Editorial
The baby and the bathwater
The 20th Amendment to Sri Lanka’s Constitution is now done and dusted and given the comfortable majority, though technically not the required two thirds by a whisker, it has all the support it needs for comfortable passage. Since its gazetting on Friday, a period of two weeks must elapse before it can be included in the parliamentary order paper. A legal challenge can also be mounted against it in the short term. But given the scale of the massive victories scored by the incumbent government, both at the presidential election last November and the more recent parliamentary elections, there will be little fire and thunder in whatever resistance is attempted.
Ever since the parliamentary election and the massive and unexpected two thirds majority it brought President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, the country has been treated to a litany of how horrible the 19th Amendment was and more than an earful on everything that was wrong with it. But none of the pundits who have expounded long and loud against the amendment has explained why, if this were so, all but one of them (Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekera) voted for it. Their lack of eloquence on this subject is truly deafening. True, despite the two third majority that the UPFA and its fellow-travelers enjoyed in the 2010 parliament, the stunning defeat of then President Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2015 left the whole caboodle of them in total disarray. This left ample room for the winner to take all and that’s exactly what happened.
Such was the situation when the 2015 election result was declared that the new President Maithripala Sirisena was able to instal a minority government under Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe despite the fact that Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne was yet in office. So also the reinstatement of sacked Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake, albeit for a day, before Justice K. Sripavan (who incidentally administered the oath of office of the new president as his predecessor was in the dog house) was appointed. The defeated president, who sought a third term in an endeavour that went sour, metaphorically placed the SLFP leadership crown on his successor’s head. No political or legal challenges were mounted and the winning side, flushed with a perhaps unexpected victory, did exactly as they pleased. And how!
The 19th Amendment certainly was not enacted for the good of the country. It was done to suit the needs and wishes of those who won the election as too many of our laws have been and will be in the future. However, 19A was not without some virtue with the best known plus factors including the restoration of the two-term limit on the presidency, which Mahinda Rajapaksa removed by virtue of a two thirds majority (necessary for constitutional changes) he did not win in the country but engineered through defections. Events proved that to be his undoing, but he to his eternal credit, was able to rise Phoenix-like from the ashes. He refused to lie down and die as most would have given his situation. Like the proverbial tortoise, he withdrew into his shell during the aftermath of his defeat, to return vigorously to battle as the tide began to turn. Mercifully the two-term limit will remain under the new order. We don’t know whether there is an intention of going back to the previous age qualification of presidential contenders which was in 19A, obviously with Namal Rajapaksa in mind. It is no longer a necessity for a Rajapaksa dynasty as the years have since rolled by. Let us not forget that Namal himself voted for that amendment just as much as his father voted for 19A.
The Right to Information Act has also been applauded as a major achievement of the 19th Amendment. This too will remain, the people have been told. That is cause for applause although the Act itself was not used as effectively as it might have given the appalling state of governance in the country. Opponents of the proposed 20A are on record saying that several major democratic gains achieved through a mechanism of checks and balances like the independent commissions, are being done away with. There is no argument that President J.R. Jayewardene, intoxicated with the five sixth parliamentary majority he won in 1977, crafted the 1978 constitution to make himself the uncrowned head of Sri Lanka. He was fond of saying there was nothing he could not do except to make a man a woman or vice versa. He didn’t try to undertake that mission impossible although he did try to have two Members of Parliament representing Kalawana! But even that constitution, providing for the executive presidency in the manner of de Gaulle’s as many say, made fundamental rights justiciable. To give the devil his due, that was an enormous democratic gain.
In terms of the draft amendment, we are going to have a Parliamentary Council, instead of the Constitutional Council introduced by 19A. But this too, just like the other one. will be packed with politicians who are not exactly a breed that has endeared itself to the people. But the people themselves keep electing undesirables as we have seen over the years; and party hierarchies keep anointing them with their tickets regardless of loud (and useless) professions on their desire for good governance that has eluded us through the 42 years when we have had as many as 19 amendments to our constitution with the 20th in the pipeline. A correspondent, of Sri Lankan descent living in Washington, writing to this issue of our newspaper says that the American constitution written over 230 years ago has just 4,543 words and 27 amendments to date. Amen.
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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