Editorial
Loan ecstasy and harsh reality
Friday 2nd September, 2022
The government is cock-a-hoop that it has been able to reach a staff-level agreement with the IMF for a 2.9-billion-dollar loan to be released over a period of four years. Something is certainly better than nothing, but Sri Lanka needs much more to be able to straighten up its ailing economy. Most of all, it has to get its macroeconomic fundamentals right while curtailing waste and corruption.
While the government is crowing about its agreement with the IMF, it is coming under increasing pressure to hold a snap general election. This time around, the call for early polls has come from no less a person than SLPP Chairman, Prof. G. L. Peiris, who has voted with his feet together with a group of ruling party MPs. The SLPP is now like a temple whose head priest has disrobed himself! Could there be a worse indictment of a ruling party than its Chairman leaving it, sitting in the Opposition and calling for an election? The rebel SLPP MPs maintain that the government has lost its mandate to rule the country.
The SLPP has retained its hold on power despite the resignations of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. SLPP General Secretary Sagara Kariyawasam, MP, has, in a recent television interview, bragged that the SLPP is still governing the country. His argument holds water; the SLPP has a parliamentary majority, which it used to have UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe elected President and appoint MEP leader Dinesh Gunawardena Prime Minister. But what the government is doing is against the SLPP’s election manifestos.
A cursory look at the composition of the government will reveal that the SLPP is without any legitimacy and a moral right to rule the country. The number of SLPP MPs in the government has dropped to about 103, according to the Opposition, and the SLPP is retaining power with the help of other political parties whose policies are diametrically opposed to its. The SLPP would never have been able to secure the support of the voters who made its victories possible at the 2019 presidential election and the 2020 parliamentary polls if they had known that it would seek the TNA’s help in Parliament, appeal for economic assistance from pro-LTTE groups, make Wickremesinghe the President, and privatise state institutions, especially profitable ones.
Above all, those who ruined the country’s foreign currency reserves to the tune of several billions of dollars by defending the rupee in spite of expert advice, refused to ask for IMF assistance, opted for disastrous tax cuts, created a rupee crisis and resorted to excessive money printing, thereby worsening the currency devaluation and inflation, are still in the ruling SLPP. How advisable is it to entrust these elements with the task of managing the much-needed dollars to be received from the IMF? One of the main conditions the IMF has laid down is that a robust state mechanism be set up to fight corruption. The SLPP has become a metaphor for corruption due to its involvement in mega rackets such as the sugar tax scam. So is the UNP, which suffered humiliating electoral losses mainly due to the Treasury bond rackets. Can there be a bigger boost to corruption than the coming together of the SLPP and the UNP as partners in governance!
Meanwhile, Japan has undertaken to help Sri Lanka with external debt restructuring, and all Sri Lankans must be grateful to that country for leaping to their defence despite the current administration’s hostile actions such as the cancellation of the Japanese-funded Light Rail Transit project. The SLPP has also caused an affront to Japan by refusing to conduct a proper investigation into a complaint a Japanese diplomat made against a minister in the current Cabinet. In early July, the then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa asked Minister of Ports, Shipping and Aviation Nimal Siripala de Silva to resign following a complaint that the latter had solicited a bribe from a Japanese company. President Wickremesinghe, true to form, appointed a three-member probe committee, which exonerated de Silva, who has since been reappointed to the Cabinet. That the ad hoc committee would whitewash the tainted minister was a foregone conclusion because he had backed Wickremesinghe to the hilt in the presidential contest in Parliament. It may be recalled that, in 2015, a three-member committee appointed by the then Prime Minister Wickremesinghe to investigate the Treasury bond scams cleared Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran. So much Wickremesinghe’s probe committees!
It is being argued in some quarters that the current situation is not conducive to an election, and Chairman of the Election Commission Nimal Punchihewa has also subscribed to this view, which was widely endorsed a few moons ago because an interim all-party government was apparently on the anvil at the time. But the situation has since changed; the government is not interested in forming an all-party administration, and the SLPP leaders are doing more of what they did at the expense of the economy. Corruption, waste and the abuse of power continue unabated. Government politicians and their cronies are enriching themselves through corrupt petroleum and coal deals while the economy is screaming. What they are doing to the economy in distress is like the rape of a disaster victim. If the people are made to wait until all other issues are sorted out to exercise their franchise, there will be nothing left of the economy or democracy by the time of the next election. A clean break with the corrupt SLPP administration has to be engineered without further delay. An early general election seems to be the only way out whatever the practical difficulties it may entail.
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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