Editorial

Lying abroad for the country

Published

1 year ago

2025/01/12

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake last week met four new ambassadors to Qatar, Russia, Kuwait and Egypt and our first high commissioner to New Zealand who will assume their assignments shortly. All of them are members of the Sri Lanka Overseas Service with no political appointee among them. The heads of mission were selected during the incumbency of the last regime and, in fact, had been cleared by the High Posts Committee of the last Parliament. The new Parliament has not yet appointed a committee to oversee senior government appointments requiring such clearance although, as we report in our news columns today, the ruling party has made its nominations and opposition nominations are awaited. Presumably there will be retroactive clearance of those already in office where necessary.

What the president told the new envoys about what is expected of them was all too obvious. No new thrust in the country’s diplomacy under the new order was revealed. President Dissanayake, while expressing his confidence in the newly appointed diplomats, emphasized the importance of their roles in strengthening Sri Lanka’s bilateral ties and fostering mutual cooperation with the countries to which they had been posted. Other matters covered included giving the best possible service to Lankan working in the countries of accreditation, something that is most important as we are heavily dependent on the remittances they send home. A large number of Lankans today work not only in the Middle East as during the early years of foreign employment but also in countries like South Korea and Japan and now Israel. Also the president urged pushing for more foreign investment, supporting the tourism industry, boosting exports etc.

There is reasonable cause for hope that the new administration, unlike its predecessors, will not make blatantly political diplomatic appointments, not only at ambassadorial level but in other positions in our missions overseas. Barely a month ago, Chief Government Whip Nalinda Jayatissa read out in parliament a list of names of politicians who have drawn money from the President’s Fund for whatever reason and promised to make more revelations. A similar list of progeny and close kith and kin of politicians posted to Sri Lanka’s overseas mission would be as revealing. We do not say that all appointments to Sri Lanka missions abroad should only be from the professional diplomatic service. There have been outstanding performances by those coming from outside, notably Mr. Shirley Amarasinghe, CCS, a former Secretary to the Treasury who chaired the UN Law of the Sea Conference with greatest distinction. So much so, when the 1977 JR Jayewardene government refused to keep him in New York as our Permanent Representative to the United Nations, the UN contrived to keep him in his Law of the Sea role.

Soon after the new regime took office, a total of 16 heads of diplomatic missions deemed political appointments were ordered to wind up their affairs and return to Colombo by December 1. As a state visit by the president to India was pending, the serving high commissioner in New Delhi was asked to remain until the visit was concluded. This was a sensible decision as a new appointee or a relatively junior officer may not have been able to competently handle the work involved at an important juncture. Also the high commissioner who was in place in India was a retired member of the Overseas Service with wide experience serving in important capitals. She was re-appointed post-retirement by the previous administration and this, among others, was apparently read as a “political appointment.” The single exception to the recall was former cabinet minister Mahinda Samarasinghe who quit his ministerial position to go to Washington as ambassador. This was purportedly in view of ongoing discussions with the IMF although it is well known that the embassy is little involved in this process.

However that be, several heads of mission positions, including in important capitals overseas like London and New Delhi as well as the UN in New York, remains to be filled. Whether the existing cadre in the Overseas Service has enough trained and experienced officers to meet this requirement is an open question. The late Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, unquestionably the best foreign minister this country ever had, made some imaginative appointments such as those of business leader SK Wickremesinghe posted to London and eminent lawyer H.L. de Silva who went to New York as our Permanent Representative to the UN. We also had Mr. Mangala Moonesinghe who served in Delhi and briefly in London. The other side of the coin was that there were some rank bad appointments, notably that of a cousin of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa to Washington. He was caught with his pants down profiting from a property acquisition for the state and returned the loot. Nevertheless the then government proposed to appoint him high commissioner to Canada. Fortunately, Ottawa declined accreditation.

The current political leadership like all its predecessors will, no doubt be pressured by supporters, friends and fellow travelers to make various diplomatic appointments for which there is an insatiable greed in this country. An Additional Foreign Secretary in Mrs. Bandaranaike’s day, obtained cabinet approval to abolish the Sri Lanka Overseas Service and amalgamate it with the SLAS, opening the doors to a vast number of patronage appointments, Mr. Dharmasiri Pieris who functioned as Secretary to the Prime Minister has revealed in his autobiography of which we are running excerpts. This was fortunately nipped in the bud. Finding the right people for the jobs that must be done, not only in the diplomatic service but also in the local administration, will be a monumentally challenging task. Hopefully, there will at least some success in this regard.

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Editorial

Anger wells up as people queue up

Published

16 hours ago

2026/02/22

Thilina Walpola

A shortage of cooking gas has affected several areas, where there are long lines of people near gas sales points. These scenes evoke one’s dreadful memories of winding queues for essential commodities in 2022. The two situations however do not bear comparison in that the country had no forex for petroleum imports in 2022 whereas there is no such problem at present; the gas shortage is mainly due to supply mismanagement.

The LP gas shortage has gladdened the hearts of the Opposition politicians immensely. They have got hold of something to beat the government with. They are making the most of the issue and urging the government to ensure an uninterrupted gas supply. Having failed to secure enough popular support to win elections, they are apparently deriving some perverse pleasure from the people’s predicament. In 2022, the then Opposition, including the JVP, used public resentment, which stemmed from shortages of essentials and long queues, to fuel their political projects and oust President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The JVP went on to garner favour with the irate public and capture state power.

The JVP-NPP government is taking great pains to deny the obvious. On Friday, the ruling party frontbenchers went ballistic in Parliament, berating the Opposition for making what they termed a false claim that there was a gas shortage. They are far removed from reality. If they care to look around, they will see long lines of people near gas sales points in some areas. They had better come to terms with reality and sort out the gas shortage, which shows signs of worsening.

The Consumer Affairs Authority (CAA) has sought to make light of the gas shortage. It has been making political statements in defence of the government, instead of taking action to safeguard the interests of consumers. It has urged the public not to stock up on cooking gas. It has also claimed that the state-owned gas company, Litro, has had to meet a shortfall in the gas supply caused by the failure of Laugfs to cater to its consumers. The CAA needs to be told that there is no way the public can hoard cooking gas. They cannot store more LP gas than the cylinders in their possession can hold. It is next to impossible to purchase new cylinders to hoard gas. Litro also does not supply gas to Laugfs consumers using yellow cylinders, and therefore it does not have to release more gas into the market to meet a Laugfs gas supply shortfall.

The government insists that Litro has enough gas stocks. If so, why doesn’t it order Litro to increase the supply and end the gas shortage forthwith? The Opposition has said the gas shortage has come about as the government awarded the contract for supplying LP gas to a new company. One may recall that speaking in Parliament in December 2025, Opposition MP Chamara Sampath Dassanayake warned of a possible gas shortage in February. He said the government in its wisdom had contracted a new gas supplier who was not capable of ensuring a reliable supply. Former Minister Champika Ranawaka has said the government had to change the supplier in keeping with the conditions the US laid down for reducing the so-called Trump tariffs on Sri Lankan exports. The government has chosen to remain silent on these claims. An explanation is called for. If it is true that the new supplier is not equal to the task of ensuring a steady supply of LP gas, the government will have its work cut out to eliminate gas shortages and queues and prevent public anger from welling up.

People’s aversion to shortages of essentials and queues knows no bounds. It was one of the reasons for the crushing defeat the SLFP-led United Front government suffered in 1977. It also became the undoing of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency in 2022. Aragalaya, which developed into a massive protest campaign, started off as a series of agitations against fuel and milk food shortages, in urban areas. People did not have to take to the streets in 2022; they were already there waiting in winding queues. The situation is obviously not so bad at present, but anything is possible in politics. It is a big mistake for a government to take public resentment for granted.

Editorial

Reinventing the wheel

Published

2 days ago

2026/02/21

Thilina Walpola

Saturday 21st February, 2026

The JVP-NPP government has appointed another Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) to study the electoral system under which the Provincial Council (PC) elections are to be conducted and submit proposals and recommendations to Parliament. It is bound to take a month of Sundays to complete that task. In fact, that is exactly what it is intended to do; the government wants the PC elections delayed further as it is not ready for an electoral contest.

Speaker Dr. Jagath Wickramaratne announced in the House that the PSC had been constituted under the chairmanship of Minister Vijitha Herath. Other members are Muneer Mulaffer, Attorney-at-Law Sunil Watagala, Arun Hemachandra, Ranjith Madduma Bandara, Mano Ganesan, Lakshman Nipuna Arachchi, Shanakiyan Rajaputhiran Rasamanickam, Samanmalee Gunasinghe, Darmapriya Wijesinghe, Chandana Sooriyaarachchi and Nizam Kariapper. The PSC is scheduled to commence deliberations shortly. Rasamanickam has already warned that the government is all out to postpone the PC polls further.

The JVP-NPP government, which came to power promising a new political culture, has demonstrated that it does not scruple to stoop to any level to safeguard its political interests. In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, the JVP/NPP promised to hold the PC elections expeditiously if voted into power. The NPP election manifesto, A Thriving Nation: A beautiful Life, makes a solemn pledge to hold the PC polls within one year of the formation of an NPP government. “Provincial councils and local government elections, which are currently postponed indefinitely, will be held within a year to provide an opportunity for the people to join the governance” (p. 127). It is said that between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.

There is no argument about the need for electoral reforms. The Proportional Representation (PR) system has shortcomings, which need to be rectified. The new Mixed Proportional system, under which the local government (LG) elections are held, is seriously flawed. It has led to a two-fold increase in the number of local councillors. There are now more than 8,000 LG members. This increase may have served the interests of politicians and their parties but certainly not those of the public. Why should the people be made to pay through the nose to maintain more than 8,000 councillors when the LG bodies can manage with only half that number as they did in the past.

If the PC elections are also held under the Mixed Proportional system, the number of provincial councillors will double. Currently, about 450 PC members are elected. There is no gainsaying that the Mixed Proportional system has to be changed before being used at the provincial level. The implementation of the new electoral system requires the delimitation of electoral boundaries. Much has been discussed about the flaws in this system and the remedies to be adopted. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.

What the government should do now is to amend the PC Elections Act and hold the long overdue PC elections under the PR system soon while the PSC proceedings are continuing. Future PC elections can be held under a new electoral system. The Opposition has been clamouring for the PC polls, and therefore an amendment to the PC laws can be ratified unanimously. After the PCs are duly elected, the PSC on electoral reforms can take as long as it needs to reinvent the wheel.

Editorial

PC polls in limbo amidst govt.’s mumbo jumbo

Published

3 days ago

2026/02/20

Thilina Walpola

Friday 20th February, 2026

The JVP-NPP government finds itself in an unenviable position over the Provincial Council (PC) polls, which have been in abeyance for nearly a decade. In the late 1980s, the JVP plunged the country into a bloodbath in a bid to prevent the establishment of the PCs, which it said would endanger the territorial integrity of the country. Today, it has a two-thirds majority in Parliament and its leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake is the Executive President. It is therefore well positioned to carry out its promise to do away with the PCs. After all, some election monitors have called upon it either to hold the delayed PC polls or to consider abolishing the PCs. It has chosen to do neither. Its leaders who vowed to liberate this country from India, which created the PC system, are seen pressing the flesh with the Indian leaders.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has accused the JVP-NPP government of trying to use a parliamentary select committee (PSC) to delay the PC polls further. TNA MP Shanakiyan Rasamanickam has reportedly opposed a government plan to bring the PCs within the remit of a new PSC. He has pointed out that a PSC on the PCs already exists, and the duplication of the PSC process will only lead to confusion and create conditions for the PC polls to be further delayed.

MP Rasamanickam’s fear is not unfounded. It is obvious that the government is not ready for an election. Otherwise, it would have amended the PC Elections Act, enabling the Election Commission to hold the PC polls under the Proportional Representation system soon. All signs are that it will do everything in its power to avoid an electoral contest this year. Its fear of elections has given the lie to its claim that its approval rating has improved.

The TNA is not alone in urging the government to hold long-delayed PC elections. The SJB, the SLPP, the SLFP and the UNP are also demanding that the PC polls be held immediately. All these political parties facilitated the passage of an extremely bad Bill to amend the PC Elections Act in 2017, thereby helping the UNP-led Yahapalana government postpone the PC polls . They ought to tender an apology for that blatantly undemocratic act.

It may be recalled that the TNA, the SLFP, the JVP and the Joint Opposition, consisting of the SLFP dissidents who subsequently formed the SLPP were prominent among the parties that enabled the ratification of the aforesaid shockingly awful Christmas tree Bill loaded with more committee-stage amendments than its original text. The SJB stalwarts were in the UNP in 2017 and voted for that bad Bill, which was not consistent with Article 78 (3) of the Constitution: “Any amendment proposed to a Bill in Parliament shall not deviate from the merits and principles of such Bill.”

Meanwhile, JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva has denied reports that the government is under pressure from India to hold the PC polls. He visited India recently and met Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. However, one may recall that in April 2025, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself publicly urged Sri Lanka to hold the delayed PC polls. At the UNHRC session in Geneva in September 2025, an Indian delegation repeated Modi’s call. India has done so under pressure from Tamil Nadu.

Statements made by Tilvin, who is widely seen as the eminence grise of the ruling JVP-NPP coalition, are generally considered authoritative. If the NPP government is not under Indian pressure to ensure that the PCs will have elected representatives soon, the question is whether the Modi government has taken the Tamil Nadu politicians for a ride.

If the NPP government is not afraid of facing the public, it can amend the current PC election laws and hold the PC polls without taking cover behind the delimitation process, which is likely to drag on indefinitely. Mere rhetoric won’t suffice.