Friday 18th October, 2024

The JVP/NPP leaders got criticising others down to a fine art during their Opposition days. Now, the boot is on the other foot, and they have had to contend with living under the microscope; their political opponents are treating them to lectures on good governance!

If the members of the previous dispensation think they can rally public support by moralising and taking on the new government, they will soon realise that theirs is an exercise in futility. Similarly, let the JVP/NPP leaders be warned that their government runs the risk of facing the same fate as the British labour administration, whose leaders’ approval ratings are plummeting. Interestingly, one of the reasons for UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s growing unpopularity is that he has benefited from the largesse of a billionaire, who has showered gifts on him and his wife. Sounds familiar?

No sooner had the JVP/NPP formed a government than it took a propaganda misstep—a huge one at that. It chose to exhibit hundreds of vehicles returned by the politicians of the previous administration and their officials following last month’s regime change.

A large number of cars, SUVs, etc., were parked near the Galle Face Green and the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute. Some JVP/NPP politicians triggered a social media feeding frenzy by claiming that all those vehicles had been misused and abandoned. The people were given to understand that the ‘abandoned’ vehicles would be auctioned and the proceeds utilised to augment state revenue. Subsequently, it became clear that the government politicians and their spin doctors were stretching the truth to gain political mileage, and the ‘vehicle show’ came to an abrupt end.

The Opposition is now demanding to know where those vehicles have gone. In an interesting turn of events, former SLPP MP D. V. Chanaka claimed in a television debate, on Tuesday, that the NPP had, in its election manifesto, promised to allocate one vehicle each to the MPs to be elected. He asked the JVP/NPP representative in the debate, Mahinda Jayasinghe, whether a future NPP government would scrap the duty-free vehicle permit scheme for the MPs. There was no satisfactory answer to that query.

The question is why the MPs cannot be made to travel in buses and trains like the ordinary people they claim to represent? The best way to develop Sri Lanka’s ailing public transport system is to make politicians and bureaucrats use it and see for themselves the suffering commuters undergo daily.

The JVP-led NPP came to power, promising to practise austerity and manage state revenue frugally. During its presidential election campaign, its leaders sounded as if they were willing to serve the country voluntarily. The rulers’ lot, we believe, should not be better than that of the ordinary people whose interests they claim to serve. The JVP/NPP leaders and their propagandists highlighted the country’s bankruptcy and the people’s untold suffering to garner votes.

Condemning the SLPP politicians who were living the high life, they pledged to share in the suffering of the public. Those promises and the people’s hardships and antipathy towards the then government and its members triggered a massive wave of popular support for the JVP/NPP. Now, it is incumbent on President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and other JVP/NPP leaders to match their words with deeds. We suggest that they follow Sweden in handling public funds and prevent the MPs from living high on the hog at the expense of taxpayers.

In Sweden, only the Prime Minister is entitled to an official car, and all other MPs including the Speaker have to use public transport or their private vehicles. They are given only bus and train passes. If the politicians in an affluent state like Sweden can do so, why can’t their counterparts in a bankrupt country? Will the NPP MPs to be elected in next month’s general election care to lead by example.

Thursday 17th October, 2024

The preferential vote or manape, as it is popularly known, has become a hot topic again. Some Opposition politicians have accused the JVP/NPP of asking its supporters not to mark preferences for its candidates in the upcoming parliamentary election. The NPP has denied their allegation as a propaganda lie aimed at misleading the public; it has however admitted that, as a matter of principle, it does not encourage its supporters to mark preferences and its candidates never clash over manape. The veracity of its claim is borne out by the fact that the JVP/NPP is free from internecine manape battles, which plague other political parties, especially in the run-up to parliamentary elections. The preferential vote usually leads to intraparty poster wars, and even violence in some cases.

Naturally, manape has become the bugbear of civil society activists on a mission to root out election malpractices and violence; they consider it the mother of all intraparty disputes, which spill over onto streets. Curiously, they and political party leaders see eye to eye on this score. While the civil society groups campaigning for free and fair elections are driven by a genuine desire to ensure Sri Lanka’s democratic wellbeing and restore public faith in the electoral process, politicians are opposing manape with an ulterior motive.

The preferential vote mechanism was introduced, under the Proportional Representation system, to enable electors to ensure that their favourite candidates benefit from their votes in an electoral contest. They can mark three preferences, after voting for a political party, and thereby indicate the candidates who, they think, should represent them. If the preferential vote is eliminated, electors will be left with no alternative but to vote for political parties, and in such an eventuality, the party chiefs will have carte blanche to handpick the candidates in their good books for the parliamentary seats allocated to their outfits at the expense of the popular candidates. In other words, the party leaders will be able to nominate their kith and kin and make them MPs with the votes polled by popular candidates, the way they make National List appointments.

Even at present, party bosses can appoint as MPs their favourites leaving out the deserving candidates unless voters mark preferences on their ballot papers religiously. They can canvass for preferential votes for the candidates of their choice on the sly, and, in fact, they do so. In such a situation, the candidates representing minor parties in a coalition are at a disadvantage, for the leaders of the largest constituents can secretly help their party members in the fray obtain preferential votes and enter Parliament. One may recall that the Rajapaksas employed that method successfully to enable their favourites to top preferential vote lists in the 2020 parliamentary election.

Thus, it may be seen that unless voters mark preferences in the upcoming general election, the beneficiaries will be the candidates representing the largest constituents of coalitions. In the case of the JVP-led NPP, unless those who vote for it mark preferences, the non-JVP candidates could be at a disadvantage as the JVP may be able to ensure that its own candidates enter Parliament. The same goes for the candidates fielded by the Samagi Jana Sandayana on the SJB ticket.

Given how crafty political party chiefs manipulate the electoral process to the benefit of their favoured ones at present, how bad the situation will be if the preferential vote mechanism is done away is not difficult to imagine.

Intraparty disputes and violent incidents during election campaigns should be blamed on political leaders who cannot control their candidates and not the preferential vote. The solution is for the political parties affected by manape battles to find leaders who are capable of enforcing discipline among party members and candidates.

Wednesday 16th October, 2024

The JVP/NPP government has made a mockery of its much-advertised commitment to upholding transparency by keeping two probe committee reports on the Easter Sunday terror attacks under wraps. While the JVP/NPP leaders were in the Opposition, they were among those who demanded that the findings of presidential commissions and committees that investigated the Easter Sunday carnage be made public and legal action taken expeditiously based on them in a transparent manner. That demand struck a responsive chord with the public. But the JVP/NPP bigwigs are now humming a different tune!

Sri Lankan Presidents earned notoriety for ‘swallowing’ commission/committee reports, as it were. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has failed to be different.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe appointed two committees to probe issues pertaining to the Easter Sunday carnage. The committee, headed by former Justice S. A. Imam, was tasked with investigating some allegations Channel-4 (UK) made against Sri Lanka’s military intelligence, and the other, chaired by A. N. J. de Alwis, was assigned to probe the conduct of the State Intelligence Service, the Chief of National Intelligence, and other relevant authorities. The committees handed over their reports to President Wickremesinghe, but those documents have since been shelved.

On Monday, Pivithuru Hela Urumaya Leader Udaya Gammanpila issued an ultimatum to Public Security Minister Vijitha Herath, asking the latter to make public the aforesaid committee reports fast; he undertook to ensure that they would be in the public domain unless the government released them before 21 Oct. Instead of releasing the reports, Minister Herath threw a counterchallenge to Gammanpila yesterday; he dared the latter to make the reports public in three days, and went on to claim that it was a transgression to be in possession of such documents. One can only hope that the government will not place a legal obstacle to Gammanpila’s move to release the vital documents.

As for Minister Herath’s counterchallenge to Gammanpila, the government is making an issue of a non-issue in a bid to muddy the water and distract the public. It is absurd that Herath has asked Gammanpila to release the reports at issue; that is something he himself should have done immediately after being sworn in as the Minister of Public Security in keeping with the NPP’s election promise to uphold transparency. The JVP/NPP seems to have taken a leaf out of the UNP’s book on how to shelve commission/committee reports.

One may recall that the UNP-led Yahapalana government, which the JVP backed to the hilt, did something similar in 2015. It prevented the presentation of the first COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) report on the Treasury bond scams to Parliament. President Maithripala Sirisena dissolved Parliament before the report was tabled in the House. The JVP continued to honeymoon with the UNP-led administration despite that mega racket.

Minister Herath has said an investigation is underway to find out whether any pages in the two committee reports are missing. That is something even a schoolchild can figure out easily, and there is no need for an investigation. Besides, the chairpersons of the two probe committees, former Secretary to the President, and the Attorney General must be having copies of the reports. So, the inordinate delay in releasing those documents is unpardonable.

Now that Minister Herath has made it clear that the government will not make the two committee reports public, it is up to Gammanpila to release them online without further delay in keeping with his pledge.

Why is the NPP government wary of releasing the two committee reports at issue? Are we to conclude that the findings of the probe committees run counter to the NPP’s claims about the Easter Sunday terror attacks? Whatever the reason for the government’s hesitancy may be, the people’s right to information must be respected and transparency upheld.