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Editorial

Budget, cannabis and reality

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Wednesday 16th November, 2022

President Ranil Wickremesinghe has, in his budget speech, sought to kindle hopes of economic recovery. Claiming that the ongoing talks with the IMF, India, China, etc., would lead to positive outcomes, he has offered to build a ‘social market economy’ or an ‘open economic system of social protection’ whatever that means. However, there is no harm in the Head of State trying to infuse the public with some optimism amidst a national feeling of doom and gloom.

President Wickremesinghe has said a social market economy will help achieve a high economic growth of 7 to 8 percent, increase international trade (as a percentage of GDP) by more than 100 percent, ensure an annual growth of US$ 3 billion from new exports between 2023 and 2032, secure foreign direct investment of more than US$ 3 billion in the next 10 years, and create an internationally competitive workforce within the next decade.

Youth unrest and the resultant protests seem to have prompted the government to undertake to adopt what it calls a youth-oriented approach to economic development. President Wickremesinghe, in his budget speech, chose to call the youth ‘the real national wealth’. He is of the view that attention has not been paid to the country’s youth, and their hopes are fading; they are calling for systemic changes.

It is heartening that the President has realised the need to serve the interests of the youth, but it is not clear how his government intends to set about the task. One can only hope that it is not paying lip service to young citizens’ cause.

Among the measures the government has proposed to boost the foreign currency inflow is to create a business-friendly environment. One of the biggest obstacles to foreign investment is corruption. No foreigner can invest here unless he or she is willing to grease countless palms. How does the President propose to tackle this problem? The culprits are in his government!

Budget 2023 has proposed labour law reforms but stopped short of specifying them. The President has only said the country’s labour laws are outdated and fragmented and there is a pressing need for what he calls a new, unified labour law. Will the proposed labour laws deprive workers of their rights in the name of investment promotion?

The government has also proposed land reforms in all but name. The President has said that a programme will be launched to enable investors to utilise land productively to increase both production and exports. This is an area where the government ought to tread cautiously, for the disposal of state land always leads to rackets.

The proposed macro-fiscal framework is aimed at increasing government revenue from 8.3% to 16% of GDP by 2025, achieving a primary surplus of more than 2% of GDP in 2025, reducing public sector debt from about 110% of GDP to less than 100% in the medium term, bringing inflation to a single-digit level in the medium term, ensuring that interest rates will reach a moderate level, restoring macroeconomic confidence and replenishing exchange reserves with foreign finances to ease pressure on the exchange rate, and enabling the medium-term economic growth to return to about 5% by enhancing structural reforms. This is a tall order, and how the government will fare in pursuing these goals remains to be seen.

Budget 2023 is very clear on the government’s plan to restructure some profit-earning state-owned ventures such as Sri Lanka Telecom and Sri Lanka Insurance, and utilise the proceeds therefrom to strengthen foreign exchange reserves and the rupee. So, a fire-sale of state assets will commence soon.

The government’s desperation for forex is evident from its proposal to set up an expert committee to explore the possibility of producing Triloka Wijayapathra (cannabis or ganja) for export. This is bound to cause quite a stir. President Wickremesinghe is no stranger to controversy. If the government cares to solve farmers’ problems such as the existing fertiliser shortage and high cost of production thereby developing the agricultural sector, and goes all out to recover the country’s stolen funds, there will be no need to grow cannabis.

President Wickremesinghe, on Monday, sought to justify the unconscionable tax increases ratified by Parliament weeks earlier. He proposed to set up a Presidential Commission on Taxation ‘to study and make recommendations on the functioning, coordination and changes to be made in the tax structure, the institutions, procedures, etc.’ It is one’s fervent hope that the government is not contemplating any more tax increases!

The Opposition has dismissed Budget 2023 as something worthless, and flayed the government for not providing relief to the public. The budget is not devoid of flaws, but the question is whether the President could have done better, given the country’s economic situation.

Meanwhile, the government says it is confident that it has enough numbers in Parliament to secure the passage of Budget 2023. But efforts are being made in some quarters to shoot it down. The SLPP-UNP combine is taking precautions and all out to engineer some crossovers from the Opposition. A political war over the national budget has to be avoided for the sake of the ailing economy, which cannot take any more shocks. It is imperative that the warring parties get themselves around the table, with compromises being made in the form of committee-stage changes to the budget, so that there will be no showdown at the expense of the ongoing efforts to stabilise the economy.



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Editorial

Ensure safety of COPF Chairman

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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.

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Editorial

Dead man walking!

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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.

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Editorial

Modi Magic on the wane

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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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