Editorial
The All Party confab and its ripples
The All Party Conference (APC) that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa summoned last week was predictable anything but All Party. The president may have been pleased that the TNA, a major party in the opposition, was there despite their failure to have a one-to-one meeting with him since his election. He could not have expected the Weerawansa-Gammanpila-Vasudeva alliance to come apart though Vasu was spared decapitation unlike his two axed colleagues. The veteran warhorse retains his portfolio although he doesn’t attend cabinet or his ministry. He has (rightly) returned his official residence and vehicle/s but there’s been an eloquent silence on whether or not he draws his official salary. Prof. Tissa Vitarana and Ven. Athuraliye Rathana, both National List MPs, represented the so-called “rebels.” attended. So did senior statesman Ranil Wickremesinghe, five times prime minister, although his UNP today is no more than a rump of Sajith Premadasa’s Samagi Jana Balavegaya; though the SJB itself opted out. The president clearly was keen on keeping Wickremesinghe happy, apologizing and smoothing ruffled feathers when Central Bank Governor Cabraal (ex of the UNP lest anybody has forgotten) got Ranil’s goat with a reference to what happened during the 2015-19 period.
Also, some members of parties like the SLMC and some smaller Tamil parties turned up despite their parties’ decisions to boycott. But other ruptures surfaced with the Thondaman-led CWC, for example keeping away. There was a report on Friday, whether right or wrong we don’t know, quoting and unidentified party source saying they have lost confidence in the president. It would undoubtedly been the height of optimism for anybody to expect the APC to be a magic wand which will conjure political consensus on hard but necessary measures to combat what is unarguably the worst economic crisis this country has faced since independence. Last week’s parliamentary proceedings, for example, showed that normally belligerent government frontbenchers have lost much of their fire, no doubt because of the public opprobrium they see all around them with the masses convinced that the rulers have led the country into the unholy mess it is in. The massive JVP rally earlier in the week, where a large crowd was mustered, would surely have added to their woes.
Appearing on a television talk show on the night of the APC, the LSSP’s Tissa Vitarana went on record that the conference was an opportunity for participating politicians to keep the president apprised of their thinking. To this extent, he saw the event as a success. But the president had himself in his recent address to the nation told the country that he was aware of the predicament the country was in. Given the evidence around him, nobody with eyes to see or ears to hear can be unaware of the situation. The queues for fuel, gas, milk powder and more are unending with no end in sight. The scarcities of essentials have reached unprecedented levels and the ripple effects are pervasive. Ordinary people are expressing their anger in unmistakable terms in language not usually thrown at national leaders. They are loudly and clearly heard in homes countrywide via the various television news bulletins. Even government friendly stations are not pulling their punches. The agriculture minister who stridently defended his boss’s fertilizer policy not long ago has now admitted crop losses but nary a squeak about promised compensation.
Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa (BR), branded an ‘Ugly American’ by his cabinet colleague (until recently) Udaya Gammanpila is seldom seen in parliament. Perhaps Mr. Gammanpila has forgotten that he along with others like Wimal Weerawansa etc. who see Basil R. as the chief culprit for the country’s current woes voted for the 20th Amendment that allowed dual citizen to sit in parliament. It is being freely alleged that BR had not been there since December and not uttered a word in the legislature with all hell breaking out in the country. There was a halfhearted by an SLPP MP to say that the minister was busy with important business and cannot spend time in parliament. But it behooves on the government to explain to the country why its finance minister is a scarce commodity in the legislature. As a former Speaker, Sir. Albert. F. Pieris, exhorting that MPs behave, once said “everything flows from here.”
The finance minister was a front row presence at the APC and he did not perform very credibly according to live telecasts. For example, he said no IMF report on the national economy had been received. Pushed by Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe, he admitted that only a draft report had been received. This had to be finalized once comments from the Sri Lanka side are sent in. “You know IMF procedures better than I,” he told the five times prime minister. An initial statement of the fact that only a draft report has been received would have been much more transparent and allayed suspicions of obfuscation. But that was not to be. BR also made public at the APC his willingness to present a new budget, if the cabinet approves, to address the current situation. The pros and cons of this proposal must await further discussion and debate.
Subsequent to the APC there has been an almighty shindig in parliament about the Central Bank Governor and the monetary board not answering a summons by the Parliamentary Committee on Public Finance (CoPF) to attend a meeting on Thursday. A fax had been received at 10.45 a.m. stating inability to be present. It was later explained that Treasury Secretary SR Attygalle, an ex officio member of the Monetary Board, could not be there as he was engaged in discussions with the World Bank at the time set for the CoPF meeting. Could not the Governor and other four members of the five-member Monetary Board have attended, rather than plead inability, and explained Attygalle’s absence? Given parliament’s wide ranging oversight powers over the manner in which the country is governed, the people would join MP Harsha de Silva in asking mey mona kehel malakda? Is parliament supreme or not?
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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