Grinding arrogance

Saturday 2nd October, 2021

The government has finally bitten the bullet and issued a new Gazette cancelling the previous one which stipulated maximum retail prices (MRPs) for rice. Whoever would have thought a powerful regime with a two-thirds majority in Parliament and former battle-hardened frontline combat officers in key positions would ever suffer such humiliation at the hands of a few businessmen from Polonnaruwa?

Dudley Sirisena has done, as a rice miller, what his elder brother Maithripala failed to do as the Executive President; he has humbled the Rajapaksas! After securing the presidency, in 2015, Maithripala did everything in his power to tame the Rajapaksa family; the yahapalana government, under his leadership, went to the extent of having some members of the Rajapaksa family probed, remanded and prosecuted, but to no avail. Maithripala failed in his endeavour in spite of being assisted by the UNP, a section of the SLFP, the TNA, the SLMC, the western bloc and many others. The Rajapaksas turned the tables on him and the UNP-led government and captured power again. Today, Maithripala is only an ordinary MP playing second fiddle to the Rajapaksas. But his sibling, Dudley, with the help of only a few millers, has brought the Rajapaksa government to its knees. This is no mean achievement for a miller from Polonnaruwa.

When the government declared Emergency regulations, a few weeks ago, and ordered raids to trace and seize hoarded paddy and rice, after issuing a Gazette announcing the MRPs for rice, the Millers’ Mafia retaliated by starving the market. The Consumer Affairs Authority did its darnedest to make rice available, but in vain. The powerful millers held out against the government, which, unable to have its order carried out, ran around like a headless chicken for a while, threatening to import rice, before conceding defeat to the Millers’ Mafia to all intents and purposes. Now, rice is freely available but at prices determined by the powerful millers.

Rubbing salt into the wound, a triumphant Dudley went so far as to announce the MRPs for paddy, at a media briefing, which is reported to have attracted as many hits as President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s recent address to the United Nations General Assembly! Curiously, an otherwise pugnacious government has baulked at reacting.

How the government heroes including Agriculture Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage, who embarked on a mission to defeat the Millers’ Mafia and did a lot tilting at rice mills, may have felt on watching Dudley on television, is anybody’s guess. They are not sighted in public these days.

Farmers were at a disadvantage when they had to sell their paddy at prices stipulated by the government. They said they could have disposed of their produce at much higher prices but for the government intervention. The Millers’ Mafia purchased paddy at lower prices at the expense of the farmer, thanks to the government, and is selling rice at higher prices at the expense of the consumer. They have got the best of both worlds! Has anyone other than the unscrupulous millers stood to gain? What is playing out seems to be a bigger racket than the Sathosa garlic scandal. (Where is the Opposition?)

If Prabhakaran knew the victory of the Millers’ Mafia he would regret that he ever resumed hostilities over a mini reservoir by closing a sluice gate, and think he would have been able to tame the Rajapaksa government if he, too, had set up a rice mill in Polonnaruwa instead of fighting a war. One only hopes the various Mafias in other sectors will not emulate the Polonnaruwa millers.

It is now patently clear that the government is not equal to the task of taming a cartel of millers, and a local cooking gas company which has left its customers high and dry. How bad the situation will be in case of a dispute between Sri Lanka and New Fortress, a US energy firm, which has been allowed to have the monopoly over the LNG supply to power plants here, is not difficult to imagine.