Modi govt goes on charm offensive as Sri Lanka stands up to China

[samv]

Narendra Modi govt goes on charm offensive as Sri Lanka stands up to China

Hours before External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s arrival in Colombo on Friday and a week before Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Sri Lanka (13-14 March), the government of Maithripala Sirisena has taken the bold decision of suspending a $1.5 billion Chinese real estate project in Colombo.

The Sirisena government has walked the talk and it's a high stake foreign policy gamble by his government. Not many countries have rebuffed China so strongly and that too within two months after Sirisena stunned the world by winning the 8 January presidential elections.

Sirisena has moved in quickly to brace himself up for the upcoming parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka as on Thursday he was made Chairman of Sri Lanka’s largest party Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) which has 126 MPs in the 225-member Sri Lankan parliament. Interestingly, Sirisena had defected from the SLFP just before the presidential election to become the joint opposition candidate.

Needless to say, this political move of Sirisena also has adverse implications for China as it is meant to keep former president Mahinda Rajapaksa out. Rajapaksa was a strong supporter of China and the Sri Lankan opposition parties had repeatedly questioned his pro-China policies which were also at the expense of India’s strategic interests in the island nation.

Swaraj’s two-day visit to Sri Lanka (6-7 March) will set the stage for PM Modi's visit to this important neighbour. It will be the first time that an Indian Prime Minister will be visiting Sri Lanka in over 25 years. Apart from having structured talks with her Sri Lankan counterpart Mangala Samaraweera, Swaraj will also be meeting Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as well as Sirisena, and brief her Sri Lankan interlocutors about the Indian preparations for the extremely significant upcoming visit of PM Modi.

The last prime ministerial visit from India to Sri Lanka was way back in 1987 when Rajiv Gandhi had visited the island nation. But that visit triggered a growing India-Sri Lanka divide as India got sucked into the cesspool of Sri Lanka’s civil war and Rajiv Gandhi’s policies pitted India against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Just about four years later, Gandhi was assassinated by the LTTE in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu.

Modi’s upcoming Sri Lanka visit will have many firsts. He will be visiting multiple Sri Lankan cities and will be the first Indian PM to visit Jaffna which was a de facto capital of the LTTE till the rebel group was militarily defeated by Sri Lankan armed forces in May 2009.

Modi will also be the fourth Indian Prime Minister to address Sri Lankan parliament, an honour that his predecessors like Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Morarji Desai had. Desai was the last India PM to have addressed the Sri Lankan parliament way back in 1979.

Sri Lanka’s ancient capital Anuradhapura, a stronghold of Buddhists, is also on PM Modi’s itinerary. He is also likely to visit Kandy and inspect ongoing Indian housing projects there.

China will obviously be the elephant in the room as India and Sri Lanka engage with one another at top political levels in the coming days. China has been wooing dozens of Indian Ocean and Asia Pacific littoral states for its $40 billion Maritime Silk Road, which is Beijing’s ambitious strategic project aimed at linking China with to-be-constructed multiple communication lines in Indian Ocean Region and Asia Pacific.

India is wary of the Chinese MSR project and Sri Lanka is a key country for China in implementing its MSR project. However, the Sri Lankan government’s decision to suspend the $1.5 billion Chinese project in Colombo and Sirisena’s emergence as top leader of SLFP have stopped the Chinese juggernaut.

Though the Sirisena government has only suspended the Chinese on environmental grounds and not cancelled it outright, the move may trigger a cascade and may embolden other small nations to take on China. Beijing will inevitably be using its immense diplomatic and economic clout to stem the rot here and now and not allow it to become a trend.

On India’s part, New Delhi will be keen to see that the Sirisena government does not lose momentum in its current policies of purging the Chinese influence in Sri Lanka which had become a major cause of worry for the Indian strategic establishment.This will be the main strategic template for India-Sri Lanka engagements in the coming days and months. The strategic competition between the Chinese Dragon and Indian Elephant has begun in right earnest in Sri Lanka.

Narendra Modi govt goes on charm offensive as Sri Lanka stands up to China - Firstpost

 

[Star Wars]

now Bangladesh and Srilanka dono's hamare ghulam hai

 

[he-man]

About time...........

 

[Beast]

Lol.. About time? The game has not end yet. Probably a few months later Sri Lanka will change side again.

 

[Bilal.]

Lol.. About time? The game has not end yet. Probably a few months later Sri Lanka will change side again.

I said it in another thread. If China is not ready to play the dirty game and buy people then the outcome will be diplomatic defeat one after the other.

Xi for all his reputation of being a tough guy has shown nothing but weakness.

 

[Beast]

I said it in another thread. If China is not ready to play the dirty game and buy people then the outcome will be diplomatic defeat one after the other.

Xi for all his reputation of being a tough guy has shown nothing but weakness.

Don't be too happy and think the game is over. Money at the end of he days still counts. India cannot match the kind of incentive and infrastructure China provide plus even government party needs money. I am sure if offer some party will take the stance.

Remember, the project is suspend and not cancel. If few months later, project restart and then Indian will look like a loser again.

 

[Echo_419]

Lol.. About time? The game has not end yet. Probably a few months later Sri Lanka will change side again.

There is no Indian influence in this
If we were to believe these paranoid members we literally run all of South Asia with the help of proxies
The SL govt is just probing any iregularities & if there are none this project will take off

 

[WAR-rior]

Don't be too happy and think the game is over. Money at the end of he days still counts. India cannot match the kind of incentive and infrastructure China provide plus even government party needs money. I am sure if offer some party will take the stance.

Remember, the project is suspend and not cancel. If few months later, project restart and then Indian will look like a loser again.

Hmmm.Yaaaa....Alrite. come back when all it happens. OK?

 

[Bilal.]

Don't be too happy and think the game is over. Money at the end of he days still counts. India cannot match the kind of incentive and infrastructure China provide plus even government party needs money. I am sure if offer some party will take the stance.

Remember, the project is suspend and not cancel. If few months later, project restart and then Indian will look like a loser again.

The question is, are you guys willing to use the financial muscle and out bid your much smaller competitor that's out playing you?

 

[Beast]

The question is, are you guys willing to use the financial muscle and out bid your much smaller competitor that's out playing you?

outplay? I think within an few months most SL will be sick of new government licking indian boots and the table will turn again. They are proud of being sinhanlese.

 

[Didact]

Don't be too happy and think the game is over. Money at the end of he days still counts. India cannot match the kind of incentive and infrastructure China provide plus even government party needs money. I am sure if offer some party will take the stance.

Remember, the project is suspend and not cancel. If few months later, project restart and then Indian will look like a loser again.

Sri Lanka is free to do as it chooses, vis-a-vis pursuing economic and diplomatic relations. We do not intend to influence that in any way. However, Sri Lanka's military relations are a subject of our interest, as it affects our security. We are well within our rights to protect our interests, and by extension, free to do whatever it takes to preserve our interest.

With that sub docking, Rajapaksa crossed a red line. If he'd won the elections and further acted against our interests, there would be a physical retaliation. The last time Sri Lanka got to close to another power, the US, India threatened military intervention, and was determined to go through with it.

 

[Beast]

Hmmm.Yaaaa....Alrite. come back when all it happens. OK?

Sure but I can bet you will not dare answer this thread.

 

[WAR-rior]

Sure but I can bet you will not dare answer this thread.

Obviously if what you say comes true why wud I, like a loser, come and troll unnecessarily. Afterall we are only playing a betting game on our respective administrations. Its not we who run the govt. Is it?

 

[OrionHunter]

Xi for all his reputation of being a tough guy has shown nothing but weakness.

No, Xi is tough but the problem for him is that Modi is tougher!!

 

[Bilal.]

No, Xi is tough but the problem for him is that Modi is tougher!!

@Beast... As I said Xi is proving out to be a weakling... China did not see such setbacks in even the time of so called weak Hu's time.