Editorial
The coming colour
Though Basil Rajapaksa, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa have resigned in that order, the Rajapaksa clan on the back of which much of Sri Lanka’s present woes are laid, remains alive and kicking and is very much a part of the country’s political equation. When then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe appointed his first cabinet following GR’s stunning elevation of a one man show as the head of his government, there were no Rajapaksas in the new line up with several old faces dropped. But there was a reappearance of Shasheendra Rajapaksa among the recently appointed state ministers. Now there’s been a public statement by an SLPP grandee that heir apparent Namal baby is suitable for reappointment to the cabinet. There have also been calls for previous ministers to be taken back to the fold. With at least a semblance of normality restored on the fuel and gas front, those out in the cold seem to believe that the time is right to get back to business.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe is all too aware of the national mood and the near unanimous public opinion on the Rajapaksas and the jumbo cabinets we have known too often in our contemporary political history. But these are realities he must live with. Gotabaya is back in the country although it wasn’t that long ago that Wickremesinghe told the Wall Street Journal that he didn’t think the time was right for GR’s return. Though Basil is out of the country for a few months, it is very well known that he continues to pull many of the SLPP’s strings. Mahinda shows up in parliament now and then although he seldom speaks on the public domain. And Namal is knocking at the door.
Though Wickremesinghe very much desires to show the country that he’s running a tight ship at minimum cost to the taxpayer, until the time comes after February 2023 when he is empowered to dissolve parliament, he is the prisoner of the SLPP. It is that party which elected him to office and the Rajapaksas are very much in control there. It is all too clear that he must do what the discredited Rajapaksa party wants him to do at this point of time. Having dragged his feet a little bit about the appointment of the state ministers, he succumbed a few days ago and appointed as many as 38 of them. No effort whatever has been made to justify such appointments. What has only been attempted up to now is to say that they will draw no salary outside their parliamentary emoluments.
Egg has been publicly rubbed on the collective face of the government both by mainstream and social media demonstrating that the difference of a few thousand rupees in salaries drawn is irrelevant compared to the cost of taxpayer paid perks and privileges they will enjoy. Now the president is on the verge of appointing new ministers to the present 20-member cabinet and this is likely to be completed in the short term. The constitution permits the appointment of 30 ministers, which can go up if we have a national government, and fishing expeditions by aspirants are already visible. It has also been said in public that the previous ministers, many of them anathema to the people, must be reappointed. We need not labour the fact that already there are bad hats in office.
Not very long ago we saw former Agriculture Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage, the public face of then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s calamitous ban on chemical fertilizers, saying in parliament that he was not responsible for the ban. He said that fertilizer under his ministry was the subject of a state minister (Shasheendra Rajapaksa now back in office as State Minister of Irrigation). He even claimed that he had canvassed the ban with then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The whole country was privy to Aluthgamage’s passionate defence of the ban at that time and saw countless effigies on the minister torched by angry farmers. Yet he has the brass to attempt to distance himself from that action in which he fully participated, in what seems very much like an attempt to return to cabinet office.
President Wickremesinghe has made little headway in his attempt to form a National Government or Government of National Unity. There seems to be few buyers at political party level but individual defections for consideration of office is very much a part of this country’s political history. Already two Samagi Jana Balavegaya MPs, Harin Fernando and Manusha Nanayakkara are in the cabinet. So also seniors of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) like Nimal Siripala de Silva and Mahinda Amaraweera. There are many more SLFPers who are state ministers and of the 14 SLFP MPs elected to the sitting parliament only five remain loyal to party leader Maithripala Sirisena. While some parties have begun domestic inquiries against rebels, few expect them to lose their seats in terms of existing anti-defection laws.
We will know very shortly what the new cabinet will look like and what the 2023 budget will bring for the country. It has already been made clear that the wealthy will have to suffer a major tax blow. Our contemporary history amply demonstrates that the tax administration is very good at squeezing already squeezed lemons and more of that will shortly be in evidence in the context of the prevailing massive tax evasion. That, together with the lack of equity which is a basic principle of taxation, is a long evident fact of life in this so-called democratic socialist republic ours.
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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