessels will be permitted to poach in Sri Lanka’s territorial waters. The proof of the pudding, so to say, is if he can stop the armada of South Indian fishing vessels brazenly crossing thrice-weekly into the Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar and stealing the marine resources that belong to Sri Lanka.

Successive Governments have been unable to challenge Indian prevarication on stopping this theft. Such are the challenges the President and his Government will have even with a two-thirds majority.

East to West: Non-Alignment is best

As President Rajapaksa made no mention of his Government’s foreign policy in his address to Parliament, we are left with a comment made over the week by Foreign Relations Minister Dinesh Gunawardena that the country will be strictly non-aligned.

That’s what all Governments have said in the past, but the Minister has gone a step further to add that they will revert to Sri Lanka’s role as a frontline member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a role it played in the formative years of the grouping in the late 1950s right unto the 1980s and thereabouts when the Movement began to fade away from the world stage as a third force.

The last NAM summit was in 2019 in Azerbaijan and Sri Lanka didn’t even bother to attend with high-level representation. NAM member states have, over the years, abandoned its original vision and though not irrelevant, the days of the Nehrus, Nkrumahs, Sukarnos, Nassers, Titos and Mrs Sirima Bandaranaike are long over.

Yugoslavia’s Marshal Josip Tito was credited with a comment that non-alignment meant “signalling left and turning right”. That seems what once Communist Russia and China are doing now in an economic sense!

Tito and the others were keen to keep NAM equidistant from the two superpowers of that era, but the Movement tilted towards the Soviet Union which identified more with the aspirations and sentiments of the newly independent countries like Sri Lanka trying to break away from the remaining shackles of colonialism and the growing shadow of neo-colonialism in the post-World War II years.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, NAM members, including Sri Lanka began individually looking for economic support from the West and to hell with unity and solidarity among the group.

A classic example was Sri Lanka voting against a NAM resolution at the UN condemning Britain over the invasion of the disputed Malvinas (Falkland Islands) because Britain had funded the Victoria dam project. The country paid dearly for this decision when another member state in the neighbourhood got Argentina, as its proxy to sponsor a war crimes resolution against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC in Geneva.

There are new power houses now in the global scene and two of them in this neck of the woods are very sensitive about Sri Lanka’s foreign policy.

Their long range diplomatic binoculars, telescopes, periscopes, sonar sensors and drones are watching every move within this island-nation. They have all tried to take advantage of this country’s weaknesses, with the possible exception of Japan. And when Sri Lanka resists their carrots, they come with the stick.

The Foreign Relations Minister referred to the Buddhist concept of the country adopting a ‘kalyana mithra’ (spiritual friendship) approach with all nations — a friend of all and an enemy of none.

The NAM’s ‘pancha seela’ (five principles of peaceful co-existence) policy is now a thing of the past. Tito’s Yugoslavia itself is no more. Global predators carved up that country into separate states after his passing. Sri Lanka’s Foreign Relations Ministry has shut down its NAM desk and incorporated it into its UN and Multilateral desk.

Resuscitating NAM in the New World Order that has evolved is a tall task for Sri Lanka. And yet, non-alignment is the golden thread that must run through the fabric of its foreign policy. That policy might still be the safest bet for the country to survive in this volatile world.