Smiles and grimaces

Thursday 13th August, 2020

The new Cabinet was sworn in yesterday within the sacred precincts of Sri Dalada Maligawa. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had his inauguration ceremony in the vicinity of Ruwanweliseya, last year, and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa was sworn in at the historical Kelaniya Raja Maha Viharaya, on Sunday. We hope that the government members will abstain from killing and stealing in keeping at least two of the Five Precepts.

Former President Maithripala Sirisena did not receive a ministerial post yesterday. It may be that he did not want to queue up with others to take oaths. There are two vacancies in the Cabinet and Sirisena can be sworn in later if he and the government so wish. It is also being speculated that he may be appointed the next Speaker, but he has promised the people of Polonnaruwa that he would be in charge of the development of their district. On the other hand, having witnessed how powerful the Speaker was, during the 2018 constitutional crisis, when the then Speaker Karu Jayasuriya stood up to both the President and the forcibly appointed Prime Minister and aborted an attempt to overthrow the UNP government, the Rajapaksas must be wary of having Sirisena in that post. They do not trust Sirisena, who turned against them, in late 2014, and brought down their government.

Wijeyadasa Rajapaksha was a notable absentee at yesterday’s swearing-in ceremony. He obviously expected a Cabinet post and did not want to settle for less. Someone in the SLPP seems to be settling personal scores with him. Otherwise, there was no reason for the government, which appointed several misfits as ministers, to exclude him from the Cabinet. After all, he fell out with the yahapalana government and lost his ministerial post because he was accused of preventing legal action being taken against the Rajapaksas. It is too early for the newly elected government to face bitter dissensions, which led to Sirisena’s defection from the Rajapaksa government in 2014. How the SLPP leadership will settle such disputes remains to be seen.

Government propagandists claim that the allocation of ministerial subjects has been done scientifically, but we are convinced otherwise. State Minister Janaka Wakkumbura is responsible for the maize cultivation, etc., while Shasheendra Rajapaksa is the State Minister for paddy and cereals among others.

It would have been better if power and energy had been placed under a single minister, for the two subjects are interrelated. Electricity and petroleum are two sectors where corruption stinks to high heaven. Many are those who line their pockets at the expense of the Ceylon Electricity Board and the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation; the losses these state ventures incur are conveniently passed on to the public. Minister of Power Dullas Alahapperuma and Minister of Energy Udaya Gammanpila will have to straighten up their ministries urgently if they are not to fail and the government is not to get unpopular.

The task of developing ports requires ingenuity and vision. We need a person of the same calibre as the late Lalith Athulathmudali, who transformed the Colombo harbour into a modern port, to head the Ministry of Ports. With several other ports in the region undergoing rapid development to compete with Colombo, the government should have taken the task of managing and developing ports seriously. This is a race Sri Lanka cannot afford to lose, and we need a thoroughbred to win it, but the government is readying itself for a donkey derby if the calibre of the person it has handpicked for the job is anything to go by.

Whingeing about what they called obstacles in their path, the SLPP leaders from 16 November 2019 to 5 August 2020, kept asking for a clear mandate to overcome them. They promised the public the moon. Now that the people have answered their call, the government has secured a two-thirds majority and the Cabinet has been appointed, the SLPP should stop whining and make good on its promises. It must get cracking. ‘Boot, saddle, to horse and away!’