Sumanthiran on what the budget does and does not do

Speech made November 22

I have consistently recorded my opposition to Minister of Finance being the President. From 2010 onwards in this House, whenever the President in his capacity as Minister of Finance has presented a budget I have recorded that protest and I wish to record that today as well. When a person who is not a Member of this House presents the budget as the Minister of Finance, that seriously curtails this House’ ability to be in total control of public finance as the Constitution stipulates in article 148.

This also exposes another thing this time: And that is there’s a 21st amendment to the constitution that, was said to be going back to the 19th amendment – that is doing away with the 20th amendment – and that has been pointed out during that debate. It doesn’t really do that. Under the 19th amendment to the constitution the president could not hold any ministries; not even the ministry of defence.

For the tenure of that president at that time, personal to him, to President Maithripala Sirisena, three named ministries were permitted in the transitional provision. Thereafter the president couldn’t hold any ministries. But now the President actually can hold any number of ministries. In fact he can hold all the ministries. So this is another occasion on which we can expose that lie to the country that some reform was made that executive powers were curtailed through the 21st amendment. No! no such thing was done.

Even the one positive thing that is being touted is the re-establishment of the constitutional council. That also, we pointed out, is a political body, is not a 17th amendment constitutional council. More members are from this House which makes it political, and that body starts with the appointment, amongst others, independent commissions. And in the last couple of days we found how this supposed independent commission chairmen have behaved. We saw the National Police Commission Chairman going to the VIP launch to receive a person who was chased out of this country, for fraud, for large scale corruption. And who else but the chairman of the National Police Commission is there bowing in two, and welcoming him back.

A few days before that we heard the chairman of the Office of Missing Persons, saying that only a few people went missing and all of them are living abroad. Now that very office was established to investigate missing persons. And the government commissions, there are many, all of those commissions have reported that over 20,000 people have gone missing. That’s a conservative number. And the chairman of the office that is appointed, supposedly an independent office, says nobody has gone missing.

And then the Honourable Minster of Justice explains and says “No he’s wrong, because he hasn’t understood the Government’s priority. The government has prioritised reconciliation measures which must deal with the issue with disappearance also and unfortunately this chairman does not know that.” Now that creates another problem. Why should an independent office chairman know what the government’s priorities are? If he is independent, why should he comply with what the government wants to do today? The government will not want to do that tomorrow, the government changes its mind, day to day but if this is an independent office and he has been tasked by law to make investigations into this several thousands of disappearances in the country, and this is what he says.

So this 21st amendment was just an eyewash, really did not make anything independent in the country, nor did it strip the President of any executive powers. That said, let me turn to the budget proposals. I want to concentrate on one matter, and that is with regard to the EPF. The EPF is Sri Lanka’s single largest fund, this fund has been dipped into and there are serious allegations of fraud and corruptions in the way investments have been made out of this fund. There have been five forensic audits conducted, but no action has been taken to date. The last annual report of this fund is 2016, forensic audits have revealed massive frauds, into earnings and savings by the working force of this country, and not a muscle has been moved; nothing has been done to date with regard to taking action on this.

I am highlighting this because the economic crisis that we are facing in this country is primarily due to corruption. And that is why the IMF in its report have said “there are corruption susceptibilities” and that is one of the challenges for the IMF in implementing their programme in this country. The President or the Finance Minister in his budget speech said that’ll be dealt with; the corruptions, but where? Nothing has been done.

The other issue is with regard to the office of the Attorney General, who advises the government, who appears on behalf of the government, who defends the government even when the Right to Information Commission orders the Central Bank to divulge certain information the Central Bank appeals, and the Attorney General appears. Now these are pubic funds, these are monies of people of this country. There is absolutely no transparency; evidently large scale corruption and fraud and all that is covered up by the government, by the Central Bank , by the EPF and by the Attorney General gives absolute sanction to cover it up.

Now with that background, how do we get out this economic crisis? The government pays lip service, but every action of the Government demonstrates the opposite. Earlier this morning the Hon. Anura Kumara Dissanayake cited the case of a Minster who asked an Ambassador for a bribe, that was reported, he was suspended from the cabinet, and he got a committee of his choice appointed which exonerated him. And he is back in the cabinet, now to add insult to injury that very minister has been appointed as the President’s nominee on the Constitutional Council which is supposed to appoint independent commissions – handpicked , handpicked because there is no one who is up to that mark, in the cabinet.

Now who has the brass to go and ask an Ambassador for a bribe? I suppose the other ministers are a little less corrupt. So you have to pick the most corrupt, to appoint to the Constitutional Council. You have a convicted extortionist as a Chief Government Whip. So how do we then tell either the IMF or anyone else that we are dealing with corruption? The Government has really no intention of doing any of that sorts, the President has no intention. Because these are President’s appointments, so you say one thing but you do just the opposite.

here is a book written by V.P.Vittachi – a small blue colour book, I have read some time ago on President Jayewardene’s conduct – its called “Sri Lanka – what went wrong?” And Mr. Vittachi coins a word and calls it “plonking”.

He says President Jayawardene will say “I am turning right” this is the right way to go – I am turning right, and he will turn left. All the while he will insist, while travelling. “no ,no I am travelling right” that is plonking. Now the incumbent President learnt his political lessons from President Jayewardene. And one wonders whether that is what he is now practising, saying “we are dealing with corruption” but doing the very opposite to what will eradicate corruption.

The Tamil National Alliance’s Parliamentary group met today, and we took certain decisions with regard to this budget. We have highlighted various shortcomings, matters that are contrary to the well-being of this country, Particularly the high percentage of allocation to the defence sector. The country’s economy is contracting. Various fundamental service sectors are contracting, are reducing. Whilst in the last two years the allocation for the defence sector has been increased by 12 %.

Now this is not salaries and recurrent expenditure that is necessary. You must only visit one of the camps to see the high life that go on there. To test it out I went with the President and had lunch at the Vavuniya Air Force camp. The lunch is of a standard that is higher than what you can get in a seven star hotel. Nothing has come down. No one wants to touch that. The ceramicware, the food, everything. Nobody wants to touch that. You tell the country 70 % of our people have dropped one meal. 50,000 children are in danger of malnutrition. Government may deny it. But those are the real facts, and you want to keep the military happy. You don’t want to upset them. So that you can suppress dissent, so you can suppress people who protest that they don’t have food to eat. Now all of this is there and at a time like this one would have expected a programme through this budget to lift this country out of the economic crisis and it is not there, so we are opposed to this budget.

But for one reason, we took a decision today not to cast our vote on opposition. That is due to the reason that the President has in the last couple of days repeatedly said that he is taking steps to resolve the long standing Tamil National Question. Although we are sceptical – it is not because we trust it, but we don’t want to be blamed for opposing a President when he says “I want to solve this, come let’s sit down and talk” so for that very reason, we will today not cast our vote against this budget.