Editorial
Down the pallang with no end in sight
It was a tragedy for this country that Venerable Madulwawe Sobitha Thera, who founded and led the National Movement for Social Justice (NMSJ), died prematurely. Had he lived, the Sirisena – Wickremesinghe government he helped install in 2015 may not have come to its ignoble end five years later. He was the lynch-pin of the force that was able to marshal a common opposition to take on, and stunningly topple, the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime which through its infamous 18th Amendment to the Constitution abolished the two-term limit on the presidency. Rajapaksa fatally sought a third term for himself, but the end of his presidency and subsequently his government, did not drive him into the political wilderness as it would have most mortals. He lived to fight another day, making those who ousted him eat more than humble pie by first installing his bother, Gotabaya, as the country’s sixth president, and then reducing the once proud UNP to zero in Parliament.
That is contemporary history that our readers are all too familiar with. We all well know too many of our past presidents falsely pledged to abolish the executive presidency created by President J.R. Jayewardene, who too hankered for a third term after decreeing a two term limit, but thought better as two insurrections in the north and south, wracked our island home. Sri Lanka survived those insurgencies with the JVP now in the political mainstream and the LTTE not quite dead, with a diaspora seeking to keep its ambitions alive active in many western countries where votes are bartered for influence. Some of its cult followers are still among us here in Sri Lanka. Former President Maithripala Sirisena, who pledged at Ven. Sobitha’s bier to abolish the executive presidency, though reduced today to a mere Member of Parliament, continues to maintain a low profile presence in national politics. His UNP bete noire, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who helped crown him as president and then sought to strip him of power, clings to the leadership of his party which up to now has been unable to even fill the solitary National List seat in Parliament it secured at the last election.
If Ven. Sobitha had lived, it would have been difficult for the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government to welsh on its promise of abolishing the executive presidency. The moral force of his authority would also surely have prevented the many omissions and commissions of the yahapalana government which was anything but that. But all that was not to be and the country today is at the brink of an abyss with the rupee devalued to 200 per U.S. dollar for the first time in its history, and its national debt estimated to run at over 98% of its GDP. Even though the country’s per capita income has increased steadily over the last two decades, revenue collection has been well below government expenditure, and has not been adequate even to cover recurrent expenditure of the state. Added to this dismal fiscal picture are the everyday travails of ordinary people struggling to make ends meet in the face of an ever-rising cost of living with no relief in sight. Covid has aggravated our predicament and where we go from here is anybody’s guess.
It is in this context that the National Movement for Social Justice (NMSJ) that Ven. Sobitha founded and led is seeking to soberly present to the people the very real dangers confronting the country. Led by respected elder statesman Karu Jayasuriya, the organization is seeking to push the rulers into a correction course through its various activities. It seeks to project an apolitical stance and denies subversive interests. We have published in this newspaper, as we do today, much of what NMSJ and its leader is saying but whether or not such utterances resonate in places where it matters is hard to say. The 20th Amendment that abolished the 19th has thrown the baby with the bathwater. None can claim that the ousted leaders and members of yahapalana or their successors were paragons of virtue. The people know too well that succeeding political establishments this country has seen in the 73 years post-Independence has each been worse than its predecessor. The government that has presented some new math on the result of the recent vote at the UNHRC in Geneva continues to muddle along endangering both national security and the national economy.
Not a day passes without one blunder being followed by another. We had the bond scam under the previous dispensation. This one did better with the sugar scam followed by the coconut oil scam. There was no loss but only “foregone revenue” was the feeble defence on offer. This from the keeper of the public purse charged with the responsibility of balancing budgets where revenue monotonously falls short of expenditure. The last lot says that the sugar scam cost the country more than the bond scam; whether the reference was to the first or the second fiddle at the Central Bank or both together, the people don’t know. Environmental degradation continues unabated and the problem has assumed frightening proportions. A minister from the ruling family outrageously declares that two reservoirs will be built in the Sinharaja reserve to provide water for their pocket borough. He promises to plant 150 acres elsewhere to compensate saying that rubber will be planted to give people an income. We have not not had any word that this madcap project has been abandoned if it was ever seriously considered.
The predicament of the people will surely get worse before it gets better – if at all. We have to keep on voting in scoundrels despite their sorry performances and sordid track records for want of alternatives.
NMSJ criticism is offered non-abrasively. Let the issues raised be viewed in a similar spirit and properly addressed.
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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