Editorial
Covid vaccination reflections
We are running several stories in today’s issue of this newspaper on a matter that is of great moment not only to this country but the whole wide world. Yes, you guessed right. These reports are about the vaccination roll-out against the Covid virus which which is now ongoing and is a matter of highest national priority. What clearly emerges is that there is no unity among particularly the various medical experts, both in the health bureaucracy and health professionals outside it, on whether we are setting about this war against the virus in the correct way. That is clearly evident in the differing statements issued one after another by various concerned parties.
Take the statement issued by Infectious Diseases Forum of Sri Lanka, comprising many eminent doctors, who have warned that if the elderly are not vaccinated, the entire purpose of the of the vaccination program would have been in vain. The Forum has accused those responsible of “maldistribution” of vaccine and described an alleged decision of the Health Ministry – whether correctly or not we do not know – not to vaccinate people between the ages of 30 and 59 years as “meaningless.” Nobody, as far as we know, has made an authoritative statement on the age cohort who will be or will not be vaccinated. What we do know that older people and those with non-infectious diseases like diabetes are considered more vulnerable and deserve priority.
On the other hand, there is what Dr. Sudarshini Fernandopulle, the State Minister of of Primary Health Care, Epidemics and Covid Disease Control, had told reporters last week. She alleged that top officials of the Health Ministry had taken snap decisions on the vaccination roll-out in complete disregard of Ministry-sanctioned recommendations made by a technical committee. Such rash decisions were the reason for what she calls the “sudden appearance of vaccination centers.” She has added that these officials even override directives of the President given via the task force appointed to oversee the vaccination drive. A report we publish today quotes the state minister saying “When decisions have already been made (regarding the roll-out timetable) these officials suddenly call at night and say start the program right away. We can’t do it this way.”
Are all these accusations and allegations correct? It is high time that somebody in authority cleared the air. This business of who rates priority age-wise is not clear although we believe that the vaccine will be administered to all age groups in high risk areas identified and mapped as ‘red spots.’ Most of these are in the densely populated areas of the Western Province and commonsense would tell us that as many of those possible, regardless of age, living in riskyh areas should be vaccinated. We all know that the already procured doses of vaccine falls far short of what is needed to cover our total population of 22 million plus. Thus the thrust of the current effort is to first cover the Western Province and this is what seems to be attempted at present.
Fortunately there have been no reports of vaccine stocks running out on a large scale. True, vaccine ran out in some centers with long lines of people awaiting their turns but this has not been widespread. Colombo’s Mayor Rosy Senanayake has denied a widely distributed social media post that she had submitted a list of names for preferential vaccination at a center at the Colombo Public Library. Her media secretary had said that the mayor had visited that center following these reports and instructed that those using her name be denied vaccination. We cannot comment on the rights and wrongs of these allegations for the simple reason that we do not know. But the professionally tabulated list doing the rounds had several well known names, many of them affluent.
We all know that influence peddling is a fine art that is widely indulged in this country. Nobody did or could complain about front-line health workers, armed forces and police personnel etc. being accorded priority. But senior health official have confirmed that there had been attempts to pressure officials. There have been people armed with numbers who had gone to various vaccination points expecting favours. But those of them we spoke to said that they had to wait hours on line though they were not forthcoming about the origin on the numbers they carried. All that suggests that not everything has been happening above board; but that’s something that we are well used to in this so-called independent, sovereign, democratic, socialist republic of ours.
However that be, there is one area that urgently requires clarification and that relates to age-priority. Different things have been said at different times. The College of Community Physicians had noted that the vaccine prioritization of of the Ministry of Health had deviated from the original plan. Targeting the 30 – 60 age group “had been implemented in a few selected communities and this is a clear deviation from the scientifically agreed prioritization statement in the National Vaccine Deployment Plan.” There has been an explanation that the decision to vaccinate those between 30 and 59 was due to high transmission rate within this age group.
What is necessary is to clear the air on this matter. Obviously communications on this drive is far from satisfactory. People must know what’s what and that part of the act must be urgently put right. General Shavendra Silva who heads the National Operations Center on Covid has said that over 175,000 frontline workers and over 100,000 in high risk areas in the Western Province have been already inoculated. There’s a lot more distance to cover in this province alone, but doing that would mean significantly reducing the national risk. A regular contributor has in an article in this newspaper made a very complimentary reference to his personal experience at Dehiwela. That’s a clear demonstration of the fact that regardless of our penchant of criticizing most things Lankan, there is much that we can do and we have the people to do it.
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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