Rohana R. Wasala

After Ranil Wickremasinghe and Anura Kumara Dissanayake became president one after the other (in 2022 and 2024 respectively) without any sign of full-hearted public approval, though, their social media admirers shared posts that claimed that they both had made a substantial contribution to ending the separatist terrorism that had plagued the country for decades. They may have their arguments to support their claims. Those who know the facts, however, would hardly agree with them. But there is one distinguished UNP politician, who was  opposed to the SLFP-led UPFA, about whom such a claim can probably be safely made. He is none other than Karu Jayasuriya.  

In an interview with The Island’s Shamindra Ferdinando (‘Parliament approved USAID and other foreign funded projects: Karu J’/February 25, 2025), former UNP MP and Speaker of Parliament during the Yahapalanaya government (2015-20), Karu Jayasuriya, showed the least awareness of or concern about  the subversive agenda run by the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) projects launched in Sri Lanka. In response to the recent flurry of criticism against the USAID, veteran politician Karu Jayasuriya (84) pointed out that all agreements with the USAID implemented during the 2016-20 period had full parliamentary approval and that there was nothing secret about the projects. He also mentioned that Parliament received assistance and expertise from many foreign countries other than the US, including China. 

Jayasuriya refused to comment on domestic criticism in America itself about  taxpayer money  being squandered by the USAID in Sri Lanka on wasteful subversive projects as alleged by Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) newly formed by president Donald Trump. I am not surprised. Jayasuriya is wise. He has one thing in common with Trump and Musk: He’s been a successful businessman like them. Both he and Trump are professional politicians as well; but I don’t think Musk is one. Trump seems to be rewarding him for funding his election campaign as well as speaking at his rallies, though Musk is not in need of material rewards, as Trump himself said. Musk has found a chance to avenge himself on the LGBTQ+ lobby and the USAID that supports it for causing him to reluctantly agree as a parent to a sex change operation that turned 18 year old Griffin Musk, his eldest son by his first wife Vivian Wilson, into a woman (dead named Vivian Jenna Wilson) in 2022. Musk called the USAID a criminal organisation” that ought to be terminated forthwith, for he said, (It was) ……time for it to die!”. Whereas Trump’s conclusion was different. He didn’t find fault with the USAID itself, but with those who have been running it lately. So he described it as having been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out”. Unlike the younger Musk stricken by personal tragedy, Trump hadn’t forgotten the fact that the USAID was set up in 1961 by president John F. Kennedy to unite a number of US aid agencies into one body and that it is a vital instrument of US foreign policy.  A shrewd politician himself, Jayasuriya must have understood whose utterances should be taken more seriously in this context. Clearly, Trump’s utterances indicate the importance Trump attaches to the perpetuation of the USAID itself. 

In my perception, during his interview with The Island, Jayasuriya tries to let it appear as if he didn’t have enough information about the controversy to express an opinion about it. However, it can’t be that he is unaware of what actually is the problem about. It involves, as he surely knows, the locally hotly disputed subject of expressly planned promotion of non-binary gender identities ideology that remains culturally unacceptable to the overwhelming majority in our deeply religious {Buddhist, Hindu, Christian and Muslim} society. The promotion of the LGBTQ+ ideology is allegedly done in ways including teaching young YouTubers and other journalists to avoid the use of the normal, established gender binary in language. The gender binary uses the pronouns ‘he’ for male and ‘she’ for female. LGBTQ+ lobbyists want to avoid using these established masculine and feminine pronouns on themselves in the accepted way as the usual gender binary pronouns (that recognise only the two sexes that really exist) do not accommodate the multiplicity of sexual identities they want to adopt or claim, against nature.

 If confronted with an explicit explanation of the controversy and pressed for a response, Jayasuriya might give an evasive answer like ‘Let Americans sort out their own unique gender identity problems, leaving us free to solve our real problems in our own way’.I won’t be surprised by such an answer. But his ignorance of the issue is fake. Jayasuriya was a key local collaborator of the regime change operation of 2015, which was a good example of political subversion by America of a vulnerable small nation that is of strategic importance for maintaining its global hegemony. Located at a geostrategically critical point in the Indo-Pacific Ocean, Sri Lanka has great attraction for America in pursuing its central goal in the region of containing China’s influence. This harks back to how the perceived need to curb the growing power of the Soviet Union outside its own borders during the Cold War period (1947-1991) gave rise to the setting up of the USAID organisation in 1961, in the first place. 

While judiciously avoiding the LGBTQ+ issue, Jayasuriya dwelt on the immense benefits that Parliament allegedly derived from foreign funded programmes. Explaining how this happened, he said that Parliament was able to maintain good relations with both the US and China. He asked the reporter: Don’t you think having nearly 200 out of 225 lawmakers (get) an opportunity to visit China on a familiarisation tour in groups is an achievement on our part?”. Jayasuriya stressed that even the parliamentary staff benefited from the various projects implemented with the financial backing of external parties (meaning, no doubt, USAID and others). Both parliamentarians and senior officials were secured laptops from China, justifying which, he said: An MP may serve one term, but parliamentary staffers may continue for 20 or 25 years. Therefore they should have received proper training and been given the opportunity to develop contacts”. 

Is subjecting parliamentarians who are democratically elected for a short five years and unelected, state appointed civil functionaries like the parliament staffers who serve indefinitely long until retirement to the manipulative influence of powerful foreign governments on equal terms, good diplomacy or sound statecraft?

Strangely, Jayasuriya never once mentioned whether or how or in what form these benefits were transmitted to the general public who should be the true legitimate beneficiary of whatever material help or expertise that a friendly nation makes available to the country. Countries maintain diplomatic relations for mutual benefit. Foreign diplomats work to promote their own national interests, when necessary, even to the detriment of the host country’s interests, which is what Sri Lanka is experiencing today with the US, India and China (perhaps the last should be excluded from this list). When countries are unequal partners, the weaker nations become subject to various forms of subversion (political, economic, cultural, etc.,) exerted by the stronger nations. Willing submission to international subversion seems to be Jayasuriya’s creed. 

To be continued