Winding up the 2025 budget debate in his capacity of finance minister, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake once again told the country that legislation to abolish MPs’ pensions is forthcoming, presumably in the short term although he has not specified when. However, opposition lawmaker Ravi Karunanayake has stolen a march on the president and his government by bringing a private member’s motion to abolish pensions for parliamentarians which has already been unanimously adopted by the legislature and is now awaiting a formal government Bill for enactment. Ironically, MPs who voted unanimously to give themselves pensions are now on the brink of similarly voting to abolishing them.

We have on previous occasions harked back on the fact that former prime minister, Sir John Kotelawela, famously exhorted henda athey thiyanakan bedaganilla (as long as the spoon is in your hand, serve yourselves). This, our lawmakers have been assiduously doing over the decades. The parliamentary pensions, non-contributory as in the case of coveted pensions for life paid to public servants, was later extended to their widows and orphans. But in the case of the public service, surviving spouses and orphans were covered by a contributory Widows and Orphans Pension Fund while parliamentarians paid nothing for this extended privilege to their widows.

The president correctly understands that perks and privileges elected officials vote for themselves are deeply resented by the public. He has hence scored brownie points for himself and his government by announcing that having discovered that he was being paid an MP’s pension in addition to his salary as executive president, he was foregoing the former entitlement and has already written to parliament’s secretary general to that effect. He further announced that the present all powerful regime has decided that its ministers and deputy ministers will not enjoy both their parliamentary emoluments together with the salaries for their official positions. They are foregoing the former but will enjoy a fuel allowance on account of the latter. We do not know if this dual payment was made was so in the past.

Although President Dissanayake has not said as much, it appears that many of his predecessors in office have drawn their parliamentary pensions in addition to presidential entitlements covered by statutes. The demand for pensions go back to the previous House of Representatives when LSSP leader, Dr. NM Perera, a highly qualified senior full time politician with no professional income unlike some of his colleagues, suggested such payments. He has however been derided for, despite his socialist professions, being a plantation owner (Oakfield nd Moragolla estates) and owning a mill (Giridara) which became a cause célèbre in the sixties.

When legislation for parliamentary pensions was eventually enacted remains uncertain. Former secretary general of parliament, Mr. Nihal Seneviratne in his book of memories of a long career in parliament, which we are excerpting and running at present, says the legislation was introduced by a former speaker, Mr. KB Ratnayake, who was once minister of parliamentary affairs and sports. Other reports say that it came during the tenure of the JR Jayewardene government. However that be, such pensions have long been paid and many senior politicians who decided not to run for re-election fearing defeat at the last elections are now in receipt of their pensions.

Time was when eminent people spent private wealth to render public service through election to the legislature. Times have changed and opportunistic politicians seeking elected office to get what they can from such positions – legitimately and illegitimately – are dime a dozen. President Jayewardene often claimed that he made political office sufficiently materially attractive to discourage corruption. Singapore’s legendary Lee Kwan Yew did as much. While Lee achieved a desirable result, sullied occasionally though the guilty have been successfully prosecuted and jailed, Sri Lanka has abjectly failed on this score.

There was one instance in the sixties when a senior Eastern Province politician, who had served as a parliamentary secretary, lost his civic rights for seven years following the Thalgodapitiya Bribery Commission report and was expelled from parliament. Two ministers found guilty by that commission had the grace to resign. But we have seen a politician convicted of murder and sentenced to death being elected to parliament a few weeks later and being sworn as an MP despite the ruling of the attorney general that he was ineligible to sit. He was eventually acquitted on appeal, There was also a minister in the last government convicted for extortion with a suspended sentence of imprisonment and a hefty fine continuing to sit in the legislature and function as a minister while an appeal was pending.

The current government seem determined to halt the past practice of heaping gravy on the plates of elected politicians. No ministers or deputy ministers of the present regime live in government housing as was common in the past. Nor do the president and prime minister. There have been ministers who had built swimming pools at taxpayer cost in their official residences. One even installed an elevator in his official bungalow for his aging mother through a state corporation under his purview. Others have not paid utility bills for which they were liable.

The present regime has showcased profligacy of the past including luxurious mansions occupied by past presidents at taxpayer expense, hefty payments made to politicians whose homes and offices were attacked by aragalaya protesters far exceeding the caps on compensation payable to victims of natural disasters and much more. The report of the KT Chitrasiri Committee on trimming fat off the political establishment is in though not published. The government seems seriously intent on setting a good example and correcting past excesses.

Saturday 29th March, 2025

University students who campaigned very hard to ensure the JVP-led NPP’s victory in last year’s elections, may have thought they would be able to conduct a peaceful protest in front of the Health Ministry in support of a group of Allied Health Sciences graduates, without being arrested and hauled up before court. But they were in for a rude shock, yesterday, when the police swooped on the protesters and arrested 27 of them including several Inter University Students’ Federation (IUSF) members for violating a court order that banned their agitation.

Time was when JVP used to let out howls of protests when the police descended on protests, after obtaining court orders against them, at the behest of previous governments. It condemned police action based on court orders, as draconian tactics employed by dictatorial regimes bent on suppressing the people’s right to protest. It also launched numerous protests against the previous governments in violation of court orders, and even tried to march on the Presidential Secretariat only to be dispersed by the riot police, who used teargas, rubber bullets, and water cannon liberally. At present, the police do as the NPP government says and go all out to obtain court orders banning protests, which they crush, the way they did in the past.

Opinion may be divided on public protests which make already congested urban roads even more chaotic, much to the inconvenience of the public. Police action against protesters may therefore resonate with many people. However, successive governments have not cared to tackle the root causes of public protests––chronic grievances and injustices. The current NPP administration has failed to be different from its predecessors.

The Students’ Union of the Allied Health Sciences Faculty of the University of Peradeniya launched their protest on Thursday, demanding that the government do away with the requirement for its members to sit an examination to join the state health services. The fact that the medical graduates of national universities are recruited to the health service straightaway may have prompted the protesting Allied Health Sciences graduates to make the aforesaid demand. The protesters’ talks with the Health authorities failed yesterday, and they decided to intensify their agitation, coupling it with a fast. The police moved in, made arrests and pulled down a makeshift hut the agitators had put up for their fast. Some student leaders were heard, on television, cursing the NPP leaders they had backed.

The incumbent government should have addressed the grievances of the Allied Health Sciences graduates before they took to the streets. After all, the JVP/NPP made an election pledge to give the graduates of state universities priority in the public sector recruitment. Representatives of the unemployed graduates, at press briefings and in television interviews, play a video of JVP/NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake making the above-mentioned promise during his presidential election campaign last year. In an audio clip, JVP/NPP stalwart and former IUSF Convener, Sunil Handunnetti, is heard telling an unemployed graduate who telephoned him in the run-up to last year’s general election that they (the JVP/NPP leaders) would have to secure their jobs first—meaning election to Parliament—before resolving the issue of graduate unemployment. The members of the unemployed graduates’ association insist that their efforts to contact Minister Handunnetti have since been in vain.

The JVP leveraged its ability to mobilise flash mobs and hold protests to weaken previous governments in defiance of court/police orders. It drove students and workers to agitations, in their thousands, to advance its political agenda, condemning the past governments for using the police and judicial orders to suppress the people’s right to protest. Now, it is employing the same methods as its predecessors to crush protests instead of heeding the grievances of protesters. It ought to get protesters around the table and give them a patient hearing and do its best to solve their problems. That is the least it can do for those who believed its promises and worked tirelessly to ensure its impressive electoral victory last year.

Friday 28th March, 2025

The Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) arrested New Democratic Front MP Chamara Sampath Dassanayake yesterday over some alleged financial irregularities during his tenure as the Chief Minister of the Uva Province about nine years ago. The national anti-graft commission is often blamed for slumbering or netting sprats while sparing sharks when it deals with the corrupt. Its action against the likes of Dassanayake is welcome.

The CIABOC, however, should explain why it let the grass grow under its feet for so long before taking action against Dassanayake. Or, has it acted on a complaint made against him recently? If so, the complainant owes an explanation to the public as to why he or she took so long to move the CIABOC against him.

The presence of the likes of Dassanayake in politics has made the public think less of politicians. But it is difficult to get rid of such characters electorally because Sri Lankan voters are swayed by factors such as caste and patronage. Crafty politicians enter Parliament by leveraging pockets of support scattered across electoral districts. The Proportional Representation system has stood them in good stead; it enabled them to survive last year’s ‘maroon wave’.

It is being argued in some quarters that MP Dassanayake was arrested because he is at the forefront of the Opposition’s anti-government campaign, and the JVP/NPP government will have all its critics in Parliament arrested to suppress dissent. This argument is not without some merit, given Dassanayake’s scathing attacks on the government, and the sullied history of the CIABOC, which has blotted its copybook on numerous occasions by launching politically motivated investigations against the Opposition politicians, and opening escape routes for ruling party members who face legal action. So, the Opposition may be able to cast suspicions on the integrity of the CIABOC investigations against its members.

What we have been witnessing on the political front during the past several months resembles a replay of the early stages of the Yahapalana rule, which was characterised by numerous arrests. A large number of political rivals of the UNP-led Yahapalana government were summoned, questioned and arrested by the CID, which then bussed them to courts, some of which were kept open until midnight! Most of those suspects were remanded and prosecuted, but none of them were sent to jail.

Under the current dispensation as well, the police go hell for leather to make arrests, but most suspects obtain bail. It may be recalled that the CID went so far as to send a team from Colombo all the way to Beliatta to arrest former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s second son, Yoshitha, in January 2025. It could have asked him to visit its headquarters and make a statement, or even arrested him in Colombo itself.

The police have also recorded a statement from Yoshitha over a recent nightclub brawl, where several persons described as his associates set upon a bouncer. Before last year’s elections, the JVP-led NPP had the public believe that it would take stringent action against all lawbreakers, especially the perpetrators of serious crimes. But today the NPP is floating like a bee and stinging like a butterfly in a manner of speaking. It said it had more than 400 files on various corrupt deals involving its political rivals. What has become of them?

Let the police be urged to concentrate more on probing grave crimes such as the assassinations of The Sunday Leader Editor Lasantha Wickrematunge and popular rugby player Wasim Thajudeen. If such emblematic crimes can be solved without further delay, the government will be able to ensure that some politicians currently out of power and their kith and kin are sent to jail.