Unsuccessful bid to whitewash SLPP

Tuesday 14th May, 2024

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa has sought to dissociate himself from the incumbent government’s divestiture drive by taking exception thereto, in a media statement. He has bragged that he ruled the country from 2005 to 2015 without ever selling a single state-owned enterprise (SOE). Mahinda is the leader of the SLPP, which elevated Ranil Wickremesinghe, who stands accused of being in overdrive to divest SOEs and dispose of state assets at fire-sale prices, to the executive presidency. Mahinda’s SLPP is also fully supportive of President Wickremesinghe and the IMF bailout programme. The UNP has only a single seat in Parliament, and it is the SLPP which enables Wickremesinghe to secure parliamentary approval for what he is doing in the name of the IMF programme. So, Mahinda cannot absolve himself of responsibility for the ongoing IMF-prescribed divestiture drive.

Mahinda says that when he was the President there was an unbroken nine-year economic boom and the country faced no difficulty whatsoever in paying off its debts or meeting the cost of subsidies. This argument is not without some merit, but the fact remains that the country’s indebtedness worsened on his presidential watch as well; government expenditure increased exponentially during that period due to profligacy, rampant corruption and ill-advised investment in Ozymandian projects such as the Mattala airport, the Hambantota Port and the Lotus Tower. Having taken over the national carrier, SriLankan, and appointed a total misfit as its chairman solely on the basis of kinship, Mahinda’s government caused colossal losses to the state coffers, and contributed to the national debt crisis.

Mahinda was the Prime Minister and Finance Minister in the current administration when the economy went into a tailspin; the SLPP government slashed taxes, granted duty waivers to its cronies, resorted to excessive money printing, carried out politically-motivated cash distribution programmes by way of pandemic relief, cut numerous corrupt deals, mismanaged the economy and did not seek IMF assistance at the first sign of the economic crisis. The economic downturn cannot be blamed entirely on the Covid-19 pandemic. After all, the Supreme Court has said in its judgement in a fundamental rights case that Mahinda is among those whose cumulative actions and inactions led to the economic crisis.

Most of all, Mahinda led the SLPP’s election campaigns from the front, and it was in him that the people reposed their trust. His comeback campaign was named Mahinda Sulanga (‘Mahinda Wind’), which turned out to be the Basil twister, as it were, after the SLPP was ensconced in power. Therefore, Mahinda is responsible for what the SLPP-led government has done or failed to do.

Curiously, in his media statement, Mahinda urges trade unions to take a more nuanced approach to private sector participation in SOEs, and refrain from opposing every attempt to secure foreign or private sector investment in SOEs; he calls for a pragmatic and non-dogmatic approach to such matters. Why did he, as the President, allow many SOEs to run at a loss without applying the remedy he has prescribed? He underestimates the intelligence of the public when he says ‘any restructuring of state-owned enterprises should take place with maximum transparency, according to a national plan, in a manner consistent with national security and in consultation with the employees’. He was the Prime Minister when the Yugadanavi power station deal was cut clandestinely with New Fortress, a US company, amidst howls of protests from trade unions and other stakeholders. So much for Mahinda’s and his party’s commitment to transparency.

Pointing out that the next presidential election is only a few months away, and therefore as a measure to mitigate widespread public discontent over the government’s divestiture programme, Mahinda has proposed that all moves to sell off SOEs or state assets be postponed until a new government is formed after the presidential election. He has inadvertently revealed the underlying motive behind his call for suspending the ongoing divestiture drive; his media statement is an attempt to whitewash the SLPP ahead of the upcoming presidential election.

Interestingly, Mahinda says the present government is only an interim arrangement. Will he explain why the SLPP-led government does not take this fact into consideration when it commits the country to long-term programmes and agreements such as the questionable one it has struck with Adani Group?