Editorial
Subsidised meals and police guards
There was a babble of righteous indignation when new MPs elected to the incumbent Parliament were told during an orientation session that meals served to them at the Diyawanna restaurant cost the taxpayer a cool three thousand bucks per meal though they paid only a relative pittance for what they ate. The figure, which seemed highly unlikely, was later corrected to say that a fish meal cost Rs. 950 to provide while a vegetarian meal cost Rs. 629 with MPs charged Rs. 200 per meal. In a previous comment on this subject, we said that the chances are that the entire food bill in the legislature appears to have been divided by 225 (the number of MPs) to reach the astronomical figure although it is not only the legislators who eat in Parliament. Numerous officials, policemen, the press and sundry others eat there as well knowing that they are being treated to a highly subsidized meal. Although the
Speaker promised to go into the matter and report back, nothing further was heard on the subject. So the people remain ignorant on the true situation and quite willing to believe the worst.
Now the question of the security offered to parliamentarians has cropped up with a couple of Samagi Jana Balavegaya MPs saying that two police guards assigned to them is insufficient. Former Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa, now charged with the responsibility Irrigation, Internal Security, Home Affairs and Disaster Management seems to have struck a responsive chord in the public mind saying that policemen will not be deployed “to carry files and bags of MPs.” He might have added “or answer telephones” because that is also a common chore falling on those cops assigned to security details of parliamentarians. From what the Minister said, the previous four policemen per MP has now been reduced to two and the government did not seem inclined, rightly we believe, to increase this. But there were no questions asked about numbers assigned to “special cases” including ministers, opposition personalities, and former presidents. The minister will surely be embarrassed to reveal the facts as well as the names of the privileged few.
Rajapaksa explained that it was necessary to substantially increase the protection granted to MPs, during the JVPs second adventure in the late eighties when several MPs and other political activists were literally bumped off in cold blood. There were so many of them including several MPs from both sides of the fence and others like Vijaya Kumaranatunga who might have become President as his widow, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaranatunga, did some years later, Apart from the MPs there were well known trade unionists like PD Wimalasena of the LSSP and LW Panditha of the CP. Other names that readily come to mind include Nandalal Fernando, General Secretary of the UNP and that party’s Chairman Harsha Abeywardene. Older readers might remember the grenade which did not explode flung at Dr. Colvin. R. de Silva through a verandah grill at his Kollupitiya home late in the night.
Then came the LTTE threat which was much more fearsome than its JVP predecessor with the Tigers responsible for the assassination of no less than Rajiv Gandhi, President Premadasa, Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, Gamini Dissanayake, Lalith Athulathmudali, Ministers Jeyaraj Fernandopulle, CV Gooneratne, Ranjan Wijeratne and many more including a large number of Tamil MPs including TULF leaders like Messrs. A. Amirthalingam, M. Sivasithamparam and Tamil Congress Leader Kumar Ponnambalam. Naturally, as Minister Chamal Rajapaksa said, huge resources had to be thrown into protect national leaders and other vulnerable persons at that time. President Chandrika Kumaratunga lost an eye and barely escaped with her life in the last campaign rally she addressed prior to her re-election. An icy chill will run down the spines of all those who remember those terror-filled days. Both the JVP and LTTE terror resulted in an ever ballooning security apparatus like the Presidential, Prime Ministerial and Ministerial Security Divisions of the Police. There are necessarily special units also, like diplomatic protection. Thousands of policemen are assigned for such duties at the expense of regular law enforcement.
The extent of VIP security is usually based on threat perception. But even with such perception going sky high, as in the case of Mr. Lakshman Kadirgamar, and the massive resources deployed, it was not possible to save him from the LTTE sniper who put a bullet through his head having patiently bided his time for probably months. The assassin had been holed up in the unused upper floor of a neighboring residence whose occupants did not know what was going on in a part of their house they never visited. Kadirgamar, typically, did not wish his neighbors harassed in any way and that resulted in his personal security personnel not running a fine tooth comb as they well might have had they not been prevented from so doing.
We say all this in the context of the reality that electors generally react adversely to the perks heaped on representatives sent by them particularly to Parliament. Thus the media is able to raise a great hoo haa about what their MPs are able to eat in the House restaurant and at what price. People naturally rile against security squads, sometimes converted to virtual private armies during extraordinary times, and white-gloved soldiers in VIP motorcades shooing people off the roads to make way for the high and mighty to speed by. The JVP insurrection and the civil war naturally bloated the security apparatus but does it need to remain so for all time now that the threats are gone?
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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