Editorial
RW moves the pawns
Nobody talks any more about the local government elections the president aborted earlier this year. It is as clear as clear can be why RW resorted to the “no money” ploy to accomplish that objective. The UNP had struck a deal with the SLPP to run together, each complementing the other, and both parties along with other aspirants went through the cosmetic motions of paying their deposits and handing nomination for an election that was even then very much in doubt. Colombo, a traditional UNP bastion, which old timers would remember was wrested by the greens led by Messrs. J.R. Jayewardene and V.A. Sugathadasa soon after Mr. Bandaranaike’s ‘People’s Revolution’ of 1956, was conceded to the UNP and so possibly was Kandy. SLPP General Secretary Sagara Kariyawasam repeatedly claimed his party was not afraid of elections while the issue of holding them was being canvassed both before the Elections Commission and the courts.
A sitting SJB MP, Mr. Mujibur Rahman, resigned his seat in parliament to run for Mayor of Colombo. The president did say at one point of time that he had sent a message to Rahman to warn him that he shouldn’t vacate his parliamentary seat, but the latter has denied this claim. Whether the messenger failed to deliver, or there was no such message, or whether it was unreceived or not was never thrashed out in the public domain. But the fact remains that veteran politician AHM Fowzie who has batted for both the UNP and SLFP in national and municipal politics is back in parliament filling Rahman’s vacancy. He’s already defied the SJB whip to vote for the recent resolution on the IMF deal when the SJB had decided to be absent at voting time. He’s been suspended though not expelled from his party for his pains. This has provoked the question of whether Fowzie has expectations of office but many believe that at age 85-years, he’s more interested in ensuring that is son succeeds him in politics.
Be that as it may, last week’s removal of three Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed provincial governors and their replacement by the president have many national political implications. Undoubtedly the appointment of CWC President Senthil Thondaman as the new Governor of the Eastern Province is related to RW’s aspiration to be the elected president of the country. Senthil’s cousin, Jeevan Thondaman, the CWC’s general secretary, was recently appointed the country’s youngest cabinet minister by RW. Now Senthil has been made a governor and the obvious signal is that Wickremesinghe is wooing plantation Tamil votes in any forthcoming presidential election. Both Thondamans are direct descendants of the late S. Thondaman, the leader of the plantation worker community of recent Indian descent, who wielded tremendous political clout in post-Independence Ceylon and Sri Lanka.
Speculative reports that Wickremesinghe may even attempt to hold a presidential election at the end of this year has been widely published. Given that he was elected by parliament in July last year to serve GR’s balance term which runs till November 2024, Wickremesinghe cannot call an early presidential election without an amendment to the constitution. Whether he can engineer the necessary two thirds majority to push through such an amendment is regarded unlikely by analysts who argue that even the 134 votes in parliament that RW mustered to be elected to serve the balance GR term, has not held. Also the question arises whether a court will hold that a mere two thirds majority is sufficient to enact such a constitutional amendment as it can be argued that the matter involves the franchise of the people that also requires a referendum. But it should not be forgotten that when Mahinda Rajapaksa sought to annul the constitutionally stipulated two term limit on the presidency, the then Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake ruled that no referendum was necessary as abolishing the term limit enhanced rather than diminished the franchise. That proved unfortunate for MR who lost his 2015 bid for a third term.
The SJB which a few days ago unanimously anointed Sajith Premadasa as its next presidential candidate will most likely favour an early presidential election and may support such an election by supporting the necessary constitutional amendment. But the SLPP which has not yet decided on its next presidential candidate may probably prefer more time to make up its mind. Some SLPPers have already expressed support for Ranil Wickrenesinghe. Other are sitting on the fence.
The Rajapksas and their supporters are now out of the woodwork and at least one of the three governors appointed last week seem to have been an SLPP nominee. It is not clear whether the appointment of Mrs. P.S.M. Charles as the new Governor of the Northern Province was part of Wickremesinghe’s strategy of mending fences with the Tamils. She had earlier served as Governor of the North and wartime GA of Vavuniya. RW is now empowered by the Constitution to dissolve parliament and hold a fresh election if the SLPP stretches its luck. But he’ll have to do so with the full knowledge that his UNP is hardly in a position to put up a credible fight without some arrangement with the SJB.
The JVP/NPP is also a clear loser of the local elections not being held. Most analysts believed that it had every chance of making a showing that it is a credible alternative to the SJB. RW is also reportedly considering staggered provincial elections, it has been said. But if there was no money for local elections how can there be funds for any elections? Sri Lanka’s foreign friends and multilateral donor agencies are less than likely to do business with a government determined to deny its people their franchise.
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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