When sugar tastes bitter

Saturday 23rd January, 2021

Many a yahapalana politician made a spectacle of himself, in the last Parliament, by trying to defend the indefensible after the lid had been blown off the Treasury bond scams. The UNP MPs argued, until they were blue in the face, that there had been no wrongdoing, and the bond scams were a total fabrication. However, the truth like oil came to the surface, and the defenders of the bond scammers are now in the political wilderness. Some SLPP politicians are doing likewise in the current Parliament; they are making a futile bid to counter various allegations against the government, the latest being that it slashed import duty on sugar to help a crony make huge profits.

The Opposition has claimed that the sugar importer involved in the racket is one of the SLPP financers; he sponsored Viyathmaga events among other things, we are told. The government has not denied this claim, and one can, therefore, conclude that the person who is said to have benefited from the duty reduction on sugar is a financial backer of the SLPP.

Hardly anything comes free in this money-driven world, especially in the lucrative business of politics. Moneybags do not part with their dosh for nothing. Funding political parties is an investment for them, and they expect returns thereon. It is now payback time for those who bankrolled the SLPP’s election campaigns, etc., and their interests always take precedence over those of the ordinary electors.

Financial backers of ruling politicians have all the luck across the globe. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trusted lieutenant, Gautam Adani, is so powerful that he can have the Indian government make Sri Lanka cough up even a port terminal! Barack Obama, who during his first election campaign, pledged to end cronyism, also stood accused of favouring his cronies; he made quite a stir by appointing one of his financial backers, Louise Susman, who had little experience of foreign affairs, as the US ambassador to the UK. Quid pro quo is the name of the game in politics.

The SLPP politicians are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public as regards the import duty controversy. They claim that some importers had bought huge stocks of sugar, especially from India, which gave concessions to its exporters, by the time the import duty was reduced here, and refused to sell sugar at the new price determined by the government. Cooperative Services, Marketing Development and Consumer Services State Minister Lasantha Alagiyawanna told the House, the other day, that those sugar importers had resorted to market manipulation and frustrated the government’s effort to bring down the sugar price. He claimed that a private company had taken advantage of the duty reduction to import sugar at a lower cost while other importers were left with huge stocks of sugar in their warehouses, which were packed to the rafters. There had been no racket whatsoever, the State Minister claimed. Market watchers are convinced otherwise, though. Their position is that the duty reduction was timed in such a way that it benefited the SLPP’s crony. Their argument that the government purposely waited until the warehouses of other sugar importers were full to slash the import duty on sugar so that its backer would stand to gain, holds water.

The problem with the Opposition is that it generally does not raise pointed questions in Parliament. Its members make a lot of noise but little sense during the question time in the House, and regrettably this allows the ministers to obfuscate vital issues. Only the JVP poses some sensible questions.

The government may beat the weak Opposition in parliamentary debates and wriggle out of difficult situations by muddying the water, but it cannot hoodwink the public. As for the political health of any government what really matters is public opinion. The sugar import controversy has left a bad (or sour) taste in many a mouth.