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Editorial

RW moves the pawns

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Nobody talks any more about the local government elections the president aborted earlier this year. It is as clear as clear can be why RW resorted to the “no money” ploy to accomplish that objective. The UNP had struck a deal with the SLPP to run together, each complementing the other, and both parties along with other aspirants went through the cosmetic motions of paying their deposits and handing nomination for an election that was even then very much in doubt. Colombo, a traditional UNP bastion, which old timers would remember was wrested by the greens led by Messrs. J.R. Jayewardene and V.A. Sugathadasa soon after Mr. Bandaranaike’s ‘People’s Revolution’ of 1956, was conceded to the UNP and so possibly was Kandy. SLPP General Secretary Sagara Kariyawasam repeatedly claimed his party was not afraid of elections while the issue of holding them was being canvassed both before the Elections Commission and the courts.

A sitting SJB MP, Mr. Mujibur Rahman, resigned his seat in parliament to run for Mayor of Colombo. The president did say at one point of time that he had sent a message to Rahman to warn him that he shouldn’t vacate his parliamentary seat, but the latter has denied this claim. Whether the messenger failed to deliver, or there was no such message, or whether it was unreceived or not was never thrashed out in the public domain. But the fact remains that veteran politician AHM Fowzie who has batted for both the UNP and SLFP in national and municipal politics is back in parliament filling Rahman’s vacancy. He’s already defied the SJB whip to vote for the recent resolution on the IMF deal when the SJB had decided to be absent at voting time. He’s been suspended though not expelled from his party for his pains. This has provoked the question of whether Fowzie has expectations of office but many believe that at age 85-years, he’s more interested in ensuring that is son succeeds him in politics.

Be that as it may, last week’s removal of three Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed provincial governors and their replacement by the president have many national political implications. Undoubtedly the appointment of CWC President Senthil Thondaman as the new Governor of the Eastern Province is related to RW’s aspiration to be the elected president of the country. Senthil’s cousin, Jeevan Thondaman, the CWC’s general secretary, was recently appointed the country’s youngest cabinet minister by RW. Now Senthil has been made a governor and the obvious signal is that Wickremesinghe is wooing plantation Tamil votes in any forthcoming presidential election. Both Thondamans are direct descendants of the late S. Thondaman, the leader of the plantation worker community of recent Indian descent, who wielded tremendous political clout in post-Independence Ceylon and Sri Lanka.

Speculative reports that Wickremesinghe may even attempt to hold a presidential election at the end of this year has been widely published. Given that he was elected by parliament in July last year to serve GR’s balance term which runs till November 2024, Wickremesinghe cannot call an early presidential election without an amendment to the constitution. Whether he can engineer the necessary two thirds majority to push through such an amendment is regarded unlikely by analysts who argue that even the 134 votes in parliament that RW mustered to be elected to serve the balance GR term, has not held. Also the question arises whether a court will hold that a mere two thirds majority is sufficient to enact such a constitutional amendment as it can be argued that the matter involves the franchise of the people that also requires a referendum. But it should not be forgotten that when Mahinda Rajapaksa sought to annul the constitutionally stipulated two term limit on the presidency, the then Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake ruled that no referendum was necessary as abolishing the term limit enhanced rather than diminished the franchise. That proved unfortunate for MR who lost his 2015 bid for a third term.

The SJB which a few days ago unanimously anointed Sajith Premadasa as its next presidential candidate will most likely favour an early presidential election and may support such an election by supporting the necessary constitutional amendment. But the SLPP which has not yet decided on its next presidential candidate may probably prefer more time to make up its mind. Some SLPPers have already expressed support for Ranil Wickrenesinghe. Other are sitting on the fence.

The Rajapksas and their supporters are now out of the woodwork and at least one of the three governors appointed last week seem to have been an SLPP nominee. It is not clear whether the appointment of Mrs. P.S.M. Charles as the new Governor of the Northern Province was part of Wickremesinghe’s strategy of mending fences with the Tamils. She had earlier served as Governor of the North and wartime GA of Vavuniya. RW is now empowered by the Constitution to dissolve parliament and hold a fresh election if the SLPP stretches its luck. But he’ll have to do so with the full knowledge that his UNP is hardly in a position to put up a credible fight without some arrangement with the SJB.

The JVP/NPP is also a clear loser of the local elections not being held. Most analysts believed that it had every chance of making a showing that it is a credible alternative to the SJB. RW is also reportedly considering staggered provincial elections, it has been said. But if there was no money for local elections how can there be funds for any elections? Sri Lanka’s foreign friends and multilateral donor agencies are less than likely to do business with a government determined to deny its people their franchise.



Editorial

Reform political parties and their leaders, too

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Thursday 28th March, 2024

The government is going hell for leather to bring forth electoral reforms as if there were no tomorrow. It would have the public believe that the current electoral systems are full of flaws, which need to be rectified as a national priority if the country is to be put right and progress ushered in.

System bashing, as it were, has become the vogue in this country. Everyone is calling for a system change these days. Even those who have ruined the economy and enriched themselves at the expense of the public are doing so obviously in a bid to deflect criticism directed at them. A country doubtlessly needs robust systems in all sectors, but what Sri Lanka needs more than anything else, at the present juncture, is the restoration of the rule of law.

Former Chairman of the Election Commission, Mahinda Deshapriya, at a discussion on electoral reforms, the other day, rightly pointed out that unsavoury characters must not be nominated to contest elections. Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, PC, was also present at the event. In response to Minister Rajapakshe’s criticism of the current electoral system, Deshapriya said the problem of miscreants being elected to political institutions had to be tackled at source. He argued that the political parties had to refrain from nominating malefactors. One could not agree with him more.

All political parties conduct interviews to select candidates, and, therefore, it is the party leaders who have to take responsibility for nominating political dregs to contest elections. They must sift out miscreants at that point. This will be half the battle in cleansing politics and raising the standards of political institutions, especially Parliament.

Minister Rajapakshe argued that the rogues who were rich enough to throw money around obtained the highest preferential votes at elections. This argument is not without some merit, but there have been numerous instances where moneybags could not overtake other candidates in elections.

In the 2004 parliamentary polls, several members of the JVP, which contested as a constituent of the SLFP-led UPFA, came first in districts such as Colombo, Gampaha and Kurunegala. Obviously, they fared so well in spite of being outspent by many other candidates. Dullas Alahapperuma conducts very clean and inexpensive election campaigns, which are free from polythene, posters, cutouts, etc. He has disproved the argument that the Proportional Representation system has made election campaigns extremely costly. He wins handsomely in the Matara District. Why can’t others emulate him?

There is also a campaign against the preferential vote or manape, which is made out to be a source of evil. If it is scrapped, political party leaders will be able to nominate their favourites to contest elections and enable them to enter Parliament, etc., at the expense of the popular candidates who deliver votes to their parties. It was to prevent the party leaders from resorting to such arbitrary action that the preferential vote system was introduced.

At present, people can decide who should represent them by voting for political parties of their choice first and marking their preferences for candidates. If manape is done away with, the party leaders will have unbridled discretionary power to ensure that only their favourites are returned. Given the sordid manner in which they manipulate the National List by engineering vacancies to smuggle their loyalists into Parliament, how bad the situation will be in the event of the preferential vote being abolished is not difficult to imagine.

That the preferential vote leads to election violence, especially internecine intraparty disputes, is also a big lie propagated by violent characters in the garb of politicians. The JVP has been free from preferential vote battles because its candidates put their party before self. They are worthy of emulation.

The government ought to tread cautiously when introducing electoral reforms. The mixed-member electoral system under which the last local government elections were conducted in 2018 plunged the country into chaos with the number of local councillors doubling to more than 8,000. Now, efforts are being made to change the new system!

The need, in our book, is for the political parties and their leaders to be reformed more than the electoral systems.

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Editorial

Vulpine praise for a Trojan horse?

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Wednesday 27th March, 2024

The mere sight of a notorious pickpocket usually prompts people to check for the safety of their wallets or purses even if he is not looking for prey. The SLPP-UNP government has the same reputation as a cutpurse, and therefore the public tends to view everything it does with a jaundiced eye. Its recent undertaking to introduce electoral reforms has therefore triggered howls of protests from those who cherish franchise. The Opposition has accused the government of trying to put off national elections on the pretext of introducing electoral reforms.

Government politicians are full of praise for the proposed electoral reforms, which are widely seen as a Trojan horse. Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe has sought to dispel doubts and suspicions in the minds of the public about the proposed electoral reforms. He has said they will not cause elections to be postponed. He may be telling the truth, but Sri Lankans usually do not believe anything until it is officially denied. So, the government will have a hard time trying to convince the public that it is not trying to postpone elections again. It ought to explain why it announced its decision to reform the parliamentary electoral system ahead of the coming presidential election.

The blame for postponing elections should be apportioned to all self-righteous members of the current Parliament as well as President Ranil Wickremesinghe. They have suppressed the people’s franchise on several occasions.

In 1975, an SLFP-led government postponed a general election by two years. It abused its two-thirds majority in Parliament for that purpose, and dealt a severe blow to democracy; resentful electors voted overwhelmingly for the UNP at the 1977 general election. President J. R. Jayewardene abused his steamroller majority in Parliament to cause a general election to disappear in 1982 by conducting a heavily-rigged referendum. He did so because he feared that he would lose his five-sixths parliamentary majority if a general election was held. Wickremesinghe was a Cabinet minister in that repressive regime.

In 2017, the UNP, the SLFP, the TNA, the SLMC, etc., voted for the Provincial Council Elections (Amendment) Bill, which helped postpone the PC polls indefinitely. UNP leader Wickremesinghe was the Prime Minister and SLFP leader Maithripala Sirisena the President at the time. The incumbent SLPP government postponed the Local Government (LG) polls, in 2021, on President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s watch. The SLPP dissidents cannot absolve themselves of responsibility for that poll postponement, for they had not broken ranks with the SLPP administration by that time. The SLPP and the UNP postponed the LG polls last year by claiming that funds could not be allocated for an electoral contest owing to the country’s pecuniary woes.

In a previous editorial comment immediately after the announcement of the government’s decision to bring in new laws to elect 160 MPs under the first-past-the-post system and 65 MPs under the Proportional Representation, we pointed out that electoral reforms could entail long-drawn-out delimitation processes. Fear that it may not be possible for a general election to be held until the conclusion of the delimitation process pertaining to the proposed electoral reforms is therefore not unfounded.

The People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL) has warned of the possibility of such a situation coming about. A government that fears elections will do everything in its power to postpone them. The SLPP-UNP regime is no respecter of public opinion and has no sense of shame; it therefore does not scruple to safeguard self-interest at any cost.

If the government is serious about allaying the people’s doubts and suspicions about the proposed electoral reforms, it will have to give a legal assurance that they will not lead to poll postponements. PAFFREL Executive Director Rohana Hettiarachchi has rightly called for the incorporation of a specific clause into the electoral reforms draft Bill, which is said to be on the anvil, to enable the Election Commission to conduct a general election under the existing PR system in the event of the delimitation process dragging on indefinitely. Nothing else will do.

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Editorial

Easter Sunday carnage: Vital aspect overlooked

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Tuesday 26th March, 2024

Former President Maithripala Sirisena, who declared last Friday that he was aware of the identity of the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday terror attacks, made a statement to the CID yesterday. His political opponents are baying for his blood; among them are those who were in the Yahapalana government at the time of the carnage. Some of them have even called for grisly penalties for Sirisena, such as drawing and quartering!

The ongoing political battle over the Easter Sunday terror mastermind’s identity, conspiracy theories involving local politicians, the vilification of Sirisena, etc., have eclipsed a critical dimension of the carnage—the possibility of an external involvement. Instances of bloody conflicts, uprisings, terror attacks and other forms of shocks being used to make feeble economies scream and jolt the developing countries, caught up in the great power rivalry, out of their strategic alliances and to engineer radical geopolitical shifts are not rare.

As for the Easter Sunday attacks, there are two major schools of thought. One is that they were engineered to catapult national security to the centre stage of politics in favour of wartime Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was planning to run for President in 2019. Gotabaya announced his candidature a few days after the carnage. The other school of thought is that there was a foreign hand in the Easter Sunday carnage, and the conspirators sought to destabilise Sri Lanka to compass their geopolitical ends.

The PCoI (Presidential Commission of Inquiry), which probed the Easter Sunday attacks, dealt with the alleged foreign involvement perfunctorily. Only an eight-page chapter in its bulky report has been devoted to the claim of a foreign hand in the attacks. The witnesses who expressly testified that there was ‘an external hand or conspiracy behind the attacks’, according to the PCoI, are Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, former President Maithripala Sirisena, former Minister Rauf Hakeem, former Minister Rishad Bathiudeen, former Governor Azath Salley, SJB MP Mujibur Rahman, former SIS Director SDIG Nilantha Jayawardena, former STF Commandant M. R. Lateef, former Chief of Defence Staff Ravindra Wijegunaratne, former SDIG CID Ravi Seneviratne and former CID Director Shani Abeysekera. Dismissing their statements as mere ipse dixits (assertions made but not proven), the PCoI has said, in its report, that it did not find any such foreign link. It has, however, recommended that certain identified parties be further investigated. This recommendation has not been implemented.

We argued, prior to the release of the PCoI report, that it was possible that Zahran and his gang had taken orders from a fake ISIS created by a foreign spy agency. The PCoI has quoted SDIG Jayawardena as saying that an Indian named Abu Hind ‘may have triggered the attacks’: “He [Jayawardena] went on to imply that the intelligence agencies that provided him with the intelligence on 4th, 20th and 21st April 2019 may have had a hand in the attack.” According to the PCoI report an ‘international expert on terrorism, who testified in camera, said, “Abu Hind was a character created by a section of a provincial Indian intelligence apparatus, and the intelligence that the Director SIS received on the 4th, 20th and 21st April 2019 was from this operation and the intelligence operative pretending to be one Abu Hind. Operatives of this outfit operate on social media pretending to be Islamic State figures. They are trained to run virtual personas.” The PCoI report says, “The testimony was that Zahran believed Abu Hind was the Islamic State regional representative. Abu Hind was in touch with both Zahran and his brother, Rilwan, and had spoken to Naufer. This part of the evidence is confirmed by the testimony of Hadiya [Zahran’s wife].” It is mentioned on page 220 of the report that according to the aforesaid international expert, ‘the Indian Central Government was not aware of the intelligence obtained by the provincial outfit’.

The allegation that there was a conspiracy behind the Easter Sunday attacks to enable the SLPP to capture state power must be probed. Similarly, there is a pressing need for a thorough investigation to find out whether an external force was behind the carnage.

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