Editorial
Get TUs around table
Thursday 30th March, 2023
Long lines of vehicles began to form near filling stations on Wednesday owing to a continuous strike launched by the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) trade unions, but the government managed to bring the situation under control and buy time by announcing a fuel price reduction with effect from midnight yesterday; many people decided to wait until today to avail themselves of the weekly fuel quota. The problem however is likely to persist unless the government succeeds in restoring fuel supplies preferably by negotiating with the warring trade unions.
Petroleum workers have downed tools over what they call a sinister move to privatise the CPC. The government is determined to go ahead with its restructuring programme, which is widely considered a euphemism for divestiture, while insisting that the trade unions’ claim is baseless. The Cabinet has already decided to allow three foreign companies to import, store, distribute and retail petroleum products for a period of 20 years. The CPC’s monopoly is fast becoming a thing of the past.
The CPC unions are demanding that the government abandon its restructuring plan, which is an IMF condition. The government is resorting to strong-arm tactics to crush the strike. It has called in the police and the military and declared the CPC premises out of bounds for the striking unions. Saman Rathnapriya, Director General of Trade Unions to President Ranil Wickremesinghe, has taken on the striking unions, which claim that the CPC is making huge profits and therefore must not be privatised. He is supposed to negotiate with trade unions and bring about rapprochement, but he has, in his wisdom, chosen to ride roughshod over them. Interestingly, in trying to pooh-pooh the claim that the CPC is a profit-making venture, Rathnapriya has said it is earning profits by jacking up the prices of its products.
It is popularly said in this country that even if one’s mouth lies, one’s tongue doesn’t. Rathnapriya has admitted, albeit unwittingly, that the government keeps fuel prices unreasonably high to maximise profit while the public is struggling to make ends meet! This exploitative policy is against the founding principles of the CPC, which was set up to serve the interests of the public. The CPC mission statement says, inter alia, that it strives ‘to be a market leader by procuring and supplying petroleum and related products at competitive prices’. One of the main allegations against all multinationals is that they are bent on profit maximisation at the expense of their customers. Sadly, the ‘homegrown’ CPC has failed to be different if the unconscionably high prices of its products are any indication. Perhaps, this is the reason why the petroleum sector trade unions have not succeeded in drumming up enough public support for their struggle. This however does not mean that the people approve of the haphazard disposal of state assets.
There are arguments for and against the restructuring of the CPC. The proponents thereof claim that if the petroleum market is made competitive with more companies being allowed to enter it, benefits will accrue to consumers from competition. But the problem is that there is no such thing as perfect competition in this world; moneybags collude to protect their own interests at the expense of consumers. The advocates of dirigisme or state monopoly over products and services argue that the public benefits from the state involvement in the provision of essential commodities and services, and the CPC must retain its monopolistic status to ensure the country’s energy sovereignty, which is an integral part of national security. If multinationals are allowed to dominate power and energy sectors, they will be able to hold the country to ransom, the critics of the government’s restructuring programme have warned. These arguments are tenable to some extent, but the fact remains that all state-owned enterprises (SOEs), save a few, have become huge liabilities that provide sinecures to the supporters of the government in power and bleed the state coffers dry. Most of these outfits have outlived their purpose and become anachronisms. It is being claimed in some quarters that they need to be restructured, but the baby must not be thrown out with the bathwater. Equally, questions are being raised about the bona fides of some of the foreign companies that are planning to enter the local petroleum market. They are thought to be fronts for some local politicians and their kith and kin. One can only hope that the government will try to clear these doubts and suspicions.
The supporters of the government’s divestiture project argue that when D. S. Senanayake was the Prime Minister, there were no SOEs as such, but the country was prosperous. This is a cleverly masked non sequitur. It was a different era. The British had just left and there were surplus funds; more importantly, waste and corruption were unheard of, and political leaders were statespersons driven by altruism. The country achieved progress in those days mostly because it was free from the likes of the present-day politicians, and its wealth was safe; the wealthy who took to politics ran the risk of being reduced to penury unlike today.
Politicians of every hue and their cronies have ruined the SOEs, which are in the red. Now, they are trying to blame these outfits for the country’s economic woes in a bid to justify the ongoing fire sale of state ventures, some of which are profitable and have even helped lessen the state’s dependence on taxes to a considerable extent much to the benefit of the public.
The government must not try to bulldoze its way through. It must negotiate with the striking CPC unions and try to arrive at a compromise formula. After all, its leaders have a history of negotiating with even the LTTE despite the latter’s savage terror campaign to divide the country, don’t they?
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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