Govt. vs Govt.

Monday 14th June, 2021

It never rains but it pours. There is no end in sight to the various shocks the public frequently receives from the government. The Covid-19 pandemic is ripping through the country, destroying scores of lives daily. The inoculation programme is moving at a tardy pace as there is no steady supply of vaccines. Travel restrictions are causing hardships to the public and hurting the economy badly but have not yielded the desired results. The poor are asking for food and farmers fertiliser. Atop all these have come fuel price increases, which are bound to send the cost of living into the stratosphere.

Bakery owners have already decided to increase the prices of certain products. Private bus owners, cab operators and the trishaw fraternity will follow suit, and life will become even more unbearable to most people.

The fuel price hikes have made the ruling SLPP coalition look like MV X-Press Pearl, which had a nitric acid leak on board and was burnt out. A caustic remark made by SLPP General Secretary Sagara Kariyawasam has triggered an explosion aboard the ship of government, as it were. No sooner had Minster of Energy Udaya Gammanpila announced the fuel price increases, claiming that the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) was incurring heavy losses due to the world market oil price increases than Kariyawasam fired from the hip; he issued a stinging media statement flaying Gammanpila, and demanding to know whether the price hikes were aimed at bringing the government leaders into disrepute; he even asked Gammanpila to resign.

Kariyawasam sought to have the public believe that Gammanpila had done something high-handed. But we reported a few days ago that the government was planning fuel price increases. However, if one goes by the SLPP General Secretary’s statement, then one may wonder if Gammanpila is so powerful in the government as to revise fuel prices himself? But the truth is otherwise. The Energy Minister alone cannot jack up fuel prices or bring them down without the consent of the President and the Prime Minister. The Cabinet Sub-Committee on Cost of Living also has a say in such matters.

Gammanpila struck back yesterday; he insisted that he had only announced a government decision, and the uncomplimentary remarks Kariyawasam had made in the aforesaid statement applied to both President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa! Several ministers have also sought to justify the oil price increases. Curiouser and curiouser! Is it that they are also party to Gammanpila’s ‘conspiracy’ to make the government leaders unpopular?

If the SLPP really thinks Minister Gammanpila alone is responsible for the fuel price hikes, then there is a simple remedy. The government can swiftly undo what he has done. If it thinks it can get away with the price hikes at issue by laying the blame for it at Gammanpila’s door, it is mistaken.

The SLPP General Secretary’s statement flaying Gammanpila is proof of the ruling coalition’s internal problems. The SLPP is apparently doing to its coalition partners what the SLFP, in its wisdom, did to its United Front allies in mid-1970s. Some SLPP leaders are apparently trying to settle political scores with Gammanpila, who is critical of them. A few moons ago, Kariyawasam took on Minister Wimal Weerawansa, who has antagonised some SLPP grandees.

It was only the other day that the government MPs gloated over the SJB’s internal problems and tried to embarrass the Opposition, in Parliament. They expect UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe’s appointment as a National List MP to create a division in the SJB. But the fact remains that the SLPP, which is magnifying others’ problems, is far from united; and a scenario similar to what we witnessed towards the latter stages of the previous Rajapaksa government in 2014 seems to be playing out.

The SLPP seems to think the masses are asses. Otherwise, it will not try to dupe the public into believing that the government had no hand in the fuel price hikes, and Gammanpila arbitrarily effected them unbeknownst to his bosses. Now that it has come to light that the decision to jack up fuel prices was taken by the Cabinet, the entire government must resign in keeping with the SLPP General Secretary’s argument that anyone responsible for placing another economic burden on the pandemic-hit people has to go.