Here come the Brits!

We know it was in Britain’s interest to come back and “redeem” so to speak Sri Lanka by betting big on Sri Lanka, by using their diplomatic clout, when the time was right, the conditions were right, the terms of business in favour of a negotiating position?

by Victor Cherubim

( January 16, 2016, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) Beside the satire, wit and accent, the British people are a very clever people. They survive on using ingenuity to achieve their ends. They use diplomacy to carry the day.

They live and believe on smart working.

We were not surprised to hear after having ruled over the colonies for several hundred of years, they have left an indelible legacy, their language, the English Language.

Who says Sri Lankans can speak English? They learn English and English literature before Swabasha was introduced. But they cannot speak English for toffee.

You say “tom AA tow,” they say “Tom ah toe,” you say “advertist TISE ment,” they say

“ad VERT isment,” you say “bal COHN ny,” they say “Bal cony.” Your foreign accent is just too obvious. This can make understanding more difficult with different pronunciation ways and accents. We know each sound is produced in a certain way and when you produce it right, it sounds right, it sounds “natural.”

Word stress and syllables have always let Sri Lankans down either when we have a difficult and uncompromising negotiating position or in diplomacy. It gives an overdue advantage to Brits. Ask a Sri Lankan to say the word, “think,” and the pronunciation can vary a variety of decibels. Our elocution teachers are a dying breed.

Here comes Mr. Swire

In one breath he says we have to deliver on all our commitments before the Geneva deadline, in another he says British companies are competing in Sri Lanka for £1 billion in Sri Lanka investment.

Rt. Hon Hugo Swire is Her Majesty’s Minister of State … for Asia at the FCO. Really he holds the position for India, Far East, Latin America and Australasia. He is Conservative MP for East Devon. He hails from a well connected Swire family. His great, great great grandfather ,John Swire (b.1793) was the founder of the Liverpool textile trading business, later to become the Swire Group, the multi billion US $ conglomerate based in Hong Kong. He attended Eton College, attended University of St. Andrews before going to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. He served in the Grenadier Guards.

With such a history or a pedigree shall I say, imagine him listening to either our Foreign Minister, on. Mangala Samaraweera or for that matter, Chief Minister of Northern Province, C.Vigneswaran. Could we have a chance in hell negotiating anything with such ancestry? But who says, diplomacy is the art of the impossible?

Everything in this world is timing?

Sri Lankans know that everything in this world revolves around timing. President Mahinda Rajapaksa believed in his astrologer(s) who advised him of his every move. Could he have not seen that he was put in a cul de sac that he could not get out, by perhaps, British diplomacy? He had won the “almighty war.” He had got the infrastructure done by the Chinese, the railroad to the North done by the Indians, all his fancies covered, that it was time for a new beginning?

We know Britain or the rest of the world was not ready to come and take over or pump in investment in war torn Sri Lanka. The spoils of war had to be attended first, with someone having laid the foundations for future development. They had MR to do it for them.

Big Deal

We know it was in Britain’s interest to come back and “redeem” so to speak Sri Lanka by betting big on Sri Lanka, by using their diplomatic clout, when the time was right, the conditions were right, the terms of business in favour of a negotiating position?

The previous Labour Government tried it with Lord Mark Mallock Brown of the FCO. It did not work, The stars were not right? The accent was not right?

Who better could the Brits have sent other than a Grenadier Guardsman, a man of substance, a businessman, perhaps a Liveryman, a thorough diplomat to tie up the loose ends in this deal to bring Sri Lanka back into its fold?