Editorial
Elephant in the room gets spotted
Wednesday 7th April, 2021
Never a dull day in Sri Lanka, where controversies crop up so rapidly that nobody can keep track of them. The latest issue is the government’s contention that the removal of Chief Justice (CJ) Mohan Peiris, in January 2015, was unconstitutional. Justice Minister Ali Sabry himself said so in answer to a question raised by a government MP, in Parliament, on Monday. He promised to take remedial action after consulting Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. Why has this issue been catapulted to centre stage all of a sudden?
It is being argued in some quarters that the ruling party propagandists engineer controversies, from time to time, to prevent their opponents from flogging an issue hard and long enough to turn public opinion against the government.
It is a supreme irony that Mahinda Rajapaksa, under whose presidency Dr. Shirani Bandaranayake was removed as CJ in 2013 amidst protests and Mohan Peiris appointed to that post, and Maithripala Sirisena, who used his presidential powers in 2015 to defenestrate Peiris and reinstate Bandaranayake as the CJ, are now together in the SLPP coalition. One may recall that Sirisena, as a senior member of the Rajapaksa Cabinet voted for the impeachment of Dr. Bandaranayake, in Parliament.
Opinion is divided on the removal of CJ Bandaranayake. The Rajapaksa government should have refrained from resorting to such a course of action for the sake of democracy, which is underpinned by the principle of separation of powers. Intoxicated with power, it was no respecter of democracy.
The UNP’s arguments against the impeachment of CJ Bandaranayake were compelling; the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC), which probed her, refused to allow her witnesses and failed to specify what the due process was. Most of all, the UNP said the Rajapaksa government had bungled its impeachment project; the resolution passed in a hurry to impeach the CJ sought and secured parliamentary approval for the appointment of the PSC, which probed her; it did not specifically seek approval for her removal, according to the Order Paper, the then UNP MP Lakshman Kiriella told the House.
But if the impeachment process had been flawed and the removal of CJ Bandaranayake wrong, as argued by the UNP and some legal experts, a proper way to right the wrong would have been for President Sirisena to have Parliament undo what it had done. The yahapalana government, which mustered a two-thirds majority for the 19th Amendment, could have accomplished that task easily. Instead, President Sirisena chose to override Parliament. Sadly, the Bar Association of Sri Lanka egged him on to do what he did, unmindful of the politico-legal consequences of his arbitrary action.
President Sirisena’s line of reasoning was that Dr. Bandaranayake had been removed from office wrongfully in January 2013, and the post of CJ had therefore not fallen vacant. He declared the appointment of Peiris as the CJ null and void ab initio, and reinstated Dr. Bandaranayake, who retired soon afterwards. Sri Lanka had three CJs on three consecutive days—Peiris, Bandaranayake and her successor K. Sripavan!
A person has recently been arrested for posing as a President’s Counsel. But, strangely, the yahapalana government, which claimed that Peiris had functioned as the CJ ‘illegally’ and removed him unceremoniously, stopped short of taking any action against him for having been in that post for two years. If it is true that his appointment was invalid, as Sirisena and the UNP claimed, then it follows therefrom that everything he did as the CJ lacked legality. Peiris drew the CJ’s salary, enjoyed the perks of office, functioned as the Chairman of the Judges’ Institute of Sri Lanka, heard cases, gave judgments and signed vital documents. Why didn’t the yahapalana government take any action against Peiris and/or the person who appointed him CJ? Sirisena and his erstwhile yahapalana chums owe an explanation.
Interestingly, the implication of Justice Minister Sabry’s statement at issue is that Sirisena, as the President, violated the Constitution by removing CJ Peiris. If so, action will have to be taken against Sirisena. The SLPP ought to explain why it is keeping Sirisena within its ranks.
If the current Parliament resolves that the government’s contention that the removal of CJ Peiris, in January 2015, was unconstitutional is valid, then it will follow from such a resolution that the reinstatement of Dr. Bandaranayake as the CJ in January 2015 was not legal, and, worse, doubts may even be cast on the legality of the appointment of her successor as well in that if Peiris had not been removed, his term would not have come to an end in mid-January 2015. It will be interesting to see how legal luminaries look at this issue.
One need not be surprised if the government does not proceed beyond the Justice Minister’s statement on the removal of CJ Peiris. Troubled by many problems including intraparty rivalries and clashes and the prospect of the SLFP breaking away in case of action being taken against Sirisena over his failure in 2019, as the President, to prevent the Easter Sunday attacks, the government obviously does not need another issue to contend with.
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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