UN Speeches as Whited Sepulchers: Marble Outside, Skeletons Inside

by Rajan Philips

September is the month for speeches by world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York. Last year, the pandemic put paid to travel plans and speech plans by many leaders and their retinues. This year they were back in numbers. South Asia was represented in force this time. Former Maldivian Foreign Minister, Abdullah Shahid, is the President of the current, 76th, Session of the UNGA. The President of Sri Lanka and the Prime Ministers of India and Bangladesh attended the sessions and addressed the Assembly. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan zoomed in from Islamabad with a fiery speech that blamed everyone else except Pakistan for all of Pakistan’s problems. Mr. Khan’s speech triggered a harmless war of words between two young and articulate female diplomats from India (Sneha Dubey) and Pakistan (Saima Saleem), exercising the right of reply, so to speak, to the delight of patriotic audiences back home and on twitter.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina noted the historic significance of this year for Bangladesh. It is the birth centenary of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, her father and the father of her country, as well as the golden jubilee of the creation of Bangladesh. Impressively, she went on to list Bangladesh’s achievements over the last decade, after being dismissed as world’s basket case for nearly three decades after its fiery birth. To quote Ms. Rahman: “We are now among the five fastest growing economies in the world, ranking 41st in terms of GDP. Over the past decade, we have reduced the poverty rate from 31.5%to 20.5%. Our per capita income jumped to more than threefold in just one decade to $2,227. Our foreign currency reserve has reached an all-time high to $48 billion.”

The last statistic, Bangladesh’s foreign currency reserve, is Sri Lanka’s sorest point now. President Rajapaksa did not try to whitewash that blot in his speech. The speech was cleverly crafted – short, crisp and avoiding oratorical flourishes that would have been too challenging to deliver. But there were factual flourishes, quite a few of them, and all of them at odds with the realities at home. The gaps between speech claims and ground truths were too obvious to send eyes rolling and twitters chirping. In fairness, President Rajapaksa was not the only one who was guilty of embellishment, if not exaggeration.

Prime Minister Modi came in for some lampooning in India for claiming before the UN that India had achieved “all-inclusive” development goals only under his government in the “last seven years.” The gospel according to the BJP is that nothing worthwhile happened under the Nehrus, or even other non-Congress governments. He was also constrained to answer his many critics at home and abroad that Indian democracy is getting worse than stepmotherly treatment from the Modi government. He took cover under India’s universal motherhood, claiming that Bharat had been named the “mother of democracy.” And the rejoinders were swift, calling on him to match his words at the UN with actions at home.

For Prime Minister Modi, addressing the UN in New York was only a minor part of the American trip. Far more important were his summit meetings in Washington – first with President Biden and then the first in person meeting of the leaders of the Quad countries, besides Biden, the Prime Ministers of Japan and Australia. In the wake of the controversies over AUKUS announcements, the Quad summit downplayed security matters and highlighted the softer areas for global co-operation, namely, climate change, Covid-19 cooperation, technology, and supply chains to reboot global production. The singular outcome for the Modi government, with both domestic and regional implications, was of course President Biden’s reaffirmation of America’s position that India is now America’s ‘Major Defence Partner’.

Rice Power and Gas Power

Sri Lanka’s President was away for only less than few weeks, but many things have gotten worse by the time he got back. The only redeeming, touch wood, change has been the declining numbers of Covid-19 infections and deaths. Not by a whole lot, but good enough for a breather. Everything else has either got stagnant bad or gone worse. Two developments are sticking out sore. The first is the cartel power of Polonnaruwa rice millers over the governmental power of the Medamulla brothers. The powerful rice millers are now announcing retail rice prices overriding the government’s gazetted maximum retail prices. For the hapless but not at all harmless government, it might be easier to get rice even from the moon than to ‘price’ it out of the miller mafia.

The second sore development is the corporate power of an American energy company to unilaterally announce the sole-sourced deal that it has struck in Sri Lanka for supplying a seemingly endless flow of liquefied natural gas at potentially higher non-market prices. The subject company, New Fortress Energy, is a liquefied natural gas (LNG) company founded in 2014 with the salutary mission of achieving universal access to clean energy. But there is nothing salutary about striking sole-sourced contracts, in small countries, and by-passing tenders.

The New Fortress’s foray into Sri Lanka was through an MOU with a Sri Lankan company called Lakdhanavi Limited, to “jointly develop a 350 MW gas-fired power plant in the Kerawalapitiya Power Complex.” That became the steppingstone for, as New Fortress has announced, “the signing of a Framework Agreement with the Government of Sri Lanka to build an offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving, storage and regasification terminal located off the coast of Colombo, and rights to supply gas to the existing 300 MW Yugadanavi power plant” at Kerawalapitiya.

The deal which is yet to be announced formally by the government has already attracted criticism and scrutiny. The CEB Engineers’ Union has come out strongly against the deal that is estimated to be worth up to USD 6.0 billion and will leave Sri Lanka dependent virtually permanently on a sole LNG supplier. The government is playing coy and is in a state of non-denial denial. The principal mover and shaker behind the deal is said to be Basil Rajapaksa who famously flew back over the ocean from the US to become Sri Lanka’s Finance Minister. And not a hum of protest from the ‘leftists’ in the government or the patriots on the sidelines over new LNG deal.

Earlier they had raised hackles and scuppered the far lesser and more secure MCC agreement directly with the US government. The port unions and patriots also sank the agreement for India’s lead in the development of the East Container Terminal at the Colombo harbour. Now the government with hardly any whimper of protest has reached agreement with India’s highly connected Adani Group to build a brand-new West Terminal in partnership with John Keells Holdings, and the government-owned Port Authority as a minority partner. The deal apparently will counterbalance Chinese contracts for Port development. The Rajapaksa government unilaterally terminated a serious and well developed agreement with the Japanese to build LRT infrastructure in Colombo. Now there is news that Koreans are coming, God knows at whose behest, to start from where the Japanese were not even allowed to begin. This is the methodical record of the Administration of President Rajapaksa in tender matters.

The speech: Claims and Denials

The domestic record did not prevent the President of Sri Lanka from lofty claims at the UN. He rightly and properly began by drawing attention to the “devastating impact on humanity” caused by Covid19. Then he sympathised “deeply with all who have lost their loved ones during the pandemic.” Unfortunately for Sri Lankans, the President’s sympathy did not quite begin at home. Or whoever who wrote his domestic speeches did not insert a sympathy line in the text. And there is no sympathy in the way the dead and their beloved are treated in administering last rites.

The President’s next homage was to the global scientific and medical communities. There has been very little of that shown by this government to Sri Lanka’s scientific and medical communities. And science too was trashed by government ministers promoting covid-syrups for pandemic cure and presidential decision making reportedly predicated on supernatural influences, not to mention Gnanakka’s admonitions. As for vaccination, Sri Lanka’s vaccination has been impressive and there is much to be said about the inequity in the global distribution of vaccines. But there was also inequity and selectivity in Sri Lanka about who got which vaccine and before who else.

In the area of environmental protection, the President’s claims were quite embellished and they contrast quite severely with the poor stewardship of the environment by the present government. Mr. Rajapaksa proudly asserted that “because of its impact on soil fertility, biodiversity, waterways and health, my Government banned the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and weedicides earlier this year. Production and adoption of organic fertilizer, as well as investments into organic agriculture, are being incentivized.” But the reality on the ground is a looming food crisis compounded by the cartel power of the miller mafia.

The President saved his best, or worst, for the last. Just like Prime Minister Modi, President Rajapaksa too exalted Sri Lanka’s democratic traditions and credentials, claiming credit by implication for their governments’ apparent contributions to protecting these traditions. And just as in India it could be said in Sri Lanka that words spoken before the world body should be matched by actions in their respective countries.

The President spoke of the challenges posed by the “separatist terrorist war for 30 years” till 2009, and the 2019 “devastation wrought by extremist religious terrorists in the Easter Sunday attacks.” In dealing with the aftermaths of these challenges, the President affirmed his government’s commitment to “fostering greater accountability, restorative justice, and meaningful reconciliation through domestic institutions is essential to achieve lasting peace.” He contended, “history has shown that lasting results can only be achieved through home-grown institutions reflecting the aspirations of the people,” and that “Sri Lanka’s Parliament, Judiciary and its range of independent statutory bodies should have unrestricted scope to exercise their functions and responsibilities.”

The problem is that there is no external source restricting Sri Lanka’s parliament, its judiciary, and its institutions from fulfilling their roles and responsibilities. The primary source for these restrictions is an entirely domestic one. And it is called the executive presidency. What is more, even without restrictions, Sri Lanka’s parliament, judiciary and institutions have not been exercising their functions and responsibilities properly and consistently all the time. They were also co-conspirators in creating the behemoth of an executive presidency.