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Editorial

Be prepared

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There is little doubt among thinking people here who followed the U.S. presidential election that Donald Trump was bad news for a land which prided itself as being the cradle of democracy in the world. He did everything but “Make America Great Again,” leaving a legacy of blunders and a personal stamp of a man too small for the very big pair of boots he wore during the last four years. But as the ‘Trumpkin Pumpkin,” (orange on the outside and hollow inside) depicted by a cartoon on this page, is plotting his last stand to remain in office, there have been expatriate Lankans mounting social media platforms to express fears that the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket leaves openings for LTTE supporters, particularly those living in North America, to exploit Harris’ Indian ancestry to further their cause in a country where the Tigers remain a banned terrorist organization.

Given the worldwide media focus on the U.S. election, most Lankans are well aware that Kamala Devi Harris is the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father. Her publicists took pains to project the vice-president elect as a politician who throughout her life took pains to preserve her Indian roots about which she was justifiably proud. We ran an appropriately illustrated story during the campaign of her fondness for idli, a favourite South Indian dish. Indians throughout the subcontinent, and more particularly those living in Tamil Nadu, have predictably exulted about what she has achieved in a country that is not only among the world’s richest and most powerful, but also a land that is justifiable considered a place where “anything is possible.”

Although we in Sri Lanka like to think that the LTTE is well and truly dead and buried, we cannot ignore the reality that a rump remains that is alive and kicking. This is true not only of Tiger sympathizers living this country, but of the Tamil expatriate community spread out through the wider world. They may not take arms on behalf of a separatist cause, but their sympathies lie there. Many of these expats, some voluntarily and others through extortion, were among the major funders of the LTTE throughout the 30-year war. The Black July pogrom of 1983, for which the J.R. Jayewardene government of the day, and a misguided section of the majority Sinhala community must take much of the blame, drove many Tamils out of the land of their birth. Among them were professionals, some the best and the brightest of this land, who fled particularly to the West. There were also the numerous so-called “economic refugees” who migrated to Europe and North America taking advantage of the climate created in many developed countries that Sri Lanka was not safe for Tamils.

The mere fact that the woman who will be vice-president of a world power has a Tamil ancestry, does not mean that she will be a puppet on a string easily manipulated by pro-LTTE lobbies. US foreign policy, like that of most countries in the world is anti-terrorist, and there is no escaping the fact that the LTTE was terrorist and what remains of it is separatist. It has been widely acclaimed that the Tigers were among the deadliest terrorist groups of their time. Nevertheless, expatriate Tiger sympathizers would do their best to exploit the slightest opening, the remotest possibility. During the height of the war, the LTTE ran a skillful propaganda campaign, often with a homely touch. There was a time when journalists would be invited to expatriate homes and wined and dined on delectable Lankan cuisine not easily available in restaurants and other eating places in those countries. As there is no such thing as a free lunch (or dinner), the guest would be brainwashed with a vengeance on what had happened and was happening in Sri Lanka with the intention of influencing whatever he/she would write in the media.

The various posts that have surfaced after the Biden-Harris victory have provided other tidbits, including that the new vice-president will have a woman of direct Tamil ancestry, Rohini Lakshmi Ravindran Kosoglu as her chief-of-staff. This lady is the daughter, a post said, of Dr. Wijeydevendram Ravindran who has been practicing for over 35 years as an Emergency Room physician in New Jersey. He had emigrated to the U.S. many years ago and presumably his daughter was born there. While there will be many here, and among the non-Tamil expatriate community overseas who are strong nationalists wary of incipient dangers, who would see this as a possible ethnic access route to the very top of the U.S. administration. This need not be necessarily true. Hopefully, vested interest lobbies will be seen for what they are. But it will be both useful and appropriate for Sri Lanka to be aware of a worst-case scenario and not let down its guard.

This is particularly true at a time that the incumbent administration, like all its predecessors, is making patronage ambassadorial appointments to important capitals abroad while at the same time recalling senior and experienced professional diplomats on a 60-year age rule. There has been a proposal under consideration that the public service retirement age to be raised to 62-years and this may be announced in the forthcoming budget. It is high time that a realistic cost-benefit assessment of our overseas missions is made and those that are redundant are closed down. We are massively over-represented in terms of the number of the high commissions, embassies and even consulates that we, as a country with limited resources, run abroad. Cutting them down to size is long overdue. This is true of nearly all areas of government, and in the context of sharply declining revenue and essential Covid 19 related expenditure, now is the time to grasp the bull by its horns.



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Editorial

Cat out of the bag

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One of the best kept secrets following the 2022 Aragalaya which saw the end of the Mahinda/Gotabaya regime was revealed in parliament on Thursday when the chief government whip, Minister Nalinda Jayatissa let the cat out of the bag stating that 43 former ministers had together collected over Rs. 1.2 billion compensation from the government for property lost and damaged during the tail-end of the rioting when gasoline carrying mobs torched the homes and offices of government politicians. To his eternal credit, then prime minister and later president, Ranil Wickremesinghe’s name is not among the beneficiaries although his Kollupitiya home was perhaps the most valuable of those properties that were destroyed/damaged.

Jayatissa in his speech alleged that some of those who had been compensated had pressured divisional and district secretaries to increase valuations. While it would be freely admitted that brave souls in the public service able to stand up to political heavyweights are few and far between, the people would like to know from the present regime, delighting in flaunting the misdoings of its predecessors, whether it has any intention of re-assessing the claims presumably settled? Among those massively compensated to the tune of over Rs. 60 million each were some former cabinet ministers and a deputy minister, one of whom was convicted of extortion and held cabinet office pending appeal and another who spent several months in remand on corruption charges who resigned upon being arrested.

Even an economic simpleton well knows that the value of real estate today is more related to the land on which buildings stand and very much less or not at all for the buildings themselves. So compensation payable must be limited to homes/offices destroyed by mobs. While nobody could (or should) gloat over the misfortunes of another. Politicians who lost property in the Aragalaya, however unpopular or corrupt they may have been, deserve some compensation for their losses. But as Minister Jayatissa said in parliament, compensation for ordinary people losing their homes in natural disasters is capped at Rs. 2.5 million. Why did no similar cap apply in this instance? Did the claimants have tax files and can they explain wealth amassed to build palatial mansions? And how were these payments kept under cover these many months?

Ken Balendra, one of a kind

The death last week after a long illness of Kandiah (Ken) Balendra, the first Lankan to head the John Keells Goup of companies of which he was chairman from 1990 to 2000, took away from the scene an iconic business leader who built what is probably the country’s largest business conglomerate. Balendra who had no formal academic or professional qualifications began his working life as a planter in the James Finlay managed Hapugastenne Group in the Ratnapura district and a few years later moved as a tea broker to what was then John Keell, Thompson White Ltd., a produce and share brokers under British ownership and staffed at the top by Britons. This was probably due to the professional needs of his doctor wife and schooling needs of his children.

Ken Bala, as he was popularly known, did not come from an elite family, his father serving as a revenue inspector in the Colombo Municipal Council. But his sporting prowess on the rugby field where he hooked for the first fifteen of Royal College opened the doors to a planting career to him, as it did for many other young men in the colonial and post-colonial era. While his exploits on the rugger field are very well known few remember that he was a member of the Stubbs Shield winning Royal College boxing team. Old stagers will recall Royalists of yore chanting “hook, Bala, hook,” from the sidelines during his school’s rugger matches.

After six years as a planter on the thottam, Balendra came to Colombo to work as a tea broker in one of then Ceylon’s very long established commodity broking houses. Like many planters, though lacking in book learning, he had wide ranging managerial skills and it was not long before he was appointed a director of his company. This was a time when tourism was taking off in the country and John Keells was among those seriously investing in the industry. They were the first to build a hotel at Habarana rightly calculating that it could serve tourists headed for sun and sand holiday in the east coast and those taking the sights of the ruined cities from a junction town. As head of Walkers Tours he led the company’s inbound and outbound tourism sectors taking the John Keells tourism portfolio to new heights.

As the first Lankan chairman of the company, Balendra led the conversion of the group into John Keells Holding PLC (JKH) in which employees were given preferred share allotments in the Initial Public Offer (IPO) on the Colombo Stock Exchange followed later by employee share options. This encouraged their acquisition of an ownership stake in the company in which he himself invested substantially earning substantial profits. A longtime JKH employee says in an article we republish today that the group’s culture in the Balendra years centered around the principle “play hard, play smart, play together and have fun.” He adapted long-held colonial management systems within the group to conform to modern times, had an unerring knack of spotting young talent which he nurtured within the firm to its great advantage. He was a patron of the arts with substantial JKH support for the George Keyt Foundation.

Acquisitions made during his time, including those of Whittalls and Ceylon Cold Stores brought substantial real estate assets into the group portfolio now developed into the iconic Cinnamon Life City of Dreams, the country’s biggest private sector investment. He stood up to President Premadasa who threatened to reduce the JKH share to five rupees by courageously resisting the appointment of a Premadasa-backed main board director to JKH. A public relations genius with an instinct for an opportunity and the long term view, he was a business leader who will be hard to replace.

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Editorial

Cost puzzles

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Saturday 8th February, 2025

The government has not yet disclosed its costing formula for paddy. It only releases information about cost calculations in dribs and drabs in an unorganised manner, which has left the public none the wiser. Farmers insist that their production costs are much higher than the guaranteed prices announced by the government; some of them have even claimed that the average certified paddy price should be above Rs. 140 a kilo.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture Namal Karunaratne told Parliament yesterday that the guaranteed prices of paddy had been properly worked out, and they included a 30% profit margin. The production cost of red kekulu paddy was only Rs. 76, and the farmers of that variety of rice earned a profit of Rs. 44 per kilo, he said. Interestingly, the guaranteed price of red kekulu paddy has not been specifically mentioned in government communiques on guaranteed paddy prices. Karunaratne also claimed that it cost farmers only Rs. 91 to produce a kilo of white nadu paddy, which fetched Rs. 120 although its actual cost plus the 30% profit amounted to only about Rs. 118. But paddy farmers say their production costs are much higher.

How can there be such vast cost discrepancies? Who is telling us the truth—the paddy farmers or the government politicians/officials? Will the two sides present itemised cost estimations for the public to decide whose claims are credible? The current cost calculations lack transparency and credibility. Most of all, on what basis was the 30% profit margin for paddy determined? Was it just plucked out of the air?

Deputy Minister Karunaratne told Parliament yesterday that in calculating the paddy production costs, the fertiliser subsidy had not been taken into consideration. The government ought not to ignore such vital factors when costs are estimated. The public, who bears the cost of fertiliser subsidy, must not be made to pay higher prices for rice unfairly.

Going by Deputy Minister Karunaratne’s statements at issue, the government can be accused of having facilitated the exploitation of the red rice consumers by placing the profit margin for the growers of that variety of rice far above the stipulated 30% level. The government should have taken steps to ensure that at least one variety of rice was reasonably priced for the benefit of the ordinary people who are getting by on shoestring budgets. It would also have been politically wise for the government to do so ahead of the local government elections slated for late April.

Subsidies for farmers could be considered an investment in the agricultural sector, for they help incentivise cultivators and keep production costs low. The government is duty bound to ensure that the benefits of subsidies accrue to the public, who bears the cost of them. Therefore, the fertiliser subsidy, or at least a part thereof, should have been factored in when the paddy production costs were calculated.

How does the government propose to prevent rice millers from making unconscionable profits? They have benefited from a 30% power tariff reduction, which must be passed on to the public. Rice wholesalers and retailers must also be prevented from fleecing the public. The government, which has failed to protect rice consumers against rapacious businesses bent on exploiting them, should get its act together.

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Editorial

Trump’s shockers

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Friday 7th February, 2025

President Donald Trump has apparently inherited from his father a propensity to acquire real estate. What he did as a real estate tycoon before becoming the US President has not caused much concern to anyone except some of his political rivals, but the problem is that old habits die hard; he, even as the US President, has not stopped eyeing land that belongs to others.

President Trump has expressed his desire to acquire Greenland. He is apparently dreaming of something like the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the greatest land bargain in US history. He has also disclosed his intention to take over the Panama Canal. Another shocker came on Tuesday, when he revealed a plan for the US to take over and own Gaza, resettling the Palestinians living there in neighbouring countries. Thankfully, all Arab states and even the western allies of the US have condemned Trump’s idea.

Gaza belongs to Palestinians, and the world must oppose any plan to dispossess them of their land. President Trump has brought shame on the US by seeking to capitalise on the misery of Palestinians who have undergone untold suffering for decades. The least the world can do for those people crying out for justice is to ensure that the UN-sanctioned two-state solution is implemented without further delay. One can only hope that the fragile Gaza ceasefire will hold, with Hamas and Israel acting with restraint, and that the West Bank will not face the same fate as Gaza.

The White House has sought to walk back Trump’s absurd idea of taking over Gaza. It has claimed that Trump has only suggested temporary resettlement of the Palestinians pending reconstruction. No matter how hard the White House spin doctors try, they will not be able to unsay what Trump said very unequivocally.

Trump has not started wars, and he deserves praise for that, but one wonders whether he is trying to make America great again by taking advantage of the US-backed wars and their disastrous consequences. Israel would not have been able to reduce Gaza to rubble without US backing. Ukraine would not have provoked Russia into a war but for assurances from the US and other NATO members that they would stand solidly behind it. Now, Trump is eyeing land in Gaza and rare earths in Ukraine. One is reminded of the bloody conflicts in some African countries which have many terror groups secretly funded by certain multinationals plundering their minerals. The Democratic Republic of Congo has been plagued by armed conflicts mostly due to power struggles over mineral resources, especially coltan used in producing mobile phones, laptop computers and automobiles. It is protracted violent conflicts claiming many lives that ensure a steady supply of coltan at cheap prices to the West.

President Trump has said the US will stop pouring dollars into a bottomless pit that is the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. He has told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in no uncertain terms that the US wants Ukraine to supply it with rare earth minerals in return for financial support. Ukraine is agreeable to his proposition, according to Trump. This is the price Ukraine has had to pay for its efforts to join NATO at the behest of the US and its western allies and antagonising Russia in the process. Hereafter, Zelensky will have to dispose of his country’s rare earths to fight NATO’s proxy war! Unless the other NATO members increase military aid to Ukraine, he will be in serious trouble economically, militarily and politically. Even during the Biden administration, when the US allocated funds generously for Ukraine’s military operations, Zelensky went around the world, complaining that support from his allies was woefully inadequate.

It is now clear that Trump’s second presidential terms will be much more problematic than the first one. He has also suspended US assistance to the developing world granted through the USAID. What other shockers Trump has up his sleeve is anyone’s guess.

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