Editorial
Ominous signs
The week that is behind us saw developments that signposts what the country is facing in the short term. The most ominous of these is the threat of a general strike. Professionals and other groups that have never paid income tax have come together in a powerful united front to resist the new taxes recently announced. The former say that they are not against paying taxes but demand that these be fair, especially in the context of today’s rocketing cost of living. They also urge that interest rates on loans they were encouraged to take not so long ago have doubled recently. This has resulted in their being painted into a corner, unable to find the wherewithal for living. Changes exempting non-cash benefits from income tax proposed in the last couple of days by the Inland Revenue Department have only added fuel to the fire. These have been angrily condemned as benefiting the political class long pampered at taxpayer expense.
If President Ranil Wickremesinghe thinks that he can smash a burgeoning strike in the manner his uncle and mentor, President J.R. Jayewardene did in July 1980, he is indulging in more than a pipe dream. Remember that 1980 was just three years after JRJ was swept to power at the crest of an unprecedented electoral landslide with a five sixths majority in parliament. Wickremesinghe, today, is the President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka not on the popular, or for that matter, any mandate of the people of the country. He is in office on the back of the parliamentary votes of the hated Rajapaksas’ Sri Lanka Podu Jana Peramuna (SLPP). RW was unable to be even elected to parliament in August 2020 and reduced the once powerful UNP to zero elected seats. He returned to the legislature, after much foot dragging, on the single National List seat his party was entitled to. So Wickremesinghe today and JRJ at his prime are as different as chalk and cheese.
President Wickremesinghe, having served as prime minister of this country six times in a political career beginning in 1977, knows this very well. Though the protests have been resisted by the police for the past several days, there have been no major clashes. It appears unlikely that an iron fist would be resorted to in the immediate future in the manner that the Aragalaya was crushed. This after Gotabaya Rajapaksa, having been compelled by People’s Power to get rid of his aiya, Mahinda Rajapaksa who enthroned GR as president, first appointed RW prime minister and then acting president before fleeing the country. Under siege, GR to his credit, had ordered the armed forces not to shoot to quell protests and it is hoped that his successor too would follow that good example. The country is well aware of the government’s dilemma. The economic situation is critical and Wickremesinghe in his address at last week clearly indicated he well knew the difficulties the people are facing. But he said it is not his wish, indeed he cannot even try, to be popular in the current scenario.
It was not long ago that the president who is also finance minister revealed that the IMF wanted earnings above a monthly Rs. 45,000 taxed. The government had tried to raise that threshold to Rs. 150,000 a month and eventually settled at Rs. 100,000. From all the information now available in the public domain, the public at large have been led to believe that getting out of the mess the country is plunged in is largely dependent on an arrangement with the IMF. This has been coming, coming for some months but has not yet come. A lot of comforting words have been spoken by the political authorities saying that except for a further commitment from China, much that must be accomplished to kick off the external debt restructuring process the IMF requires, has been completed. But if the protest process gathering recent momentum reaches a crescendo, will the resulting instability permit any arrangement with the IMF? A government that as lost its mandate and a president with no mandate whatever has been doing their damnedest to postpone the local elections. The last word on the subject from the Supreme Court was heard on Friday with the Elections Commission directed to go ahead with the poll. But is this one but the last word because another court action is yet proceeding?
Last week also saw the former president and his successor making a joint appearance at the Gangaramaya in Hunupitiya. GR also went to court claiming Rs. 17 million found at President’s House as Aragalayists stormed the presidential mansion where he taken refuge after his private Mirihana home had been attacked. This was where he lived and worked from during his final days when the Presidential Secretariat was also under siege. There was a spot of bother that this cash, discovered and counted by those who crashed into the presidential abode, and handed to the police, was not deposited in the courts for several days. How this will unravel in the coming days remains to be seen. Most ordinary people will not keep Rs. 17,000 in cash in their homes for reasons of safety; they’d rather keep it in a bank. But the First Citizen, it seems is different. He’s gone public on that by claiming the cash. The question now is whether the Inland Revenue Department will investigate this matter in the way they would an ordinary Silva or Perera.
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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