Editorial
Inevitable blackouts on the way
As readers know, auctioneers conclude a sale saying “going, going, gone!” with a hammer blow to signal that the final bid has been accepted and whatever’s on offer is sold. We may well adapt the analogy to the impending power cut hanging over our collective necks like a Sword of Damocles with “coming, coming, came!” Thankfully it has not yet come, but the fuel supply situation is threatening thermal electricity generation as the dry season has set in after a year of good rainfall, nay floods, and replenishment of the hydro power generating reservoirs cannot be expected until the next monsoon breaks. So it’s a case of waiting for the sword to fall as the tightrope walk continues with the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) unable to find the dollars to pay for its fuel and the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) demanding hard currency to keep even a meager supply of diesel or furnace oil going to power thermal generation.
Energy Minister Udaya Gammanpila and Power Minister Gamini Lokuge are at each other’s throats in a war of words where both sides are right. CPC can’t procure supplies without the hard currency that is demanded by its suppliers. The CEB has no dollars and an economy wracked by the worst ever foreign exchange crisis that anybody can remember is in no position to find them. That apart, it is already neck deep in debt to the tune of billions to the CPC for past supplies. Kaata kiyannada (whom to tell?) as the pithy Sinhala idiom goes. We have previously said in this space that Gammanpila is right in his assertion that it is better to suffer 90-minute power cuts daily now rather than endure much longer blackouts down the road. But the powers-that-be, as always, know better and the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) has now got into the act and is determining, almost on a daily basis, whether the CEB has enough fuel to make do, and to continue at least for now without load shedding. The last edict was issued on Thursday with PUCSL decreeing that as power demand falls over weekends, the CEB can manage to continue as is till Monday when another assessment will be made.
So the merry merry-go-round keeps spinning and a government, with its back to the wall with inflation at a historic high and the rupee at a historic low, desperately trying to keep the power supply going in what seems to be a futile effort at preventing further damage to its already plummeted reputation. There is no escaping the fact that its popularity is deeper in the dumps than that of any predecessor despite being popularly elected only two years ago. No doubt Covid-19 is responsible for much of the woes the country is grappling with, but not all of them as repeatedly pointed out by both experts and drawing room and kopi kadey pundits. Regular contributor Sanjeewa Jayaweera has, in a commonsense article we run in this issue of our newspaper, focused on the many reasons of why we are in the present predicament. The situation is grim and the reality harsh. There is neither a quick or cheap fix nor any way of escaping the reality. Threadbare as the cliché is, we have to grasp the nettle with, as always, the taxpayer picking up the tab.
As Jayaweera has pointed out, the CEB does not collect its dues in dollars. Let alone dollars, its overdue bills are now running at over rupees 45 billion and government agencies/institutions not exposed to disconnection like common or garden mortals are among the biggest culprits of non-payment. Television viewers are treated to a nightly diatribe from opposition politicians and trade unionists berating the government for what has already gone wrong and gloomily forecasting that worse is to follow. Not that the people don’t know that already. As is the norm in this so-called democratic socialist republic of ours, strikes are being freely threatened even by those who should know better like CEB engineers. These worthies have just succeeded in having the very recent appointment of a new acting general manager reversed. CEB Chairman MNC Ferdinando, a former Secretary to the Ministry of Power and Energy, recalled from Australia to head the Electricity Board has resigned pleading “personal reasons.” The public will judge how true that is given that the now canceled acting appointment would not have been made without clearance from the top. The people are ot fools and have been recently treated to the spectacle of the Chairman of Litro Gas suddenly removed at the behest of the finance minister reappointed the same day on a presidential order! Who can deny that this country is not treated to first rate entertainment by its leaders.
Electricity tariffs have not been revised since 2014 and it is claimed that consumers are charged Rs. 16 per unit when the cost of generation runs at Rs. 24. Whether this is accurate, though claimed by an expert at a recent TV talk show, we don’t know. There are various tariffs, charged on a sliding scale, with upper-end consumers paying more for high consumption with the less affluent domestic users protected by a lower charge. Then there are different tariffs for industrial users and (at least once-upon-a-time for religious institutions). The relevant figure should be the average charge per unit and whether the above figure is average or not is uncertain. What we do know is that generation cost includes the notorious corruption within the CEB, no doubt interest on its staggering debt, transmission leaks and what have you. But government is understandably hesitant about imposing new loads upon already burdened people who wouldn’t care about long-term implications if they are spared instant rate hikes.
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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