Editorial
Windbags and sacrifices
Wednesday 1st March, 2023
Sri Lanka finds itself in the same predicament as a gang rape victim being forcibly kept in the custody of her rapists. Those who are responsible for stealing public funds, mismanaging the economy and bankrupting it continue to be in power. Worse, while living high on the hog at the expense of taxpayers, these characters are urging the people, who are struggling to keep the wolf from the door, to make more sacrifices and help straighten up the economy!
Sri Lanka and Pakistan have many things in common, the most noticeable being the sheer number of parasitic crooks at the levers of power. The latter is also facing a severe forex crunch, but thankfully its dollar reserves are not exhausted. So far so good. Both countries are pleading with the IMF to throw a lifeline. The Pakistani government, however, has launched an austerity drive, and is trying to lead by example while its Sri Lankan counterpart is splurging public funds on ceremonies, etc., to boost the egos of political leaders on the pretext of improving the country’s image.
Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has announced that ministers and special advisers have decided to forego their salaries and perks in view of their country’s economic situation. According to him, there will be a complete ban on buying luxury items and on purchasing all types of new cars until June 2024; all luxury cars being used by Cabinet members will be revoked and auctioned; federal ministers will travel in economy when undertaking domestic travel or going abroad; support staff will no longer be allowed to go on state visits; Cabinet members will not stay in five-star hotels during foreign trips; government officers will only be allowed to undertake ‘obligatory visits’, and they will travel in economy; security cars will no longer be provided to government officers; teleconferencing would be promoted to reduce traveling expenses; for the next two years, no new administrative unit, division or sub-division will be created; to conserve gas and electricity, offices will open at 7.30 a.m. during summer; only a single dish would be allowed at government events; there will only be one dish in all the ministries in Islamabad, and in the Prime Minister’s House; if it is tea time, only tea and biscuits will be provided; current expenditure of ministries, departments and sub-departments will be reduced by 15%; government houses spread on acres will be converted into townhouses; no official or minister will be allowed to retain state gifts worth more than $ 300 million, and a single treasury account will be established.
There is no reason why the Sri Lankan government cannot do likewise. After all, its leaders never miss an opportunity to make a public display of their patriotism and what they make out to be their readiness to die for the country. But we bet our bottom dollar that they will not emulate their Pakistani counterparts; they are not willing to do anything for the country other than paying PAYE tax.
Leader of the House and Minister Susil Premajayantha has gone on record as saying that the ministers and other MPs are making ‘huge sacrifices’ by paying Rs. 241,000 each and Rs. 90,000 each respectively as PAYE tax. No Sri Lankan is so naïve as to believe that for an MP or a minister his or her salary and allowances are the only source of income. Going by the amounts Premajayantha has mentioned, the lawmakers, most of whom are not eligible to secure employment in the public sector even as sanitary workers, are drawing much bigger salaries than senior professionals in highly-specialised fields such as medicine, higher education, finance, banking, engineering, IT, accounting, etc.
Is any Sri Lankan minister willing to allow his official vehicles to be auctioned so that the proceeds therefrom could be utilised for some productive purpose? Having fallen from grace and failed to secure a Cabinet post in the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration, Premajayantha, in January 2022, put on a boru show at the Delkanda fair, where he held a brief presser and flayed the government’s agricultural policy, which, he said, had caused the prices of vegetables to go into the stratosphere. Thereafter, he went back home in a tuk-tuk, claiming that it was the only mode of transport he could afford, and his lot would improve if he resumed his legal practice. Subsequently, he clawed his way back into the Cabinet and is now enjoying all ministerial perks. Why can’t he stop using luxury vehicles and travel in trishaws?
Minister Premajayantha is reported to have said that MPs from far-flung areas such as Ampara find it difficult to travel to Colombo due to PAYE tax deductions from their salaries and fuel allowances. These worthies are wealthy enough to spend truckloads of money during elections. So, why can’t they pay for their fuel? Why can’t they travel by bus or train as their electors do? Unless politicians are made to do so, they will never feel the need to develop public transport. More often than not, parliamentary sessions are inquorate, and the Speaker has a hard time trying to have a quorum in the House. So, where do the MPs who travel long distances go after reaching Colombo? There is an MPs’ housing complex close to Parliament, and the MPs from faraway places can travel to Colombo by bus or train and stay there when the House is in session.
In Sweden, one of the most developed nations, as we have pointed out in a previous comment, no people’s representative other than the Prime Minister is entitled to an official vehicle. The MPs are given bus and train passes. Of course, they can use their private vehicles but at their own expense. Not even the Swedish Speaker is given an official vehicle. No wonder such countries are developed. The deification of politicians is one of the main reasons why Sri Lanka remains underdeveloped. So long as the ordinary Sri Lankans do not care to assert their rights and prevent politicians and other such leeches from sponging off them, the country will not be able to attain its development goals.
It is high time the Sri Lankan politicians in power stopped wasting state funds and shared in people’s suffering lest they should worsen the economic crisis, enrage the public further and find themselves in a situation where they will have to outrun irate protesters for their dear lives.
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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