Editorial
May Day signals
May Day falling last week, as is very well known, has long lost its Labour Day intent and flavour certainly in this country, degenerating into the political carnival all Lankans are familiar with. With a presidential election due later this year, predictably the various contending parties made the occasion one of trying to demonstrate their pre-poll strength by transporting their supporters by bus and train for the various rallies organized in Colombo. This, of course, has always been done, but the incentive to make the show bigger was more so last Wednesday. While it was easy enough to see that a great deal of money had been spent for this purpose, it was less easy to judge who put up the biggest show although there were many claimants for that achievement.
The hurrah boys of some of the contenders for the presidency had promised all kinds of revelations on May Day. But very little surfaced with a single, little known MP from the Moneragala district switching allegiance from the SLPP to the UNP. There was also the already stale news that Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe will be the SLFP candidate for the presidential crown. We all know he will not wear it, at least the next time round, but former President Maithripala Sirisena announced his candidature at the SLFP’s muted May Day show at Gampaha.
What Rajapakshe’s intentions are, we don’t know. But the comedy continues and we can easily guess that he’s probably looking at the next parliamentary election rather than the presidency at least at this moment – whatever may happen in the future. He’s been serving many masters since his entry from the legal profession into parliament in 2004 on the national list of the SLFP and later by election. He’s thereafter held several cabinet ministries and chairmanship/membership of different parliamentary oversight committees. He’s now been named acting chairman of the SLFP but since restrained from assuming that position by the courts. The determination of an appeal on that judgment is pending.
The UNP which has been claiming many SJB defections to be announced on May Day pulled in a single minnow from back of beyond, not from the SJB but from the SLPP, into its ranks. Party hacks didn’t bother to even talk about it, leave alone make any noise. But the Wickremesinghe cheering squad keeps saying there are several months to go before the big election and are asking the country to await developments. So also the SLPP, out of the woodwork since the aragalaya, which while repeating they will field a candidate at the presidential poll remains shy of revealing that worthy’s identity. Though his father has said that Namal Rajapaksa has more time, the latter continues to champ at the bit.
One small clue from the SLPP May Day platform was the presence of billionaire businessman Dhammika Perera. Clad in his trademark blue suit and red tie, he looked a fish out of water among the political hoi polloi. Although he had barely spoken in parliament since he succeeded Basil Rajapaksa in an SLPP national list seat and briefly held cabinet office, his DP Education initiative offering free IT distance education remains alive and kicking. Observers believe this signals that Perera is not yet old hat as far as his presidential ambitions are concerned.
The anticipated May Day announcement of his own candidature by the president did not come to pass, some say to the disappointment of the Nimal Lanza-led group of SLPPers waiting to toss their hats into the Wickremesinghe ring. This made them keep off the UNP rally this May Day until the candidature is formally announced by the real McCoy rather than his acolytes. There was no clue last week on why Wickremesinghe chose to remain personally silent of his candidature although there are a multitude of signals that he plans to run. The latest among these was the president’s announcement on the CWCs (Ceylon Workers Congress) Kotagala May Day platform of the long promised Rs. 1,700 daily wage for plantation workers.
Newspaper correspondents resorted this May Day to identifying who was present where, and who was not at particular events to read the political barometer. Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka was present at the SJB rally which he left early probably because he was not given a speech. Observers attribute this to the ongoing squabble between Fonseka and SJB leader Sajith Premadasa.
In May Days of long ago when the old left, affiliated to many trade union federations, was alive and kicking, newspaper correspondents resorted to the not very accurate practice of timing which procession (often called demonstration) took the longest time to pass a given point. Given the pace of the marching and spacing between different sections of the processions, it is doubtful whether this was a reasonably accurate measuring device. But it was often practiced.
Galle Face green was then the most preferred venue, often hogged by whoever was in office, but public meeting are no longer permitted there. Many of this year’s May Day events were confined to the streets with the SLPP choosing the more open Campbell Park – and making much of it – while others chose smaller open spaces and the streets where participants were packed into narrow confined spaces with obvious attempts to outdo each other in terms of crowd show. Mahinda Rajapaksa projected his party as the kingmaker in this year’s presidential contest claiming that nobody could win without their support. The JVP/NPP had four rallies, big ones in Colombo and Matara, one in Anuradhapura and the smallest in Jaffna.
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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