Editorial
Ranil’s dilemma
When now President Ranil Wickremesinghe was made prime minister by then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the country was presented with a candidly accurate picture of the economic predicament Sri Lanka was mired in. RW chose parliament as the forum to take the country into his confidence and convey the bad news not once but many times over. The people, of course, needed no convincing. The kilometers long fuel queues, gas queues, power cuts and rocketing food prices were evidence enough. Last week he went back to parliament, exercising his presidential prerogative to address the legislature at will, not only to tell the country that the situation was still bad, but also to declare as the state-controlled Daily News had in an unusually prominent front page banner headline that “Government (was) Ready To Overcome Worst Economic Crisis in History.”
Half the front page of the paper was crammed with highlights of Wickremesinghe’s speech with a photograph of the president making his address. The news it conveyed was both good and bad. The good news included Japan’s agreement to play a lead mediator role in restructuring Sri Lanka’s debt; support from India and Prime Minister Modi; the commencement of restructuring massive loss-making state enterprises; the ADB’s willingness to provide us a USD 500 million loan; nobody having to stand in gas and fuel queues any longer etc. The bad news was the ignorance of some political parties assuming the country “is in a sound state;” and of some politicians thinking that if the economy collapses and people die, they can gain power over dead bodies.
Usefully, the president reminded us that all citizen of this country pay taxes “without realizing it.” It needs to be pointed out, especially to income tax payers grumbling mightily about what they have to pay, that most government revenue come from general and not direct taxes. General taxes apply to all, both rich and poor alike. As one newspaper editor said decades ago, “every time you strike a match or flush the toilet, you are paying a tax.” The very popular Illustrated Weekly of India of yesteryear, once quoted a market vendor telling an affluent customer, “If I had your income, I’d be glad to pay your taxes.”
Wickremesinghe also said in his parliamentary address that at “a time when no other political party or leader would accept the risk, I accepted it.” That certainly is the truth, but not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It is publicly known that the beleaguered Gotabaya Rajapaksa, compelled to get rid of brother Mahinda who enthroned him, after political goons were unleashed from Temple Trees on the Aragalaya protesters, offered the prime ministry both to Sajith Premadasa and the Field Marshal he imprisoned. But that offer was not open to all takers. RW, among the most experienced politicians now incumbent and among the few with the ability to do the job, accepted the offer to work with GR. This despite his reducing the UNP to zero (except for a single National List seat). He even lost his own Colombo Central seat, long a bastion of his party. GR’s eventual expulsion propelled Wickremesinghe to the presidency on the back of the parliamentary votes of the Rajapaksa controlled SLPP. None would believe that RW did not well know when he accepted the prime ministry that, like it or not, he was crowned to protect the Rajapaksa. That is the major part of the job he has been compelled to reluctantly do.
We for our part do not believe that Wickremesinghe relished the recent appointing of 38 state ministers, among them some known miscreants. They are now in office at considerable cost to the taxpayer. Claiming they are not drawing any emoluments outside their compensation as Members of Parliament would have cut little ice with the thinking public at large. The people well know what the perks and staff accompanying such appointments mean to the tax exchequer. The president dragged his feet on appointing the new state minister and most likely caved into SLPP pressure as he had done before on cabinet appointments.
He’s also being pushed to add to the 20-strong cabinet which is pending business to be completed sooner rather than later. Already Minister Bandula Gunawardena, a co-cabinet spokesperson, is arguing the case for expanding the cabinet. He recently said in justification that existing ministers are overloaded with work. Given the country’s current predicament, the JVP assessment that the country does not need more than 25 cabinet ministers, a like number of deputy ministers and no state ministers at all will surely resonate with the people struggling to survive.
The Rajapaksas, other than Gotabaya, crawled into the woodwork following MR’s resignation that dissolved the cabinet. One of them is back among the new state ministers in a portfolio previously held by his father. Namal Rajapaksa appears to be knocking at the door to make a comeback. What conditions Wickremesinghe stipulated, if any, to become prime minister is not known. GR, ensconced in a government bungalow with all the privileges of a former president has been receiving callers including at least one foreign dignitary. The SLPP is holding strategy meetings to plot a Rajapaksa comeback. Though Basil Rajapaksa is in the U.S. he is known to be pulling the strings in that party. There will be surely no move to get rid of Wickremesinghe ahead of the balance of the GR term. But he will remain a prisoner of the SLPP until next February when he’ll be empowered to dissolve parliament and hold an election the whole country yearns for.
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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