Thursday, May 30, 2013

Appeal Court Issues Notice On Respondents In Cases By 2176 Jaffna Tamils Seeking Relief Against Land Grab By Rajapaksa Regime

Colombo TelegraphMay 30, 2013
The writ applications filed by 2176 Jaffna Tamils in a desparate bid to prevent their lands and homes being grabbed by the Rajapaksa regime were taken up for support in the Appeal Court today (30.05.2013), before Justice S. Sriskandaraja, President of the Court of Appeal.
The Appeal Court heard counsel and issued notice on the respondents to show cause if any through filing of objections, as to why the court should not grant the reliefs asked for. The date given for the purpose was10.07.2013.
Counsel for the petitioners were permitted by the Appeal Court to reserve and retain the right to press for interim relief.
CA (Writ) 125/2013 (with 1474 petitioners) and CA (Writ) 135/2013 (with 702 petitioners), both fixed for support today, were by petitioners who set out in their petitions, the grave prejudice caused by the forcible acquisition of an area of the Jaffna Peninsula equivalent to two-third of the entire city of Colombo.
The petitioners in CA (Writ) 125/2013, who first came to court upon learning of initial steps under section 2 of the Land Acquisition Act, had amended their petition, to include the fact that thereafter, a purported publication under section 38 Proviso A of the Land Acquisition Act had been gazetted by the regime, making out that the land is needed urgently.
The petitions in both cases ask the Appeal Court to quash both steps taken – notice under section 2 and further decision to acquire under section 38 Proviso A by writs of Certiorari and for writs of Prohibition preventing further steps in that direction. The petitions stated the grave and irreversible prejudice that would be caused to them, unless the respondents were stayed from taking any further steps until the cases are gone into by court.
The petitioners in both cases who say they are forcibly prevented from accessing their lands, urge effectively that the steps to acquire their traditional lands to perpetuate their illegal military occupation is perverse and does not constitute a genuine or acceptable public purpose, and that no steps under Section 38 Proviso A could be legitimately taken in the given circumstances.
Among the prejudice complained of by the 2176 petitioners, is effective erosion of the rights of Tamils of the Jaffna Peninsula under their personal laws (known as “Tesawalamai”) which has been enjoyed and applicable for hundreds of years.
The petitioners in both cases were represented by K. Kanag-Isvaran, PC with M. A. Sumanthiran, Viran Corea, Lakshmanan Jeyakumar, Niran Anketell and Bhavani Fonseka instructed by Suntheralingam & Balendra, Attorneys-at-Law. Deputy Solicitor General Murdu Fernando appeared for the respondents.
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UIC physicist named White House Champion of Change


Siva Sivananthan at the Sivananthan Laboratories in Bolingbrook. (click on image for larger file size)
Sivalingam Sivananthan, professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has been named a White House Champion of Change. He was presented with the honor at a ceremony this morning at the White House.
The honor recognizes immigrant innovators and entrepreneurs—”the best and brightest from around the world who are helping create American jobs, grow the economy and make our nation competitive in the world,” the White House said in a press release.
Sivananthan’s work with a semiconductor material, mercury cadmium telluride or MCT, is at the heart of night vision technology and made the raid that took down Osama Bin Laden on a moonless night possible. Developing “technology that protects our protectors” has given him the opportunity to give back to his adopted country, said Sivananthan.
“Immigrants have long made America more prosperous and innovative, and the Champions we are celebrating today represent very best in leadership, entrepreneurship, and public service,” said U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park. “We are proud to recognize these leaders who work every day to grow our economy, advance science and technology, and support their home communities.”
Sivananthan is the founder of the high-tech, Bell-Labs-styled incubator, Sivananthan Laboratories, Inc. in Bolingbrook, Ill. The Laboratories’ focus is on infared technology, radiation detection, materials research and biosensors.
Because, at its most fundamental, MCT technology is about transforming light into electricity, Sivananthan is also leading an effort to develop next-generation solar power. To that end, he helped found InSPIRE (the non-profit Institute for Solar Photovoltaic Innovation, Research, and Edu-training), whose mission is training Illinois’s workforce and exciting Illinois undergraduate and high school students to create a renewable energy and solar eco-system in Illinois.
In Sivananthan Laboratories Sivananthan is promoting economic growth by fostering cutting-edge, fundamental research and development that bridges the gap between academia and industry.
Sivananthan credits much of his success to the support he received from UIC from his days as a student to his continuing engagement on the faculty.
“UIC is a community of individuals that has treated me with respect for who I am,” he said.
“I have been blessed with having talented people around me,” said Sivananthan. “I can take credit only for hiring them. Our success has been and always will be a product of  team work.”
Immigrants make America more prosperous and entrepreneurial.  Immigrants are more than twice as likely to start a business in the United States as the native-born, and more than 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies – from GE and Ford to Google and Yahoo! – were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants, according to the White House.
The White House ceremony can be viewed at the White House website.

Undoing Constitutional Tomfoolery

Basil Fernando
Colombo TelegraphMay 30, 2013 
That the United National Party (UNP) has published a few ideas on the changes to the constitution they would bring about if they come to power is an indication that a serious critique that has been made about the 1978 Constitution, can no longer be ignored. As it is good to have even an inadequate debate on vital issues rather than nothing at all, it would be better not to ignore the UNP proposals but rather to utilise the occasion to raise all the vital issues that need to be addressed if the mess created by what retired Justice C.V. Wigneswaran charaterised as tomfoolery with the constitution, is to be brought to an end.
What has to be asserted clearly and unequivocally is the fundamental elements of the basic structure of the constitution. The notion of basic structure implies that certain permanent notions are entrenched in the constitution and that attempts by any government to change that basic structure will be resisted. The tomfoolery with the constitution became possible only because there was no agreement on such a basic structure and because the judiciary did not consider it their fundamental obligation to defend and to promote such a basic structure.
The basic structure of the constitution must recognise that the inalienable sovereignty of the people is guaranteed by the recognition of the following principles:
  1. That Sri Lanka is a secular democratic republic where all persons are equal.
  2. That the basic structure of the government envisaged in the constitution is organised on the principles of the rule of law.
  3. The recognition of the principle of the separation of powers.
  4. The recognition of the independence of the judiciary and the right of the judiciary to be the final arbiter on interpretations of the law and with the power of judicial review (as it existed before the 1972 Constitution).
  5. The independence of the public institutions within the framework of the rule of law.
  6. The recognition of human rights as expressed in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, with the recognition that everyone is entitled to the enforceable right to a legal remedy for violations of rights.
  7. That the peoples’ right to participation is guaranteed by free and fair elections held at fixed periods and through the freedom of expression.
  8. That the public accountability of all public servants must be guaranteed through public hearings before state organs created by the Constitution.
  9. That the character of the welfare state will be safeguarded.
The prime importance of agreeing on the basic structure
The making of a constitution or replacing a constitution is not just a matter of writing a new essay. It is an historical act. In an historical act addressing in the clearest terms possible the fundamental errors that have led to the present impasse need to be clearly expressed. A new constitution is a clear departure as well as a clear beginning.
Therefore it would require a prolonged and a sometimes painful discussion in order to enable a clear agreement being expressed through the basic laws of the country. This does not mean that all issues can be finally settled through a constitution. A constitution is a dynamic document and the problems of a nation are also dynamic. Resolving these problems is a perpetual preoccupation. However, there are basic and fundamental areas where the people recognise that things went wrong and that these must not be allowed reoccur. Therefore a thorough reflection of the past is an essential aspect of any serious attempt to develop the country’s basic law for the future.
The UNP in entering into this area of the national debate has done itself a favour. However, in the very preamble of its declaration on the basic constitutional issues it has done great harm to the credibility of this initiative by being an apologist for the 1978 Constitution. The UNP’s credibility will be tested by its capacity to unequivocally condemn the enormous harm caused by the 1978 Constitution and the practices which developed under that constitution. Accepting full responsibility for the catastrophic consequences caused by introducing this constitution is an essential step for establishing credibility for its initiative for constitutional reforms.
Jaffna University students stage protest on demanding to dismiss lecturer
[ Thursday, 30 May 2013, 09:14.23 AM GMT +05:30 ]
Arts faculty students of Jaffna University stage protest on demanding to dismiss economic lecturer S.Ilankumar on attempting to create sexual disturbances to female students of the university.
Students burned the effigy of Ilankumar. Large amount of students present at this protest and hand over petition towards Vice Chancellor.
Several army intelligence unit members deployed in the university compound to monitor protest campaign.

The Land Of The Indifferent

By Tisaranee Gunasekara -May 30, 2013 
Colombo Telegraph
“That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third, Were axioms to him, who’d never heard. Of any world where promises were kept, Or one could weep because another wept” - Auden (The Shield of Achilles) 
The Lankan crisis is a multi-dimensional one. There is the political crisis which encompasses the crisis of democracy and the crisis of peace-and-nation-building. There is the economic crisis.
There is also a psychological crisis, a moral-ethical crisis, a crisis of values. This societal affliction was cast into sharp relief by two incidents which happened during the Wesak season.
The callous manner in which several doctors and nurses in the General Hospital treateda seriously injured patient has received a fair degree of publicity thanks to the efforts ofSeylina D Peiris, the Good Samaritan who took the young woman to the hospital and witnessed the pageant of indifference first hand. This incident cannot be pigeon-holed as typical of the state sector, because similar horror stories have emerged from private hospitals as well, the most recent being the death of a young child at Nawaloka[i]. Nor is this problem limited to hospitals. It is present in every possible space, public and private, political and non-political.
In today’s Sri Lanka, a militarised value system ensures that weakness is scorned, strength worshipped and victims ignored. This is augmented by religious brands which enthrone empty piety in place of real kindness.
The state Wesak Festival was held in Buttala, under the patronage of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. A few days previously, the local authorities poisoned 38 homeless dogs in the area to prevent them from disturbing the Wesak celebration. Can anything encapsulate the damning hypocrisy and the vacuous exhibitionism which pass off as Buddhism today than this act? Killing living beings in the name of celebrating the Birth, Enlightenment and the Final Extinguishing of a teacher who placed compassion to all living beings at the forefront of his teaching: is this what Buddhism is becoming in Sri Lanka?
This week 35 families in Dambulla were given 24 hours by the local authorities to vacate their homes of more than 3 decades. That callous order was made supposedly in furtherance of developing Dambulla as a Sacred City. As illegal occupants of state lands, these families may not be entitled to any compensation; but as human beings and as citizens, they are entitled to some sympathetic consideration. Rendering men, women and children homeless and destitute to protect a temple does not accord with the teachings of the Buddha.
According to another media report, 13 islands in Kalpitiya have been sold to foreigners. This will deprive thousands of people of their homes and their livelihoods. But this tragedy too will pass us by.
This is what happens to a country when pity dies.
When Pity dies
In October 2009, a man started throwing stones at passing vehicles in Bambalapitiya.
We all know, instinctively, that no sane man would throw stones at passing vehicles; that a man who does so is indubitably an insane one. The normal, ordinary, civilised reaction would be to restrain such a man and ensure that he gets some medical attention.
But in Bambalapitiya, on that day, monsters reigned. A mob consisting of policemen and civilians started chasing the stone-thrower. When he waded into the sea to escape from his demented pursuers, two policemen waded in after him and started beating him with stout poles. The footage shows the victim begging for mercy, but his attackers, immeasurably more unhinged than him, had none to give[ii]. In the end, he waded ever deeper into the sea in order to escape the savagery, and drowned.
Having caused a man’s death and watched him die, the two attackers and the more than 100 spectators returned to their momentarily interrupted ordinary lives.
Initially the police claimed that the victim died of drowning. But a cameraman from a private TV station had videoed the tableau of inhumanity. It was after the footage was made public that the police admitted that a crime was committed.
Eventually it was discovered that the victim was indeed a mental patient.
That grisly incident, and the moral depravity and lawlessness it embodied, was a forewarning of the rapid de-sensitisation and brutalisation of Sri Lanka.
In commenting on the Holocaust, Hannah Arendt said, “The deeds were monstrous but the doer…quite ordinary, commonplace”[iii]. Clearly her observation has a relevance far beyond that time and that place:
The men and women who watched passively as a defenceless man was beaten and forced to drown, the doctors and the nurses who ignored the plight of a patient (and watched television amidst the Wesak decorations honouring the Compassionate One) are not monsters; they are perfectly ordinary people, and in all probability, good family men and women in their private lives.
What does this say about our future?
Sri Lanka has had her share of times when ordinary virtues which underpin a liveable life such as decency, sympathy and kindness were in abeyance. The Black July, in which the killers were ordinary people rather than soldiers, militants or even terrorists, was an ideal case in point. That was a time when crime became the norm and legality the exception, when deeds of brutality were committed in the wide open, with pride – often to the acclaim/approbation of onlookers – while acts of mercy, of ordinary humanity were carried out in stealth. What made that horror even more appalling was the way it continued, day after day – every morning mobs would come out to burn, pillage and kill; every evening the constituent individuals would go home to their families, and to a few hours of normal existence; the same surreal process would be repeated the next day.
But until recently such descents into savage amorality were incidental and episodic; they flared up, lasted for a while, and died.
Today the germs have infused every fibre of Lankan society. Today no corner ofSri Lanka, no aspect of Lankan life is immune to the disease.
The culprits are not just politicians, though they too bear their share of blame in setting this devastating trend, especially by enthroning impunity in the name of patriotism. Religion, as it is institutionally practiced in Sri Lanka, is a part of the problem. It will build magnificent edifices while helping to create people devoid of basic human decencies.
The self-immolation by a Buddhist monk has merely added another layer of deadly violence to a society already choking on violence.
In the past, after atrocities happened, there would be some shame and guilt, and perhaps even some soul-searching. But that necessary, civilising practice died with the Humanitarian Operation and the Welfare Camps. Not only did we shut our hearts to natural human pity during the war and in its immediate aftermath. Four years later, we still have no pity to give; nor see a need for it.
Pitilessness is habit-forming; now it’s devouring our own.
The Rajapaksas can be ejected, democratically, someday. The political and economic crises can be resolved, to some extent, in a post-Rajapaksa Sri Lanka. But curing Lankan society of the plague of ruthless-indifference will be far more difficult, if not impossible.

Sri Lankan freed from Qld detention centre

news.com.au-May 29, 2013


KNEELING before a statue of Jesus in a remote Queensland church on Sunday, Jesurajah Vasanthan prayed to be freed from the detention centre where he was held.

On Monday his prayers were answered.
Mr Vasanthan sailed for 14 days toward Australia from Sri Lanka earlier this year before being captured by authorities on Christmas Island, off Western Australia.
"I am Tamil (an ethnic minority group in Sri Lanka) and I was afraid for my life so I had to leave," he told AAP.
Mr Vasanthan, 38, has spent the past three months at the Scherger Immigration Detention Centre, about 30km east of the Cape York mining township of Weipa.
On Monday he was told he had been granted refugee status and the following day he flew to Perth to make a new life for himself.
He's only been granted a temporary visa which will be reviewed in six months.
He can't work until a permanent visa is granted.
Mr Vasanthan, a former IT worker, told AAP he hopes he can remain in Australia and that one day his wife and eight-year-old child can join him from Sri Lanka.
"I am very excited about my new life but I miss them very much," he said while waiting for his flight to Perth from Cairns.
Mr Vasanthan spoke to AAP after a church service in Weipa last Sunday, days after seven Vietnamese men broke out of Scherger by climbing a fence.
He said the other detainees had no idea the men were planning to escape and all were shocked by the breakout.
He was surprised anyone would want to break out of the centre as the detainees are treated very well, he said.
Six men, aged 23 to 32, managed to board a plane at the local airport last Thursday and fly to Cairns, 770 kilometres away.
They were nabbed at a popular backpackers' lodge in Cairns later that day.
The seventh man was stopped before he could get on the plane.
He has not been charged but police say investigations are ongoing.
Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor has ordered an independent review of the incident.
Mr O'Connor has asked Serco, the firm that runs Scherger, to explain how the men were able to escape and what was being done to stop more breakouts.
"Any escape from an immigration detention facility is unacceptable," he said.
Serco has not responded to requests for an interview.
However, a spokesman said in a statement that Serco was taking the incident seriously and the firm was committed to providing a safe and secure centre.
The six men who escaped appeared in Cairns Magistrates Court on Tuesday where they were granted bail.
They were handed over to the Department of Immigration and will be transferred to an unspecified detention centre.
Five other Vietnamese men, two in Cairns and three in Weipa, have been charged with helping the escape.
Meanwhile, Mr Vasanthan has arrived in Perth and is coming to terms with life down under.
"I'm very excited and very happy," he said.
"I hope one day my wife and child can come here but at the moment what I needed was protection so I had to come here (to Australia)."


Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/sri-lankan-freed-from-qld-detention-centre/story-e6frfku9-1226653186008#ixzz2UnoP75Gb

Exclusive Expose: Serious Corruption Allegations Against Bribery Commissioner Jayantha Wickramaratne Hidden At Bribery Commission By Influence

Colombo TelegraphMay 30, 2013 
Confirmed information obtained exclusively by The Colombo Telegraph points to two investigations pending against former Inspector General of Police (IGP) Jayantha Wickramaratne at the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery & Corruption (commonly called ‘Bribery Commission’) being suppressed and covered up.
Jayantha Wickramaratne with Secretary to the Ministry of Difence
Two investigations bearing internal file Nos. 1571/2009 and 1574/2009 relate to Wickramaratne and  certain corrupt procurements made by him,  for the “Deyata Kirula” Exhibition held in 2009 at the BMICH, Colombo.
The Colombo Telegraph is reliably informed that the serious allegations that caused the files to be opened are not being acted on, due to undue influence exerted through powerful persons in the ruling regime to sweep these matters under the carpet.
Wickramaratne was widely considered a ‘hatchet man’ for the regime during his time as IGP. Reliable sources also said his wife, Anoma Goonetilleke, a lawyer also lost her standing within the legal profession for failing to stand up for the independence of the legal profession and the judiciary. In this way, they are both considered unquestioning loyalists of the ruling regime.
The members of the Bribery Commission are not independent, after the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. They are chosen by the Executive President, Mahinda Rajapaksa without any effective checks or balances. Many allegations have been made that the Commission is merely a tool of the Rajapaksa regime to harass political opponents or those seen as standing in the way of what the regime wants to do.
Former Presidential Candidate, former General Sarath Fonseka and Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake have both been hauled before the Commission. At the same time, the above two files relating to Wickramaratne are gathering dust.

Doctors & staff at Karapitiya on strike

logoTHURSDAY, 30 MAY 2013 
Medical staff including doctors of Karapitiya Hospital engages in a strike action since today (30th) morning protesting against an attack from thugs on hospital employees who had attempted to prevent a group from entering hospital without permission.
The Deputy Director if the Hospital Dr. Jayampathy Senanayake said the strike action was taken as police or authorities do not take any action despite such attacks and threats are carried out by thugs and other interested parties.
Only emergency and essential services are carried out in the hospital.

This government is not ours now – UPFA provincial minister

logoTHURSDAY, 30 MAY 2013 
What exists today is a government that has a majority of UNP Parliamentarians and those who have crossed over to the government to strengthen the hands of the President says the Minister of Fisheries and Cooperative of the Southern Provincial Council Rohanapriya Upul.
He says the government has to gratify those who have come from the UNP but those of the SLFP have not been looked after.
Mr. Rohanapriya Upul made these observations at a media conference held in Provincial Ministry of Fisheries yesterday (29th).

Dr. Jayalath Jayawardane passes away

THURSDAY, 30 MAY 2013
The Main opposition United National Party (UNP) parliamentarian Dr. Jayalath Jayawardena passed away on Wednesday after a brief illness in Sigapore. He was 59.

The Gampaha District parliamentarian was receiving treatment at hospital in Singapore at the time of his death.

In April 2012, Dr. Jayawardena was admitted to East Surrey Hospital after being found unconscious at the Gatwick Airport in London. Specialist doctors at East Surrey hospital have recommended heart surgery for Dr. Jayawardena.

Dr. Jayawardena, a medical doctor by profession was elected to the Parliament from the United National Party in 1994.

Dr Jayalath Jayawardana was born in 1953 and obtained his MBBS Medical Degree from the Medical Faculty of the University of Colombo.  He has also obtained several Postgraduate degrees from the USA, Russia, etc., He has been the Personal Medical Doctor to the late President Ranasinghe Premadasa and to his family.

Dr Jayalath Jayawardana had shown a keen interest in social service since his young days and has been a volunteer of the Sri Lanka Red Cross and several Non-Governmental Organizations during his University days.

He was elected to Parliament in 1994 and has been serving as a Parliamentarian for the last 15 years. He was the Minister of Rehabilitation, Resettlement & Refugees from 2002 to 2004. Dr Jayawardana is well known as a very enthusiastic, dynamic and active Parliamentarian.

How Canada Became The Odd Man Out In Sri Lanka

By Martin Collacott -May 30, 2013 
Martin Collacott
Colombo TelegraphCanadian Foreign Minister John Baird has announced that he will not attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka this November because of that country’s sub-par human rights record. No other members of the Commonwealth, including Britain, Australia and New Zealand, have followed Canada’s example.
There is no question that Sri Lanka has a poor human rights record — one that might have been expected to improve after the long civil war ended in 2009, but which did not. Judges have been threatened and impeached, and many journalists murdered or driven from the country. There is little tolerance for criticism of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government from any quarter.
Canada has the largest Sri Lankan Tamil community outside of South Asia, and many of its members seek to raise awareness of the fact that the government in Colombo is repressive and that Tamils in Sri Lanka are persecuted. This helps explain why Stephen Harper’s government feels the need to express its displeasure with Sri Lanka’s poor commitment to human rights.
Many Tamils living in Canada came here as refugees. Indeed, in one year alone (2003), Canada accepted far more Tamil refugee claimants than all the other countries in the world combined. Some of these refugees had ties to the Tamil Tigers military and terrorist group that was then fighting against Sri Lanka’s government.
The voting power of these Tamils distorted Canadian policy: Liberal governments repeatedly ignored CSIS recommendations that the Tamil Tigers be designated as a terrorist organization, even though Britain and the United States had done so. As a result, the Tigers were able to use Canada as one of their principal bases for fundraising — a situation that may well have contributed to prolonging the conflict and carnage in Sri Lanka.
Even after the Conservatives took office in 2006, and wasted no time in adding the Tamil Tigers to the official national list of terrorist groups, Tiger supporters continued to exercise considerable influence within the Liberal Party of Canada. At the Liberals’ December 2006 leadership convention, for example, a block of delegates pressing to have the Tigers removed from the terrorist list played a key role in the selection of the new leader.
The failure for many years of countries such as Canada to curtail Tamil Tiger activities is, in all likelihood, a factor in Sri Lanka’s continuing indifference to international entreaties to improve its human rights record: Having turned a blind eye to the Tamil Tigers for so many years, we no longer have credibility in lecturing Sri Lanka over its post-war policies.
As for calls for an international investigation into the massacre of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan armed forces in the closing stages of the civil war, this is another area where the Sri Lanka government feels it is not being treated fairly.
While there is considerable evidence that such large-scale killings took place, many occurred in large measure because the Tigers chose to use their own population as human shields. The fact that there are no longer identifiable high-level Tiger leaders around to blame for their contribution to these massacres no doubt does little to encourage the Sri Lankan government to expose itself to what it believes will be a very one-sided investigation.
No doubt Britain, Australia and New Zealand share Canada’s concern over the poor state of human rights in Sri Lanka. The fact that Canada alone chose not to send its foreign minister to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo, however, may be more the result of domestic Canadian considerations — such as increasing political support among Tamil voters — than anything else.
*Martin Collacott was the Canadian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka when the civil war there began in earnest in 1983. He now lives in Vancouver. This article is first appeared in the National Post

Sri Lanka missing world’s biggest trade party and it’s in her backyard

WEDNESDAY, 29 MAY 2013 
Once upon a time, Sri Lanka was at the forefront of South Asian trade liberalisation. Beginning in 1989, Sri Lanka made large reductions in import duties and by 2001, Sri Lanka’s average applied import duty was down to 9.1 percent compared to India’s 32 percent and Pakistan’s 20 percent.

Sri Lanka was also the prime mover in South Asian trade agreements with the Indo-Lanka Free Trade Agreement (FTA) of 2000. It would have also been the first in South Asia to enter a trade agreement covering services and investment had it stuck with the 2004 deadline set by the Joint Study Group for the Indo-Lanka Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA).
All along economic analysts smiled upon these developments. Sri Lanka was seen as a beneficiary of its boldness.

Sri Lanka has changed direction
But that was the past. The times have changed and so have the economists (what came first?).
Sri Lanka still has the lowest average import duty in South Asia but the effective protection has been increasing. Ad hoc levies such as the special commodity levy, port and airport levy and import cess have been on the rise in the last decade.
The gaps are also narrowing. In 2011, the average import duty of Sri Lanka stood at 10.2 (higher than 2001 levels), India at 12.6 percent and Pakistan at 13.9 percent.
If that seems little bit odd, here is where it becomes downright puzzling. Free trade agreements with Asian countries have been dancing up in the last 10 years and Sri Lanka has been missing at the party.

World’s trade agreement party has moved to Asia
By the beginning of 2013, there were 546 World Trade Organisation (WTO)-notified trade agreements, of which 354 were in force and others being negotiated.  In the last 10 years, with nearly 100 operational agreements and another 150 under negotiations, Asia has surged to account for nearly half of the global trade agreements (see figure 2).



This proliferation of trade agreements is driven both by Asian economies trying to tap each other’s markets, as well as non-Asian economies, attempting to expand in Asia’s large and fast growing consumer markets. This means, Asia is fast closing in on the developed countries in terms of its share in global trade. By 2012, just six Asian countries accounted for nearly a quarter of global trade (see table 1).



Sri Lanka is sitting out of party
Once a prime mover in terms of trade agreements, Sri Lanka is now getting left behind in Asia. It is only doing better than those classified as least developed countries (LDCs) in South Asia (see figure 1).
Since 2005, India has signed Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreements with Singapore, ASEAN, South Korea, Japan and Malaysia. Many more are being negotiated. Overall, India has 13 agreements that are operational and 21 under negotiation. But the Indo-Lanka CEPA is on the backburner without a deadline.

Not having fun with trade
The puzzle deepens. Not only is Sri Lanka lagging behind in trade agreements, it is not getting much out of the agreements it has either.
Sri Lanka has five trade agreements that are operational and three agreements under negotiation. All of them are with Asian countries including India, South Korea and even China (see table 2).
Yet, the exports to these countries, other than India, are rather small. For example, as a percentage of total exports, Pakistan accounts for just 0.8 percent, Bangladesh 0.6 percent, Maldives and South Korea just 0.5 percent each and China 1.2 percent.
Even more discouraging to Sri Lanka is the fact that it imports heavily from Asia and exports so little (see table 3). Among the top ten countries from which Sri Lanka imports, eight are Asian countries and they account for 57 percent of total imports. But only 13 percent of Sri Lankan exports reach these same markets leading to a trade deficit with them that can be as high as US $ 10 billion.



Why is Sri Lanka missing out?  
There are two reasons why existing agreements have not delivered.
First is low coverage and limited depth of concessions of existing agreements (other than the agreement with India). APTA’s product coverage in which South Korea and China are members is poor and the preferential margin is low. The GSTP is even more restrictive than APTA both in terms of product coverage and concession levels. SAFTA has very long tariff phase out periods for LDCs and relatively large negative lists (see table 2).
Second, Sri Lanka’s trade agreements are still restricted to trade in goods. All recent agreements signed by both developed and developing countries go beyond trade in goods to cover a number of other areas such as services, investment, competition, intellectual property, etc. For example, to date, there are 117 agreements notified to the WTO covering both trade in goods and services.

Time to take stock
There can be good reasons to not liberalise trade. For instance, it can be important to protect vulnerable farming sectors and develop nascent industries. But there is no evidence that Sri Lanka’s direction change in trade liberalisation is resulting in such positive benefits. Sri Lanka has gone from prime mover in Asia to a laggard in trade agreements. Its export access to Asia (except India) is anaemic relative to its imports. What is the policy direction for trade and what are the positive benefits being pursued? The data says that it is time to take stock and re-evaluate.

(Verité Research provides strategic analysis and advice for governments and the private sector in Asia)