Editorial
Paid leave for striking teachers et al
We run three articles in this issue of our newspaper to which we would like to direct reader attention. The first of these is by regular columnist Sanjeewa Jayaweera who had a long career in the JKH group of companies and now sits on several quoted company boards who advocates severe pruning of our overseas missions. The second is by Franklyn Amarasinghe who long served and headed the Employers’ Federation of Ceylon and later held a senior position with the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva. He was commissioned by the government of Sri Lanka and ILO to make proposals for a dispute settlement process in the public sector. He had also served on many Wages Boards and was a onetime presidential adviser on human relations to the banking sector. Amarasinghe discusses the ongoing teachers strike and some other key issues and makes the point that the striking teachers are on full salary. He points out that it’s a cardinal principle of a strike, as confirmed by an ILO Committee of Experts, that strikers are not paid. This reality has been ignored in the existing confrontation and few people are aware of it. The third article under reference has been written by M.P. Dhanapala, a highly qualified scientists, with 50 years experience in rice research, both at the Batalagoda Rice Research Station he headed and overseas.
Sanjeewa Jayaweera’s father, the late Stanley Jayaweera, was a career diplomat at a time this country had a public service as different to what we are burdened with today as chalk and cheese. The writer who had accompanied his father to several of his overseas postings cogently argues that Sri Lanka, for a country of its size and resources, has way too many expensive overseas missions and it is high time that we closed many of them. Believe it or not, we currently have as many as 54 resident overseas missions worldwide. Compared to this, resource rich Singapore has just 36. Many of the countries where we have a presence are not represented here.
While there has been a long existent necessity for us to cut down in this regard, we have on the contrary been been opening new ones including one in the Seychelles! There is no need to labor the point that exorbitant and wasteful expenditure in this regard, as in almost everything we do, has everything to do with expediency and nothing to do with prudent and tight management desperately desired in our current predicament. The number of political and other ‘catchers’ posted overseas over the years for reasons other than necessity is too well known to bear repetition. There is no escaping the reality that our overseas missions and their representation has for too long been a massive pork barrel and the sooner we begin correcting this situation, the better for the country and its people. This years budget estimates published a figure of Rs. 11 billion (USD 58 million) expenditure to sustain this extravagance. That was at Rs. 190 to the U.S. dollar. But with the exchange rate well ahead of Rs. 200 to the dollar, that figure will zoom higher.
People are today being made to tighten their belts to an unbearable extent. Daily wage earners are in a terrible predicament not knowing where the next meal is coming from. But splurges in government expenditure continue unabated and the political class remain pampered. It was recently revealed that more monitoring MPs are to be appointed. One such worthy of the past was convicted of murder, released on a presidential pardon and appointed to a cushy state sector jobs. Making token contributions of a month’s pay to the exchequer, while living in government housing, riding official vehicles and enjoying sumptuous subsidized meals does not count for much in this context. Another of our columnists today has commented that the political class, regardless of whether its members are in government or opposition, is universally hated. Some of our best and brightest have left the country and others are looking for a way out.
Citing chapter and verse, the writer of the third article titled “Are we making rational decisions in the rice sector?” answers his own question with a resounding ‘No.’ Pointing out that the current status of rice production in the country was achieved through what he has called “mutual development of related technologies” for more than a century, he says: “It is not a matter to be ruled-out by the so-called expert advisors with one stroke of a pen; as a result of transition to nontoxic organic rice cultivation, the loss incurred in national rice production will be colossal. This is not the time to learn organic rice cultivation with text book experience of experts with no field experimental evidence, he says. He warns that given the covid pandemic and other natural calamities like drought and floods will adversely affect global rice production and further threaten our national food security.
Reducing our overseas diplomatic missions is not the only way of reducing government expenditure. Everybody knows that government money is spent by the political and bureaucratic class in a fashion quite different to how they spend money coming out of their own pockets. At least a halt has been called to further recruitment to an already bloated public sector. There are countless more ways to effect savings in public expenditure and all these must be pursued with the necessary political will. Junketing at public expense is not a way of achieving these objectives. How big a retinue accompanied the PM and foreign minister to Bologna? We are sure that many world leaders will be there for the G20 Interfaith meeting, where PM Rajapaksa will be physically present, virtually. If anybody thought being in Italy will mean an audience with the Pope, that has proved grievously wrong. Yet the taxpayer here will have to cough out yet another pretty penny on this account.
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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