Lanka Loses Half A Billion-Dollar MCC Grant; Gota Rewards Main Culprit As US Envoy
Sri Lanka lost USD 480 million or nearly a half billion dollars when the Board of Directors of the US Government Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) cancelled the already approved grant. At its most recent meeting on December 15 the MCC Board decided to discontinue the already approved grant to Sri Lanka while unanimously adding Sierra Leone, Kiribati and Solomon islands to the programme and continuing assistance to Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Niger.
In 2005 President Mahinda Rajapaksa initiated an application for the MCC grant sending the then secretary to the Prime Minister, Sirisena Amarasekera to Washington to discuss the request. These initial efforts were unsuccessful since Sri Lanka failed to meet the MCC eligibility criteria, which include healthy democratic rights and corruption control indicators. After reviving the application in 2015, the Yahapalana government was ready
By Neville Ladduwahetty
From 2012, Reconciliation and Accountability have been the twin pillars of the series of Resolutions that emerged from the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Perhaps, the thinking of those who developed the formula of linking Reconciliation with Accountability was guided by the notion that an effective accountability process that holds some members of the security forces and the associated leaders accountable and punished would somehow ease the humiliation of defeat, and make the painful processes of healing and eventual reconciliation more tolerable.
In general, this notion presumes that retributive justice would promote reconciliation. The presumption of such an outcome is not an assured given because the possibility exists for the positions of the parties hoping to reconcile to harden to a point of defeating the intended objective of reconciliation if retributive processes and their outcomes are perceived as being vindictive. Thus, the contemplated accoun
Member of Company of Master Mariners of Sri Lanka
This article is dedicated to Captain P A Virasinghe, who passed away recently. He was the first Sri Lankan to command the Ceylon Shipping Corporation (CSC) ships. Appointed the Master on Lanka Kanthi in 1972, he was instrumental in getting the things right and raising the bar for future deck officers and marine engineers.
The CSC, established about five decades ago, was thriving with a healthy bottom line; it continued to serve Sri Lanka with our own managers and seafarers to run our ships.
Although SL was self-sufficient in rice before the advent of colonialism, rice production gradually dropped, under the British occupation, due to the neglect of the major irrigation tanks built by kings. Rice had to be imported to meet the shortfall in supply. Shipping companies in the 1950s and 1960s increased freight rates, sending rice prices up, and that became a political issue as well. Labour unrest caused delays in loading and discharging