Lankan ‘patriots’ defending American ‘Fortress’

Monday 27th September, 2021

Chain snatchers swallow the necklaces they are making off with when they fail to outrun their pursuers, who however beat them black and blue before handing them over to the police for recovering the valuables with the help of laxatives. The incumbent government is apparently in a similar predicament. When it struck a shady deal with a US energy firm, the other day, behind the back of its coalition allies and the public, it may have thought the hurriedly inked pact would be a fait accompli, and its opponents would be left with no alternative but to stop protesting. But it thought wrong; it is drawing heavy fire, and pressure is mounting on it to scrap the questionable deal.

In February, the government had to withdraw from an agreement on the Colombo Port East Container Terminal (ECT), which was to be run as a joint venture with an Indian company and Japan. The SLPP leaders do not seem to learn from their mistakes.

Why there is so much resistance to the shady deal with a US company is understandable. The government scuttled a bidding process and selected the American venture, New Fortress Inc., which will acquire a 40% ownership stake in the West Coast Power Ltd., the owner of the 310 MW Yugadanavi power plant. The US venture will also build an offshore LNG receiving, storage and regasification terminal off the coast of Colombo, and initially supply the equivalent of 1.2 million gallons of LNG to Sri Lanka.

Even those who are supportive of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are critical of the New Fortress deal due to the absence of transparency and questionable exclusivity. The Professionals’ National Front has condemned the deal, which it says is a threat to the country’s energy security. It has also demanded to know whether the government consulted the Attorney General on the agreement, which, it says, does not come under the Sri Lankan law.

Millions of Sri Lankans who were dependent on Laugfs for cooking gas have been left high and dry. Laugfs starved the market and obtained a price hike, claiming that it was incurring losses, but its gas is still not available. The government is helpless. Given this situation created by a local company, what guarantee is there that something far worse will not happen due to the New Fortress deal? All US companies do as Washington says; their compliance anent the US ban on the Chinese tech giant, Huawei, is case in point.

The SLPP leaders vehemently opposed the yahapalana government’s deal with China to lease the Hambantota Port in 2017. They even staged protests and called the deal a threat to Sri Lanka’s sovereignty. Today, they are struggling to justify the New Fortress deal while wrapping themselves in the flag. The then President Maithripala Sirisena defended the Hambantota port deal, which he said had to be struck because his administration could not pay back the loan the Rajapaksas had obtained for the project; he is now in the incumbent government as the leader the SLFP, which is opposed to the New Fortress deal.

The New York Times

published an article titled, How China Got Sri Lanka to Cough Up a Port, criticizing the Hambantota port deal. It will be interesting to see how the US media describes the New Fortress-the Rajapaksa government deal. Will any American newspaper publish an article titled, ‘How the US Got Sri Lanka to Cough Up a Power Plant’?

When the yahaplana government tried to implement a free trade agreement it had signed with Singapore arbitrarily, Sri Lankan professionals and Opposition politicians (who are currently in the SLPP) launched a successful protest campaign. They called for the formulation of a national policy on agreements between Sri Lanka and other countries and/or foreign companies. It is the absence of such a policy that has enabled government politicians to do as they like in handling state assets.

Sri Lanka cannot exist in isolation and has to work with other countries and foreign ventures, but such deals must be transparent, legal and beneficial to its interests.

Among those who are campaigning against the New Fortress deal are some SLPP constituents. They would have the public believe that they have taken a principled stand on what they call a clandestine pact. What will they do if the SLPP leaders do not heed their protests? They must tell the public what action they are planning to take in such an eventuality. Will they pull out of the government? Or, will they fall in line and stop protesting. Let them be urged to fish or cut bait.