Editorial
Sick Jumbos dream
Saturday 30th January, 2021
The trouble-torn UNP shows signs of further disintegration with some of its rebels giving up their positions and criticising their leader in public. Curiously, some of them have already stressed the need to field a common Opposition candidate at the next presidential election. There is much the UNP will have to do on the political front before the next presidential election.
Interestingly, those who cannot even get rid of their party leader are planning to oust a powerful President, who is vigorously consolidating his power. Accomplishing the task of engineering the ouster of a powerful government is within the realm of possibility, one may argue, pointing out that a dark horse beat an extremely popular President–– Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR)––in the 2015 presidential race, but the fact remains that MR had served two terms and was seeking a third when he suffered the humiliating defeat. On the other hand, MR had ruined things for himself, ably assisted by those who were around him. At the next presidential election, the situation will be different; the incumbent President will be seeking a second term. It may be recalled that the Opposition’s plan to defeat MR when he entered the presidential fray to secure a second term went pear-shaped in 2010; the common Opposition candidate—the war-winning Army Commander, Gen. Sarath Fonseka—lost badly in spite of being backed by the entire Opposition.
The UNP will have no say in selecting a common candidate vis-à-vis the strength of the SJB, which will field its leader Sajith Premadasa at the next presidential election. So, it will be a case of Hobson’s choice for the UNP and others. Sajith shows signs of attaining political maturity and is apparently making the best use of the post of the Opposition Leader to boost his image and shore up his support base.
The practice of cobbling disparate political forces together to contest presidential elections is the political version of ingesting Dhammika peniya. All those who pinned their hopes on the common presidential candidate in 2015 subsequently found themselves in the same predicament as those who converged on a small village in Kegalle in their numbers to secure doses of the shaman’s concoction only to be disappointed; they realised they had been taken for a ride. Some Opposition grandees in the run-up to the 2015 presidential election marketed what may be called the Sirisena peniya or Maithri palanaya, the way Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi promoted the Dhammika syrup by swigging it in public to ward off coronavirus, but had to be rushed to a COVID-19 treatment centre a few weeks later.
It did not take long for the proponents of yahapalanaya to realise that the remedy they had found was fake although it seemed to work initially. Their experiment with Sirisena peniya caused the country to witness the biggest ever financial crime, tableaux of horror in churches and hotels in 2019 and the sale of state assets. Sirisena is now in the exalted company of the Rajapaksas, having failed to destroy them politically!
The blame for what befell the country after being given an overdose of the Sirisena peniya should be apportioned to MR, who during his second term failed to live up to people’s expectations and surrounded himself with political dregs and astrologers and lost the plot. Following the conclusion of the war and the 2010 presidential election victory, he could/should have concentrated on helping the country heal and developing the economy instead of strengthening the Rajapaksa dynasty, squandering public money, and unnecessarily making a lot of enemies both locally and internationally. In 2015, he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, so to speak. This is the fate that awaits any leader who lets power get the better of him or her.
The SLPP has apparently duped itself into believing that the people have approved its leaders’ past wrongdoings by voting for them overwhelmingly at the last three elections. The public did so out of desperation as they were fed up with yahapalanaya, but they will not hesitate to defeat the present dispensation unless it makes a course correction and fulfil its election pledges, most of which have been reneged on.
What the UNP should do is not planning for what is to be done at the next presidential election but giving itself a radical shake-up and regaining vitality to act as a formidable countervailing force against the incumbent regime, which is like a juggernaut careening downhill. If the Jumbo party gets its act together and adopts pro-people policies instead of trying to humour the western members of the international community, it may be able to make up lost ground in time for the next election. If it continues to cherish delusions to the neglect of what needs to be done now it is bound to be swallowed whole by the SJB sooner or later.
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.
US sports envoys to Lanka to champion youth development
Rahuman questions sudden cancellation of leave of CEB employees
