Reviews

By Dushni Weerakoon

Strong macro-stabilisation efforts characterised Sri Lanka’s economic policy in 2017. After two years of budgetary turmoil, fiscal consolidation efforts under an ongoing IMF program are delivering higher revenues for the cash-strapped Treasury. A stronger fiscal footing is allowing Sri Lanka’s central bank to act pragmatically in its fight against inflation.

As the macroeconomic fundamentals improve, so too does Sri Lanka’s performance in two pressing areas: export earnings and foreign direct investment inflows. Export earnings were up by nearly 9 per cent in the first 10 months of 2017 compared to a contraction of 2.5 per cent over the same period in 2016. Foreign direct investment inflows in the first nine months of 2017 stand at US$766 million compared to a low US$397 million over the same period in 2016.

The economy is faltering on the growth front. GDP growth fell to a low 3.3 per cent in the third quarter of 2017. This suggests that annualised growth will hover around 4 per cent — a steady decline from the 5 per cent GDP growth achieved in 2014. The drop was partly due to harsh weather that devastated agriculture (a sector that generates 7 per cent of total GDP). The other part of the growth slowdown came from Sri Lanka’s contractionary fiscal consolidation efforts under the IMF program. Higher taxes on consumption and production constrained both household disposable incomes and corporate profits.

The need for strong fiscal consolidation is apparent. Sri Lanka’s accumulated debt overhang was considerable by the end of 2014. At that time, net external debt exposure totalled US$22.9 billion and expanded further to total US$24.8 billion at the end of 2016. Indeed, Sri Lanka’s most critical medium-term challenge is a bunching up of its external debt service payments during 2019–2022. The risks of refinancing large volumes of sovereign bonds remain high. Better management of public finances and evidence of sound macroeconomic policy are both vital to retain investor appetite for Sri Lanka’s sovereign bonds.

To add weight to the above, the government finally set out its economic direction for the country in September 2017 under its Vision 2025: A Country Enriched policy framework. At its core, the policy aims to position Sri Lanka as a competitive, knowledge-based economic hub at the centre of the Indian Ocean. This entails a transformational shift in ambition to tackle deeply-rooted structural constraints on growth while maintaining a stable macroeconomic outlook. The first step towards this was taken in the government’s November 2018 budget, which outlined commitments to liberalise sectors such as shipping and logistics. This signalled the government’s intention to position Sri Lanka as a regional goods and services hub.

After initial missteps in managing public finances, dispelling policy confusion and establishing prudent leadership at key economic agencies, the Sri Lankan economy appears to be turning a corner at long last. Stronger macroeconomic fundamentals and a clear commitment to reform can entice private investment and propel a medium-term economic take off.

The primary risk Sri Lanka faces is the interaction of economics and politics. Sri Lanka’s local and provincial elections have been delayed since 2015 due to a web of electoral reforms. Local government elections in February 2018 will be the ruling coalition’s first test of electoral popularity. Once these elections kick off, the cycle of these electoral ‘tests’ for the government will only end with the next presidential elections, which are set for early 2020.

A mid-term reform push is hard even without this slew of local elections. The adjustment costs of fiscal reforms have already hit ordinary voters in the form of higher prices whereas the gains from structural reforms will likely manifest after the current term of office. A reform push is trickier again since Sri Lanka is already on a low growth trajectory amid a tight fiscal austerity program.

The politics are also daunting. The elections will test the apparent political stability of the ‘unity government’ in the coming months as the ruling coalition parties plan on contesting separately. Just when Sri Lanka’s investment climate begins to seem more promising, electoral volatility in the lead up to the 2020 presidential elections could deter investors from cashing in immediately.

Sri Lanka will enter a critical phase of its economic reforms in 2018. In order to reap the full benefits of macroeconomic stability, the government should balance some quick policy fixes with deeper reforms. A number of important reforms may be too complex to implement in any meaningful fashion at this time, such as tackling loss-making state-owned enterprises or increasing labour market flexibility. A selective approach that offers easy, quick fixes to cut down red tape and bureaucracy will allow tangible gains to keep coming. If appropriately managed and implemented, these much-needed economic reforms can help Sri Lanka become ‘a country enriched’.

Dushni Weerakoon is the Executive Director and Head of Macroeconomic Policy Research at the Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka.

This article is part of an East AsiaForum's special feature series on 2017 in review and the year ahead.

I have done lot of irresponsible things throughout my life.

Youthful transgressions may not be our best moments, but they’re also part of growing up. And let’s face it – a lot of them were really fun too. So I can’t help but be put off by the never ending stream of “advice” thrown at young women about how to be “safe” or “respect ourselves” – advice that boys of the same age never hear.

Equality is about politics and economics ... but it’s also about the ability to be a damn fool every once in a while, if we want to. As Rebecca Traister wrote in Big Girls Don’t Cry, true equality “would involve as many Sarah Palins as it would Hillary Clintons.”

Young women need to be able to move around the world with the same amount of stupid that men do because, if women are held to a higher standard of behavior, and we’re inevitably blamed if – and when – we don’t adhere to it.

Take Caroline Kitchens of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, for example. Kitchens, who previously characterized concern over rape culture as “hysteria”, recently published a video in which she suggests that, if women don’t want to be raped, they shouldn’t get drunk. It’s not a new line of thinking – Slate’s

Emily Yoffe came under fire for writing that the “common denominator” in rapes is alcohol instead of, you know, rapists.

In addition to just being ineffective – women get raped drunk and sober, in skirts and in sweatpants – warnings to avoid alcohol in order to avoid being raped send a clear message to women: you can never make a mistake, or any crime committed against you will be at least partially your fault.

Do we really believe that women shouldn’t have the freedom to get drunk and be stupid? That they can’t partake in the silly, fun, dumb behavior that we’ve come to expect of young people – young men – on the brink of adulthood? That one bad decision and they could “get themselves” raped, but that never making a bad one will protect them?

Do we really believe that only women can stop rapists?

Sure, binge drinking is a problem among young people – and, though men are far more likely to binge drink than women, the rate of women binge drinking has stayed steady as the rate among men declined. No, we should not encourage people to do dangerous things (and there are dangers). But the freedom to have fun, make mistakes and participate in some youthful irresponsibility shouldn’t be limited to men.

And if we spent even a fraction of the time and energy teaching affirmative consent, fighting rape and punishing rapists that we normally squander on chastising women for not being good boring girls, it wouldn’t have to be. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need a drink.

 Jessica Valenti

by Zainab Ibrahim & Ermiza Tegal

For decades, female genital mutilation (FGM) has been practiced in Sri Lanka. However, to those outside the practicing communities, this information elicits shock and disbelief. Secrecy about FGM in Sri Lanka is both imposed and internalised. Women who have experienced FGM strongly fear retaliation for speaking out. There is a lack of freedom to discuss, question and explore alternative views within practicing communities.

In December 2017 a news story broke the public silence on FGM, opening a contentious debate. Spokespersons for some sections of the Muslim communities in Sri Lanka confirmed the practice of cutting but have taken pains to make a distinction between FGM and "female circumcision". They argue that what happens in Sri Lanka is "just a nick" of a girl's clitoris that does not constitute mutilation. This distinction is not recognised by the World Health Organisation ; the types of FGM it classifies include forms described as "just a nick".

 Female Genital Mutilation is practiced by a number of Muslim communities in Sri Lanka [Louise Gubb/Getty Images]

Based on personal testimonies of women, our work shows that FGM is practiced within the Moor, Malay and Dawoodi Bohra ethnic communities in Sri Lanka.

The practice appears to vary regionally, and there are clerics who denounce FGM, those who promote it, and also those that say it is mandatory. This means there are also sections of the communities abandoning the practice, with some reporting that FGM is diminishing with each generation and could possibly die out. Some women are opting to not get it done to their daughters or pretend to have it done to save face within their families and communities.

The form and conditions under which the genital cutting happens are varied. Moor and Malay women speak of a practice done at 40 days after birth by an "Osthi mami", a medically untrained woman who carries out the "ritual". Shaving blades are used and there is no mention of sterilisation. What exactly is nicked and how deep the nick is is left to the untrained "Osthi mami" to decide. Blood is drawn and sometimes ash is sprinkled on the wound.

Dawoodi Bohra women describe experiencing cutting at age seven, usually by medical professionals. Some have recounted traumatic memories of the procedure, of being pinned down on tables, feeling pain between their legs and feeling pain when passing urine for days after.

Some mothers have expressed regret with hindsight at having done this to their children. For others, it has strained their relationships with parents. A 27 year-old Sri Lankan woman who got herself medically examined as an adult, found part of her clitoris and labia had been cut when she was a child. Another woman testified to experiencing pain during sexual intercourse as an adult, due to nerves being exposed when she was cut as a child.

There is no established medical benefit, even of hygiene, that justifies the cutting of the clitoris or labia of young girls.

Proponents of FGM claim the WHO has not studied local practices, arguing that the local form of the practice somehow does not cause harm and, on the contrary, is beneficial - an argument for which no medical evidence has been presented.

It is hard to deny that the "local practice" involves interfering with the genitalia of a child who is unable to give informed consent. The clitoris matures to have a high concentration of nerve endings in a small piece of flesh. Given this, even if the clitoris is only minimally or accidentally injured, scar tissue develops and it can affect the ability of the woman to experience pleasure normally.

That FGM is done to control a woman's sexuality is well documented and echoes the narratives of Sri Lankan women we have spoken to between the ages of 25 and 60. These women have bravely testified to the lasting harm and trauma caused by their childhood experiences of being cut, despite great fear about the social and personal consequences of doing so.

Supporters of FGM have been loud and vehement. They are community gatekeepers who hold power and authority and are often male. Their insistence on the cultural practice is an attempt to trump the voices of women saying they have been hurt and don't want it done to any other child. There are also women who say the cutting has not affected them.

The latest argument of some proponents of FGM has been to say that the practice as described in the recently publicised excerpts of testimonies is not in line with the cultural practice they promote, and should in fact be "done properly". Their attempt to medicalise or regulate the practice would not undo the physical and psychological harm done to girls and women.

FGM proponents' debates on the methods and extent of cutting also distracts from the central fact that the practice of FGM is a violation of the rights of a child as protected by national and international law. The Muslim clerics in Sri Lanka who denounce the practice of cutting also highlight the issue of protection of children, along with their calls to respect the perfection of God's creation.

Women have started to speak up on the issue and have approached state authorities to lobby them to take action. FGM is a public health issue, but it is also a child abuse issue. Sri Lanka's Penal code criminalises any form of "grievous hurt" and genital cutting clearly falls within that definition. However, the women affected are calling for FGM to be recognised as a specific criminal offence. This will address the reluctance of law enforcement officials to take action on what they see as a private matter for families or a "cultural practice" of a specific community.

The pushback to women's advocacy raises important questions about whose voices we privilege in debates around cultural practices and women's bodies. While debate is a healthy process of exchange of information and views, vilification of and threats against women who raise the issue of FGM are simply attempts to silence them and must be condemned.

Women are reaching out for state protection because the problem of FGM is not an issue they are able to resolve within the community due to the overwhelming resistance from powerful interests that do not recognise their suffering. Banning FGM could help women resist harm to their daughters and protect the reproductive and sexual health of the future generations of women in Sri Lanka.

The views expressed in this article are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect isis.lk's editorial policy.

Lately, Colombo has intensified its defiance of UN resolutions calling for investigations into war crimes committed during the latter stages of the civil war. In late November, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena declared that “There won’t be electric chairs, international tribunals or foreign judges. That book is closed.”

Earlier, in October, Colombo sought and obtained the help of British parliamentarian Lord Naseby to downplay a report by the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Experts, which in March 2011 found “credible allegations” that as many as 40,000 civilians may have been killed in the final months of the civil war, mostly as a result of indiscriminate shelling by the Sri Lankan military. Naseby had called on the UN to reduce the number from 40,000 to between 7,000 and 8,000 based on his own research.

Naseby’s links to Sri Lanka go back to 1975, when he founded the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sri Lanka. Naseby has been an advocate for Sri Lanka in the British parliament and in 2005, was awarded Sri Lanka Ratna, the highest national honor bestowed upon foreigners for exceptional and outstanding service to the nation by the then Sri Lankan government. In November 2017, Sirisena thanked Naseby for calling for a reduction in numbers of the people killed. Although much has been made by the Sri Lankan press about Naseby’s call for a revision of the casualties, this has been summarily dismissed by the British government via its High Commissioner in Colombo.

Britain’s position is based on the Report of the UN Panel of Experts, comprising prominent human right activists, Marzuki Darusman (from Indonesia), Yasmin Sooka (South Africa), and Steven Ratner (United States). Unlike Naseby’s “findings,” the UN report has been corroborated by several other independent sources. These include: the Channel Four documentary Killing Fields, Francis Harrison’s book Still Counting the Dead, and reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

Since 2012, resolutions calling for international investigation into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka have been passed in the UN. Until 2015, these were opposed by Colombo on the grounds that international investigations were intrusive and, if implemented, would undermine Sri Lanka’s sovereignty. The Sri Lankan government during this period was the one that had successfully crushed the Tamil rebellion and the resolutions passed were directed in particular at this government, headed by president Mahinda Rajapaksa.

In January 2015, Maithripala Sirisena, with the support of the United States and India, defeated Rajapaksa in the presidential election. The new regime was expected to be more receptive to UN resolutions on post-war justice. In September 2015, a new resolution calling for an investigation into war crimes avoided any reference to an international investigation and in its place called for establishing a mechanism involving foreign judges in a local investigation. The Sirisena government went along by co-sponsoring this resolution. However, in March 2017, Colombo sought and obtained another two years to implement the 2015 resolution. But its current actions show that it has no intention of implementing the resolution. Instead, it seeks defy the very resolution it had co-sponsored in 2015.

There are good reasons to suspect that the Sri Lankan government’s opposition to any impartial investigation is due to its apprehension that it may result in Colombo having to face the much grimmer charge of genocide.

In February 2015, Sri Lanka’s Tamil-dominated Northern Provincial Council passed a resolution reflecting Tamil sentiments that the crimes perpetrated went beyond war crimes and were in fact genocide. Following this resolution, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) came under criticism for its “silence” on genocide. The Hindu, an Indian newspaper, was prompted to raise this with the OHCR, which responded by stating that the UN report does not preclude the potential for a future finding that genocide was committed as a result of further criminal investigations.

OHCR’s response was not entirely surprising. In December 2008, just six months before the Tamil rebellion was brutally crushed, the New York-based Genocide Prevention Project had identified Sri Lanka as one of the eight “red alert” countries where genocide and other mass atrocities were underway. And just two months later, in February 2009, the Boston Globe compared the ongoing massacre in Sri Lanka to the Bosnian Srebrenica genocide. Then there were the accusations leveled by Professor Francis A. Boyle, a leading American expert in international law, who interpreted the Sri Lankan government’s actions as genocide under international law.

In December 2013, a full session of the Rome-based Permanent Peoples Tribunal held in Bremen to consider evidence gained over three years found,”that the State of Sri Lanka is guilty of the crime of genocide against Eelam Tamils.”

Given the suspicions that Sri Lanka may well be guilty of genocide, this may be the reason for its concerted attempts to evade any kind of investigations into its conduct during the final phase of the war.

Ana Pararajasingham was Director-Programmes with the Centre for Just Peace and Democracy (CJPD). He is the author “Sri Lanka’s Endangered Peace Process and the Way Forward” (2007) and editor of “Sri Lanka: 60 Years of ‘Independence and Beyond’” (2009).

PIC: Wall Street Journal

by Richard Javad Heydarian

20 Dec 2017

 In less than a year in office, US President Donald Trump has managed to alienate more allies and provoke more enemies faster and more decisively than any of his predecessors in recent history. All of a sudden, we face the simultaneous threats of war from the Korean Peninsula to the Middle East.

Meanwhile, US' chief rival, China, has steadily expanded its influence across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, wooing both the East and the West with an enticing package of economic mega-initiatives, which seek to transform the world in Beijing's image.

While Trump is picking fights with new and old adversaries, China is steadily expanding its spheres of influence. Day by day, it's becoming increasingly clear that the world is on the cusp of a post-American order, if not a new era of Chinese hegemony. And neither outcome is necessarily a cause for celebration.

China's soft power coup

From Europe to Asia, friends and allies of the US have been watching Trump's tempestuous presidency in dread.

His midnight rants on Twitter, incoherent policy on major geopolitical flashpoints, penchant for firing senior advisers, apparent Islamophobia, and constant berating of free trade and the broader international liberal order have dramatically undermined confidence in US global leadership. And controversial decisions by his administration have been increasingly alienating US allies.

According to one survey covering 37 nations in five continents, confidence in the US presidency doing the right thing for the international community has virtually collapsed; as many as 74 percent of respondents expressed little to zero confidence in Trump's global leadership acumen.

In major allied nations such as Japan and South Korea, 78 and 88 percent of respondents said they had confidence in Barack Obama in the last year of his presidency; for Trump, these numbers are now respectively 24 and 17 percent.

Washington's fickleness has eased in Beijing's charm offensive. China has courted even some of US' closest allies such as the Philippines.

And surveys show that a growing number of people, including in the Philippines, support their country's pivot to China amid doubts over American wherewithal and commitment.

With the Trump administration's aggressive rhetoric escalating over the past year, China has adopted a much more balanced and diplomatic stance on the world political stage. Beijing has opposed Trump's suggestions of decertifying the Iranian nuclear deal and his belligerent statements on North Korea. China has also openly rejected Trump's decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by emphasising the necessity for a two-state solution, where East Jerusalem becomes the capital of Palestine.

If the White House continues down the foreign policy path it has adopted in the first year of Trump's presidency, China will have a much easier time presenting itself as a non-interventionist superpower, which favours peaceful solutions to intractable conflicts, and perhaps even as a global arbiter.

China: The new champion of free trade

In a bizarre twist of events, Trump (a billionaire and former real estate magnate) has also become the new voice of economic protectionism and a chief critic of economic globalisation.

Throughout his international visits, including in Asia, he has called for "fair" trade and bilateral trade agreements, directly challenging the US century-old commitment to the global liberal order.

In response, the most powerful allies of the US, including Japan, Australia and Europe, have pushed ahead with alternative trade arrangements which directly bypass Washington.

In stark contrast to Trump's rhetoric, communist China has presented itself as the new vanguard of the international economic order.

During his speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam in November, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for "more open, more balanced, more equitable and more beneficial" global trading arrangements, praised proposed and existing "multilateral trading regime[s]" and underlined the necessity for "practice[ing] open regionalism."

While Trump unilaterally nixed the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, China supported alternative trading arrangements such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, which covers 16 nations across the Asia-Pacific region.

China has doubled down on its economic influence by launching the trillion-dollar One Belt One Road Initiative earlier this year, a mega-project that aims to connect Asia to Europe and Africa via a new network of Beijing-funded roads, railroads and shipping lanes. The message is clear: Where the US offers criticism and threats, China offers investments and hope.

Will China be a better hegemon than the US?

The emergence of China as a new pillar of the international order isn't necessarily a cause for celebration.

For a reality check, one must take a sober look at Beijing's limited respect for human rights and democracy, support for oppressive and dangerous regimes, mixed record on the success of its investments across the developing world, territorial assertiveness and direct challenge to international norms and laws, as well as increasing interference in the affairs of smaller nations.

From Asia to Africa and Latin America, a growing number of developing countries have found themselves drowning in unsustainable debt, thanks to white elephants built by Chinese infrastructure companies.

Unable to settle their debt and optimise mal-designed infrastructure projects, poor nations have been forced to grant Beijing full stake in their critical infrastructure and resources such as seaports (Sri Lanka), major public land (Laos), and natural resources (Venezuela).

China hasn't behaved as belligerently as the US (yet), but there are enough reasons to cast doubt on the long-term designs of the Asian powerhouse in the developing world.

The American bully may be on its way to permanent decline, but it is likely successor is far from reassuring.

Source : Al Jazeera

By John Pomfret

A global backlash is brewing against the People’s Republic of China. In Australia, China’s efforts to use surrogates to funnel money into the Australian political system led one senator to quit last week, and has prompted the government to unveil a series of laws to crack down on foreign influence. In Europe, alarm is growing at Chinese mercantilist practices and China’s desire to snap up European firms with innovative technologies. In the United States, the business community, long the ballast in America’s relations with China, is no longer united over the issue of how to pursue relations with Beijing. Many American firms have suffered losses in China.

As a result, a slew of other issues — such as China’s industrial espionage, its demands for forced technology transfer, its use of Chinese state-run media to broadcast pro-Beijing propaganda in the United States and its attempts to influence U.S. educational institutions — is prompting calls for a response. Already, Chinese firms seeking to buy American high technology are facing more difficulties. And there’s talk in Congress of forcing China’s state-run TV and wire service operations in the United States to register as agents of a foreign power.

This backlash is coming at a time when Beijing has expressed unprecedented confidence in its economic and political model, which combines the dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party with an industrial policy that aims, through subsidies, massive government-backed research and development, and the acquisition of Western technology, to ensure that Chinese firms dominate the economy of tomorrow. Starting in July 2016 at a celebratory speech marking the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, China’s President Xi Jinping began to use a term, the “China solution,” to assert that China had found what he called a “solution to humanity’s search for better social institutions.” The term has since gone viral in China and has been picked up by Chinese communist theoreticians as an idea to counter Western influence around the world. As a writer for the party’s mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, put it on Dec. 6, the China solution “transcends ‘Western centrism’ and greatly stimulates the development of the broad range of developing countries’ self-confidence in ‘going their own way.’ ”

The backlash is also building as many in the West worry that China is winning a global competition for resources, market share and ideological influence. Around the time of President Trump’s summit in China in November, the American press was full of hand-wringing that China was outpacing the United States in the race for global leadership. “Why China won 2017 and how Donald Trump helped them do it,” read the headline from CNN’s website on Nov. 3. “China won” was how Time magazine framed a cover piece by the political analyst Ian Bremmer. USA Today has piled on, too.

Interestingly, the growing negative reaction to China’s rise belies reports that the United States under Trump is no longer capable of cooperating with America’s traditional allies. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has joined with the European Union in rejecting China’s claim that, under the terms of its accession to the World Trade Organization, it should be granted market-economy status, which would protect China from anti-dumping duties. At the WTO ministerial meetings in Buenos Aires last week, the United States, the European Union and Japan confronted China over its unwillingness to scale back its industrial production and other questionable trade practices.

During his trip through Asia in November, Trump began using the term “Indo-Pacific,” and not the Asia-Pacific, as a way to signal the region of a U.S. intention to include India in the United States’ attempts to balance China’s growing military and economic heft. On the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Manila, U.S. officials met with counterparts from Australia, Japan and India, reviving what has come to be known as “the Quad,” a loose association of the four maritime democracies worried about China’s rise.

In addition, the widely perceived impression that Trump’s election has resulted in a weakening of U.S. influence has also prompted countries in Asia to continue to hedge their bets against China without the United States. No sooner had he entered the Oval Office than Trump pulled the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade pact grouping 12 nations that border the Pacific. That move was supposed to spell the end of the TPP, but it did not. Concerned that the pact’s demise would allow China to dictate the terms of economic relations in Asia, the 11 remaining nations continue to move forward on a deal. In addition, bilateral relations between Asia’s democracies remain robust and are improving. Japan has played an important, if not the critical, role in encouraging India to increase its influence in Asia. Japan helped coordinate a summit in New Delhi between India and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which focused on how India could help those nations rely less on Beijing for trade and investment.

The pushback against China is not confined to democracies. Even nations with historically close ties to China have begun chafing at the high-handed treatment emanating from Beijing as part of China’s “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure program. While China has attempted to package the program as a Chinese version of the Marshall Plan, increasingly it’s being received as something more akin to Western colonialism than Western largesse. Sri Lanka currently owes Chinese state-controlled firms more than $8 billion. As part of a plan to break free of its debt trap, last week, the government handed over the strategic port of Hambantota to China on a 99-year lease, in a move that critics said would threaten the country’s sovereignty. In India, pundits referred to China’s move as “debt-trap diplomacy.” Even Pakistan, perhaps China’s closest foreign partner, seems to be having second thoughts about taking Chinese money. Express Tribune, a Pakistan newspaper, reported that the government had canceled a $14 billion dam project after Beijing made it clear that it wanted to own the dam after it built it. Nepal announced that it, too, was canceling a deal on a Chinese-funded dam for similar reasons.

So far, China’s reaction to the growing concern about China’s power has tended toward the aggressive. In Australia, the Chinese Embassy warned Australian government officials not to damage “mutual trust” as they moved to pass laws aimed at protecting Australia’s political system from foreign money. After Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull noted “disturbing reports about Chinese influence,” the embassy cautioned Australian officials not to make “irresponsible remarks.” The embassy also accused Australian media outlets of fabricating news stories about “the so-called Chinese influence and infiltration in Australia.”

For decades, successive administrations in Washington have worked for a stronger China. But now that China is stronger, the United States, along with many other countries around the world, is no longer so sure that’s what it wants.

 John Pomfret, a former Washington Post bureau chief in Beijing, is the author of “The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present.”

By Kai Schultz

 Struggling to pay its debt to Chinese firms, the nation of Sri Lanka formally handed over the strategic port of Hambantota to China on a 99-year lease last week, in a deal that government critics have said threatens the country’s sovereignty.

In recent years, China has shored up its presence in the Indian Ocean, investing billions of dollars to build port facilities and plan maritime trade routes as part of its “One Belt, One Road” initiative to help increase its market reach.

Along the way, smaller countries like Sri Lanka have found themselves owing debts they cannot pay. Sri Lanka owes more than $8 billion to state-controlled Chinese firms, officials say.

Sri Lankan politicians said the Hambantota deal, valued at $1.1 billion, was necessary to chip away at the debt, but analysts warned of the consequences of signing away too much control to China.

“The price being paid for reducing the China debt could prove more costly than the debt burden Sri Lanka seeks to reduce,” said N. Sathiya Moorthy, a senior fellow specializing in Sri Lanka at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation.

Sri Lanka has long been in India’s orbit, but its relationship with China has strengthened in recent years. As Western nations accused Mahinda Rajapaksa, the country’s former president, of grievous human rights abuses during the final stages of Sri Lanka’s nearly 26-year civil war, China extended billions of dollars of loans to Mr. Rajapaksa’s government for new infrastructure projects.

In July, the state-controlled China Merchants Port Holdings Company signed a deal with the Sri Lanka Ports Authority to control a 70 percent stake in the Hambantota port, which lies on the southern coast of the country.

Last Friday, Sri Lanka’s Parliament voted to grant tax concessions to a joint venture led by China to develop the port. On Saturday, the government completed the handover of the port to two state-controlled entities run through China Merchants Port Holdings, which has already made its first payment of $300 million to the Sri Lankan government.

“With this agreement, we have started to pay back the loans,” Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said in an address to Parliament. “There will be an economic zone and industrialization in the area which will lead to economic development and promote tourism.”

Critics said the lease could set a precedent for Sri Lanka and other countries that owe money to China to accept deals that involve the signing over of territory. After the original port deal was signed in July, Namal Rajapaksa, a member of Parliament and son of the former president, asked on Twitter whether the government was “playing geopolitics with national assets.”

Perceiving a threat to its regional hegemony, India has also watched with suspicion as cranes operated by Chinese firms began to dot the skyline in Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital. To reset the imbalance, India has partnered with Japan to develop a port on Sri Lanka’s eastern coastline, and it has entered into talks to invest in an airport near Hambantota.

“India has been overwhelmed by China’s offensive in its strategic backyard,” said Constantino Xavier, a fellow at Carnegie India in New Delhi.

But across South Asia, there have been some signs of pushback to Chinese investment, including the recent sidelining of hydropower projects in Nepal, Pakistan and Myanmar.

Mr. Xavier said Sri Lanka’s dependency on China has alarmed some countries. “Countries in the region are beginning to realize the long-term costs of Beijing’s massive investment promises,” he said.

 Source: Article was published in the New York Times on 13 December 2017

Pic: Getty Images

By Frida Ghitis

December 7, 2017

(CNN) : No, the entire world is not obsessed with Donald Trump, but you have to travel far to reach a place where people are not following closely -- and worrying deeply -- about what's happening in Washington.

I travelled some 10,000 miles across continents and seas to Sri Lanka and then drove another eight hours away from the capital, Colombo, among rice paddies and coconut palm farms, to the island's war-scarred Northern Province before I found people who had little interest in America's unusual president and his policies.

I must admit, after months of a Trump-heavy news diet, it was starting to look at the morning newspaper and see an entire front page without a single mention of the word "Trump."

Before driving off to the provinces, I scanned the bustling skyline of Colombo, with its multiple, ambitious projects, many of them built, financed and largely owned by China, which sees in this country a strategic point of influence in its expanding global footprint. It's hard to avoid the impression that while Americans are understandably focused on what's happening at home, the rest of the world is moving fast to make gains on the distracted superpower.

And yet, it's not only Americans who are fascinated with US politics. A year ago, as I informally surveyed people in a number of countries about the US election, Sri Lanka was the only place where I found Trump supporters. But what about now?

Along my way to the north, Suranga Fernando, who lives in the town of Negombo, not far from Colombo, commented, "Trump is crazy, no?"
And Fernando isn't alone in his sentiment. The troubling phenomenon is far-reaching. Pew research surveyed 37 countries and found a widespread collapse of trust in the US president and in the United States. A median of just 22% said they have confidence in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs, a jaw-dropping collapse from the 64% who trusted the US president at the end of the Obama presidency.

A stunning 74% said they have little or no confidence in Trump, up from just 23% who didn't trust Obama. Mistrust in the US leader extended to confidence in the United States, with favourable views of the United States plummeting around the world from 64% to 49% since Trump became president.

The President's Wednesday announcement that the United States would now acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel isn't likely to improve his ratings. Allies across Europe and the Middle East -- from the United Kingdom to Saudi Arabia -- warned Trump against it. And yet, Trump ignored them, choosing to make an announcement they said would prove harmful.

And though Sri Lanka wasn't included in the Pew survey, I found many Sri Lankans shared similar concerns to Fernando's. In Jaffna, the North's capital, Jathu Jathurshan, a local businessman, told me he hasn't made up his mind about Trump, but he worries, especially regarding North Korea. "The way he's talking is not the proper way," he said, "I think he wants a war."

In a country divided by ethnic and religious differences, some value Trump's strong words against Muslims and his vow to defeat terrorists. Rukshan Kasthuri, a marketing expert, admires Trump's own marketing prowess, which led to electoral victory, and he likes Trump's goal to "eradicate Muslim terrorists from the world." But Kasthuri admits he has not heard about the Russia investigation or the controversial tweets that came after the election. Others have.

But Trump's reposting of racist anti-Muslim videos last week made an impression in a country that endured nearly three decades of a civil war pitting the separatist terrorist group known as the Tamil Tigers, mostly-Hindu and ethnic Tamil, against forces of the central government, mostly Buddhist and ethnic Sinhalese, a conflict whose full tally will likely never be known. Some detailed accounts put the number of dead above 100,000 even before the final government offensive, which the United Nations says left another 40,000dead.

Writing in Sri Lanka's prominent Daily Mirror, Ahilan Kadirgamar, a Tamil activist and researcher, described the "lunatic tirades of Trump," along with the rise of nationalism in Europe, and the muscular projects of China as a warning sign. "Nationalism requires an enemy," he noted, as Sri Lankans have seen, with "disastrous consequences."

Gehan Gunatilleke, a Sri Lankan human rights lawyer and research director at Verité Research, an independent Sri Lankan think tank, told me Trump's retweet of the racist videos "amounts to advocacy of racial/religious hatred," adding that "the Trump presidency has delegitimized the US among Sri Lankans in an unprecedented way."

Observers here are weighing the implications of Trump's words. Harinda Vidanage, director of a local think tank, says Trump is "systematically undoing" the achievements of a liberal world. His feud with the United Kingdom after posting the vile videos undermines the until-now impregnable "special relationship" between the United States and Britain. As a result, he said, countries that had relied on the United States will "rethink or even recalibrate their own alignments." Trump's "scathing attack on its ultimate friend," he notes, "harms the United States and its global standing." And news of Trump's tweets of false information is travelling the world.

The Dutch quickly rejected Trump's tweet of a video that was supposed to be a Muslim attacking a Dutch boy on crutches. "Facts do matter," said the Dutch Embassy. The attacker was not Muslim. He was born and raised in the Netherlands, and was arrested over the attack.
Brazil's O Globo, in multiple articles, said plainly that the President of the United States tweeted videos with false information, "inciting prejudice against Muslims." A similar message spread in the rest of the continent and beyond.

In India, just north of Sri Lanka, the tweetstorm, including Trump's aggressive retort against British Prime Minister Theresa May, received widespread attention. Trump, explained the Hindustan Times, stoked the same anti-Islam sentiments he had fanned during the campaign, turning away from important items of his agenda (including North Korea) to promote videos from a British hate-monger.

Does it matter that far-away nations are looking at the American President, noting his assaults on the truth, on the media, on his allies -- and on tolerance and coexistence?

Without a doubt, it does. It matters that nation-states now view the United States as an increasingly unreliable country, with an untrustworthy president. That emerging image of America will affect US influence in the world, eroding its strategic positing and diminishing the strength of American values, weakening those fighting to create more democratic societies where they live and simultaneously strengthening the hand of America's authoritarian rivals.

Consider Nigeria, pondering whether it should ally itself economically, strategically and politically with a rising China or with the US.

The words and actions of an America president are working their way across vast distances, slowly seeping across oceans, jungles, languages and cultures. Trump may claim people now respect America, but the truth is very different. The more people hear about a president who promotes discord and distorts the truth, the less they respect and trust the United States.

Pic Source : Newsweek

By Peter Wollweber

08 December 2017

A new day, and the sun rises over Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport. A tourist might be greeted by any number of sounds; the dawn chorus of tropical birds, palm leaves rustled by the breeze, or the gentle spray of a fountain. One thing is for sure: there won’t be any planes. The commercially disastrous airport lies in the middle of the Sri Lankan jungle, for no other reason than the ambitious personal project of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa to develop his home town into the economic centre of the Indian Ocean. Here, the shadow of the Rajapaksa regime, an administration that ended the country’s bitter civil war, quite literally hangs over the region. The man himself was ousted in 2015 after a surprise election defeat, but the Rajapaksa dynasty still dominates Sri Lanka today, and despite the government’s best efforts, will not be fading into the background anytime soon.

In order to understand the current situation, however, it is useful to look back at Rajapaksa’s time in office. He rose to power with the centre-left Sri Lanka Freedom Party on a pledge to defeat the Tamil Tigers (LTTE), and thereby end the drawn-out civil war mainly taking place in the north of the country. This he did, but has since been dogged by war crime allegations and gained the enmity of many of the ethnically Tamil regions. Other priorities during his tenure were mainly infrastructure projects such as Mattala Rajapaksa Airport and its US$1.5bn partner, Mahinda Rajapaksa Port. The port is famously devoid of shipping to the extent that the current government has been forced to lease the entire facility to the Chinese. Having brought to a close the civil war that defined the country since the 1980s, Rajapaksa comfortably won the 2010 presidential elections, embarking on a second term. Aiming to repeat this success in 2014 following a constitutional amendment relaxing the rules on re-election, Rajapaksa found himself challenged unexpectedly by Maithripala Sirisena, his own former health minister. Pledging to curb presidential powers and investigate misconduct in the civil war, Sirisena achieved a shock victory with the support of Tamil regions. Far from consolidating his presidency, Rajapaksa’s gamble backfired and he now found himself out in the political wilderness.

Yet two years later, Mahinda Rajapaksa and his family still matter in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is a country made up of ethnic divisions, deepened by the civil war. Just as the Tamils flocked to vote for Sirisena, the majority Sinhalese south are largely through-and-through Rajapaksa loyalists. To them the end, victory over the LTTE, was worth the disputed means. And the seeds of a Rajapaksa comeback have already been sown. Unlike any previous president, he won election to the Sri Lankan parliament after his defeat. It is a clear indication that his ambitions have not yet been satisfied, or perhaps that he intends to throw a spanner in the works of Sirisena’s regime, who are attempting to fulfil their pledge on war crimes.

But why worry? The continued political involvement of a former president would hardly be a concern. To see what is at stake, it is once again necessary to look back at his tenure. Rajapaksa himself held four separate ministerial positions whilst president. Two relatives held deputy and non-cabinet positions from 2005, the administration’s inception. But later on, in 2007 and 2010 respectively, two more members of the Rajapaksa clan were introduced and given full ministerial briefs, leaving the family in charge of ministries such as Economic Development, Finance and Planning and Highways, Ports and Shipping. Projects like the MRIA therefore acquire a new significance, not just a symbol of Rajapaksa’s struggling economic initiatives but a concrete and steel sign of the power his family wielded over the small, strategically important island.

Power that has undeniably abated, but shows definite signs of returning. Rajapaksa is aware that he retains a large following. Moreover, cracks are beginning to appear in the Sirisena government. The president appears to be undecided regarding war crimes allegations, declaring in 2016 that he would not allow a single soldier to be brought to trial, but hinting on November 12th that some prosecutions could indeed be made. Sirisena’s professed anti-corruption drive seems to be almost devoid of media attention, making his government increasingly easy game for a resurgent Rajapaksa.

And the former president appears to be well aware of this. Rajapaksa, for all his faults, understand the political process like few of his rivals. He practices the art of charisma to near perfection, and his public profile remains high. It is considered that he still commands the loyalty of 55 MPs in the SLFP, more than the president can muster. It seems the man himself is perfectly positioned to wait out Sirisena’s government, pledged to solve the transparency problem of a country that, a year into his ‘regime of good governance’, still occupied 95th place on the Corruption Perceptions Index. Sirisena’s targets are, in a country still recovering from civil war, nigh-on unattainable, and it is only a matter of time before one of two situations arises. The first is that Sirisena will find himself in another presidential runoff against Rajapaksa, only this time with a difficult record to defend and lacking the element of surprise that allowed him to carry the election in 2015. The other scenario is that a weakened Sirisena, remaining president into the next term, may be forced to appoint Rajapaksa prime minister to stabilise his own government. The prime ministerial role was even strengthened by Sirisena as part of his curb on presidential powers. Either situation, with or without Sirisena, looks positive for his rival.

The final question to ask is what could be expected of a Rajapaksa return. Domestically it would almost certainly mean heavy investment in his Sinhala heartland, and an end to the war crimes probe that has dogged members of his own administration. Corruption investigations would likely also be ended, especially since Rajapaksa’s own brother Gotabaya is one of the most recent victims. The most important consequence would be further political instability as Rajapaksa attempts to entrench his dynasty, in a region in which China has shown steadily increasing interest over the past few years. The Chinese invested heavily in the Rajapaksa regime, and its return would be a geopolitical coup for them. Companies owned by the Chinese government already hold a commanding stake in Mahinda Rajapaksa Port, and a pro-Chinese Rajapaksa would be keen to further work on the ‘Maritime Silk Road’ of which Sri Lanka is a central component. The implications of a Rajapaksa return would therefore reach far beyond Colombo, eroding Indian influence in south Asia and bolstering the economic and political hand of the Chinese. In a region that is already the centre of a strategic game of chess between China, India and the West, it is high time the global media recognised its significance.

 Source: http://foreignaffairsreview.co.uk/2017/12/mahinda-rajapaksa-the-man-who-would-be-sri-lankas-president/