President Maithripala Sirisena addressing the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday, spoke of Sri Lanka being a good UN member-state abiding by its treaties and obligations. And yet, while in the city all week, neither he nor his Government signed the Nuclear Treaty that the country voted for.

The signature book was open all week at the UN headquarters in New York, but Sri Lanka’s apparent volte-face (being one of the 122 countries that voted for it) remains unexplained up to date. A request to the Foreign Secretary for a comment more than a week ago has gone unanswered. Why?

The world right now is resonating with the buzz of a nuclear war exploding around the Korean peninsula. And yet, the ‘UN Week’ when leaders from around the globe descend on the headquarters of the world body – there were 77 heads of state and 38 heads of government –to make speeches on peace and prosperity, saw no support for nuclear disarmament. The treaty aims to prohibit the use of nuclear weapons and promote nuclear disarmament.

The US President went a step further suggesting he would “totally destroy” North Korea if it started a nuclear war, something peace activists compared to “putting out the fire with gasoline”. In addition, he pledged to roll back the deal struck with Iran on its nuclear programme. A UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of yesteryear is now history, and so it seems the latest treaty.

At Wednesday’s signing ceremony of the new edition of the NPT prohibiting nuclear weapons, the UN Secretary General said survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continue to remind the world of the devastating humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and this new document, is the first multi-lateral disarmament treaty in more than two decades. He pointed to the “increasing concerns” of the existence of some 15,000 doomsday nuclear weapons that endanger the world and the risk of nuclear fallouts.

Unfortunately, like Sri Lanka, not all the countries that voted for the treaty signed it this week. Not even Japan, the only country so far to have faced a nuclear bomb, nor South Korea which has a belligerent neighbour threatening war – both, clearly arguing that they cannot defend themselves without nuclear power when North Korea is threatening to use it – the same argument the world over.

That is why at the UN, they just cannot walk the talk. But Sri Lanka’s position, its silence, is deafening, to say the least. The questions seem to be which super (nuclear) power or powers twisted our arm not to sign the treaty, or who were we trying to please. Was the President adequately briefed about Sri Lanka’s position, and if so, wouldn’t he look a bit silly when he says in New York that Sri Lanka abides by all UN treaties – and yet, doesn’t sign this treaty. Is there good reason, bad reason or no reason to do so?

It cannot be that Sri Lanka wants to be a nuclear power itself. Against whom would Sri Lanka use a nuclear bomb? On the other hand, there have been Government Ministers who have articulated the need for Sri Lanka to go ‘nuclear’ for peaceful purposes, especially to boost its energy capacity. That is what all nuclear powers start off by saying and justify their membership in the nuclear club.

Many countries in the economically developed world are moving away from nuclear powered energy because an accident at a reactor can cause irreparable human and environmental harm. Notwithstanding these worries, India is on a nuclear building programme, while Germany has a policy to phase out all its nuclear power plants.

This non-placement of Sri Lanka’s signature on the UN treaty to prohibit nuclear programmes cannot be an oversight. Not only did this newspaper run the story of Sri Lanka’s absence from the list of signatories but the normal UN channels communicated the invitation for the ceremony. No doubt, the signing can be done on a later date, but what is the Government’s stand on this? No one knows.

One only hopes it is not a precursor to Sri Lanka’s departure from an independent foreign policy and signalling a dance to the tune of any one, or more foreign powers.

PC elections: Missing the forest for the trees
The Government was determined to postpone the impending Provincial Council elections by the 20th Amendment – or by a bill gathering dust in the Legal Draftsman’s Department.

And so, with the Supreme Court determination on the Constitutionality of the 20th Amendment (which was to hold all PC elections on a single day) being torpedoed by calling for a Referendum of the people, the Government came up with ‘Plan B’ – i.e. to delay the elections by constituting electorates within a province. It would be a delimitation process that could see months-on-end delays, even though time limits were solemnly given in Parliament, just like what the Government has done with electoral reforms delaying Local Government polls.

The Government’s fear of mid-term elections is patently, and manifestly clear. Of the two partners within the National Unity Government, the UNP-led UNF is at a distinct advantage given the SLFP-led UPFA being split down the middle. The biggest nightmare President Maithripala Sirisena harbours is if the UPFA that he leads comes a poor third in an electoral contest to the UNP and the UPFA faction led by his predecessor and nemesis, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

All this dust pitifully revolves around elections to Provincial Councils, as if elections are the panacea to all the ills of these nine costly ‘white elephants’. Both factions of the SLFP took to the streets when laws were introduced in 1987 to establish these PCs. Now, at least one faction sees virtues in it for no other reason than one-upmanship over the other. The Rajapaksa Administration used these elections to demoralise the Opposition UNP by repeatedly defeating it, only to come a cropper at the ‘big race’.

If the Government had wanted to put off these elections come-what-may, a better alternative would have been to reconsider this entire system that was forced down Sri Lanka’s throat in 1987. Alas, the All Party Constitutional Steering Committee drafting a new Constitution seems to say that PCs have come to stay.

Today, these PCs are viewed, not so much as the decentralisation of power or the nurseries for future political leaders, but through tinted political glasses. Are they all missing the forest for the trees?

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

President Donald Trump’s decision to exit an international climate agreement sparked outrage from many quarters, but some countries are likely already eyeing the positives from the move, experts said Friday.

“This opens up opportunities for other countries to occupy the power vacuum that the U.S. is leaving when it pulls out of these sorts of agreements,” said director at the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute, Mark Howden.

“I could imagine some countries are very positive — seeing this as a good opportunity to start flexing their muscles internationally,” he added.

China, India and EU are countries that are progressing in green initiatives and will stand to benefit, Howden said.

The world’s second largest economy and EU leaders have already said they are still committed to the Paris Agreement on tackling global warming and are expected to announce intensified joint measures to reduce carbon emissions in a statement later on Friday, Reuters reported.

“We are going to see closer cooperation between China and the European Union in accelerating the energy transition into a low-carbon economy,” Frank Yu, Wood Mackenzie’s principal consultant of Asia-Pacific power and renewables, wrote in a note on Friday, adding that the U.S. withdrawal presents “an unprecedented opportunity for China”.

He predicted that U.S. companies involved in environmentally friendly technologies will relocate renewable technology research and development centers to Asia, helping countries such as India, Indonesia and Vietnam that need foreign capital to reach renewable goals.

“By leveraging the strong manufacturing value chain in China and other Asian countries, cost of renewables could fall even faster and penetrate more rapidly to displace dirty fossil fuel such as coal in key Asian markets,” Yu said.

Director of the Center for EU Studies at Renmin University, Wang Yiwei, said China and the EU can cooperate to taking a leading role in tackling climate change and setting new standards for technologies like electronic vehicles, changing the “traditional confrontational” stance between China and the West.

However, it’s still too early to call a new international order, said Philippe Le Corre, a fellow at The Brookings Institution.

“I don’t believe this is a redistribution of cards with a new international order under the banner of China and the EU,” Le Corre told CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” adding that he didn’t believe China’s international relationships would see major shifts.

“The Sino-American relationship is a strategic partnership as well as a very competitive relationship — it’s not going to go away,” Le Corre said.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

China hosting a mega event this week not only announced that it has arrived on the world scene as a major economic power-house, but telegraphed its vision for the next 30 years and more. With the US now on reverse gear advocating nationalism and protectionism, China has become the new face of internationalism. How the roles have reversed.

In an article on Page 8 (ST 2), a Sri Lankan-born UN diplomat lucidly explains China’s ambitious US$ 124 billion plans aimed at linking Asia with Europe and Africa, by road, rail and sea. The ‘One Road; One Belt’ initiative was attended by leaders of 29 countries, including Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister, 1,500 delegates from 130 nations, NGOs, the IMF, World Bank and the UN Secretary General.

To calm any unease that this was the Chinese dragon romping through the world stage, China’s President said; “We will not interfere in other countries’ internal affairs. We will not export our system of society and development model, and even more, will not impose our views on others”.

India was not impressed. For one, the road link cuts across disputed Kashmir. India boycotted the forum while the US and several European nations sent low-level representation, clearly smarting that they are being slowly, but surely upstaged by China.

The world is witnessing the re-emergence of two former Communist giants of the past — Russia and China which split on dialectic Marxism only to re-emerge as economic superpowers through free market policies they once derided as “Capitalist pigs”.

For the new Chinese initiative to be altruistic, is too good to be true. Those dealing with the Chinese negotiators on the Port City project and the Hambantota harbour know only too well how they drive a hard bargain and exploit the weaknesses of corrupt local politicians in developing countries when doing business.

Parallel to the ‘One Road; One Belt’ initiative, China has invested US$ 100 billion in an Investment Bank and the BRICS Development Bank to break the monopoly of the West-dominated IMF and World Bank and their grip over countries like Sri Lanka.

With the anticipated inflow of funds not forthcoming from the West despite a new Government more amenable to it here in Sri Lanka, it is becoming clearer that this country’s economic future rests on the broad shoulders of India and China. By accident or design, the previous Government recognised this fact, but played its cards wrong.

This Government will need to learn from past mistakes and look to the future as this ‘New Economic World Order’ unfolds.

Plantation workers are Sri Lankan citizens of recent origin
Indian scribes accompanying their Prime Minister last week to Sri Lanka were only half-joking when they said that their leader of over a billion people at home also loves to meet their diaspora overseas when he travels. This might have been after he got a rock-star reception in the United States.

And so, the story goes, that his office must have contacted the High Commission in Colombo and asked it to organise a similar event here; except that that there’s no real Indian diaspora in this country. The next best thing was to arrange a mass meeting in the central highlands where a sizeable crowd could be mustered of those categorised as “Tamils of recent Indian origin”.

No wonder, the Indian PM told the cheering crowd at Norwood estate in Dickoya last week; “We rejoice at the success of the Indian origin diaspora as they leave a mark across the world, near and far”.

The ancestors of these plantation workers were brought to this island from southern India as indentured labour by the British planters because the Kandyan peasantry whose lands were plundered under a Waste Lands Ordinance refused to work for the colonisers. It was an age when Africans were taken as slave labour to the cotton fields of America, but they have no allegiance any more to their country of origin.

The plantation workers here are now fully-fledged Sri Lankan citizens with voting rights. Their long struggle for citizenship has its roots in the Citizenship Act of 1948 which made them “stateless”, but that Act was modelled on the Indian Citizens Act which debarred Nepalis from citizenship in India.

If their line-rooms had portraits of Mahatma Gandhi it is understandable. And the Indian tri-colour displayed at Dickoya would have prompted the visiting dignitary to say; “India beats in your heart”, but it also raised concerns whether India was stirring the pot for a permanent fifth column here.

In an era of dual-citizenship, and a foreign citizen signing local currency notes, having allegiance to two countries may — or may not — be an issue as it was before. Parliaments still insist on allegiance to one country, but even Ambassadors are now allowed to represent a country while also being a citizen of another.

Minister Mano Ganesan, a frontline leader of the plantation workers sidelining the traditional ‘hereditary mafia’ that led them for decades, put things in perspective while addressing the crowd, “Our loyalty to our Motherland Sri Lanka is not a divided loyalty — we are only a bridge between the two countries”.

They were classed as ‘Tamils of recent Indian origin’ to distinguish them from the North and East Tamils whose ancestry dates further back to India, and who, in fact, looked all along at the plantation workers as people of a lesser god. To the eternal credit of the plantation Tamils, they had no truck with the North/East separatist movement of recent times.

It is, therefore, the bounden duty of the Government to embrace these Tamils not as those of recent Indian origin, but of recent Sri Lankan citizenship. They are the ‘natural increase’ of those people who opted to remain in Sri Lanka under the Sirima-Shastri Repatriation Pact. Young people in the plantations do not want to be ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’ anymore and prefer city jobs with technical skills or in supermarkets and foot massage centres. Labour is going to be an issue in the plantations unless the industry ventures into some form of mechanisation. Importing indented labour once again, as is feared with new Economic agreements repeating colonial history, is not an option.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka