Thursday 14th November, 2024

Sri Lanka goes to the polls today to elect a new Parliament. Curiously, voter enthusiasm has been at a low ebb, compared to that in the run-up to the 21 September presidential election. It has been interpreted as voter apathy in some quarters, but whether it is so will be seen only when the total number of votes to be polled is announced.

Stakes are extremely high for all political parties in today’s contest. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has urged the public to ‘fill the tenth parliament with only NPP members’, and former Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa is seeking a mandate to control the legislature. Some political parties are asking the public to help them form a formidable Opposition. Whether their wishes will be granted remains to be seen.

President Dissanayake and his party, the JVP-led NPP, have embarked on a mission to ‘cleanse’ Parliament. Ironically, the JVP/NPP has been an integral part of the Augean stables it has undertaken to clean!

Steamroller majorities are jinxed in this country, for they result in corruption, overreach, abuse of power, attacks on democracy, especially the suppression of dissent, and economic mismanagement. They are a curse for the people. Hung parliaments are also detrimental to the country’s interests in that they lead to political instability as cooperation is something alien to the parties in contest; they subjugate their own interests to those of the people.

Most Sri Lankan electors let their rising choler get the better of them and resort to punitive voting to express their frustration with the incumbent rulers instead of making a careful and reasoned assessment of candidates’ policies, abilities and integrity. This results in massive waves of popular support and huge majorities much to the benefit of crafty politicians who make themselves out to be saviours.

In underdeveloped democracies, the basic law often becomes the first casualty of mammoth majorities, as they are misused to amend or replace it to consolidate the winner’s power. A huge majority in a weak democracy could also serve as a passport to autocracy. Examples abound in this country. There is reason to believe that but for its five-sixths majority, the J. R. Jayewardene government would have acted differently, mindful of public opinion, and perhaps savage attacks on democracy and bloodbaths which characterised that regime would not have occurred. It was the abuse of the SLFP-led United Front’s two-thirds majority to extend the life of Parliament by two years and other excesses that enabled the UNP to sweep the parliamentary polls in 1977. A two-thirds majority drove President Mahinda Rajapaksa to abuse power to his heart’s content and amend the Constitution to do away with the presidential term limit. The 18th constitutional amendment became his undoing. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa acted similarly; he misused the SLPP’s two-thirds majority to amend the Constitution and carry out disastrous experiments and in the process ruined the country and his own political career.

Obtaining popular mandates is one thing but delivering what they are given for is quite another. Sloganeering and empty rhetoric can help whip up public resentment to engineer regime changes when the people are desperate for change, but they alone cannot ensure the stability of any government. The fate that befell the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration is a case in point. Those who infuse the people with hope and elevate their expectations beyond measure to capture power but fail to deliver run the risk of having to head for the hills with the irate public in close pursuit.

One can only hope that whichever party wins today’s election, economic recovery, battling corruption and strengthening the rule of law will figure high on the new government’s agenda; the escalating cost of living will be reined in; the doctrine of the separation of powers will be upheld; streets will remain peaceful and, above all, no need will arise for roads to be barricaded again near the President’s House and Temple Trees.

Perhaps, nothing exemplifies Sri Lanka’s predicament than the Brechtian aphorism—’Pity the land that needs heroes’. This country has had many bogus messiahs to contend with, but the search for new ones continues.

A country cannot be anything but what its people make out of it, and the people are said to get the governments they deserve. So, it is Sri Lankans’ call, today. Happy voting!

Wednesday 13th November, 2024

Prices of all varieties of rice are soaring and the large-scale millers are laughing all the way to the bank. Successive governments have vowed to tame the Millers’ Mafia, which always has the last laugh. The people, who expected the JVP-led NPP government to get tough with the powerful millers given to exploiting rice consumers and farmers alike, are utterly disappointed.

Instead of taking on the unscrupulous millers with might and main, the incumbent government is ‘floating like a bee and stinging like a butterfly’. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake met the large-scale millers in a bid to bring the prices of rice down, but in vain. His meeting with them reminded us of a powwow President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had with the same millers a few years before; a former military officer, Gotabaya roared like a lion before the meeting, but he was heard mewing afterwards; the millers’ Mafia continued to determine the prices of paddy and rice. All Executive Presidents have acted likewise despite their braggadocio.

President Dissanayake, in an interview with Derana TV on Monday night, spelt out some measures which, he said, his government had adopted to tackle the shortage of nadu rice and bring the prices of all rice varieties down to affordable levels. He said the government would do so through legal means and by building buffer stocks of paddy to make market interventions and prevent artificially created shortages of rice and unfair price increases. The government would purchase more paddy and the state-owned storage facilities would be developed, he said. Those measures may work on paper, but the reality is otherwise. The state machinery is geared to further the interests of the wealthy millers and other nabobs in the private sector. This is why the Paddy Marketing Board (PMB), Sathosa, etc., have failed.

What one gathers from the arguments of the millers’ Mafia and their critics’ counterarguments is that the shortage of nadu rice has resulted from the large-scale millers’ efforts to dispose of their unsold keeri samba stocks; rice wholesalers and retailers complain that the big millers refuse to sell them nadu rice unless they buy keeri samba. When nadu is in short supply, the people are compelled to consume expensive varieties of rice such as keeri samba for want of a better alternative.

Claiming that a stockpiling audit of the paddy and rice available in the warehouses of the millers in some districts and wholesalers had been conducted, President Dissanayake said in the aforesaid interview that overall there were enough stocks of rice, but there was a shortage of nadu rice because more land had been cultivated to produce keeri samba. His explanation corroborates that of the powerful millers like Dudley Sirisena. But independent agricultural experts and farmers’ organisations are convinced otherwise. They are of the view that the shortage of nadu rice has been created by the millers’ Mafia to increase the price thereof and sell their keeri samba stocks.

Former Director of Agriculture K. B. Gunaratne has exposed a ruse the powerful millers employ to mislead the Consumer Affairs Authority (CAA) and other state institutions. He has gone on record as saying that those millers keep part of their paddy stocks in the houses of some farmers. This is something President Dissanayake should look into.

Gunaratne, who is at the forefront of a campaign to safeguard the interests of the rice consumers and farmers, has challenged Dudley to a debate on the issues related to rice. President Dissanayake should seriously consider inviting experts like Gunaratne when he meets the crafty rice millers, who have had the leaders of successive governments eating out of their hands thanks to their political connections and slush funds.

No strategy to liberate consumers and farmers from the clutches of the millers’ Mafia will yield the intended results unless immediate action is taken to revive the small and medium-scale millers. No government has cared to ensure that banks, etc., make funds available to them for purchasing paddy in time for the commencement of harvesting seasons. The large-scale millers use their influence to delay loans for their smaller counterparts.

If the small and medium-scale millers are given state assistance while the PMB is revitalised, it will be possible to rein in the wealthy millers given to exploitative practices, and make the paddy/rice market more competitive––provided that the ruling party politicians have not benefitted from the largesse of the millers’ Mafia.

Tuesday 12th November, 2024

Another round of promise making has come to an end with two days to go before the next general election. Perhaps, the only thing Sri Lankan politicians do ‘as if to the manner born’ is to make promises to win elections, which have become promise-making contests in this country. If Machiavelli were alive, Sri Lankan politicians’ adeptness at making promises and breaking them would compel him to put out a revised edition of ‘The Prince’. The Opposition politicians are making new promises while President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and his team are promising to fulfil their election promises and making still more pledges.

It is only natural that all political parties in the parliamentary election fray are desperate and troubled by a gnawing sense of uncertainty. Elections held under the Proportional Representation (PR) system can throw up surprises. Given the electoral strengths or weaknesses of the parties in contest, and the way seats are allocated under the PR system, the prospect of a hung parliament is looming large and has left political parties and their leaders scrambling for alliances.

The JVP-led NPP did not succeed in getting off to a flying start after winning the presidency in September much to the disappointment of those who expected quick results. Sri Lankans are in a mighty hurry; they cannot even wait until traffic lights turn green! The NPP elevated the people’s expectations immeasurably, before the presidential election, promising many things including huge fuel price reductions and making other essential commodities freely available at affordable prices. Above all, its failure to win the presidency outright, despite its claim that it was riding a massive wave of popular support, has apparently affected its parliamentary election campaign, which has seen a drop in voter enthusiasm.

President Dissanayake, who stumped for the NPP throughout the country during the past several weeks, renewed a controversial promise in Vavuniya over the weekend. He pledged to release the ‘Tamil political prisoners’ in consultation with the Attorney General (AG). The Tamil Guardian has reported that JVP/NPP stalwart Bimal Ratnayake said in Vavuniya last month that President Dissanayake was “committed to releasing all political prisoners”.

Interestingly, successive governments including the Yahapalana administration, which Dissanayake’s JVP backed to the hilt, have insisted that there are no political prisoners. In 2015, Yahapalana Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe declared that Sri Lanka did not have any political prisoners. He said there were only some LTTE suspects in detention. The JVP did not take exception to his claim. Rajapakshe has reiterated his position on the issue, according to our main news item today. In 2021, Justice Minister Ali Sabry, in response to an inquiry ITAK MP Shanakiyan Rajaputhiran Rasamanickam made in Parliament about the total number of ‘political prisoners’ in Sri Lanka, denied that there was anyone in prison for political reasons. He said 12,848 LTTE members had been rehabilitated and released after the end of the war in 2009 and that 600 of them were child soldiers. He said some persons were being held in connection with ongoing legal procedures, which were time-consuming due to the complex nature of the cases. He said the government would expedite those cases with the help of the AG. The then SJB MP Mano Ganeshan accused the government of playing on nomenclature to evade the question of political prisoners, and called for the release of all those who were being held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The NPP reportedly stayed aloof from the debate on ‘political prisoners’ at the time.

What President Dissanayake, who is also the Minister of Defence, has said about ‘Tamil political prisoners’ is likely to be considered official, and his pledge to release them has already been picked up by the international media and human rights groups. So, it is incumbent upon the President to substantiate his claim in question by revealing the number of ‘political prisoners’ in Sri Lanka, if any. It is antithetical to democracy to hold political prisoners. Has the government mistaken some hardcore LTTE cadres for ‘political prisoners’? An explanation is called for.