Monday 16th December, 2024

The JVP-led NPP, which embarked on a much-advertised, ambitious campaign to clean up Parliament by ‘filling it with honest, educated, intelligent members’, has had to cleanse itself. Speaker Asoka Ranwala had to resign on Friday, unable to prove his claim that he had a doctorate. The NPP leaders, who contested under the Compass symbol, and secured an unprecedented mandate to put the country right, were left with no alternative but to throw Ranwala to the wolves as they did not want the integrity of their moral compass questioned.

‘Doctorgate’, as it were, could not have come at a better time for the Opposition parties, which are still reeling from crushing electoral defeats and licking their wounds. It has provided them with a rallying point and an opportunity to divert public attention from their internal battles over National List appointments. Their leaders are now trying to make themselves out to be paragons of virtue!

Ranwala’s resignation has prompted some other NPP MPs, including ministers, to have the title of Dr. removed from their credentials. The government has been able to forestall the Opposition’s no-confidence motion against Ranwala as the Speaker. But the SJB says it will move a no-faith motion against Ranwala unless he resigns from Parliament on the grounds that he has deceived the voters in the Gampaha District, where he contested last month’s general election.

This, we believe, is a textbook example of twisting the knife. Opposition politicians are taking it a bit too far. Their argument that Ranwala entered Parliament by way of deception, has no leg to stand on. There is reason to believe that he would have been elected even if he had contested without flaunting the title, ‘Dr’, because he has been in the good books of the JVP/NPP leaders, who made it clear to the public that they wanted him elected.

Above all, the people of Gampaha have proved that they are not selective or choosy about the qualifications, educational or otherwise, of the candidates they vote for. In the 2010 general election, they elected a teledrama actress fielded by the UNP, giving her a staggering number of preferential votes simply because she had played the lead role in a subpar soap opera, which became popular. She admitted in a television interview that she knew nothing about Sri Lanka’s Constitution. Today, the UNP as well as its offshoot, the SJB, are out for Ranwala’s blood! Moreover, the people of Gampaha also elected the likes of Mervyn Silva and Prasanna Ranaweera, who boasts of having carried out a chilli powder attack on the UNP MPs in Parliament in 2018. Thankfully, they have not been able to re-enter Parliament.

It looks as if a branch of the Examination Department had to be set up in the parliamentary complex to check the educational qualifications of the MPs. Let the holier-than-thou Opposition politicians, who have taken the moral high ground, and undertaken the task of checking the authenticity of the academic credentials of the NPP politicians, be made to prove their own educational qualifications. We see among them a politician who was once accused of having sat a law examination in a separate room, and obtained external help to score very high marks.

This allegation, which went uninvestigated, should be probed. Better late than never. Some Opposition politicians who are parading their learning and questioning the academic qualifications of others have only aegrotats or unclassified degrees awarded by some foreign universities to candidates who cannot attend examinations due to illnesses.

Power blinds the wielders thereof to reality and fogs their thinking faculties, making it hard for them to act rationally. How the JVP/NPP politicians are behaving exemplifies a pithy local saying about the exclusivity of power and thinking capacity—‘bale thiyanakota mole ne, mole thiyanakota bale ne’ (‘when one has power, one has no brains and when one has brains, one has no power). They are doing exactly what they persistently condemned their predecessors for. A large number of videos highlighting their policy contradictions have gone viral in the digital space.

Worryingly, a bunch of tainted politicians who were beaten badly in last month’s parliamentary polls have been able to make use of the controversy surrounding MP Ranwala’s educational qualifications, to gain some political mileage. They have a remarkable ability to heal their wounds and regain their strength like ‘The Blob’, or ‘the many-headed slime’. The NPP seems to have underestimated their ability to do so. However, it will be a mistake for the Opposition parties to entertain the hope that they will be able to secure a bridgehead in the NPP-dominated national politics and launch a counterattack soon, without making a serious effort to regain public confidence by mending their ways.

On December 1 television bulletins beamed and the print media published next day news of the presentation of the KT Chitrasiri report on parliamentary and presidential privileges to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. A smiling president was shown on television screens accepting the gift-wrapped report from the retired supreme court judge who with two others, retired Ministry Secretary D. Dissanayake and retired District Secretary CT Bulumulla had been tasked by the new regime to review the allowances, perks and privileges provided to MPs, ministers and former presidents. The much-awaited report is now being studied, the cabinet spokesman announced at his weekly briefing soon after it was in.

Public opinion has long been running high about how this impoverished country’s legislators have been showering themselves with perks and privileges at heavy cost to the taxpayer. Resentment on this score is huge. It must be said to the credit of the new administration and the president, who pledged during the election campaign to correct this situation, that they lost no time in appointing the Chitrasiri Committee, requiring it to report within a very tight time frame, on this much discussed topic affecting a wide range of politicians including former presidents.

There has been no word yet on the actual content of the report; but the expectation among the public is that, befitting its gift-wrapped presentation, considerable reduction of past extravagances showered on elected officials will be addressed. These politicians sanctimoniously pledged to serve their electors rather than themselves but did quite the reverse. Particularly notable is the fact that President Dissanayake and the new parliament are willing to reduce their own privileges to within bounds of reason.

Given today’s prices, nobody would (or should) grudge an MP his monthly allowance or salary of Rs. 54,286 plus Rs. 100,000 a month to maintain an office. This is topped up with a sitting allowance of Rs. 2,500 a day – usually eight days a month except during the budget debate when there are daily sittings – payable for parliamentary sittings as well as attending meeting of committees on non-sitting days; an entertainment allowance of Rs. 1,000 a month, a driver’s allowance of Rs. 3,500 monthly (if no government driver is provided as for ministers, deputy ministers and state ministers), Rs. 50,000 a month for telephones, a fuel allowance depending on the distance of the member’s electorate from parliament (284 liters of diesel per month for Colombo MPs), a travel allowance of Rs. 2,500 per month each for four personal staff (Rs. 10,000 in all) and stamps to the value of Rs. 350,000 annually. These taken together would not seem excessive.

Public resentment boils not so much over the above package but other lavish benefits served at taxpayer expense. News stories galore have been published about sumptuous subsidized meals served to MPs at the parliament restaurant scandalizing ordinary people struggling to make ends meet. Very often such reports bear no semblance of truth. Shortly after the August 2020 election, an orientation session for MPs threw up an astonishing revelation that an MP’s meal cost Rs. 3,000! This fictitious figure had been calculated by dividing the total parliamentary food cost by 225 – the total number of MPs – when a large number of parliamentary staff and others are also fed off the parliament kitchen. The stated figure was far from accurate and did not reflect the reality. The last speaker (Mahinda Yapa Abeywardene) eventually offered a figure of Rs. 296 per head. But various other figures for fish and vegetarian meals have been bruited around although there was no figure offered for chicken meals that are also served in parliament.

Duty free vehicle permits for MPs have been awarded from time to time – many of them sold on the market for figures running into millions – have infuriated the public. These permits were issued every five years in the past and the new administration is pledged to discontinue this widely condemned practice. President Premadasa used a special police unit headed by a respected senior officer to check on such abuses and that fueled the eventual impeachment resolution against him. Given the huge duties imposed on motor vehicles imported into this country, especially on luxury vehicles, the duty free permits exploited by many parliamentarians are widely resented. Fortunately, the new dispensation has made clear that such practices will not continue.

MPs do need vehicles to carry out their duties and the issue of a non-luxury, fuel efficient vehicle to each of them – and not only government MPs – is not unreasonable. But the present administration has reversed a previous decision to issue vehicles to government MPs and decided to give them a fuel allowance instead. The NPP no doubt, is acutely conscious of its projected image that their MPs are different from those of the past and are more interested in serving their electors than themselves. Equity demands that opposition MPs are similarly treated.

Payments and privileges of former presidents under the Presidents Entitlement Act of 1986 are also under review. These, including city mansions, luxury vehicles, secretarial help etc. in addition to the pension are widely regarded as overly lavish. We have seen two former presidents (Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirirsena) continue in parliament post-retirement presumably drawing current emoluments in addition to their benefits as former presidents. Among those alive today are former Presidents Chandrika Kumaratunga, Mahinda Rajapaksa, Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe who served just two years. Mrs. Hema Premadasa, widow of assassinated President R. Premadasa, is also alive and paid a pension, provided a Colombo residence, transport and other privileges. The present government has expressed commitment to trim these including enormous security contingents for politicians past ad present. It has already been said that presidential mansions in various parts of the country including Kandy and Nuwara Eliya are intended to be used for the public benefit.

The intentions of the new administration are excellent. Hopefully there will be delivery as promised.

Saturday 14th December, 2024

Sri Lanka’s Fisheries Minister Ramalingam Chandrasekar has sought to address an issue that is expected to figure in talks between President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shortly. Dissanayake is scheduled to leave for India tomorrow on a state visit. Minister Chandrasekar is reported to have said the longstanding fisheries dispute between Sri Lanka and India could be resolved only if the Indian fishers stop bottom-trawling. Indian fishermen are notorious for employing internationally banned fishing methods, which must be stopped. But that alone will not help solve the vexed issue.

A prerequisite for solving any problem is to identify it properly. The issue Sri Lanka has been struggling to tackle is poaching by the Tamil Nadu fishers in its territorial waters. Bottom trawling is only one aspect of that problem, which has remained intractable because India is wary of reining in the Tamil Nadu fishermen responsible for illegal fishing.

What needs to be addressed is the entire problem of illegal fishing and not a part of it. Poaching is essentially a legal issue and there cannot be a diplomatic solution to it. No foreigners must be allowed to fish in Sri Lankan waters, and all those who do so must be arrested and made to face the full force of the law. Similarly, Sri Lankan fishers must be told in no uncertain terms that if they fish in India’s or any other country’s territorial waters, they will do so at their own risk.

Interestingly, the Tamil Nadu fishers let out howls of protests when Sri Lanka dumped discarded vehicles in its territorial waters, in June 2021, as part of a programme to create artificial reefs. They claimed those submerged contraptions would damage their nets and affect their livelihoods! It was an admission on their part that they fished illegally in Sri Lankan waters and used banned methods. We argued in an editorial comment that more such end-of-life vehicles should be dumped into the sea to disrupt the Tamil Nadu fishermen’s bottom-trawling operations.

There is more to the issue of illegal fishing than economic costs and threats to local fisherfolk’s livelihoods. Smugglers, especially drug traffickers, use fishing craft to carry out their illegal operations, as evident from the huge hauls of narcotics frequently found in trawlers. Therefore, illegal vessel movements in a country’s territorial waters must be stopped at any cost. Smuggling operations also pose a serious threat to a nation’s national security. Sri Lankan criminals resort to boat escapes and carry out gun-running operations with the help of rogue fishers, both local and foreign. A strategy to stop these illegal operations consists in tackling the poaching issue.

It has been revealed that some Tamil Nadu politicians are behind poaching in Sri Lankan waters. Dr. Rajitha Senaratne, as the Fisheries Minister in the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, pointed out that most of the Indian vessels involved in poaching belonged to Tamil Nadu politicians, who rented them out on the strict condition that they be used for fishing in Sri Lanka’s territorial waters. Those politicians are driven by an ulterior motive, and therefore illegal fishing by Tamil Nadu fishers at the behest of their political leaders could be considered a willful infringement of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty.

It is hoped that the NPP government will tread cautiously in addressing the issue of illegal fishing, without leaving any room for India to opt for piecemeal remedies instead of preventing the politically-backed Tamil Nadu fishers from blatantly violating Sri Lanka’s sovereign right to control and manage its marine resources.