Editorial
Gota’s address to the nation
The point has been made that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in his address to the nation last Thursday had not only argued the case for his defence over the dire predicament now confronting the country, but had also left a great deal unsaid. We begin this comment complimenting the president on the tone and tenor of his delivery. As is usual with him, he made his pre-recorded address without oratorical flourishes or rhetoric, obviously reading from a teleprompter, and also not taking cheap jibes at his opponents as most politicians are wont to do. He clearly said that he is very well aware of the present suffering of the people but these problems were not of his making. As President Rajapaksa has eyes to see and ears to hear, he cannot be unaware of what people are going through today. Right now we at a juncture widely accepted as being among the worst periods in our post-independence history. These feelings are freely articulated at numerous protest rallies and queues for almost impossible-to-get essentials and are beamed to millions of homes countrywide in the evening television news bulletins.
What hit many viewers of this address was that not a word was said about the president’s fertilizer misadventure that created chaos in the agriculture sector. It disrupted production and created massive shortages of previously available essentials including home grown rice, vegetables and fruit. The president conveniently chose to ignore all this, a matter which is a major contributor to the present impasse rooted in the forex crisis the country is now fighting. There was also his remark that those who contributed to creating the problems are criticizing the government before the people today. This, perhaps was the only overt criticism of the opposition in his speech aimed at and those who served the previous Yahapalana administration. It could not be targeting the JVP which too is in the vanguard of the protests. Certainly Yahapalana’s acts of omission and commission during its tenure, notably the bond scam, did contribute to the present mess but the present lot has done worse
The president must not forget that his brother, Mahinda, who unsuccessfully sought a third term in 2015 after engineering defections for a two thirds majority to abolish the constitutionally mandated term limit on the presidency, brazenly colluded with Yahapalana leader Mathiripala Sirisena to unlawfully seize the prime ministry from Ranil Wickremesinghe. Sirisena and his SLFP were part of the winning coalition at the last parliamentary election although they are now distancing themselves from the ruling party which enabled most of them to win their seats.
Who blasted the country’s precious resources in vanity projects like the not yet commissioned Lotus Tower, the far from viable Mattala International Airport, and other projects at Hambantota like the stadium, the international convention centre, what was claimed to be the only dry zone botanical garden and much more? The Hambantota port is now under long lease to the Chinese to overcome debt servicing and repayment problems. Then there was the disaster of getting rid of the Emirates Airline profitably managing the national carrier under a joint venture over a matter of personal pique and the airline has returned to losses. Some of these vanity projects were shamelessly bestowed the name of a living Rajapaksa.
While there is no gainsaying that the highway construction initiated by the previous Rajapaksa regime vastly improved connectivity in the country, there are questions on whether many of them were rated high enough on the national priority list to rate turboprop implementation at great cost. Did we for instance need a six lane highway to Hambantota with the elaborate Siribopura intersection linking it to the local road network? We cannot overlook pervasive suspicion that road building entails massive kickbacks into political pockets.
Then there was Gota’s assertion that he entered politics at the invitation the people. That was what Winston Churchill once called a “terminological inexactitude.” He was undoubtedly invited by the Rajapaksa family to run for president to succeed his brother who wasn’t entitled to run for a third term thanks to the 19th Amendment. He gave up his U.S. citizenship with that objective. Although 6.9 million voted for him, grateful for the major role he played in the war victory, and trusting his promises of “vistas of prosperity and splendor”, they in no way invited him to seek the presidency. That was his own and his family’s choice. The majority were happy that he won comfortably but many of them are now publicly ruing how they voted and saying so without mincing their words. That has hitherto not happened on the present scale when people publicly express their feelings towards their rulers in the harshest terms. But that, of course, can be marked a plus for the regime not interfering with free speech.
Nobody would have expected a mea culpa address to the nation from an incumbent president and we did not get it. People remember that President J.R. Jayewardene in 1983 did not utter a word of apology to the Tamils who were set upon by savage Sinhala mobs while law enforcers idly stood by earning his regime a massive blackmark at home and abroad. President GR in his address last week called for the cooperation of all to overcome the massive problems besetting the country. The generally non-abrasive nature of his address has set the stage favorably for achieving a positive outcome from that effort. But for that much else must be done as Mr. Karu Jayasuriya said at Anuradhapura last week. But his proposal that 20A be repealed as a sign of good faith is too much to expect. So also the demand of Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa’s that a presidential election be held and the government handed to a ‘can do’ SJB. Dr. Nihal Jayawickrema has forensically demonstrated that this is unattainable while columnist Rajan Philips has on this page branded it as “vacuous bluster.”
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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