Editorial
Properly compensating road accident victims
An English morning newspaper last week editorialized on a very well known fact: that motorists, often under the influence of liquor, driving top end vehicles at breakneck speed causing death and destruction, too often get off very lightly. It urged that the culprits should not be easily let off the hook with a one-off compensation payment but should be required to support the victim’s wife and children as long as needed. We heartily endorse this suggestion but wonder whether it is a practical possibility. The editorial under reference was hung on the peg of a recent accident in Colombo when the driver of a Mercedes Benz luxury car driven at high speed careened into a slow moving three-wheeler going in the same direction killing its 52-year old driver pronounced dead on admission to hospital or shortly thereafter.
A columnist writing to The Island, our stablemate, said in her Friday column that she knew the victim, Tuan, who her friends had teasingly dubbed ‘your white-capped charioteer,’ very well. He plied his own vehicle for hire and was a remarkably fine man whom she had warmly recommended to her friends. He was ever helpful and scrupulously honest, once returning a bag containing some clothes and Rs. 20,000 a passenger had left in his vehicle. Not succeeding in finding the woman owner, he had requested the columnist who he often drove to the Crescat apartments on the Cinnamon Grand grounds to inquire for somebody helping in an apartment there who may have lost the bag. That was because he had picked up the fare outside the hotel. He intended handing the bag over to the police if the owner couldn’t be otherwise found.
As luck would have it, the person who lost the bag was working for our columnist’s friend. The bag was returned with the contents intact and the reward offered declined. It was only accepted on the insistence of the grateful owner. This man who wouldn’t take hires during Muslim prayer time when he went to the mosque, also volunteered now and again to help sink wells in remote Muslim villages. Such a man with teenage daughters was cut down in the prime of life by a reckless driver, possibly under the influence of liquor who has spent the previous night carousing at a nightclub. He vanished from the scene of the crash leaving two female companions accompanying him to face the music from angry onlookers. Hours after the accident he had enplaned for Dubai returning next day to be arrested by the police on arrival at the BIA.
Drivers as well as vehicle owners are well aware that they must cover themselves with at least third party insurance to drive on the pubic road. This is required to ensure that third parties, like pedestrians unfortunately injured in a road accident, are protected. But how adequately are such accident victims compensated by the various insurers? There are numerous instances where compensation has been woefully insufficient. Granted guilty parties do make settlements, generally one-off payments. But families of poor victims, cannot or do not, manage whatever they get to tide over the loss of a breadwinner. Granted also that there’s a not uncommon breed who pretend they have been hit by a vehicle to extort what they can. A common ruse is to strike a vehicle passing close to the con artist with the flat of an open hand and yell happuna. A motorist not savvy enough in the ways of such tricksters, making the mistake of stopping the vehicle is immediately confronted with extortionate demands.
A judgment of long ago held that driving a motor vehicle was somewhat akin to walking a tiger on a leash. The dangers of motor vehicles recklessly driven is similar to the tiger breaking loose. “Hold that tiger” was the implied message in that judgment. Published statistics indicate that some 2,419 people had been killed in over 2,000 fatal accidents last year. Over 13,000 were injured, over 5,000 of them critically. No doubt the figures this year are as bad or worse. The Christmas and New Year holiday period invariable sees and exponential rise in drunken driving. While some people take care not to drink and drive, taking taxis to parties and festivities serving alcohol, many more blithely take the wheel hoping they can avoid an encounter with police on their return home.
There’s a National Council for Road Safety under the Ministry of Transport and Highways with a data base of accidents. This indicates that in 2019 a measly Rs. 4.4 million compensation had been paid over road fatalities and just three million rupees to critically injured persons. Given today’s costs, the inadequacy of such payments is self-evident. Not so long ago a group of so-called car enthusiasts engaged in what was called drag racing in deserted Green Path in the dead of night. Neighbours were privy to engine roars and the noise of screeching tyres. But the police, strangely, took little notice. Even though the road was empty there’s always a chance of somebody venturing out or even a homeless tramp on the road being at risk.
Those who saw the grief written on the faces of Tuan’s wife and children, not knowing what a good and fine man he was, obviously reacted angrily to the tragedy. There feelings were aggravated by the fact that the vehicle involved was a Mercedes driven by a rich young businessman probably after liquor. This country has seen too many political brats and rich kids misbehaving in public spaces, most recently with off-road vehicles in the Yala National Park. There is also suspicion that is not unfounded that fatal accidents are sometimes a money making activity for the police. However that be, we can only hope that the conclusion of the investigation into the recent Kollupitiya accident will end favorably for the victims family.
Editorial
Ensure safety of COPF Chairman
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.
Editorial
Dead man walking!
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.
Editorial
Modi Magic on the wane
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.