Editorial
Gerrymandering
President Ranil Wickremesinghe never tires of appealing to the opposition to support the government’s efforts to revive the economy shattered by the Covid pandemic followed by the aragalaya in 2022. Yet he continues to ride roughshod over the opposition most of the time and expects the cooperation of those affected by his style and acts of governance to assist him in the task of nation building and stabilizing the economy. Successfully doing so may, of course, help him to realize his dream of being elected president of this country later this year. But that would be the last thing his opponents would want to do and they cannot be expected to help him along his way.
The most recent example of the president’s preposterous acts is the appointment last week of Mr. Deshabandu Tennekoon as the country’s 36th Inspector General of Police (IGP). Dr. Nihal Jayawickrema, an eminent legal academic who served as Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Justice and briefly as Attorney General in Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike’s 1970 government has contributed a short article on the new IGP’s appointment to this issue of our newspaper. Here he lucidly and cogently argues that there had clearly been an act of blatant gerrymandering in claiming that the Constitutional Council has approved Tennekoon’s appointment.
Certainly the ‘ayes’ outnumbered the ‘nays’ in the 10-member Constitutional Council which is minus one member due to the lack of consensus among minority parties on a nominee when Tennekoon’s nomination came up for approval. Four votes were cast in favour and two against. But although no official declaration to that effect has been made, it appears that Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardene, who ex officio chairs the Constitutional Council had chosen to count the two abstentions as votes against the appointment and decided that the result was a tie with four votes for and four against. He had used his own casting vote to decide the matter in favour of the government. Jayawickrema has pointed out that this was totally unconstitutional, saying that while the Constitution does say that the Council should endeavour to make a unanimous decision, no decision of the Council would be valid unless it is supported by no less than five members present at the meeting.
As Jayawickrema has explained, the Speaker has no original vote in the Constitutional Council and may only use his casting vote to break a deadlock in the event of a tie. He has quoted Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa making a public declaration that four members of the Council, one less than the required five, voted for the president’s recommendation while two others, including himself, voted against. Jayawickrema has asked: “In what capacity did the Speaker vote? He did not have an original vote but only a casting vote in the event of a tie.”
There has been no formal statement on the Constitutional Council meeting that endorsed the president’s nominee for the post of IGP and the media has depended largely on hearsay for what has been reported. Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa has been outspoken on the subject and said in a post on social media platform ‘X’ on Monday: “Constitution is being blatantly violated for the second time. Shame on you speaker!” He was referring to the appointment of Tennakoon as IGP as well as the previously enacted Online Safety legislation.
Given that the opposition is a minority in the Constitutional Council, there is speculation that the two abstentions were a strategy adopted to ensure that the vote did not end in a tie giving Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardene the opportunity to legitimately to break the deadlock with his casting vote. Abeywardene was quoted in The Hindu last week saying Premadasa’s accusation was “totally baseless.” He has said: “If they [opposition] think there is a violation, they have to go to the courts, not come to parliament.” Abeywardene was elected to parliament on the ticket of the Rajapaksas’ SLPP which elected RW to the presidency and continues to back his government. Traditionally the Speaker is expected to divest himself of party loyalties when assuming parliamentary office.
It must be said in fairness to President Wickremesinghe that he originally did not appear to favour Tennekoon’s appointment. The previous IGP, Chandana Wickramaratne, was granted several short extensions from his original date of retirement on March 26 last year when he reached his mandatory retirement age of 60 years presumably to forestall Tennekoon’s appointment. The general perception was that Tennekoon who was eventually made acting IGP in November 2023, was Law and Order Minister Tiran Alles’ choice for permanent IGP. The minister eventually had his way even though Tennekoon was held guilty of a fundamental rights violation in a torture case by the Supreme Court and ordered along with three other police officers to pay half a million rupees each to the victim. Several other fundamental rights violation cases against him are to be taken up by the Supreme Court in April.
Tennekoon has also been accused of being responsible for the law and order failure, as Senior DIG for the Western Province, when a mob from Temple Trees attacked the aragalaya protesters on Galle Face green. Upon formally assuming office he went on record saying that he was the most reviled officer in the history of the police force.
Meanwhile, the SJB has initiated a motion of no confidence against the Speaker for approving the Online Safety Bill, allegedly without incorporating all the recommendations made by the Supreme Court, which heard nearly 50 petitions challenging it. Government critics and rights groups have fiercely opposed the new legislation that, they fear, will be used to stifle dissent and undermine freedom of expression. Collection of signatures for this motion had begun before the new IGP issue became a hot ticket and this too is likely to be part of that motion.
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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