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| Sunday, 14 August 2005 |
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Features |  |
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Official
tsunami aid to Sri Lanka - Breaking deadlock
Solemn Thoughts by Wendell Solomons An example of a type of broken deadlock is available to us in the garment industry. Sri Lanka's producers had been reduced to gloom and doom... At the end of year 2004, preferential customs tariff treatment for Sri Lankan garment exports would also end. Chinese and Indian garment manufacturers with their downstream links to textile industry at home would squeeze out in Europe's markets, smaller - turnover countries such as Sri Lanka that import their textiles for garment manufacture. Heavily demoralised, Sri Lanka's garment producers chanced to rally together with a supportive public sector. The Trade Minister and officials went overseas, opened doors and placed before European officials the case of Sri Lanka. The country's case was heard and Europe reduced impending levies. That kept alive access for Sri Lanka's garments. Many thousands of livelihoods were saved thanks to the effort of lobbying overseas. (1) What the success with garments teaches is a new need for making one's case directly in the offices of the specialist officials concerned. To speak with their generalised, representational embassies in Colombo classically send a diplomatic bag with letters to transit offices in a busy world. Turning to official relief for tsunami - hit areas in Sri Lanka, relief has been held up for more than six months. Since we speak of earmarked and voted governmental assistance, we must not exclude the possibility that someone has been presenting a case against Sri Lanka within specialist offices overseas. If negative lobbying must also be considered, Sri Lanka could do with some assistance. A method of description is present in the traditional almsgiving to Buddhist clergy. When a senior monk requires a helping of food he may uses the phrase, "A sharing of coconut for the junior monk..." (Sinh: Podi hamuduruwota pol.) (2) Sri Lanka can gain mileage with advocacy and lobbying overseas by a friend. One way to go is to invite a neutral government to participate directly in tsunami relief. In such a type of joint project Sri Lankan officials become the counterpart. Internationally, and in Sri Lanka, the role of the counterpart has been long established in project work. For instance, the early engineering drawings for using the waters of the Mahaweli river were completed in 1968 by foreign engineers, with Sri Lankan engineers as counterparts. In part due to the experience of the overseas design engineers, the project designs incorporated mechanised tunnelling in the Polgolla barrage. Last but not least, this feature needs mention. So as to balance environmental change and impact, the reservoir building was planned to span 25 years. However, the implementing UNP government decided unilaterally to accelerate project time to less than 9 years. The hurried implementation was to take a toll on the island's resources in many ways, not in small account by the accumulation of fortunes at a pace that the country had never seen. Money talks - and difficulty was experienced locally in buffering the huge bonanzas. So as not to be politically partisan in that example, let us choose an unilateralism that made for the 'Leap Forward' military campaign, that from mid-1995 ravished for six years of the island's resources. At the war's very inception, its logistics caused anguished statements from several friendly nations with equally if not more trained army staff. The unilateralist move, evoked with the bluster of local military officers, led to the crushing of the PA government's "Peace and Prosperity" platform and ended with the electoral return of a UNP government to office. Ten years later in 2005, Sri Lanka's lady President's experience with bluster made her accept that local military officers are unreliable in warfare. A joint venture approach that brings in a friendly, foreign government, removes several features now adverse to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka doesn't have to continue to rely on local officials who are vulnerable to negative international lobbying (the trail of some private donor assets into the wrong hands, has been regularly seen in print and also visible have been the police and court enquiries.) The counterpart model helps remove grounds for suspicion using transparency where another government, subject to accountability, participates. A two-government, joint venture approach in tsunami relief also gains for Sri Lanka a valuable stakeholder. We must notice that a remote sort of partnership has existed with volunteer peace-maker Norway. Yet, ineptly for Sri Lanka, during these many years Norway sees that the deep-water, all weather port of Trinco can guard East-West petroleum sea avenues, but it has discounted regional power India's signals that the NATO nation's choice of venue is much too close for the stability of India's southern flank. A correct choice by Sri Lanka would gain for the country, a positive partner to present the case of Sri Lanka's displaced in the offices of the specialist officials concerned, so as to balance any lobbying against the release of earmarked aid. |
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