Editorial
Mahinda’s comeback
Monday 10th August, 2020
Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was sworn in as the Prime Minister again, yesterday. Mahinda’s dramatic comeback, five years after his downfall, reminds us of the Oscar-winning, Hollywood super flick, The Revenant. In January 2015, he was left for politically dead upon being beaten by a dark horse in the presidential race. His rivals celebrated his defenestration, as it were, bragging that they had hung (not hanged) him on a window of his Tangalle residence, where he climbed to a windowsill to address a crowd of supporters after his defeat. Many of his trusted lieutenants deserted him and joined the yahapalana government for political expediency and/or for fear of being arrested for their past misdeeds. Mahinda was determined to make a comeback.
Mahinda’s political journey full of twists and turns and trials and tribulations has been a fascinating one. He first became an MP in 1970 and lost his seat in 1977. He re-entered Parliament in 1989 and went on to become the Opposition Leader in 2001 and Prime Minister in 2004 before being elected the President in 2005. After his defeat in 2015, he became an MP again and subsequently the Opposition Leader and the Prime Minister in quick succession.
The 19th Amendment was introduced to curtail the executive powers of President Maithripala Sirisena and strengthen the position of the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. It has, in fact, put the Executive President in a constitutional straitjacket; he cannot even hold a ministerial post despite being the head of the Cabinet and the government. Ironically, Wickremesinghe, who became the de facto head of state through constitutional manipulations, has lost his parliamentary seat, and PM Rajapaksa, whom the architects of the 19th Amendment sought to banish from politics by introducing a presidential term limit, is today more powerful than the President to all intents and purposes.
Having defeated Mahinda in the presidential race with the help of the UNP, President Sirisena queered the pitch for him when he tried to enter Parliament as the Prime Minister in 2015. Sirisena also prevented Mahinda from becoming the Opposition Leader, initially. The former, however, began playing his cards well after mid-2018; he pulled out of the UNP-led government and sided with Mahinda. Today, Sirisena is under Mahinda again!
What really worked for the SLPP was the Mahinda-Gotabaya combination. They, however, would not have been able to turn the tables on their political opponents without the backing of their young brother Basil, who was instrumental in founding the SLPP, of which he is the chief strategist.
It was the Treasury bond scams in 2015 and 2016 that sealed the fate of the UNP-led yahapalana government and made Mahinda’s rise in politics easy. The Committee on Public Enterprises, headed by JVP MP Sunil Handunnetti went out of its way to omit the name of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe from its report, and the presidential bond probe commission did likewise. But we argued, in this space, that the case against those responsible for the biggest ever financial crime in the country would be heard in the people’s court, and the public would punish the perpetrators. Most of those who tried to cover up the bond scams and defended former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran have been rejected by the people at the recently-concluded general election. Ranil, Ravi Karunanayake, Ajith P. Perera, Akila Viraj Kariyawasam and Sujeewa Senasinghe are among them. The JVP, which was seen to be cohabiting with the UNP, has lost three out of its six seats in the last Parliament.
It is being argued in some quarters that the UNP’s split made the general election a walk in the park for the SLPP. But one may argue that if Sajith Premadasa and his followers had contested on the UNP ticket under Wickremesinghe’s leadership, they would not have been able to obtain 55 seats; the Sajith faction managed to secure those seats because it had left the UNP, which is having the millstone of bond scams around its neck. The Easter Sunday carnage came as a double whammy for the UNP. President Sirisena was also blamed for neglecting national security and ignoring intelligence warnings of the terror attacks, but he avoided defeat by throwing in his lot with the SLPP.
The new government is not without contradictions. Gotabaya does not suffer fools gladly; Mahinda does. The former stands for a radical change, but most members of the SLPP parliamentary group headed by the PM do not. Those who ruined the previous Rajapaksa government have crawled out of the woodwork. Above all, coalition politics are always problematic. This time around, the Rajapaksa government will not be able to give ministerial posts to all ambitious elements within its ranks to appease them.
Had any other party captured power in Parliament, we would have had the President and the Prime Minister fighting and conspiring to bring down each other. A similar situation would have arisen even if anyone other than a member of the Rajapaksa family had become the Prime Minister from the SLPP. One can only hope that the two brothers will cooperate without succumbing to pressure from the competing power centres within the government camp.
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.
US sports envoys to Lanka to champion youth development
Rahuman questions sudden cancellation of leave of CEB employees
