Editorial
Coming colour?
As this is being written on Friday morning, the country is awaiting signals of what the future holds. Those who think that Gota will go are more than optimists. How can a man who admits blunders that have plunged this country to depths far below the worst we have ever known, even when LTTE terror was at its zenith, who says as he did recently that he cannot go as a failed president, ever see the light? Not until his head is held towards the sun. He will not go until he is driven out. Whether what is ballooning at the present moment, with organizers/participants saying the agitation will continue until their objective, will have the stamina for a very long march remains to be seen.
Meanwhile the people and economy are reeling. Over a dozen people have died in fuel queues that stretch for kilometers. The press reported on Friday that a woman had nearly delivered her baby at the passport office where the queues admittedly are not as long those outside petrol sheds. But the situation is comparable. Tens of thousands of people are as desperate as those in fuel queues to get a few liters into their tanks to get the hell out of this country where a man now sitting in splendid isolation promised “vistas of splendour and prosperity” not very long ago.
We do not know whether or not the president showed up in parliament last week as a response to a Wimal Weerawansa statement that he is in hiding. But as a former Deputy Solicitor General Srinath Perera told a television talk show a few days ago, the president and prime minister together in the chamber – one seated, one standing – looked like “a newly married couple sweet talking to each other.” Mahinda Rajapaksa was also there, perhaps to give the lie to social media posts that he’s quite ill and had been in hospital. What happens in parliament now is totally irrelevant to what is happening in the country outside. We hear smart aleck remarks like the prime minister’s, telling the presiding member to allow the JVP leader who’s time was running out to “give him five minutes more to blackguard me,” but nothing of plans or solutions to resolve the problems holding the nation in a death grip. No Ranil Wickremesinghe is needed to tell us that the situation is grim and will become grimmer. There’s no Lankan alive who does not know that.
There is no need to labour the harsh reality that the fuel shortage has wide ranging implications for the whole economy. The effects that are already evident range from schools being closed and public servants asked to stay at home. The whole country is privy to television visuals of people riding on the top of railway compartments and others clinging for dear life on the foot-boards of jam packed buses. Some desperate innovators sitting in the luggage spaces in buses with their legs dangling out are also in the news. As the haulage fleet becomes near non-operational for want of fuel, scarcities of essentials and resultant price increases are felt across the board. With the demand for fuel what it is, attempts to give identified “essential services” priority in dispensing what little that is available has turned out to be a nightmarish flop. If you start with doctors, you can’t forget nurses, paramedics, pharmacists and what have you. Various other sectors, also essential but not so classified, are making a deuce of a row demanding equity and threatening to or already have withdrawn services. On top of that the whole country is treated to images every day of policemen forming special queues for themselves at filling stations infuriating other consumers lining up not for hours but days.
Where do we go from here? Although we’ve had some sugary statements about staff level negotiations with the IMF concluding satisfactorily, there is very little positive news. Given the dollar crunch throttling the country that is inevitable. The two major dilemmas confronting us today are economic and political. It is common knowledge that our public sector is obscenely bloated. But an area that lacks sufficient focus is the incompetence that is apparent at the top of its management hierarchy. The ehei hamaduruwaney syndrome and subservience to the political establishment has now become so deeply ingrained that it will not be easy matter to root it out. But for starters, let’s look at getting the best available technocrats to sit in the public service at its commanding heights. A start was made with the new governor of the central bank. Rumour has it that there was resistance from the prime minister, who is also finance minister, to recommending Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe for a new full term after he had served out the balance term of his predecessor. Has nothing been learned from the bond scams and the Arjuna Mahendran experiences?
How the events that are now panning out will eventually end remains to be seen. There may be a signal over the weekend. After losing the presidency in 20215, the Rajapaksas did not lie down and die. Nor did the UNP and its yahapalana lot drive the last nail into the coffin. Older readers would remember that SWRD Bandaranaike claimed in 1956 that “the last nail had been driven into the UNP coffin.” He didn’t live long enough to see that it had not. The Rajapaksas may be taking comfort from what happened in the Philippines where it took the Marcos’ 30 years to come back. Judging from a recent article published by the Guardian in the UK, the rats have begun to squeal with some sitting members of the cabinet and other ex-members singing like canaries. Are they seeing the coming colour?
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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