Editorial
Govt. backtracks on chemical fertilizer ban
The President and his government has swallowed some nasty stuff of their own making and finally backpedaled on what was proclaimed as an ironclad ban on the import of inorganic fertilizer. The prohibition was announced on April 26 and rescinded seven months later on Nov. 24 this year; but not without tremendous pressure by the scientific/expert lobby and widespread farmer protests. The scientists were given a platform mainly by the print media and they argued their case cogently unlike those who backed the ban. The farmer protests were both angry and near desperate and had extensive television coverage, certainly from one television station. There was no doubt that scientists and people who knew what they were talking about presented a castiron case. Some agriculture bureaucrats quit their jobs in disgust. An agriculture professor from Peradeniya, who held office in various expert committees in the agriculture ministry was sacked, or that was how his removal was described. This academic who was part of the President Gotabaya-led delegation to the recent Glasgow Climate Change COP 26 summit – after his sacking perhaps because he was already in the UK at the time of the announcement – insisted he was not an employee of the agriculture ministry to be sacked from any of its agencies.
Be that as it may, most Lankans will wonder why the president stood tenaciously by the ban, reportedly recommended by Viyathmaga and Eliya, which worked hard for his election when the anger it provoked and the dangers it posed were plainly visible. Given the massive support the Rajapaksa ticket commanded in the rural hinterland, demonstrated most recently at the presidential election of November 2019 and the parliamentary election that followed, why the president did not relent sooner than later is inexplicable. Although that has now happened after months of agitation, it was predictably done in a manner to save what face was possible. No doubt Agriculture Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage, who had to eventually announce the policy reversal, took most of the flak. This though it is common knowledge that it was the president who was pushing the policy and the minister was no more than a loyal acolyte. But it has been remarked upon that demonstrators far preferred to burn effigies of Aluthgamage, who was the easier target, rather than those of the president and the prime minister although that too happened. Was there an element of funk to take on the bigger fish, at least as far as the president was concerned?
Most proponents of re-looking at the blanket prohibition were not opposed to a ‘green’ policy. Rather, they favored going slow on implementation, urging a step-by-step approach over a period of time. This after careful consideration of all factors involved rather than gut reaction. They stressed the blunder of attempting almost overnight imposition. Prime Minister Modi in India took longer than us to back out of his farm laws despite massive resistance. Here as well as there, there was no doubt about a presence of more than an element of political backing for and orchestration of the protests. But the responsible authorities, instead of clinging to an ironclad approach, should have paid due consideration to at least the physical evidence of the effects of blanket bans on both inorganic fertilizer and weedicides and pesticides. There’s no denying that the latter, apart from bad weather, played a part in the fall of vegetable production and consequent sky high prices. The government did itself no credit by attributing motives to opponents of the chemical fertilizer ban. It was alleged that one of them represented interests of fertilizer importers by sitting on the board of an importing company. True, but with the permission of the University employing him. It was also widely hinted that others were in the pay of such companies.
There is also the matter of the widely prevalent trust deficit between the people and the political establishment governing them. Sad but true, most people do not trust politicians regarding them to be corrupt, self-serving and taking decisions in their own personal and political interests disregarding vital national imperatives. But as has been repeatedly pointed out, most recently by the president himself, that the voters as we have often seen, re-elect those they have outright rejected. Then again the question of subsidies arise. The president is on firm record saying that the import of chemical fertilizer will be a private sector monopoly. The government has washed its hands of the business. But he has not explained how privately imported fertilizer is permissible on environmental considerations if government imports are not. He has also made clear there will be no subsidies for chemical fertilizers. The prices of these have hit record highs in the third quarter of 2021 and continued rising in November reaching levels unseen since the global financial crisis.
Our farmers have long enjoyed fertilizer subsidies and would clearly be unable to afford unsubsidized chemical fertilizers. Mr. Sajith Premadasa has made this point already after the government announcement on the import ban being lifted punching in the fact that the present rulers promised not subsidized but free fertilizer pre-election! Apart from the tilt towards organic fertilizers, government will not be able to afford many subsidies in the context of the present economic/forex picture. So there will be no return to square one. Regular columnist Rajan Philips has on this page said that the beginning of the end of the regime has begun but no there does not seem to be a new beginning for the country even if there is a change of government after elections. That seems to be a reasonable conclusion in the current context.
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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