Friday 5th July, 2024

A person described as an entrepreneur from Moratuwa has filed a fundamental rights (FR) petition, seeking a Supreme Court (SC) determination on the duration of the president’s term, and an interim order preventing the official announcement of the next presidential election until the apex court decision. The members of the Election Commission (EC) including its Chairman and the Attorney General have been named as respondents. This petition has not come as a surprise. We are reminded of a vain attempt President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga made in 2005 to remain in office until 2006.

We thought the Constitution was very clear on the duration of the presidential term. Otherwise, the EC would not have undertaken to hold the presidential election this year itself. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was elected, in 2019, for a period of five years, and following his resignation in 2022, Parliament elected Ranil Wickremesinghe as his successor to serve the remainder of his term. We, however, do not intend to dwell on the legal aspects of a matter that is before the SC. They are best left to the learned judges. Instead, we discuss the political, social and economic issues that arise from poll postponements.

The Opposition is letting out howls of protest against surreptitious moves being made to postpone the upcoming presidential election. It has vowed to do everything in its power to defeat them on both political and legal fronts. The SJB, the JVP/NPP, and the SLPP dissidents have said they will come forward as intervenient petitioners in respect of the FR petition at issue. One cannot but appreciate their concerns about democracy and action to counter threats to the people’s franchise. They can rest assured that every right-thinking person, who cherishes democracy, will be on their side. (In this country, politicians fight for the people’s democratic rights only when they happen to be in the Opposition!)

Attempts to have the next presidential poll put off could prove counterproductive, for they are bound to go pear-shaped, and will be seen as proof that those who are behind them are afraid of facing elections.

The Presidential Media Division has issued a statement that President Wickremesinghe is of the view that the EC is right in having decided to hold the next presidential election this year. It has also said the person who filed the aforesaid petition had not consulted either President Wickremesinghe or his lawyers. But it is the UNP which has called for a poll postponement. Its General Secretary Palitha Range Bandara himself has reiterated that the presidential and parliamentary polls have to be put off.

The SLPP has claimed that it is against postponing elections. It seems to think that Sri Lankans are suffering from amnesia. It has postponed the Local Government polls twice. There is no bigger threat to democracy than a regime that undermines the people’s franchise. Elections not only help the people elect their representatives to run political institutions or govern the country but also enable them to canalise their resentment towards those at the levers of power in a democratic manner.

Pressure that builds up in a polity, where the people undergo unbearable economic hardships and are denied their democratic rights including franchise, or elections do not reflect the popular will due to malpractices, etc., tends to find expression in political upheavals. There have been several instances where poll postponements made Sri Lankan democracy scream. If the SLFP-led United Front government had not extended the life of Parliament by two years from 1975 to 1977, the UNP would not have been able to obtain a steamroller majority, which it abused in every conceivable manner to suppress democracy.

The scrapping of a general election due in 1982 with the help of a heavily-rigged referendum, under J. R. Jayewardene’s presidency, paved the way for the second JVP uprising and a bloodbath. Thousands of young lives were lost and state assets worth billions of rupees destroyed. The social and economic costs of the JVP’s reign of terror and the UNP’s equally savage counterterror operations were incalculable. The Gotabaya Rajapaksa government also blundered by putting off the LG polls. If they had been held on schedule, they would have allowed the public to give vent to their pent-up anger democratically, forcing that blundering regime to heed public opinion and make a course correction without provoking the people into taking to the streets. The postponement of the LG polls last year on President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s watch has also created a massive pressure build-up, which has the potential to erupt into an uprising. Another poll postponement will make the situation even more volatile.

Let those who are making a last-ditch attempt to delay the presidential election be warned that they are playing with fire. They had better recall that the Rajapaksas, who preened themselves on having defeated terrorism, had to head for the hills in 2022 as they, in their wisdom, chose to slight public opinion and ride roughshod over the people. Unless those who boast of waging a successful economic war abandon their attempts to subvert democracy and stop testing the people’s patience, which is manifestly wearing thin, it will soon be their turn to outrun the irate public.

Thursday 4th July, 2024

The Election Commission (EC) has issued a media statement, reminding political parties and politicians that although the Local Government (LG) polls have been postponed, election laws governing them are in effect. Therefore, the EC has warned that at present nobody must promote any specific candidate, political party, or independent group. It has also informed all heads of public institutions, through a circular and a gazette extraordinary, that no state property must be utilised for this purpose. The EC’s actions and warning are timely; complaints abound that the politicians who have submitted nominations for the LG polls are involved in the presidential election campaigns of their political parties. The government stands accused of involving its LG polls candidates in state-funded development activities at the grassroots level so that they can gain political mileage while carrying out its presidential election campaign.

Some political parties, such as the UNP, the SJB and the NPP, are busy promoting themselves as well as their prospective presidential candidates in view of the next presidential election, which has not yet been called officially. These political parties have submitted nominations for the deferred LG polls, and therefore it can be argued that they are violating the election laws. Aren’t there sufficient grounds for legal action to be taken against them?

Interestingly, the laws governing the LG and presidential polls will overlap soon when the EC declares the next presidential election. This unprecedented situation could raise a legal dilemma. Will the presidential election laws take precedence over those governing the LG polls, or will the LG election laws apply only to the LG candidates, excluding the political parties and independent groups they represent, in the run-up to the upcoming presidential election? The resulting confusion among the public could undermine the integrity of the election laws and the electoral process besides eroding public trust therein. Therefore, there is a pressing need for a clarification.

All election laws prohibit the misuse or abuse of public property for electioneering, but some questionable practices are prevalent, and, worse, they have been taken for granted. The President, the Prime Minister and ministers use government vehicles and even the SLAF aircraft for campaign related activities which are craftily made to look like official engagements. Needless to say, they do so at the expense of the public amidst a crippling economic crisis. These practices that amount to a blatant violation of election laws must be brought to an end; government politicians who misuse the state machinery, the publicly-owned aircraft and vehicles can carry out their election campaigns much more efficiently than their Opposition counterparts at lower costs, leaving the public to foot the bill. Extraordinary security arrangements for government bigwigs’ travel throughout the country also cost the public an arm and a leg. If the existing laws do not provide for banning such practices, new ones must be brought in to ensure a level playing field for all candidates. Curiously, this issue has not been taken up in Parliament. Maybe the Opposition has chosen to remain silent because it is hoping to do likewise in the event of being voted into power.

It defies comprehension why the President, the Prime Minister, ministers and the Opposition Leader should be allowed to use their official vehicles, etc., for political work even during non-election times. They must be prevented from misusing state assets and public funds for their political work. They have a right to engage in politics but at their own expense, and the public, already crushed under multiple burdens including unconscionably high taxes, must not be made to pay through the nose to meet unnecessary expenses. The people’s predicament, which in fact is a double whammy caused by spendthrift, inefficient politicians, is like Saturn, the evildoer, landing in a beggar’s bowl, as a local saying goes.

Tuesday 2nd July, 2024

Parliament is to have a debate on the recently-concluded external debt restructuring agreement between Sri Lanka and some of its foreign creditors. It is hoped that the focus of the House will remain undivided on the country’s debt crisis and the ways and means of overcoming it, and nothing else. Parliamentary debates usually descend into slanging matches.

Opinion is divided on the aforesaid agreement which the government has made out to be a huge success. The Opposition has dismissed it as a sellout, claiming that the government has agreed to conditions totally unfavourable to the country. The truth, we believe, is somewhere between these two extreme positions.

The debt structuring agreement has provided Sri Lanka with some respite, but by no stretch of the imagination can it be considered an achievement worthy of celebration. Sri Lanka’s International Sovereign Bonds have not yet been restructured; the government is hopeful that an agreement with the bondholders can be reached. There is a long way to go before we achieve debt sustainability, the be-all and end-all of breaking the back of the current crisis, and putting the economy back on an even keel. This is a gargantuan task that requires a substantial increase in the country’s export revenue and a drastic reduction in the outflow of foreign exchange, among other things.

The Opposition’s position on external debt restructuring smacks of a mindset that the foreign creditors must be penalised for Sri Lanka’s blunders which have brought about the current crisis. True, Sri Lanka would have gained hugely if its creditors had been made to agree to big haircuts and other such extreme measures, but the question is whether it would have been able to borrow again from external sources in such an eventuality.

How can the foreign creditors be expected to be so considerate as to take huge haircuts for the sake of Sri Lanka while some local trade unions are demanding their pound of flesh or even more, and the MPs are all out to secure duty-free vehicle permits, which will be a drain on the country’s foreign currency reserves? Worse, Sri Lankan exporters stand accused of parking their export proceeds overseas.

Meanwhile, the crisis we are facing is multi-factorial although our focus is only on the economic aspects thereof. Therefore, our efforts to solve it once and for all should not be limited to the economic front. The need for social and political reforms to prepare the country for doing what needs to be done to overcome the present crisis cannot be overemphasised. We are without a work ethic as such and our attitude to work, as a nation, is appalling, to say the least; it is only natural that our national productivity remains woefully low, and we continue to be dependent on foreign aid.

Ideally, the government and the Opposition should have got together to help resolve the country’s worst-ever economic crisis, and formulated a recovery strategy, instead of playing politics with the issue. In fact, all members of the current Parliament are duty bound to make a collective effort to hoist the country out of its debt crisis. The SLPP government on Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s watch precipitated the economic crisis, but successive governments have contributed to the country’s unsustainable debt, albeit to varying degrees. Those in the current Opposition were in the Yahapalana government or were supportive of that regime, which borrowed more than USD 10 billion between 2015 and 2019, according to SLPP Leader and former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The SJB MPs were in the UNP at the time. The TNA, the JVP, etc., fully backed the Yahapalana administration, and even prevented its collapse in 2018 by helping it muster a parliamentary majority. Besides, the TNA backed the LTTE, which inflicted incalculable damage on the economy, and the JVP itself destroyed state assets worth billions of rupees in the late 1980s.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe has expressed his willingness to consider alternative proposals outlining a viable strategy to overcome the debt crisis. He has invited the Opposition to submit such proposals, if any, and undertaken to facilitate a meeting between the proponents thereof and the IMF representatives. Will the Opposition take up the challenge and present an alternative plan when the debt deals are taken up for debate?