The coming colour

Though Basil Rajapaksa, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa have resigned in that order, the Rajapaksa clan on the back of which much of Sri Lanka’s present woes are laid, remains alive and kicking and is very much a part of the country’s political equation. When then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe appointed his first cabinet following GR’s stunning elevation of a one man show as the head of his government, there were no Rajapaksas in the new line up with several old faces dropped. But there was a reappearance of Shasheendra Rajapaksa among the recently appointed state ministers. Now there’s been a public statement by an SLPP grandee that heir apparent Namal baby is suitable for reappointment to the cabinet. There have also been calls for previous ministers to be taken back to the fold. With at least a semblance of normality restored on the fuel and gas front, those out in the cold seem to believe that the time is right to get back to business.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe is all too aware of the national mood and the near unanimous public opinion on the Rajapaksas and the jumbo cabinets we have known too often in our contemporary political history. But these are realities he must live with. Gotabaya is back in the country although it wasn’t that long ago that Wickremesinghe told the Wall Street Journal that he didn’t think the time was right for GR’s return. Though Basil is out of the country for a few months, it is very well known that he continues to pull many of the SLPP’s strings. Mahinda shows up in parliament now and then although he seldom speaks on the public domain. And Namal is knocking at the door.

Though Wickremesinghe very much desires to show the country that he’s running a tight ship at minimum cost to the taxpayer, until the time comes after February 2023 when he is empowered to dissolve parliament, he is the prisoner of the SLPP. It is that party which elected him to office and the Rajapaksas are very much in control there. It is all too clear that he must do what the discredited Rajapaksa party wants him to do at this point of time. Having dragged his feet a little bit about the appointment of the state ministers, he succumbed a few days ago and appointed as many as 38 of them. No effort whatever has been made to justify such appointments. What has only been attempted up to now is to say that they will draw no salary outside their parliamentary emoluments.

Egg has been publicly rubbed on the collective face of the government both by mainstream and social media demonstrating that the difference of a few thousand rupees in salaries drawn is irrelevant compared to the cost of taxpayer paid perks and privileges they will enjoy. Now the president is on the verge of appointing new ministers to the present 20-member cabinet and this is likely to be completed in the short term. The constitution permits the appointment of 30 ministers, which can go up if we have a national government, and fishing expeditions by aspirants are already visible. It has also been said in public that the previous ministers, many of them anathema to the people, must be reappointed. We need not labour the fact that already there are bad hats in office.

Not very long ago we saw former Agriculture Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage, the public face of then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s calamitous ban on chemical fertilizers, saying in parliament that he was not responsible for the ban. He said that fertilizer under his ministry was the subject of a state minister (Shasheendra Rajapaksa now back in office as State Minister of Irrigation). He even claimed that he had canvassed the ban with then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The whole country was privy to Aluthgamage’s passionate defence of the ban at that time and saw countless effigies on the minister torched by angry farmers. Yet he has the brass to attempt to distance himself from that action in which he fully participated, in what seems very much like an attempt to return to cabinet office.

President Wickremesinghe has made little headway in his attempt to form a National Government or Government of National Unity. There seems to be few buyers at political party level but individual defections for consideration of office is very much a part of this country’s political history. Already two Samagi Jana Balavegaya MPs, Harin Fernando and Manusha Nanayakkara are in the cabinet. So also seniors of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) like Nimal Siripala de Silva and Mahinda Amaraweera. There are many more SLFPers who are state ministers and of the 14 SLFP MPs elected to the sitting parliament only five remain loyal to party leader Maithripala Sirisena. While some parties have begun domestic inquiries against rebels, few expect them to lose their seats in terms of existing anti-defection laws.

We will know very shortly what the new cabinet will look like and what the 2023 budget will bring for the country. It has already been made clear that the wealthy will have to suffer a major tax blow. Our contemporary history amply demonstrates that the tax administration is very good at squeezing already squeezed lemons and more of that will shortly be in evidence in the context of the prevailing massive tax evasion. That, together with the lack of equity which is a basic principle of taxation, is a long evident fact of life in this so-called democratic socialist republic ours.