Editorial
Basil wants to butter his bread on both sides?
Whether or not President Ranil Wickremesinghe took SLPP General Secretary Sagara Kariyawasam seriously when the latter publicly pronounced that his party cannot support the recently enacted 21st Amendment to the Constitution (introduced through the 22A Bill) because of provisions there that dual citizen cannot run for elected office, we do not know. But Kariyawasam, clearly went on record making that pronouncement, or more accurately threat. He also said that the SLPP would be discussing the matter with the president at a scheduled meeting. If that meeting was held, and if so what transpired there, is not in the public domain.
What we do know is that 22A (later dubbed 21A) was comfortably passed with the required two thirds majority with Admiral (Retd.) Sarath Weerasekera of the SLPP casting the only dissenting vote. Explaining his party’s stance, Kariyawasam said it was clear that the clause banning dual citizen from running for political office targeted former Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa. This, he said, was totally unacceptable because laws are not meant to target individuals.
In the event many SLPP members, including three Rajapaksas, Namal, Chamal and Sasheendra, voted for the Bill. Party leader Mahinda Rajapaksa was among the many absentees at voting time. Basil Rajapaksa, the national organizer of the SLPP, widely credited to be the brains behind party and its eminence grise has been praised for the SLPP’s success at the 2018 local elections. This was the take-off point for Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s 2019 election as president with the frequently flaunted 6.9 million vote mandate. That paved the way for Mahinda Rajapaksa’s return to office as Prime Minister in 2020.
All that is now old hat. What is important right now is that Basil, more so than his siblings Gotabaya and Mahinda, is perceived as the genius behind the SLPP victory. Some party men have even sycophantically dubbed him as a “man with seven brains.” Brother Gotabaya renounced his U.S. citizenship to run for president in 2019. But Basil was not willing to do likewise and did not run for parliament in 2020 for the reason he was barred by provisions of 19A. While sections of the SLPP-led coalition that swept that election did not favour the removal of the constitutional prohibition of dual citizen from running, President Gotabaya was able to secure the enactment of 20A removing that barrier. He did so with the promise that the new constitution he promised would not include that provision. It was widely anticipated that this was done solely for Basil’s benefit. In eight months he was back in parliament on the SLPP National List assuming the finance ministry brother Mahinda long held both as president and prime minister.
Basil Rajapaksa was permitted by the courts to return to his U.S. homeland where his family lives, for medical attention on the promise he would return. He is now considered the SLPP puppeteer, pulling the strings from far away and setting his party’s agenda. If Basil engineered that some SLPP Member of Parliament, including ministers, were absent at voting time on 21A a few days ago, he did not secure blanket backing for his wishes. Even the Rajapaksas have broken ranks with only Mahinda, with no explanation offered up to now of his reasons for keeping away, remaining on Basil’s side with three other family members voting for the amendment. Does this signal cracks in the party and family? Only time can tell.
SJB, SLFP and dissident SLPP support was necessary for the amendment to get through with the required two thirds majority. The president understood that very well and he would have socked that into the SLPP that elected him president. Given that he only has the assured support of the solitary UNPer who succeeded him in his party’s single national list slot in parliament, Wickremesinghe remains a prisoner of the SLPP in the legislature until February next year when the constitution empowers him to dissolve parliament. Whether he has held out any assurances that he would not do that, and those MPs who would not qualify for a parliamentary pension if they do not have five years parliamentary service would be apprehensive of an early dissolution, he has levers to pressure sections of the SLPP if required.
Justifying his stand, Sagara Kariyawasam pointed out that a Briton of Indian origin has become the prime minister of the UK and urged that the world was now becoming or has become a global village. Implicit in that remark is “why can’t dual citizen Basil retain his U.S. and Sri Lanka citizenships and enjoy the rights of both?” Rishi Sunak was born in Britain, schooled there and graduated from Oxford. His parents immigrated to the UK from East Africa. But comparing Sunak’s case to Basil’s is like comparing chalk and cheese. Basil was born here and sought greener pastures in the U.S., possibly for economic reasons, and acquired citizenship there. He came back after this side of the fence became even greener with MR’s election. Unlike GR, he is unwilling to renounce that citizenship in return for elected office. He has not discussed the reasons for this stance. Reportedly he has a home in the U.S. but not in Malwana according to a court determination. Kariyawasam obviously wants to help Basil to butter his bread on both sides.
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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