Editorial
20A and dual citizen
The 20th Amendment to the J.R. Jayewardene 1978 Constitution was done and dusted on Thursday night with the Gotabaya-Mahinda Rajapaksa government comfortably clearing the two thirds majority barrier. Since President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s election as the country’s seventh executive president in November 2019, nothing kicked up as much controversy as the 20th Amendment which the government was clearly intent on enacting despite, in our view, the far more important challenge of Covid-19 confronting our country and its people today. “First things first,” we said in this space last week, least expecting the powers- that-be to elevate the Covid nightmare above 20A on the national priority list. And so it sadly was, although the virus was spreading far too fast for comfort necessitating more and more stringent restriction in many parts of this island, particularly in the Western Province.
Government propagandists worked overtime to sock home the message that the president and the government elected some months after Gotabaya’s decisive victory had received a massive mandate and were fully entitled to press on with 20A. Although the present rulers came very close to getting what Junius Rex, the old fox who drafted the 1978 constitution, had calculated to be a never-attainable two thirds majority, they ignored the fact that neither President Rajapaksa nor his government said anything about a 20th Amendment in the manifestos they presented the country. There is not an iota of doubt that the people were very well aware that those who are now in office were ironclad in their ex post facto opposition to the 19th Amendment – despite all but one of them voting for its enactment. While it was clearly stated that the incumbents will bring a new constitution, the voters were never told that a 20th Amendment would be presented and passed in an almighty hurry. Claiming a massive mandate for doing what was accomplished last week was clearly not in order.
The 1978 constitution that established the proportional representation system of elections in place of the previous first-past-the-post Westminster model the country had followed since Independence, sought in vain to impose an anti-defection deterrent. It attempted to to ensure that MPs elected on party lists would lose their seats if they chose to defect. But this endeavor has proved to be a dismal failure. We’ve had a great many defections since then, with the numbers growing last week, but no single lawmaker who changed sides has lost his or her parliamentary seat. The less said the better about inducements and/or considerations that influenced switching allegiance. The people well know that there are no free lunches and many of the defectors have fed well, nay very well, at the trough. One of the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) members who voted for 20A was quoted in a newspaper saying she didn’t take even a cent for what she did. It sounded better in the original Sinhala – “sathayakwath gaththey ne, puluwan nam oppu karanna.” (I didn’t take even a cent, prove it if you can). Explaining her vote on the floor of the House on Friday, this National List lady said that she, like Antonio in Julius Caesar, “loved her country more” (than she loved her party)
This newcomer to politics was the so-called ‘owner’ of the SJB which was among the recognized political parties in the books of the Election Commission. When Sajith Premadasa and his supporters broke away from the green party, they acquired the SJB label to enable them to field their candidate list as a party at the last election. We do not know what the arrangement was, but Ms. Diana Gamage was included in the SJB National List after the election. Digressing from the thrust of this commentary, let us say here that the dozens of unknown or barely known political parties cluttering the Election Commission’s ‘recognized party’ register should be cleaned out as they have been and will be continue to be used for political expedience. The new system of elections promised in the next constitution, which the president says will be in place for his second election anniversary (November 2021), could ensure this.
To return to the subject under discussion, the dual citizen provision in 20A merits special mention. Nobody would dispute that particular provision in 19A clearly targeted the Rajapaksas – specifically Gotabaya and Basil, who were citizen of both Sri Lanka and the USA. It was clearly venal in intent. While Gotabaya renounced his US citizenship to run for president, braving a welter of legal challenges against his candidature and suffering many campaign disadvantages over the risk factor (would his candidature be annulled?), Basil Rajapaksa did not do so. Among the stalwarts of the SLPP-led alliance publicly denouncing doing away with the 19A provisions on dual citizen are three party leader-ministers, Vasudeva Nananayakkara,Wimal Weerawansa and Udaya Gammanpila. They are now on record saying that they were voting for 20A, including the dual citizen provision, on the basis of an assurance by the president that the new constitution to be enacted by November 2021 will retain the 19A prohibitions on dual citizen.
The unanswered question that remains hanging in the air is why a year-long window favoring dual citizen is being kept open if the prohibitions will be reimposed in the new constitution next year. Has any assurance been given that this opening will not be used? No answer was forthcoming during the 20A parliamentary debate. We believe that dual citizen should not only be prevented from running at presidential and national election but also not be permitted, with foreign allegiance, to assume any high public office in this country. Disgracefully, the authors of 19A during their previous tenure in government, started the rot by appointing dual citizen as ambassadors. The icing on the cake was appointing a Singapore citizen as Central Bank governor. He is now a fugitive of the bond scam investigation.
Saturday 8th June, 2024
It was with shock and dismay that we received the news about death threats to COPF (Committee on Public Finance) Chairman Dr. Harsha de Silva over the ongoing parliamentary probe into the on-arrival visa scam. Dr. de Silva yesterday told Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, in Parliament, that he was facing death threats and intimidation, and it was incumbent upon Parliament to ensure his safety. He stopped short of naming names, but revealed that some ruling party MPs were among those who had ganged up against him. The Speaker only said there had been no complaint, and he would look into the matter.
The SLPP-UNP government has been doing everything in its power to have all parliamentary committees under its thumb. The COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises), which once helped restore public faith in the legislature by exposing state sector corruption, has now become a mere appendage of the incumbent regime, thanks to the appointment of SLPP MP Rohitha Abeygunawardena as its Chairman. The SLPP-UNP combine also tried to oust COPF Chairman Dr. de Silva, but in vain. However, it knows more than one way to shoe a horse.
The COPF, under Dr. de Silva’s chairmanship, has been a thorn in the side of the government, which is struggling to cover up numerous corrupt deals. Dr. de Silva yesterday told Parliament that he found it extremely difficult to function as the COPF head due to severe resource constraints his committee was facing; he himself had to pay the salaries of some of his staff members besides burning the midnight oil.
The sheer workload he had to cope with as the COPF chief had taken its toll on his health, he said, informing the Speaker that he was at the end of his tether, and at times thought of resigning from the COPF. This is exactly what the government wants him to do; resource squeezes and threats are aimed at making him quit.
On 26 May, Dr. de Silva revealed, in an ‘X’ post, that the COPF had uncovered some vital information about the visa scam and it would reveal everything after its final meeting on the issue; the COPF was committed to exposing the truth behind the controversial tender, he added. In an editorial comment on 27 May, we warned him.
While thanking him for his bold stand, we pointed out that by making such a statement, he had thrown caution to the wind, and become a marked target, with the government making an all-out effort to delay the COPF investigation lest the truth should come out much to the detriment of its interests in this election year. Unfortunately, what was feared has come about; Dr. de Silva is complaining of death threats and government moves to strangulate the COPF financially to derail its investigations.
Dr. de Silva’s predicament exemplifies the fate that befalls the few good men and women in Parliament. It is hoped that all those who seek an end to the state sector corruption will rally behind Dr. de Silva, and bring pressure to bear on the government to ensure his safety. Let Dr. de Silva be urged to reveal the names of those who have issued threats, veiled or otherwise, to him and are trying to scuttle the COPF probes.
Friday 7th June, 2024
The SLPP-UNP government is going hell for leather to make bad laws as if there were no tomorrow. It is abusing its parliamentary majority, which has been retained with the help of some crossovers, for that purpose. The Opposition, the media and trade unions are up in arms, and understandably so. The incumbent regime is a dead man walking; it is so desperate that it is capable of anything. Hence the need for it to be restrained.
The Electricity (Amendment) Bill (EAB) plunged Parliament into turmoil yesterday, but the government secured its passage. The Supreme Court (SC) determined the entire EAB inconsistent with the Constitution and recommended changes thereto. After unveiling the Bill, sometime ago, Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera hailed it as an excellent piece of legislation aimed at straightening up the power sector to serve the public interest better.
The SC determination left him with egg on his face. He reminded us of the proverbial curate who, while eating a stale egg, assured his host, a Bishop, that parts of it were excellent. Wijesekera’s egg, as it were, made Parliament stink yesterday, but he sought to please his masters by praising it as a silver bullet.
EAB should have been discarded and a new one drafted in consultation with all stakeholders. But the government is apparently driven by an ulterior motive; its aim is not to serve Sri Lanka’s interests but to look after those of some moneybags.
It is not uncommon for Bills to contain some flaws, which are rectified either before or during the committee stage. But there is something terribly wrong with draft Bills that are full of sections inconsistent with the Constitution. The drafters of EAB have demonstrated their sheer ignorance of the supreme law, and that they are not equal to the task of drafting Bills. If they had read the Constitution at least perfunctorily, they would not have drafted such a bad law.
Ignorant and incompetent, they do not deserve to be paid with public funds and must be sent back to law school. They must be summoned before Parliament and questioned on their serious lapses, which have caused public faith in the national legislature to diminish.
Curiously, the MPs who demand that judges, doctors, Central Bankers, and other public officials be summoned before Parliament have taken badly drafted Bills for granted. The power sector trade unions yesterday alleged that EAB was of Indian origin and geared towards furthering the interests of Adani Group at the expense of Sri Lanka.
Most critics of EAB are agreeable in principle to the need for power sector reforms; the Ceylon Electricity Board should be given a radical shake-up, and transformed into a modern organisation capable of providing a better service at a lower cost. They only asked the government to tread cautiously, consulting all stakeholders and taking action to ensure that the country’s interests prevailed over everything else. But the government was in a mighty hurry to steamroller the Bill through Parliament, making the Opposition ask whether it was doing so at the behest of some external forces involved in controversial power generation deals here.
What is passed by the current Parliament can be either amended or abolished by a future parliament in a constitutionally prescribed manner. But that does not mean that a government is free to pass bad laws, making the country enter into long-term agreements with powerful nations and their investors. It looks as if the SLPP-UNP regime did not care two hoots about the consequences of its actions.
Thursday 6th June, 2024
The outcome of India’s parliamentary election (2024) has led to a ‘perspective ambiguity’. Prime Minister Narendra Modi lost no time in declaring victory for the BJP-led NDA alliance, which secured 293 seats in the 543-member Parliament, but he must be a worried man. The BJP is short of 32 seats to form a government under its own steam; it has lost 63 seats or about 20% of its parliamentary strength. It had 303 seats in the previous Parliament, and that number has dropped to 240.
Modi has become the second Indian Prime Minister to win a third term. The first PM to do so was Jawaharlal Nehru. But Nehru won an outright majority in Parliament in 1962; Modi has had to depend on smaller parties in his alliance to retain his hold on power. Modi must be reeling from a sharp drop in his victory margin in his own constituency, Varanasi; it has decreased to 152,000 from 480,000 in 2019 whereas Modi’s bete noire, Rahul Gandhi, won Raebareli by a staggering 390,000 votes.
Modi, who reigned supreme with 303 seats in the previous Parliament, is now dependent on parties such as Nitish Kumar’s JD-U and Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP to form a government. He has had to lead an alliance of strange bedfellows. Both Kumar and Naidu were bitter critics of Modi. Kumar helped form the oppositional alliance, the INDIA bloc, before switching his allegiance to PM Modi. Naidu also closed ranks with the BJP in the run-up to the election. These politicians have been described as extremely ambitious and highly unpredictable, and whether Modi will be able to manage them and consolidate his grip on the NDA alliance remains to be seen. They will demand plum ministerial posts in return for their support. The TDP is said to be eyeing Transport and Health portfolios! That is the name of the game in coalition politics, where it is not uncommon for the tail to wag the dog, so to speak. These two political leaders are however not the only problem Modi will have to contend with. The next five years will feel like an eternity for PM Modi.
Nothing would have been more shocking for the BJP than its defeat in Uttar Pradesh’s Faizabad constituency, where the Ram Mandir has been built. Modi may have thought he would be able to win the Lok Sabha election hands down after the consecration of that temple, which became a centrepiece of the BJP’s election campaign. The BJP lost that seat to the Samajwadi Party! Modi must be disappointed that the Ram Mandir hype failed to trigger a massive wave of support for his party. This particular defeat signifies a massive setback for the BJP’s ethno-religious agenda.
Modi’s divisive election campaign failed to yield the desired result. The BJP’s failure to secure an outright majority could be attributed to a host of factors, some of them being the suppression of the Opposition, the arrogance of power, chronic unemployment, and the rising cost of living. The BJP also did not care to reimage itself in a positive light to attract the youth.
Modi will hereafter see the Congress-led INDIA bloc with 223 seats, in his rearview mirror. The Congress (99 seats) and its allies have eaten into the BJP support base considerably, but they have a long way to go before being able to capture power.
The bumpy ride ahead for the BJP-led coalition government to be formed may improve the INDIA bloc’s chances of bettering their electoral performance and turning the tables on the BJP and its allies in time to come. Modi will have a lot to worry about in his third term.
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