Editorial
The deadlock continues
The Galle Face protesters remain firmly rooted to their cause after 16 days on the green. The Rajapaksa establishment has conceded some ground of which the most significant is omitting two brothers and a son from the new smaller – but not small enough – cabinet. But the major demand that aiya (Mahinda) and malli (Gota) go home, apart from side issues like returning their loot, have not received any consideration whatever. Heels have obviously been dug in and there are no signs of either side relenting. The regime’s wish and hope that exhausted protesters will run out of steam has not come to pass and to all intents and purposes will not happen, certainly not in the short term. Big business, in the shape of a statement by JKH, the country’s biggest listed conglomerate, has also thrown its weight behind the agitation.
Meanwhile there is every likelihood that incidents such as last week’s at Rambukkana, where one young man lost his life in a police shooting, will repeat themselves. Clearly two processes, one political and the other of people power are now ongoing. The first of these enacted principally in Parliament, and the other on Galle Face green have almost nothing to do with each other. What’s happening in Parliament is both a numbers and constitutional game. Mr. Sajith Premadasa and his Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) continue canvassing signatures with the magic figure of 113 votes hanging tantalizingly over them. But the government still seems to be holding a razor’s edge majority with enough fence sitters to tilt the balance either way though SJB stalwarts have claimed they will have the numbers when the time is right.
Which way will the papadam crumble? That is the billion dollar question – we’re now long past the million dollar cliche – hanging over the country. Mahinda has gone public with the view that he favours a return to 19A, albeit with some amendments. That’s a self-serving stance because it will enable trimming Gota’s wings to the benefit of the prime minister; and the obvious signal right now is that the brothers are not marching to the beat of a single drum. This is not likely to cut any ice on Galle Face green. The protester demand is that the Rajapaksas – the whole kit and caboodle of them – depart; and there is no compromising on that. No room for constitutional niceties or give and take there. In any case who is there to negotiate with? The protest is an amorphous, leaderless movement that has thankfully remained apolitical and violence free. It is not restricted to the seafront promenade beloved of generations of Lankans ever since it was opened in 1859 by British Governor, Sir. Henry George Ward, “for the benefit of the ladies and children of Colombo.”
The JVP/NPP made a not insignificant wave last week with a massive demonstration that walked for three days from Beruwala to Colombo. Wisely it confined itself to the Town Hall without attempting to swell the Galle Face numbers. As always the march was well organized and indicated that the rathu sahodarayas command a much greater following than their three-member presence in Parliament suggests. The party certainly harbors ambitions of being a new government and whether it will join an effort to establish an interim setup is yet an open question. Kumar David (KD), our regular columnist who was on their National List for Parliament at the last election, but was omitted with Dr. Harini Amarasuriya preferred, has as trenchantly as is his wont, said that comrades have at last woken up. Does this suggest, as KD seems to believe, that a trade union element is about to enter the struggle, first with a token strike and then with a general strike to follow? We must wait and see with the full knowledge that this near bankrupt country of ours is at the end of its tether and cannot afford to take any more economic blows.
We run in this issue today an analytical piece by Anila Bandaranaike, a former Assistant Governor of the Central Bank, and Colombo University Law Professor Sharya de Soysa on what the country must look at doing once the present deadlock ends and the business of everyday living resumes. This is a matter spoken about but very little has been done apart from the political changes (new Central Bank Governor, Finance Minister and Treasury Secretary) now on pilgrimage to the IMF in Washington and essential price revisions like that of fuel that has sent particularly the poor reeling. The next mol gas (pestle) blow is not far away with power and perhaps water prices steeply increased. The people well know what is coming and the political establishment, apart from a token cut in numbers in cabinet and changes of old faces with new, did not do what may well had been a cosmetic. but useful, gesture of announcing that the privileges of the political class will be pared to the bone.
Our front page story of what Viyath Maga has done over the appointment of a new Vice Chancellor to the University of Colombo, along with its other shenanigans like the chemical fertilizer import ban does not improve the pubic perception of the ruling clan. Jaliya Wickremasuriya is awaiting sentence in the US. Nothing has been heard from the rulers of the attempts to make this presidential cousin High Commissioner to Canada after he was discovered robbing in Washington and returned the stolen money to boot! Whom to tell or kaata kiyannada in more evocative Sinhala.
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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