Witch-hunt begins?

Tuesday 22nd June, 2021

Old habits are said to die hard. Some SLPP leaders have reverted to their old ways even before the government has completed one year in office. They do not seem to learn from their past blunders that cost them dear politically; they are busy settling personal scores with one another, the way they did towards the latter part of the previous Rajapaksa government, whose leaders committed political hara-kiri by trifling with some UPFA seniors and even trying to smoke them out.

SLPP General Secretary Sagara Kariyawasam is openly clashing with some Cabinet ministers. He has audaciously demanded Energy Minister Udaya Gammanpila’s resignation over the fuel price increases. Minister of Industries Wimal Weerawansa’s wings are being clipped, to all intents and purposes; his ministry has been stripped of Lanka Phosphate Ltd. (LPL). The government has sought to justify its action by claiming that the institutions involved in fertiliser production should be under the Agriculture Ministry.

Now that LPL has been placed under the Agriculture Ministry, one can only hope that it will not face the same fate as the so-called peripheral forests, whose management the government craftily removed from the purview of the Forest Department and placed under the District and Divisional Secretaries, on the pretext of helping the people engaged in traditional agriculture. This move enabled the SLPP henchmen to encroach on forests, pretending to be farmers.

The Auditor General and others on a mission to protect vital state assets should keep a watchful eye on LPL, which is said to be making profits at present; Agriculture Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage must be held accountable if LPL backslides. It is no secret that various racketeers have been eyeing this state-owned venture for a long time; there are some government cronies among them. They must be licking their chops. The sky is the limit for these elements, as evident from the manner in which the government reduced import duty on sugar to help one of its financiers make a killing at the expense of the state coffers, which suffered colossal losses amounting to billions of rupees, as a result. MONLAR (Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform), which is at the forefront of protecting farmers’ rights, has warned of a sinister move to divest LPL in the long run. This warning should be taken seriously.

The Opposition is not playing its cards well where the government’s political woes are concerned. The SJB leaders do not seem to have read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, which says, among other things, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” They seem to be convinced otherwise; they have resorted to offensive action while their political enemies are clashing, and in so doing, they have only prompted the SLPP dissenters to make common cause. They have undertaken to move a no-faith motion against Minister Gammanpila, and unwittingly provided the government with a fresh rallying point. Now, even the SLPP MPs who are desirous of seeing the back of Gammanpila will have to support him when the motion of no confidence against him is put to the vote in Parliament. In 2018, the Joint Opposition led by Mahinda Rajapaksa made a similar mistake by trying to oust the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had become extremely unpopular among the UNF MPs. Their betise turned out to be a lifeline for the crumbling yahapalana government; even the bitterest critics of Wickremesinghe in the UNP circled the wagons, and he emerged stronger.

The government is in the same predicament as a person afflicted with an autoimmune disease; it has turned against itself. It is harming itself in such a way that the Opposition does not have to do anything. So, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa can relax, or devote his time and energy to devising a way to ward off threats former Prime Minister Wickremesinghe is expected to pose to the SJB after entering Parliament as a National List MP.