Editorial
Ranil waiting for a nekatha?
A front page report in Thursday’s The Island read “NL slot: Ranil still dilly-dallying.” Dilly-dallying was the right word for describing what Wickremesinghe is doing about filling the single National List slot his party won following its zero seat debacle at the last parliamentary election. The report under reference quoted UNP Chairman Vajira Abeywardena saying that Wickremesinghe had not yet decided to occupy this still vacant seat to which his party must make a formal nomination. Several weeks earlier the UNP had decided that Wickremesinghe must take that place. According to Abeywardena, the party’s “leader for life,” as some deride him, would decide on returning to parliament (or not, we presume) in a month or two. But recent weeks have shown Ranil showing his face in the political scene, though from outside parliament, via media interviews and public appearances signaling that he’s not yet past tense.
Soon after his party’s rout last August, Wickremesinghe went on record saying he will not accept the National List position, but he showed no signs whatever of giving up the UNP leadership. President J.R. Jayewardene, Ranil’s kinsman and mentor, crafted the 1978 constitution to ensure via a proportional representation (PR) system for future elections that no major party can suffer a landslide defeat. The UNP had suffered one under the old Westminster-style order in 1956 when late Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike said that “the last nail had been driven into the UNP’s coffin.” The SLFP led by Bandaranaike’s widow suffered the same fate in 1977 when the once proud old left, comprising the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) and Communist Party (CP), suffered the same zero debacle that was the UNP’s lot at the last election. Under the previous order there were no National List straws for drowning political parties to clutch.
JRJ proved Bandaranaike wrong at the Colombo Municipal Council election that the followed the 1956 “people’s revolution” when the UNP, which governed the country since Independence, was stunningly swept out of office. By March 1960, after Bandaranaike’s tragic assassination, the greens were back in national office, albeit briefly. But five years later, the party served a full term under Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake until a second debacle hit it in 1970. Such blows, no doubt, influenced Jayewardene to use the five sixth majority he won in 1977 under a constituency system to build constitutional safeguards against history repeating itself. But the best laid plans of mice and men can go awry as the contemporary political history of this country has amply demonstrated.
If Ranil Wickremesinghe did not wish to occupy the UNP’s only National List seat in Parliament when his party decided he should fill it, he should or could have said so. He did clearly say that he will not take that seat in the immediate aftermath of the last election resulting in other’s staking claims and John Amaratunga, a party heavyweight, believing he would be back in the legislature. Thereafter the weeks and months were allowed to roll by leaving the whole matter suspended in midair. Wickremesinghe, who has been prime minister of this country several times, has by his conduct both in and out of office shown that he is a believer in the beneficial effect of attending various poojas in South India and probably has astrological beliefs. As such, none can be blamed for wondering whether he is awaiting a propitious moment – a nekatha – to return to Parliament if such is his intention. Given his recent interviews, last week on the Colombo Port City which his coalition promised to scrap but only delayed at substantial cost to the nation, and his retention of the UNP’s leadership, he does not seem to want to cut and run or retire gracefully.
The western traditions towards which he had long tilted would have required him to quit after a debacle of the proportions of August 2020. This he did not do. As UNP leader, he thrice chose not to run for president, first conceding the opposition slot to Sarath Fonseka, then to Maithripala Sirisena and finally to Sajith Premadasa whom he wanted to field not as UNP leader but as deputy leader. Premadasa did not accept that, split the UNP taking most of its parliamentary group with him, leaving Ranil with a rump. Some analysts would say that the not running concessions were made in the belief that two of those candidate’s would not win. In Sirisena’s case, the common opposition candidature was structured in a manner that enabled Wickremesinghe to call the shots if victory was achieved.
But it must also be said in Wickremesinghe’s defence that he probably would have won the 2005 presidential election but for the LTTE’s intervention, closing exit points from territory the Tigers held to government-controlled areas where polling stations were located, preventing thousands of
Tamils from voting. It has been alleged that there was heavy rigging at the previous presidential race which Ranil narrowly lost. He’s among the most experienced among our politicians, thrice served as prime minister, had long stints as opposition leader and is widely acknowledged as man of ability. He is slightly older than President Gotabaya Rajapaksa (both were born in 1949) but younger than Mahinda. Wickremesinghe catapulted to the UNP leadership as a result of the assassinations of Gamini Dissanayake, Lalith Athulathmudali and Ranasinghe Premadasa.
JRJ once famously said that he had succeeded in climbing the greasy pole outliving his opponents. But none of them were assassinated. It’s difficult to figure out now what Wickremesinghe’s game plan is. He is keeping his cards close to his chest and fending off questions during occasional public appearances.
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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