Editorial
Kings, kingmakers, puppets and dangers
Monday 18th July, 2022
The so-called people’s representatives in Parliament have proved that they have neither any sense of shame nor any concern for the hapless public. Instead of sinking their differences and uniting for the sake of the country during its worst-ever crisis, they are jousting for power and positions. The number of presidential hopefuls is increasing ahead of the mini presidential election in Parliament. What these politicians are doing could be likened to a fight among the children of a mother, who is fighting for her life in an ICU, over her jewellery. Shame on them!
The country, however, needs a President, and, therefore, according to the Constitution, an MP will have to be elected to that post soon. There are no dream presidential candidates, and the onus is on Parliament to elect the least undesirable member among the contestants as the President if the country’s slide into anarchy is to be arrested.
One of the main reasons why the UNP was rejected by the people at the 2020 general election was its involvement in the Treasury bond scams. The main culprit, Arjuna Mahendran, who was the Central Bank (CB) Governor at the time, fled the country with the help of the UNP-led yahapalana government, and is a wanted man in Sri Lanka. He must be brought back to stand trial here, and anyone who is a friend of Mahendran and/or facilitated the bond scams and/or Mahendran’s escape must not be elected by Parliament as the next President, for attempts being made to have the former CB Governor on the run extradited will go pear-shaped in such an eventuality. It may be recalled that the young protesters out there in the streets are demanding an end to corruption.
Another reason why the UNP-led yahapalana government fell apart, and the UNP was left without a single elected MP at the last general election was the Easter Sunday terror strikes. So, the next President must not be a person whom the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI), which probed the Easter Sunday attacks, has held responsible for a host of serious lapses that led to the carnage. The final PCoI report clearly states (on page 471), “The Government including President Sirisena and Prime Minister is accountable for the tragedy.” Needless to say, the ‘Government’ also means the members of the yahapalana Cabinet. The Catholics and all concerned people, both there and abroad, are keen to have the PCoI recommendations fully implemented. Parliament must not disappoint them.
The next President must not be a conceited pundit given to micromanagement and arbitrariness. As many as 6.9 million people mistakenly looked up to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the self-styled technocrat, as a maven and voted for him overwhelmingly only to be disillusioned. The country needs an intelligent, moderate President, who is capable of teamwork and is humble enough to heed expert advice and do what needs to be done to save the economy with international assistance, grant relief to the public, and bring order out of chaos.
The people fought hard to get rid of the Rajapaksas, and no room should therefore be left for the disgraced family to keep the next President and the government on a string. The former rulers are desperate to cover their tracks and ensure the safety of their ill-gotten wealth. Therefore, anyone who has the backing of the Basil Rajapaksa faction of the SLPP must not be elected President, for he will be a puppet dependent on the SLPP for his political survival. There has to be a clean break with the last regime, and the next President will have to be someone who was not a member of the Rajapaksa inner circle as well as the post-09 May Cabinet. The Rajapaksas acted like Kings, and now that they have had to make a tactical retreat, they are trying to be kingmakers with a view to making a comeback by installing a puppet President, who will do their bidding and act as a placeholder for a young member of the parasitic family.
The Sri Lankan military excelled in war, defeated terrorism, and has behaved in an exemplary manner amidst the current crisis. But its high-ranking officers in civvy street have blundered by taking up key government positions. Behind almost every failure in this country, since 2019, on the politico-economic front, there has been an ex-military officer, and therefore, a former swordsman should not be elected President.
Above all, the safety of the country’s youth, who are fighting for their legitimate rights and those of others, must figure high on the agenda of Parliament. The next President will have to be a person against whom there are no allegations of human rights violations, corruption, abuse of power, cronyism, dictatorial tendencies, etc. The unfolding events on the political front are unnerving. One has a feeling of déjà vu; the abortive attempt by a JVP-led mob to take over Parliament on 13 July could be considered a foretaste of what is to come; two assault rifles were grabbed from soldiers during the protest. A President acceptable to the public has to be elected by Parliament to defuse tensions and keep anarchists at bay. We also witnessed something frightening on 13 July, when an Air Force chopper flew menacingly low over the Galle Face protesters obviously by way of a warning. There was absolutely no need for such an intimidating manoeuvre. We were reminded of a military crackdown on a JVP-led protest march against the Ranasinghe Premadasa government at Tissamaharama in the late 1980s; attack helicopters strafed the procession, killing a large number of protesters, and a nearby temple was strewn with corpses. Hence, Parliament is duty-bound to ensure that no one who either represents the outfit that misled the youth twice and caused the destruction of thousands of young lives or stands accused of having unleashed barbaric violence in the name of counterterrorism is elected the next President.
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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