Editorial
Pangiriwatte and after
There is no escaping the reality that the Thursday night Pangiriwatte Mawatha protests near President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s Mirihana home was an outpouring of mass anger at the hardships the people are bearing at present. The poor, as always, are the worst hit but others too are at the end of their tether coping with gas queues, fuel queues, unavailable essentials and prices of everyday needs rising to hitherto unknown levels. Businesses without export cushions are in deep distress. Many small businesses have shut down altogether. Banks are unable to provide hard currency even for most essential imports and no light is visible at the end of a long dark tunnel. Where it is going to end is anybody’s guess. Regime change is not going to be any kind of quick fix with many convinced that successors are going to be no better than incumbents.
Many of the protests, catalyzed by despair, are spontaneous. But political elements looking at seizing opportunities cannot be discounted altogether. Today, April 3, has been picked for countrywide protests and how far they will spread and how effective they will be remains to be seen; so also the response of the regime. The police curfew imposed on several parts of the city and suburbs on Thursday night could well have been an effort to prevent the swelling of numbers at Mirihana especially after what began peacefully took an ugly turn with stones thrown and a vehicle used as a roadblock set ablaze. Doubtlessly middle class, educated protesters who are mostly apolitical feel that they owe both themselves and their country the duty of registering their dissatisfaction at the manner in which the country is being misruled.
Kumar David, our regular columnist, who wrote a recent column in the Colombo Telegraph has claimed authorship of the ‘Go Gota Go’ slogan and its various renditions and juxtapositions. He says he is happy to have been the source of the slogan, but the way things are moving is more serious than anyone’s authorship. There was another protest outside the president’s private home a few weeks earlier and this protest, middle class and female oriented, was attributed to ex-MP Hirunika Premachandra. A retaliatory demonstration outside her home followed. Very many small candlelit protests where participants carried placards in both English and Sinhala have been part of the everyday scene recently. Voice cuts from protesters, in both languages, have been aired on national television indicating a middle class presence in the demonstrations. Some arrests have been made and journalists covering the protests claim to have been roughed up by the police with photos of a few of the injured lying on hospital beds published.
Demonstrators participating in the various protests must not be unmindful of the possibility of goon elements infiltrating them for obvious reasons. Given the turn the Mirihana protest, which began peacefully enough but later turned violent, took with the arrival of a motorcycle squad wearing full face helmets has its own message. The use of tear gas too may have been provocative but middle class protesters do not resort to violence as goons do – even retaliatory violence. The intention may well have been at attempt to suggest that protests mean violence and therefore there should be a clamp down on all protests. There was an attack on an earlier JVP protest where rotten eggs were thrown. One miscreant was arrested and allegations made that he belonged to a regime supporting paramilitary outfit was widely made. But, as in many similar cases, investigations have been dragging on without conclusion. Such tactics are commonly used by state agencies for their own purposes and resort to them cannot be discounted in the present context.
Today’s economic crunch is largely due to the hard currency shortage that has been long building up. Responsible advice that debt repayments be re-negotiated at least as far as the last sovereign bond settlement was concerned was totally ignored. The government has been trying to pass off much or our current difficulties to the covid pandemic which forced lock downs and restrictions. But it has been clearly pointed out that at least in the region we have done much worse than our more severely affected neighbours. Bangladesh which Henry Kissinger once labeled as an “international basket case” is doing very nicely we have had to resort to currency swap arrangements with that country to tide over our difficulties.
There is no need to labor the fact that we have for long lived way beyond our means. Two of our major problems are a highly overloaded public service and an outsized military. No serious effort has been made to trim these behemoths to realistic proportions. The last budget announced a freeze on public sector recruitment but this is merely scratching the surface of the problem. Our armed forces grew to their present size as a result of the civil war. But no effort was made to downsize the military after the war ended. On the contrary our defence budget keeps increasing annually.
As in the years before the war, we have to think of our military primarily as an internal security force supplementing the police. We cannot ever hope to repel a foreign aggressor as clearly demonstrated when India engaged in the infamous parippu drop at the time we might have ended the war at Vadamarachchi. The SLAF was no match for Mirage fighter jets escorting Hercules transport aircraft carrying food supplies for what was falsely alleged to be a starving population. So let us be realistic in our defence spending without blasting the few resources we have on an unnecessarily large peacetime military.
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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