Editorial

The carnival will continue

Published

5 years ago

2021/02/7

Nobody would be surprised that both India and Japan are most unhappy about the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) allowing itself to be stampeded by port and other unions, together with a section of the Buddhist clergy, to abandon its commitment to develop and run the East Container Terminal (ECT) of the Colombo Port as a 51-49 percent joint venture (JV). The Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) was to retain its controlling interest and would thereby have collected over half the profits earned by the JV. Moreover, the minority shareholder would have funded the completion of the phase two of the project involving the building a second 600 m berth to supplement the 450 m berth already commissioned. This involves a massive investment of billions of rupees that an already debt-strapped economy cannot afford. Foreign investment and assistance for this purpose in the context of the first fiasco is most unlikely. All the wrong signals have been given.

A lot of false propaganda that the country’s national assets are being sold, with ECT being touted as the latest such instance, was allowed to gather steam during the controversy that has now reached its unhappy conclusion. Eventually the unions railroaded the government into giving in and announcing that the project will be totally handled by the SLPA which will manage and develop the terminal at its own expense. This has been hailed as a great victory. Sowing the wind by caving into union and other pressure will result in having to reap the whirlwind resulting in many dangerous implications for future governance. The unions having already had the first taste of blood, can surely be expected to look for more. They, together with others who helped scuttle the ECT deal, have already indicated that they would do as much over the development of the West Container Terminal (WCT). Having withdrawn from its original commitment, the government has indicated that 85% of WCT would be granted to Indian and other investors in an attempt to win them over. But this obviously placatory measure, which some of the unions and their backers are saying they would resist, does not seem to have any buyers. Sri Lanka’s former High Commissioner to Delhi is on record saying that India rejected WCT in 2018.

The agreed ECT arrangement covered a 35-year period during which the SLPA would have received handsome royalties and dividends from the yet incomplete deep water terminal. Management, technical and marketing expertise that the country woefully lacks would have flowed in. On top of that, the foreign partners would have completed the second phase of the project with no investment from the government. Both Japan and India are friends we cannot afford to lose. For many years Japan has been one of our biggest aid donors, if not the biggest, with grant and concessional loans running into billions extended. Good relations with India must necessarily be a cornerstone of our foreign policy, a reality that government’s of different political complexions have long acknowledged. Give the looming crisis in Geneva in March, this is hardly the time to antagonize Big Brother. While Japan has restricted itself to diplomatically expressing “regret” for what has happened, India has been less restrained with its High Commission in Colombo, obviously with the nod from New Delhi, issuing a strong statement in this regard.

A lot of geopolitics is involved in the ECT matter. China’s presence with an 85 percent interest in the Colombo International Container Terminal (CICT), with SLPA holding the balance, obviously influenced India’s interest in a countervailing presence here. Over and above that, the lion’s share of the Colombo Port’s activity involves transshipment to India. This would logically favour an Indian role in the business. The unions did not resist the arrangements at CICT, or even the 99-year lease of the Hambantota Port to China. But their approach to ECT was totally different. Undoubtedly India’s intervention in Sri Lanka’s ethnic crisis and the civil war which followed fueled nationalist sentiments, including from the Buddhist clergy, that strongly supported opposition to the Indian entry into the Colombo port. Japanese participation, as agreed, would have helped dilute such concerns. But in the event, the unions threatening strike action pushed the government to the wall. The result was the scuttling of the 2019 trilateral agreement between the governments of Sri Lanka, India and Japan.

As much as eight billion rupees of SLPA’s revenue, according to its 2018 annual report (the latest available), comes from the privately managed South Asia Gateway Terminal (SAGT) and CICT that are privately run. The Jaya Container Terminal (JCT) SLPA manages is inefficient and its profitability is not commensurate with revenue. As is the case with most state-run enterprises in this country, JCT has over 10,000 employees when the actual requirement is 3,000 by the admission of the SLPA chairman at a recent television talk show. This is the result of politically motivated ‘jobs for the boys’ philosophy that has bedeviled state enterprise in our country. An article we run today arguing that the government should have honoured its agreement on ECT with India and Japan, points out that the two privately owned terminals in the Colombo port handles more than twice the volume of containers handled handled at the SLPA-managed JCT. It says that according to SLPA figures, around Rs. 20 billion is paid annually to less than 9,000 employees averaging Rs. 2.2 million per employee. No wonder then that port employees want the carnival to continue.

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Editorial

Jekylls and Hydes

Published

21 hours ago

2025/12/29

Sahan Weerasooriya

Monday 29th December, 2025

Sri Lankan politicians love the media dearly and take up the cudgels for the rights of journalists when they are out of power. The JVP/NPP leaders also defended the media to the hilt while they were languishing in the Opposition. Jekylls become Hydes after being ensconced in power, with the media exposing their failures and malpractices. Those who can, do; those who cannot, attack the media, one may say of the governments in this country, with apologies to Bernard Shaw.

The JVP-led NPP government, angered by bad press, is all out to intimidate the media it cannot control. Previous governments had the police on a string and used them to attack and harass independent journalists. The incumbent administration has gone a step further; the police have reportedly written to the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), asking for action against Hiru TV for what they describe as broadcasting unverified, misleading news. Thus, the government has used the police to give Hiru a choice between toeing the official line and losing its licence. Thankfully, its efforts have run into stiff resistance, with media institutions and various associations circling the wagons around Hiru.

If the government thinks Hiru or any other media institution disseminates false information to the detriment of its interests, legal avenues are available for it to seek redress. The police must not be used as a political tool to intimidate the media.

Among the current defenders of the media are the SLPP, the UNP, the SLFP, etc. Their leaders are shedding copious tears for Hiru. But it was while the UNP and SLPP leaders were in power that the suppression of media freedom and violence against journalists became institutionalised for all intents and purposes. UNP governments not only throttled media freedom but also murdered journalists. SLFP regimes had media institutions attacked and journalists killed. An SLFP-led government, with the current SLPP leaders at the helm, had media institutions torched and journalists abducted, assaulted and murdered. These sinners currently in the political wilderness are condemning other sinners in power for suppressing media freedom.

The government deserves the bad press it gets. The police have been reduced to a mere appendage of the JVP/NPP. Two of the NPP’s Retired Police Collective members, namely former Senior DIG Ravi Seneviratne and former SSP Shani Abeysekera, have been appointed Secretary to the Public Security Ministry and CID Director, respectively. Absurd claims the police make in defence of the government remind us of Matilda, whose dreadful lies made one gasp and stretch one’s eyes.

When the police were asked why NPP MP Asoka Ranwala had not been subjected to a breathalyser test immediately after a recent road accident he caused, they had the chutzpah to claim they had run out of test kits. They transferred two of their officers over the incident to enable the government to save face. They arrested one of their own men assaulted by an NPP MP following a recent police raid on a cannabis cultivation in Suriyakanda. Acting just like legendary King Kekille, they let the MP off the hook and arrested the policeman, who was bailed out; they went on to suspend him from service. A few months ago, they unashamedly sided with a group of JVP cadres who stormed a Frontline Socialist Party office in Yakkala and forcibly occupied it. They go out of their way to ensure that the arrests of drug dealers with links to the Opposition get maximum possible publicity, but they do their best to keep the media in the dark when narcotics dealers with ruling party connections are taken into custody. They crack down on Opposition politicians and activists but steer clear of government members and their supporters. The despicable manner in which they are doing political work for the government reminds us of the Gestapo. Now, they are zeroing in on Hiru TV at the behest of their political masters for exposing their sordid actions.

The only way the NPP government can overcome problems and challenges on the political front and shore up its crumbling image is to mend its ways and fulfil its election pledges while taking action against its errant members who have brought it into disrepute and turned public opinion against it. Shooting the messenger is not the way to set about the task.

Editorial

Executive brinkmanship

Published

2 days ago

2025/12/28

Thilina Walpola

Pressure is mounting on President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to ensure that an Auditor General is appointed without further delay. But he has remained unmoved. He is determined to wear down the Constitutional Council (CC) and appoint one of his party loyalists as Auditor General. The CC has rejected his nominees—and rightly so; they are not eligible. Former Executive Presidents went all out to railroad the CC into rubber-stamping their decisions. They had no qualms about doing so while claiming to uphold the independence of the public service. President Dissanayake has failed to be different. His refusal to compromise amounts to brinkmanship; he is waiting until the CC blinks.

The NPP’s election manifesto, A Thriving Nation: A Beautiful Life, attributes the deterioration of the public service to ‘political appointments’ and state workers making political decisions. Among the steps the NPP has promised to take to straighten up the public service are ‘merit-based appointments and promotions’. This principle has fallen by the wayside where the question of appointing the Auditor General is concerned.

The government should take cognisance of the possible negative effects of the prolonged delay in appointing the Auditor General during a period of disaster response and international relief and rebuilding support.

The Bar Association of Sri Lanka has called upon President Dissanayake to appoint a person with proven competence, integrity, and independence, who commands wide acceptance as Auditor General forthwith. It has stressed the need to appoint a nonpartisan professional as the Auditor General to safeguard the integrity of the National Audit Office and inspire the confidence of both citizens and international partners in the financial governance of the State.

Transparency International Sri Lanka, the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and the other good governance activists, too, have faulted President Dissanayake and his government for the inordinate delay in appointing the Auditor General. They are of the view that a strong, independent Auditor General enables Parliament and the public to scrutinise government expenditure, identify irregularities, prevent misuse of funds, and ensure that those entrusted with public resources are held to account. The delay in appointing the Auditor General has weakened the effectiveness, authority, and the independence of the entire public audit system and created space for inefficiency, mismanagement, and corruption, they have noted. The situation will take a turn for the worse if the government succeeds in having one of its cronies appointed Auditor General.

The government is apparently playing a waiting game in the hope that the reconstitution of the CC due next year will provide a window of opportunity for it to appoint one of its loyalists as Auditor General.

Why the government is so desperate to place a malleable person at the helm of the National Audit Office is not hard to understand. If it succeeds in its endeavour, the next Auditor General will be beholden to the JVP/NPP. When an ineligible person is elevated to a high post, he or she naturally becomes subservient to the appointing authority. Such officials go out of their way to safeguard the interests of their political masters in case of irregularities involving state funds and other accountability issues.

A protracted delay in appointing the Auditor General or the appointment of a government supporter to that post will increase the risk of mismanagement of state funds and corruption, lead to the erosion of public trust and confidence in the National Audit Office, undermine legislative oversight and impair fiscal discipline. Most of all, the government’s failure to appoint a competent, independent person of integrity as Auditor General will diminish donor confidence especially at a time when the country is seeking disaster relief funds from the international community. There is no way the government can justify its refusal to appoint the current Acting Auditor General as the head of the supreme audit institution. He is obviously the most eligible candidate.

Editorial

Selective transparency

Published

3 days ago

2025/12/27

Thilina Walpola

Saturday 27th December, 2025

The NPP government has released a cordial diplomatic letter from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, and gained a great deal of publicity for it as part of a propaganda campaign to boost Dissanayake’s image. Such moves are not uncommon in politics, especially in the developing world, where the heads of powerful states are deified and their visits, invitations and letters are flaunted as achievements of the leaders of smaller nations. However, the release of PM Modi’s letter to President Dissanayake is counterproductive, for it makes one wonder why the government has not made public the MoUs it has signed with India?

PM Modi’s Sri Lanka visit in April 2025 saw the signing of seven MoUs (or pacts as claimed in some quarters) between New Delhi and Colombo. Prominent among them are the MoUs/pacts on the implementation of HVDC (High-Voltage Direct Current) Interconnection for import/export of power, cooperation among the governments of India, Sri Lanka, and the United Arab Emirates on developing Trincomalee as an energy hub, and defence cooperation between India and Sri Lanka.

The NPP government has violated one of the fundamental tenets of good governance––transparency; there has been no transparency about the aforesaid MoUs or pacts, especially the one on defence cooperation. They cannot be disclosed without India’s consent, the government has said. This is a very lame excuse. The JVP/NPP seems to have a very low opinion of the intelligence of the public, who made its meteoric rise to power.

When the JVP/NPP was in opposition, it would flay the previous governments for signing vital MoUs and pacts without transparency. But it has kept even Parliament in the dark about the MoUs/pacts in question.

Ironically, the JVP, which resorted to mindless violence in a bid to scuttle the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord in 1987, has sought to justify the inking of an MoU/pact on defence cooperation between Sri Lanka and India and keeping it under wraps, about three and a half decades later. The signing of that particular defence MoU/pact marked the JVP’s biggest-ever Machiavellian U-turn. How would the JVP have reacted if a previous government had entered into MoUs with India and kept them secret? It opposed the proposed Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) between Sri Lanka and India tooth and nail, didn’t it?

Whenever one sees the aforesaid letter doing the rounds in the digital space, one remembers the MoUs/pacts shrouded in secrecy, which have exposed the pusillanimity of the NPP government, whose leaders cannot so much as disclose their contents without India’s consent.