Editorial
Business as usual in the House
Thursday’s farcical re-election of Ranjith Siyambalapitiya as the Deputy Speaker of the incumbent Parliament is a clear demonstration, if any is needed, that it’s business as usual in the Sri Lanka Parliament. This despite the revolutionary fervor of the people outside that first the Rajapaksas, aiya and malli, and thereafter the other clansmen must go. ITAK MP, Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, put it neatly. He said that the 65 Members who voted for Mr. Imthiaz Bakeer Markar represented the people. The 148 who voted for the eventual winner represented the Rajapaksas.
The way that papadam crumbled defies rational explanation. First, Siyambalapitiya, elected on the SLFP ticket resigned some weeks ago saying that having being elected from the blue party (which incidentally had an arrangement with the Rajapaksa pohottuwa) was resigning as his party had decided to leave the ruling group. He said that the president, no less, had refused to accept his resignation and he, in deference to this request, would stay on till May 1 when he would quit. He even said that he will not draw any of the pay and perks of his office until his eventual departure. And so it (presumably) was.
Then came his eventual departure. The ex and back-again deputy speaker then left office and the House last week solemnly set about electing his successor. But voila, who was that successor? None other than Siyambalapitiya himself, proposed by longtime minister and dyed-in-the-wool SLFPer, Nimal Siripala de Silva seconded by equally senior Susil Premajayantha aka Premajayanth. The latter, readers would remember, not long ago got shunted to the ‘B’ team after a long innings in the ‘A’ team and was sulking somewhat until he suddenly found himself sacked altogether, a fate later suffered by Weerawansa and Gammanpila, and took a three-wheeler home to don his black coat and return to practicing law.
If this was not a deal between the Rajapaksas and the SLFP, one cannot know what a deal is. So we are back to business as usual with various opportune arrangements made to suit needs of the moment. These are often accompanied by consideration, both visible and invisible as the Galle Face agitators are loudly proclaiming; and the rest of the country has long known but done nothing about until the advent of the aragalaya. How independent are the claimed “independents” who recently crossed from one side of the House to the other? Not much, the results of the deputy speaker’s election (more correctly re-election) shows.
Wimal Weerawansa, one of the more garrulous of that group was absent at the voting. He has not up to the time of writing offered an explanation of why this was so. TNA leader R. Sampanthan, is a very old man and may not have been well enough to attend. Justice Wigneswaran too has been mum on the subject and would hopefully offer and explanation sooner or later; like in the old days on the bench when judgments were reserved or delivered with a terse “reasons later.” Why three MPs spoilt their votes – how this was done was not made public – is also inexplicable. While there’s been a lot of noise in the public domain over the years that many of our MPs are uneducated or not educated enough to perform legislative and other parliamentary duties, nobody has been accused of being illiterate. All that a valid vote required was the name of the candidate of choice and the signature of the voter.
Why Siyambalapitiya’s resignation went to the president is a mystery that remains uncleared. Commonsense would dictate that it should go to the speaker. Standing Orders, we are told, has no provision as to whom a presiding member of the House, whether speaker, deputy speaker or deputy chairman of committees should tender a resignation. So Siyambalapitiya had chosen to go to the president and the speaker, apparently, had waited to hear what the outcome was before the election of a successor was taken up. Although a solemn ritual of placing a screen and a ballot box in the well of the house was conducted, and names of members were called out to vote, opposition whip Lakshman Kiriella was heard asking “where’s the secrecy when MPs must sign the ballot paper?” But that is the way Standing Orders prescribe for taking a secret ballots.
There was no response to the demand that ballot papers be immediately destroyed. Presumably they would be kept in the safe custody of the Secretary General of Parliament. But strange are the ways of our Parliament. There isn’t a trace of the impeachment motion against former President Ranasinghe Premadasa which a former speaker “entertained” and then stopped entertaining. Where it went, who signed it and who didn’t and whether it still exists will presumably remain for ever in the realm of the unknown. It also needs clarification whether an MP voting in secret has the freedom to write he/she was abstaining on the ballot paper. And if that was done were the votes deemed “spoilt?” Perhaps we’ll know in the fullness of time and will also learn the strategy underlying Thursday’s events.
That apart, this issue of our newspaper today offers readers a range of analytical commentary on the ongoing drama both at Galle Face and elsewhere. There is also a perception among television viewers that events around us are taking a new flavour to what prevailed before with the Frontline Socialist Party-aligned Inter University Students Federation adopting a more boisterous attitude than previously on view in their demonstrations. It has been previously reported that the FSP is the only political presence at Galle Face. Whether this can cause an ‘infection,’ and how all this will unravel, only time can tell.
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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