Editorial
The ‘new normal’ budget
The run-up to the 2021 budget which Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, wearing his finance minister’s hat, presented to parliament last week was obviously “new normal” as the post-covid minted cliché goes. There was no dramatic build-up to it with people rushing to buy vehicles, electronics, appliances or whatever as was often the rumor-fuelled case in the past. As has been inevitable in every past budget in the medium, if not the long term, the price of arrack and cigarettes routinely thrashed with a price stick, will go up once more. But nobody knows by how much and smokers and imbibers continue to pay the old price for their bad habits. But they have the certain knowledge that Christmas will soon be over on the authority of the budget speech.
This 2021 budget was crafted, as Dr. Dushni Weerakoon, head of the Institute of Policy Studies, said in a post-budget commentary, “under an exceptional level of uncertainty.” Obviously the crisis measures now in force will remain with us for a long time and it will be unrealistic to assume that fiscal policy will revert to its “pre-crisis setting anytime soon.” This must influence both spending priorities and what Weerakoon called “the slow burn scenario for revenue generation.” It is common knowledge that revenue has already slumped, and not only because of covid and its consequences. Assurances of boosting the country’s growth rate and narrowing the budget deficit, which has for too long burdened the country’s fiscal policy as well as its macro economy, have been repeated. These are old stories that have been heard before and few will buy them.
A persistent criticism of the budget is that it did not say enough about how the government is going to deal with the covid crisis, and the consequences arising from it, by taking the people into its confidence. This, more than all else, is the greatest danger confronting not only Sri Lanka but also the whole world. Neighboring countries is South Asia, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, have been much more transparent than we with Pakistan even going as far as labeling her next year’s budget as a “covid budget.” Former Central Bank Governor Nivard Cabraal, now the deputy in the finance ministry, who will be the key speaker for the government in the budget debate, has already said at one of the regular remotely held post-budget seminars that the timing was not right for declaring a covid-19 austerity year. But belt-tightening all round will be inevitable. Protecting the very large numbers of daily wage earners and others deprived of their livelihoods by the present crisis must remain high priority. Money printing alone to tide over cannot be the solution. Budgetary provision would have been appropriate.
There was a lot of old wine in new bottles in the 2021 budget speech including self-serving (or should we say government politician serving) measures announced. One of these is the raising of the private sector retiring age to 60-years for both men and women. Currently women working for private employers can retire at 50-years of age and men at 55 and gain access to their EPF benefits. Now both genders will have to wait longer – as many as 10 years in the case of women and five where men are concerned. There is no need to labour the harsh reality that the EPF is the only social security net that private sector workers have for their retirement. Government servants have had their pension benefits from colonial times, a cushion that served them well over a long period and a major attraction of a government job.
This raising of the retirement age of private sector employees also has the undisclosed benefit for the government of slowing EPF payouts and enhancing available funds for government borrowing. We all know that the EPF is the major captive lender to the government and the billions or trillions in its books is always on call for government expenditure. Given the overload of foreign borrowing that has long burdened this country and made the possibility of repayment default an ever-growing risk, postponing the payout of a looked forward to EPF nest egg to private sector employees, confers a substantial benefit on big brother. The private sector generally did not enforce the minimum retirement age rule but allowed employees to formally retire and gain access to their EPF with the assurance of an employment contract to keep them in harness post-retirement.
Let us not forget previous efforts made to convert the EPF to a pension fund that was abandoned due to massive resistance. Even if these attempts succeeded, the new pensioners paid from a contributory scheme – both employer and employee make monthly contributions to the EPF – would not have received the same benefits as their government counterparts enjoying non-contributory pensions. These matters, no doubt, will be raised during the ongoing budget debate which has been abbreviated because of the covid issue. It has up to now been lacklustre with the press and public galleries closed when the prime minister made his budget speech, a necessary precaution in the present context. But it has elicited, as budget debates must do, matters of widespread public interest. One of these relates to Dr. Anil Jasinghe, the previous Director General of Health who was highly regarded for his leadership in handling of the covid emergency. Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi told parliament on Thursday that Jasinghe, currently Secretary Environment, was now attending covid meetings at her ministry. That sounded apologetic to most people not appeased by the suggestion that ‘kicking him upstairs’ was just a promotion issue.
It is clear from the budget that policies of curtailing inessential imports and import substitution would continue and a conscious effort appears to have been made not to heap new burdens on ordinary people for revenue reasons. But the impact of the Goods and Services Tax that has been announced have not yet emerged. It is unlikely that this will not leave people altogether unscathed. And that too not only with regard to their booze and fags.
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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