Editorial

Super mandate and sobering reality

Published

1 year ago

2024/11/18

Monday 18th November, 2024

Following their stunning victory in last week’s parliamentary election, the JVP/NPP leaders must still be pinching themselves to make sure that they are not dreaming. Their mammoth majority is sure to go down in Sri Lanka’s history. However, the bigger the majority, the greater a government’s responsibility and the higher the possibility of the public expecting miracles and becoming frustrated. Above all, the Actonian truism that absolute power corrupts absolutely has stood the test of time. Giving politicians, especially untested ones, steamroller majorities could be just as much a recipe for disaster as keeping teenagers, alcohol and car keys together.

It was somewhat reassuring that JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva lost no time in appearing on television on Friday and promising that the NPP government would handle its super majority carefully and responsibly. However, one expected that assurance to come from the General Secretary (GS) of the NPP, and not the GS of the JVP, which says it is only part of the NPP. Nevertheless, Silva’s pledge will go a long way towards allaying doubts and suspicions in the people’s minds as regards steamroller majorities. One can only hope that the JVP/NPP will honour its word.

The NPP government will have to knuckle down to work forthwith and make good on its promises. It faces a steep learning curve. The new government is full of novices, and most ministers to be appointed will have no experience whatsoever with governance, and there could arise a situation where the political authority becomes heavily dependent on the highly unpopular bureaucracy, as never before. Officialdom is as much responsible as previous governments for Sri Lanka’s current predicament and the resultant public resentment, which the JVP/NPP tapped to propel itself to power.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a political greenhorn, became overdependent on public officials like P. B. Jayasundera, and the so-called professionals, such as doctors and university dons, failed pathetically. Behind every mega racket in the state sector, there is a rogue public official. The fake immunoglobulin fraud in the Health Ministry is a case in point. The fact that the members of the public service, which has become synonymous with inefficiency, callousness and corruption, threw their weight behind the NPP in the last two elections does not mean they are ready to mend their ways, work diligently, enhance their productivity and cooperate with the new government to achieve its goals for the sake of the country. There’s the rub.

The new government will find itself in the same bailout straitjacket as its predecessor, and the IMF, which is at the beck and call of the western bloc, is no respecter of popular mandates in the developing countries. So, whether the NPP government will be able to do things differently on the economic front remains to be seen. Unless it toes the western line, it will have screws being tightened by the international lending institutions.

The National People’s Power government ought to bear in mind that ‘People Power’ entered the political lexicon following a popular uprising in the Philippines in 1986 against dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who was backed by the US, which is now pontificating to Sri Lanka on the virtues of good governance. Marcos, whose regime was notorious for corruption and oppression, was ousted for more or less the same reasons as the Rajapaksa government.

But, in 2022, Filipinos elected Bongbong, son of Marcos, as their President. Ironically, his only qualification was that he was the scion of the Marcos family! Similarly, the forces the JVP/NPP boasts of having vanquished, are likely to make a comeback if the self-proclaimed liberators fail to carry out their promises. There have already emerged small pockets of resistance to the NPP’s clean-up campaign; Chamara Sampath (Badulla) and Rohitha Abeygunawardena (Kalutara) have retained their seats! These pockets could act like Covid clusters with the passage of time.

The NPP takes pride in having won handsomely in the North and the East as well in the recently-concluded general election—and justifiably so. That was a singular achievement. But would the people of the North and the East have been able to exercise their democratic rights, especially franchise, much less vote for political parties of their choice, if the LTTE had been around? The JVP did not support the country’s war against the LTTE. Most of all, whether the NPP will be able to retain its popularity in the North and the East will depend on how it handles contentious issues such as devolution and the UNHRC resolutions against Sri Lanka.

Riding a massive wave of anti-politics, the JVP/NPP succeeded in creating a kind of political Morton’s fork—a dilemma in which both choices are equally unpleasant—for the public by lumping its rivals into two groups, the Rajapaksa camp and others represented by the UNP, the SJB, etc.; it vilified both groups as corrupt, inefficient and worthless, while presenting itself as the only saviour. For this purpose, it had the public believe that the country had gained absolutely nothing during successive governments since Independence (1948). If so, how come an office aide’s son from Tambuttegama received free education and graduated from a state university with a science degree, and went on to become the President of Sri Lanka? It is thanks to successive governments that democracy has survived two JVP uprisings and a protracted war for the people to elect governments. The vast majority of professionals in the JVP/NPP, have also benefited from free education, free healthcare, etc.

True, most of the previous governments were characterised by corruption and abuse of power, and they contributed to the present economic crisis, but that does not mean that the country has not achieved anything since Independence, as evident from numerous development projects, impressive health indicators and high literacy rate. Interestingly, didn’t the JVP opt for honeymoons with the governments it keeps condemning, from 1970 to 2019? It was part of the SLFP-led UPFA government, which was in power from 2004 to 2010.

What made the NPP’s impressive electoral victories possible was the unstinting support of the ‘voters of passage’, who shift their political loyalties, based on changing circumstances, their own interests and the prevailing political climate. There is reason to believe that most of those who helped raise the NPP’s votes from a meagre 3% to a whopping 61% and its parliamentary seats from a mere three to a stunning 159 within just four years are the ones who voted overwhelmingly for Gotabaya Rajapaksa in the 2019 presidential race and for the SLPP in the 2020 general election and subsequently resorted to punitive voting against the Rajapaksas owing to contrition. Many of them are also known for virtue signaling. One of the biggest challenges before the NPP government will be to retain their support in future elections, especially the local government and provincial council polls slated for 2025.

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Editorial

A question of power

Published

5 hours ago

2026/01/3

Thilina Walpola

Saturday 3rd Junuary, 2026

The Electricity Consumers’ Association (ECA) has said the government is planning to pass the cost of the voluntary retirement scheme for the employees of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), which is to be restructured, on to the public in the form of a power tariff hike. A proposal to this effect has been submitted to the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL), the ECA has said.

The proposed tariff hike is said to be 11.57% for the first quarter of the current year. Speculation is rife that the PUCSL will grant the CEB’s request, and the public will be made to bear the cost of the voluntary retirement of about 2,500 CEB employees thanks to the cost reflective pricing mechanism. The problem is not going to end there; there are bound to be some more power tariff hikes.

One of the reasons given for Sri Lanka’s rupee crisis was the country’s legacy of below-cost pricing for utilities, such as electricity and fuel, by way of a ‘blanket’ type relief to consumers irrespective of their income level. These subsidies took their toll on the state-owned business enterprises (SOBEs) including the CEB and the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC), according to the Central Bank, which in its Annual Economic Review 2024 has noted that the banking sector financed the liquidity shortages of these SOBEs at the expense of productive investments. Hence the determination of the prices of electricity and fuel strictly in keeping with the cost reflective pricing mechanism. In fact, the IMF gave the previous government Hobson’s choice, by making cost-reflective pricing one of its bailout conditions.

The cost reflective pricing has not gone down well with the public, as is obvious, but it makes economic sense and goes a long way towards preventing the country facing another rupee crisis. Heavy subsidies are a drain on the state coffers and become unviable in the long run. In fact, it is a case of swings and roundabouts for the public where such subsidies are concerned; the state uses taxes to recover the costs of subsidies and legacy debts it assumes. However, it is nothing but unfair to make consumers bear the cost of massive overheads, waste and corruption that SOBEs, like the CEB and the CPC, are notorious for. The costs of the utilities must therefore be properly calculated in a transparent manner to prevent the exploitation of the public.

If the government goes ahead with its plan to pass the cost of restructuring the CEB on to the public through power tariff hikes, as the ECA has alleged, then the price of electricity will soar, taking a heavy toll on the economy.

In March 2023, this newspaper quoted energy expert Dr. Tilak Siyamabalpitiya, who went on to become CEB Chairman, as having said at an event organised by the CEB engineers, that Sri Lanka had the second highest electricity prices in Asia. Thus, power tariff increases are very likely to stand in the way of the government’s efforts to attract foreign investors and retain the ones who are already here. One of the factors that determine the competitiveness of investment destinations is the cost of electricity. The government must not lose sight of this fact.

The government has chosen to remain silent on the ECA’s allegation. But the truth will soon come out.

Editorial

It’s PC polls, stupid

Published

1 day ago

2026/01/2

Thilina Walpola

Friday 2nd Junuary, 2026

The SJB yesterday called upon the NPP government to hold the much-delayed Provincial Council (PC) polls soon. Its call is bound to go unheeded, for the JVP/NPP is not ready for an election. Having suffered a string of defeats in the cooperative society elections during the past several months, the government is trying every trick in the book to postpone the PC elections further. The outcome of last year’s local government polls is not something the JVP/NPP can be really proud of; its efforts to sweep the polls did not reach fruition although it managed to bag a majority of local councils.

A midterm electoral setback could be the undoing of a government however powerful it may be. The fate that befell the Mahinda Rajapaksa government following the Uva PC polls in September 2014 is a case in point. The UPFA won the Uva PC, but the number of its seats dropped from 25 to 19. The number of UNP’s seats increased from 7 to 13. The JVP, which had only one seat in the previous council, secured 02 in 2014. President Rajapaksa, in his wisdom, advanced a presidential election, and lost the presidency to Maithripala Sirisena in January 2015.

So, it is highly unlikely that the NPP government will hold the PC polls anytime soon. The Opposition is not strong enough to pressure the government politically to take a huge electoral gamble by holding an election.

It is doubtful whether the Opposition is really keen to face an election at this juncture despite its rhetoric. The SJB and other Opposition parties have closed ranks and defeated budgets in a considerable number of NPP-controlled local councils and won cooperative society elections. But their fragile unity is not going to survive an election that they will have to contest separately. A split in the anti-government vote will stand the JVP/NPP in good stead. However, the situation is likely to change if the UNP and the SJB come together to contest future elections.

What enabled the UNP to improve its electoral performance in the Uva Province in 2014 and gain a strategic opening to topple the Rajapaksa government a few months later was a rapprochement between two factions led by Ranil Wickremesinghe and Sajith Premadasa.

The SJB leaders who are demanding that the PC polls be held soon ought to tender an apology to the public for the role they played in postponing the PC elections indefinitely in 2017 while they were in the UNP-led Yahapalana government. The UNP and the SLFP, as Yahapalana allies, were wary of facing an election in 2017 and therefore amended the PC Elections Act to delay the PC polls. None of the political parties represented in Parliament at the time, including the UNP, the SLFP/UPFA, the ITAK, the SLMC, and the JVP, opposed the obnoxious amendment to the PC Elections Act. The current SLPP leaders were dissident members of the UPFA. The original amendment Bill was to provide for a quota of 30% for female candidates on the nomination papers submitted for the PC elections, but it was changed beyond recognition at the committee stage to facilitate the postponement of the PC polls. Article 78 (3) of the Constitution says, “Any amendment proposed to a Bill in Parliament shall not deviate from the merits and principles of such Bill.” But the aforesaid political parties took the bad amendment for granted; the PC polls were made to disappear, as it were.

The incumbent government has said the PC polls will be held under the Mixed Proportional (MP) system. The delimitation of electoral boundaries, which is a prerequisite for holding the PC polls under the MP system, will take about one year, according to the Election Commission. The only way to hold the PC election soon is to legislate for it to be conducted under the existing Proportional Representation system. If the SJB is serious about having the PC polls held soon, it should campaign for amending the PC Elections Act, in Parliament. Let it be urged to fish or cut bait.

Editorial

Trace all missing firearms

Published

2 days ago

2026/01/1

Thilina Walpola

Thursday 1st Junuary, 2026

The CID arrested EPDP leader and former minister Douglas Devananda last Thursday in connection with an ongoing investigation into a pistol issued to him by the Army way back in 2001 allegedly ending up in the underworld. It has claimed that information elicited from Makandure Madush, a notorious criminal, led the police to the weapon hidden in a shrub in Weliweriya.

Devananda is one of the battle-scarred ex-Tiger combatants who courageously stood up to the LTTE and helped defeat it. He survived several assassination attempts, including one inside the Kalutara Prison. Devananda’s predicament has gladdened the hearts of pro-LTTE groups beyond measure, as evident from their social media posts.

The pistol in question was reportedly issued to Devananda at the height of LTTE terror; Madush was arrested in 2019 and killed in October 2020, while in police custody. Curiously, the serial number of the weapon remained intact while it was in the underworld.

Madush is long dead, and there is no way the CID’s claims about the firearm at issue can be checked. The CID, which is under two members of the Retired Police Collective of the JVP/NPP, has become the JVP’s rottweiler. The police are all out to protect the interests of the JVP/NPP government; they suddenly ran out of breathalysers when a government MP caused a road accident the other day. A policeman, assaulted by a government MP and his backers recently for conducting a raid on a cannabis plantation, was arrested and interdicted! The police have not arrested a deputy minister and an NPP mayor, charged with fraud.

Now that the CID is busy probing Devananda’s pistol, let it be urged to launch an investigation into thousands of weapons issued by the Defence Ministry to politicians in the second JPV uprising in the late 1980s, and the arms seized by the JVP during that period.

In January 2019, the then Defence Secretary Hemasiri Fernando disclosed that about 4,700 9mm pistols and revolvers had been licensed, but there was no information about those who had obtained them and, worse, some individuals possessed as many as 15 small firearms each! In 2023, the then State Minister of Defence Premitha Bandara Tennakoon revealed in Parliament that the defence authorities had issued about 700 firearms to 154 politicians in the late 1980s, when the JVP went on a killing spree, but none of them had been returned. This figure, we believe, is a gross underestimate.

The National Commission against the Proliferation of Illicit Small Arms, appointed by President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga in 2004, dealt extensively with the issue of illegal weapons in circulation in Sri Lanka, as we pointed out in a previous editorial comment. Its survey report contains valuable information, which, however, needs to be updated. Defence authorities should study this document thoroughly and commission a fresh survey on illicit firearms.

The police must go all out to find the illegal firearms used by the JVP during its second uprising. Most of the JVP’s arms caches have not been traced. SJB MP Dayasiri Jayasekara told Parliament on 27 February 2025 that more than 2,000 firearms seized by the JVP between 1987 and 1989 had not been recovered. One may recall that the JVP attacked several police stations and military camps and grabbed many weapons. In April 1987, it seized the arsenal of the Pallekele army camp. Now that the JVP-led NPP has formed a government and launched a campaign to eliminate gun violence, the Defence Ministry and the CID may be able to ascertain information about the firearms used by the JVP in the late 1980s.

Hardly a day passes without incidents of gun violence. Two shooting incidents were reported from the Western Province yesterday. The proliferation of illicit firearms in Sri Lanka can be attributed to several key factors, according to researchers; they include gunrunning, illegal operations carried out by rogue elements in the police and the armed forces, local arms manufacturing, and criminals gaining access to arms caches of the LTTE and the weapons that went missing in the late 1980s.

The police produced 12 suspects before the Colombo Chief Magistrate on March 22, 2019, for having supplied weapons retrieved from some buried LTTE arms caches in Kilinochchi to criminal gangs elsewhere. The LTTE seized firearms from the police, the armed forces and the rival militant groups like the EPDP. It is incumbent upon the police to make a serious effort to trace all illegal firearms. Let that be their New Year resolution.