Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Former chief of the Sri Lankan army, Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka, who is also a Member of the Parliament, has said that Sri Lanka will end up like Uganda–by falling into the Chinese debt trap. The former army chief titled his Facebook post ‘ Sri Lanka swallows Chinese debt trap swallowed by Uganda!’ Writing in Sinhala, Fonseka said that Uganda has lost its only international airport due to its inability to repay the loan to China.
He said: “How oppressive would it be for Ugandans to allow another country to own, the only and main gateway to their country”? He pointed out that Sri Lanka too lost its Hambantota port to China in a similar fashion.
Recent media reports have said that China is likely to take control of Uganda’s only international airport after Kampala defaulted on a $200 million loan from Beijing. In a similar story, after Sri Lanka could not pay back a $8 billion Chinese loan it had to hand over the Hambantota port to China on a 99-year lease.
Fonseka said that such decisions are taken by corrupt political leaders who take large-scale commercial loans due to greed without making a national plan.
Drawing commonalities between Sri Lanka and Uganda, he also alleged in his post that leaders have gone beyond diplomatic boundaries and have sided with the “political and military ambitions” of another country while depriving their own country of sovereignty.
“Instead of developing the Colombo port, China has now acquired the Hambantota port which was an unnecessary project for the country. It is now a naval corridor in the middle of the Indian Ocean”, Fonseka says.
The general had served in the Sri Lanka army for four decades and contested presidential elections against current Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. Fonseka is credited with battling the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in one of the country’s most volatile phases.
Referring to the four-member Quad grouping consisting of the US, Australia, India and Japan, which is seen as standing up to China in the Indo-Pacific region, Fonseka said: “QUAD countries, including India and the United States, view the Hambantota port as a Chinese naval base. This is a serious threat to the national security of Sri Lanka. We will have to face the consequences of these decisions in the inevitable power struggle in the region over the next 60-80 months”.
The general predicts that the Indo-Pacific region will see a geo-political tussle over the next five to seven years. He seems to be referring to China’s aggressive moves in the region which are being matched by other nations.
Alluding to the drawn-out fertiliser controversy in which China tried to sell contaminated fertiliser to Sri Lanka, Fonseka highlights the Chinese embassy’s negative role in the commercial deal. Reportedly, the embassy behaved in a non-diplomatic manner by pressurising Sri Lanka into accepting Chinese organic fertiliser by keeping the ship anchored near the Colombo port. It also blacklisted a State-owned Sri Lankan bank denting mutual relations between the two countries.
In a warning to the current government in Colombo, Fonseka says: “It is now very clear to us how the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka will behave in such a situation… therefore, we must rectify this situation in the future”.
