Editorial
Plea bargain helps Jaliya to get off lightly
Rogue ambassador Jaliya Wickramasuriya, first cousin of Mahinda, Gotabaya, Basil and Chamal Rajapaksa, has got off lightly in a Washington court where he, on a plea bargain, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and escaped with a fine of USD 5,000 and five years probation. The very light sentence was because he had pleaded guilty to the charge and returned the money he had defrauded from the Sri Lanka taxpayer in purchasing a new building for Colombo’s Embassy in a posh Washington neighborhood very close to where Bill and Hillary Clinton live.
The Politico magazine, in an article we reproduce in today’s issue of this newspaper reported that eight spectators were present when Judge Tanya Chutkan handed down the sentence saying: “Even though this was not millions of dollars, it represents a serious theft from the people, and by a person they entrusted to represent their interests in the capital of the most powerful country in the world.” On hearing these words, the accused is reported to have said with a break in his voice, “I am sorry.”
We would beg to differ with the judge on one point. It was not the people of this country who appointed Wickramasuriya to represent their interests in Washington. It was his cousin Mahinda Rajapaksa. Worse, even after Wickramasuriya had been caught with his hands in the till and made to return the money he had stolen, an effort was made to send him as High Commissioner to Canada. Fortunately, Colombo was unable to win Ottawa’s Agrément for his accreditation. The Canadians didn’t say ‘no.’ Very diplomatically they said nothing as they did in the case of former Defence Secretary Chandrananda de Silva who too failed to get a posting to Ottawa. There was also a failed attempt to invoke diplomatic immunity in Wickramasuriya’s case.
De Silva, of course, was no crook. But he had been Defence Secretary during the civil war and the strong presence of a Tamil diaspora in Toronto was responsible for the denial of Agrément. However, strangely, that did not apply to Gen. Tissa Weeratunga, a former army commander, who served a term as high commissioner in Ottawa. Gen. Weeratunga had been sent to Jaffna by President J.R. Jayewardene with explicit orders to finish off the Tiger menace in the early days when the LTTE was first baring its fangs. Most likely, the Tamil diaspora in Canada then was not as numerous or as influential as they later became.
When Wickramasuriya’s shameful conduct first became public, MR is reported to have said “This fellow has rubbed soot on my face.” Despite that he wanted to send him to Canada after the fraud had been bared and the culprit had admitted the crime by returning the loot. A storekeeper at Merril. J. Fernando’s Dilmah group, Wickramasuriya on being named ambassador published a brochure on himself falsely claiming he had been trained as a tea taster by Fernando. He even had the brass to give Fernando a copy of this publication. The disgraced ambassador’s only claim to the appointment was that he ran a tea import business in the U.S. and had lived there for some time.
There was also a similar appointment of another Rajapaksa cousin, Udyanga Weeratunga, who served as ambassador in Russia. Apart from the kinship, his one qualification would probably have been that he had been living in what was the former USSR and spoke the language. A businessman, he was accused by the Ukrainian government of arms sales to the LTTE. At a point of time his diplomatic passport was withdrawn by the Colombo government which was investigating the arms sales allegations.
An Interpol warrant for his arrest was requested by the Financial Crimes Investigations Division, but not received in 2016 when the Yahapalana government was in office. As many as 16 of his bank accounts were suspended by the courts in 2017. His name was mentioned over questionable purchases of MIG-27 jet aircraft during the war and his whereabouts were unknown during a period. But he’s known to have met MR, then out of office, in Thailand. Eventually he was arrested in Dubai by international police based on a request made by the authorities in 2018. Wikepedia has quite a chunk on this worthy who was back here and working to bring tourists from Ukraine to Sri Lanka at a time the political winds were blowing in a direction favorable to him. A common factor between Wickramasuriya and Weeratunga, apart from their kinship to the Rajapaksas, was their fortunes teetered depending on who was in office in Colombo at various periods of time. Wickramasuriya’s diplomatic immunity was at one stage not upheld during Yahapalana rule. When its successor tried to invoke it later, Washington refused to oblige.
Questionable appointments to Sri Lanka missions overseas from ambassador/head of mission down to the lowest levels like drivers have been endemic during governments of all political complexions. Progeny, spouses, friends, relatives and whoever were being accommodated out of a patronage pork barrel that seemed bottomless for a poor developing country like Sri Lanka. This is ancient and not contemporary history. Even agents of security services in hot water over various acts of commission and omission have been found safe havens in this country’s overseas missions. The number of such missions is way above actual need and the costs incurred are astronomical. Efforts at downsizing and economizing have at best been perfunctory. Can anybody tell us why we opened an embassy in the Seychelles of all places. Possible answers can only be in whispers.
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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