By
C.A.Chandraprema
It was the GMOA that blew the lid off one of the government’s closely guarded secrets – the economic and technical cooperation pact that was being planned with India. They published on their website the draft of the Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement that had been given to them by the government. For the first time, the public and even the media became aware of what the government was negotiating with India.
The term ‘negotiated’ would be misnomer in this case because there is nothing in the agreement to negotiate. Like the aborted Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) which the former Congress Party government was pushing, the present Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) also envisages trade in goods, trade in services and investment. But the difference this time is that the much vaunted ETCA is not a real agreement at all but an empty shell which provides only a ‘framework’ for future negotiations.
It’s actual name is not ‘Indo-Sri Lanka Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement’ but ‘Indo-Sri Lanka Economic and Technical Cooperation Framework Agreement’ with the word ‘Framework’ in italics for emphasis. Nothing has been said in this draft framework agreement about the specific provisions relating to the trade in goods, trade in services and investment. If the present draft of ETCA is only a framework without any specifics, the question arises why the government took such elaborate precautions to keep it under wraps.
Deputy Minister Harsha de Silva addressing a press conference on Friday said for the first time that there is no agreement as such but only a framework. But he did not explain why this non-agreement was kept such a closely guarded secret.
Another matter that the government has to clarify is, if this proposed pact is only a framework for future negotiations, why sign such a document at all? This writer has not yet met anybody who has heard of a bilateral agreement to agree on certain things later. The earlier negotiations on CEPA fell through due the inability to agree on the specifics. Is it the case that the government thought that even if negotiations fall though again, there will at least be the ‘framework’ agreement to keep the marriage together? This has all the hallmarks of a forced Indian marriage with Sri Lanka as the recalcitrant bride. There are questions over what will take place under this non-specific framework agreement. The signs that have manifested themselves in that respect are not good.
With the proposed pact with India still pending, the prime minister himself presented a cabinet paper on September 2 last year to set up an Indian run ambulance service in Sri Lanka. It is significant that this cabinet paper was presented by the Prime Minister and not by the Minister of Health. When have we ever heard of a Prime Minister putting forward cabinet papers relating to the setting up of something like an ambulance service? This country already has ambulance services run by the government, private companies and non-governmental organizations. As such why this Indian ambulance service was necessary was not explained by the Prime Minister in his cabinet paper.
Indianisation through the backdoor
Be that as it may, an Indian outfit styling itself GVK Emergency Management and Research Institute (GVK EMRI) has been given the go ahead to commence an ambulance and pre-hospitalization care service in the Western and Southern provinces first and then expand countrywide. The Indian government had agreed to provide a grant of 7.6 million USD (approximately LKR.1.1 billion) for GVK EMRI to commence operations in Sri Lanka. This money will cover operating costs for the first year to purchase 88 ambulances and pay the salaries of an envisaged 600 employees to set up the rapid response centres and build data bases etc. The cabinet paper does not specify whether this is going to be a fee levying service or not, but it is implied in the cabinet paper that this will not be a free service.
That once again begs the question whether the people need another fee levying ambulance service when there are so many already providing such services. This proposed Indian service purports to be an ‘ambulance and pre-hospitalization’ care service which means that they may provide a service that may be a slightly more extended than the existing ambulance services. But this again may give rise to another raft of problems. If this is not a free service, whatever is done in terms of pre-hospitalization care in addition to the transport function of a traditional ambulance service, will have to be paid for. This is going to give rise to a mighty caterwaul of protest about the privatization of the health service. This Indian ambulance service is supposed to function as an affiliated organization of the Health Ministry. Can anyone imagine an affiliated body of the Health Ministry charging a fee for their services without causing riots?
The UNP has a track record of entering into counterproductive agreements. The 2002 ceasefire agreement with the LTTE was one example. Given the situation in which the Chandrika Kumaratunga government handed over the country to the UNP, perhaps they had no choice but to enter into a ceasefire, but the UNP could have negotiated better terms because the LTTE too had no option but to temporarily halt hostilities in the wake of the global backlash against terrorism following 9/11. Then again the present UNP government could have negotiated a less harmful resolution in the UNHRC last year through the good offices of the USA, but they proved abysmally inept at turning things to their advantage. The same ineptitude can be seen in the way they are going about this pact with India.
Indian workers flooding Sri Lanka
They have succeeded in colouring the pact with India by trying to establish this ambulance service even before the pact has been entered into. This will be interpreted as an attempt to open up the Sri Lankan services sector to Indian companies ahead of ETCA. Indeed the Joint Opposition in a statement issued on Friday insinuated that this so called framework agreement may only be a smokescreen for the Indianisation of the Sri Lankan services sector through surreptitiously introduced cabinet papers. Since an avenue was open to Indianise sections of the service industry through cabinet papers, there would be no need to flesh out the framework agreement with any specific provisions even later because everything that India expects would have been achieved by then!
According to the PM’s cabinet paper, the Indian ambulance service GVK EMRI is to have the power to recruit personnel independently and there is nothing in the cabinet paper which says they have to recruit personnel only from Sri Lanka. The government has not given any thought to the public reaction to an ambulance service in Sri Lanka manned at least partly by Indians. The cabinet paper specifies that the Sri Lankan government will be providing work visas to Indian trainers and managers in this ambulance service. The cabinet paper has not said that work visas will not be provided to any other of category of worker which means that this too has been left open depending on the requirements of the Indian organization.
Furthermore in order to set up this ambulance service, the Sri Lankan government will not only have to allow this Indian organization to import their vehicles, medical equipment etc duty free – which is quite alright given the fact that this is an ambulance service – but will also have to provide land and buildings for them to set up their medical aid centres. This is a level of aid that the government has not provided to any non-government ambulance service in this country. The unavoidable conclusion is that if the government were to provide similar facilities to a local ambulance service provider, they too will not have any difficulty in expanding services further in the Western and Southern provinces.
An economic and technical pact with India will be meaningful if Sri Lanka can obtain from India some technical or economic input which Sri Lanka cannot provide for itself such as for example in the automotive, chemical or pharmaceutical industries where India obviously has an advantage. However the service sector can be handled by Sri Lankans and it is not possible to justify Indian involvement in that area. The UNP government of 2001-2004 sold a part of the CPC to the Indian Oil Company. However given the fact that that LAUGHS, a Sri Lankan company also operates petrol stations just as well or even better than IOC, no advantage has been gained by the IOC’s operations in Sri Lanka. The only thing that has happened is that a good part of the huge profits now being made by petroleum retailers is going to India.
Indian reluctance to import from SL
A good part of the antipathy towards having a CEPA or ETCA with India stems from the bad experiences that Sri Lanka has had with the Free Trade Agreement that was signed with India back in 1998. After being in operation for 15 years, this FTA seems to be operating only in India’s favour. In 2014, India exported 4,023 million USD worth of goods into Sri Lanka, but Sri Lanka was able to export only 625 million USD worth of goods to India. The largest export from SL to India is areca nut! This was not due to Sri Lanka not having anything that can be economically exported to India but entirely due to bureaucratic blocks that Sri Lankan exporters experience in India.
The promoters of the ECTA with India have been saying that the purpose of an FTA is not necessarily to achieve a balance in trade. This is indeed true. It is also the case that nobody expects a perfect balance in trade between India and Sri Lanka. The rub is in the fact that Sri Lankan exporters have been experiencing bureaucratic blocks in India so that even the few items that Sri Lanka can economically export to India were not achieving their proper potential. India produces many things at a much lower cost of production than Sri Lanka and there are only a few items that Sri Lanka can export economically to India. If Sri Lanka had been able to achieve full potential in exporting these few products to India, that would have sufficed to create a positive image of India in the Sri Lankan psyche.
But when the public hears the horror stories of exporters who have been forced out of the Indian market by bureaucrats, that certainly does not conduce to promoting a positive view of India among the Sri Lankan public. We have heard the argument that while some Sri Lankan manufacturers want to export their products to India, the same industrialists want to prevent similar Indian products from coming into the Sri Lankan market to compete with their own products. The argument is that if Sri Lanka wants to export biscuits to India, the Sri Lankan biscuit manufacturers should allow Indian biscuits into the Sri Lankan market.
That argument simply does not hold water. India has a whole range of products, ranging from cars and heavy vehicles to chemicals and pharmaceuticals that they can and do export to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka does not have a large range of products that we can export to India. So with regard to the few products that we can export to India, we should be given a special advantage. There is absolutely nothing wrong in blocking the entry of Indian products in those categories to Sri Lanka but opening up the Indian market for Sri Lankan products in those categories, because that is the only way that some quid pro quo can be established in trade between Sri Lanka and India.
To talk of expanding free trade between India and Sri Lanka to the services sector in a context where the existing issues in the free trade in goods have not been sorted out is to invite opposition. Any talk of a free trade in services should take place only after the Indians allow the FTA to function properly and the Sri Lankan side is satisfied that they are exporting all that can economically be exported to India without bureaucratic hindrance from the Indian side. It is only then that this mistrust will be dispelled. Even if the problems in the trade in goods can be sorted out, it is a moot question whether free trade should be extended to the trade in services at all. There is no service that Sri Lanka can sell to India at the same cost as the Indian service providers. The per-capita incomes in India and Sri Lanka are completely different. So the free trade in services between India and Sri Lanka will be a one way street with Indian service providers providing services to Sri Lanka and virtually nothing moving in the opposite direction.
Early warning on ETCA fallout
The cabinet paper relating to the Indian Ambulance service shows that the services sector can be opened up to India through what the Joint Opposition calls ‘executive fiat’ even without the ETCA. Even though the promoters of ETCA have been falling over one another to say that opening the trade in services to India will not result in a flood of Indian service providers coming to Sri Lanka, the introduction of this very ambulance service speaks otherwise. As we said earlier, an ambulance service is something that Sri Lankans can easily manage on their own and Indian penetration even into an area like that without ETCA gives a clear indication what we can expect once the services sector is opened up to India under ETCA.
The mere fact that the government introduced a cabinet paper to set up this ambulance service when ECTA was pending shows their lack of judgment. They never seem to have foreseen that promoting Indian penetration into a service area that is being handled well by Sri Lankan at present will send the wrong signals to the public and prejudice them against ETCA. This also shows that the grasping attitude the Indians have shown in the trade in goods – selling their goods to SL while doing everything possible to stop Sri Lankan exports to India – has been carried forward into the services sector as well. Even though Deputy Minister Harsha de Silva was at pains to say that opening the services sector to India will not result in a flood of Indian professionals setting up shop in Sri Lanka, the introduction of this ambulance service even before ETCA is signed, proves otherwise.
The way the government is going about ETCA is not helping build public support either. At first they kept everything under a cloak of secrecy seeming to think that everything will be fine just so long as the masses, both washed and unwashed, are kept in the dark about this proposed pact with India. The fact that everything was kept under wraps resulted in speculation about this pact with India. Once the draft of the proposed ETCA or actually ETCFA leaked into the public domain, the people found out that the pact was actually worse than anybody thought! The secrecy that the government has maintained on a matter of such public importance is something that perplexes members of the UNP itself. UNP Provincial Councilor Srinath Perera, a former Solicitor General when asked about the secrecy and lack of transparency in the government’s doings in relation to ETCA, said that the government ought not to be keeping things under wraps.
On top of all this, the PM has been arrogantly trying to bulldoze his way through to signing this half baked pact with India. Media organizations that question ETCA are openly threatened. Last week, the Prime Minister launched into another tirade against the media, criticising the Daily Mirror Editor and also Derana TV – the latter obviously for hosting an excellent debate about ETCA on their programme Aluth Parlimenthuwa. Never in living memory have we ever lived through a period when the Prime Minister of the country personally and openly threatens the media so regularly.
Homagama Magistrate’s Punyakarmaya
The Homagama Magistrate has singlehandedly done what should have been done by the Rajapaksa government years ago. He has remanded the leading monks of the Bodu Bala Sena, Ravana Balaya and Sihala Ravaya for creating disturbances inside and outside his courtroom. By doing so, in the opinion of this writer, this magistrate had rendered a service to Buddhism as important as that rendered by the 18th century prelate Welivita Sri Saranakara who re-established higher ordination (Upasampada) and reformed the Buddhist establishment which was in a state of decline at the time. If not for the intervention of Sri Saranankara Buddhism may well have disappeared from this country.
The emergence of organizations like the BBS, Ravana Balaya and Sihala Ravaya began another period of decline in this country almost as serious as the one experienced prior to the 18th century. This discussion about the need to give legal effect to the Kathikawath of the various Nikayas so that the Mahanayaka theras would be able to maintain discipline among their monks gained a new urgency due to the rise of these unruly bhikku organizations which sought publicity through acts of thuggery and street action. The publicity gained by these thugs in robes made it a distinct possibility that other monks would follow in their footsteps resulting in the distancing of the laity from the sangha and the destruction of the Buddhist dispensation itself. If this had continued, Buddhism in Sri Lanka would have gone the same way as Buddhism in South Korea.
This tendency of monks to seek instant fame through unruly behaviour in public was the single biggest threat facing Buddhism in this country in recent times and by jailing virtually all the leading monks of these organizations that cause disturbances in public the Homagama Magistrate – a little known member of the lower judiciary – has rendered a service to Buddhism unparalleled in recent times. Someone might say that he did only what any magistrate would have done if his courtroom had been invaded. But this was a case of remanding monks who were hitherto thought to be ‘untouchable’. As such it took courage even to implement the law.
Some say that this remanding of monks would lead to a general repression of the opposition as well. This writer holds that even if this willingness to jail unruly monks translates into a wider repression with the government using tame magistrates to remand their political opponents, it is still worth it. This government is going down the drainpipe anyway. Whatever they do to suppress the opposition, will only hasten their inevitable fate. But Buddhism has existed in this country for 2500 years and should exist for a while more. Unless these monks are sent an unequivocal message that public acts of thuggery and taking the law into their own hands will not be tolerated, they will continue to destroy the image of Buddhism with their unruly behaviour.
Courtesy:Sunday Island