Friday 13th June, 2025

Some Opposition politicians who earned notoriety for bribery and corruption while in power are now pretending to be as innocent as lambs—butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. They are playing the victim card, claiming that they have become targets of a political witch-hunt. They must be troubled by the prospect of having to play board games behind bars with two of their former ministerial colleagues who are already in jail. If they had realised that politics was a game of Snakes and Ladders and conducted themselves properly, while ensconced in power, they would not have been in this predicament.

Some government politicians would have the public believe that the wheels of justice have begun to turn faster since last year’s regime change, and therefore the credit for the incarceration of several Opposition politicians should be given to the current dispensation; the implication of their claim is that unless they had formed a government, the culprits would have got off scot-free. They are often heard predicting that some more Opposition heavyweights will be thrown behind bars soon. Is it that they think they are capable of influencing the judicial process to secure the desired outcome? The NPP politicians’ claims, predictions and warnings are arguably tantamount to an affront to the judiciary and the Attorney General’s Department.

SLPP General Secretary Sagara Kariyawasam, a lawyer by profession, held a brief for his political masters yesterday. Addressing the media, he lamented that the blame for every corrupt deal was unfairly laid at the feet of the Rajapaksas. He used a popular local saying to drive his point home—”Whoever steals a bunch of bananas in the village, it is Abaran who is sent to jail”. If so, Abaran has only himself to blame! He becomes a suspect because of his bad reputation. This is why they say, “He that has an ill name is half-hanged.” Hence the need for politicians and their family members to be above suspicion so that not even their worst enemies can accuse them of corruption. When the members of the former ruling family, who are enjoying the life of Riley, claim that they are living off Daisy Achchi’s bag of gems, they insult human intelligence and lose public sympathy. Similarly, their self-righteous political rivals’ claim that they are living the good life thanks to the largesse of the likes of ‘Jayashantha Aiya’ is also absurd and reflects a very low opinion of the intelligence of the public.

Legal action being taken against the former rulers, their family members and cronies for corruption and other such serious offences is most welcome for two reasons. They must be made to face legal consequences for their crimes. Besides, a serious effort must be made to recover the losses they have caused to the state coffers. Jail terms and modest fines alone will not do. The other reason why they should be made to pay for their sins is that punitive action against them will set a precedent that future governments will be compelled to follow, and the present-day rulers will be held answerable for the questionable deals under their watch, when they lose power.

It has been reported that former Minister Chamal Rajapaksa will be questioned by the CID over compensation he obtained for property damage during Aragalaya (2022). When the news emerged that the SLPP-UNP government was planning to compensate the politicians whose properties had been destroyed by mobs in retaliatory attacks, we argued that the victims must be made to reveal whether they had declared the damaged assets to the taxman, and could account for the funds used to acquire them. The Opposition including the NPP should have taken up this issue in Parliament and tried to prevent the government from awarding compensation to its members generously at the expense of the public. Equally, all violent elements who carried out systematic arson attacks in 2022 must be brought to justice; deterrent punishment must be meted out to them so that there will be no repetition of such acts of pyro-terrorism.

Thursday 12th June, 2025

The State Poson Festival 2025 was held at Mihintale on Tuesday (10) with the participation of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake as the chief guest. The Nayake Thera of the Mihintale Raja Maha Vihara, Ven. Walavahengunawewe Dhammarathana Thera, did not mince his words when he censured the leaders of the previous government for having denied due recognition to the Poson festival at Mihintale for two years. His consternation is understandable; the SLPP-UNP administration, blinded by the arrogance of power, stooped so low as to frustrate his efforts to celebrate Poson in a manner befitting the historical and religious significance of the event.

In an interesting turn of events replete with irony, Dhammarathana Thera showered praise on President Dissanayake, who received an honorary title, on Tuesday, in recognition of his service to the Buddha sasana. He said the President had resumed the practice of providing state patronage to the Mihintale Poson festival and thereby righted a wrong the previous government had done.

The SLPP-UNP administration turned hostile towards the Mihintale temple because Ven. Dhammarathana  Thera was critical of some of its leaders and their policies and intrepidly aired his views in public, much to their chagrin. The incumbent government has adopted a conciliatory approach although the NPP was also at the receiving end of Dhammarathana Thera’s stinging remarks.

Poson is a time for reflection. While listening to Dhammarathana Thera’s speech on Tuesday we were reminded of the multiverse theory, which proposes that we exist in one of many or even infinite universes, and the concept that what ceases to be in one universe may persist in others. Bubble universes are unobservable and speculative. However, the digital space can be thought to function as a kind of parallel universe, where events that have ended in reality persist in audio-visual form. What Ven. Dhammarathana Thera said about the JVP-led NPP and Dissanayake in public previously have been frozen into what are described as timeless, isolated ‘info-bubbles’. Videos of his swipes at the previous government, the NPP and Dissanayake have resurfaced following Tuesday’s Poson festival.

One may recall that in July 2024, Ven. Dhammarathana Thera, addressing the media, lumped the then SLPP-UNP government and the NPP together and tore into both of them. Claiming that they were hostile towards him and his temple, he said an Archaeology Department official loyal to JVP leader Dissanayake obstructed the religious programmes launched by the Mihintale temple. Branding the unnamed state official as a heretic, the Thera warned that given the manner in which the NPP behaved while in the Opposition, it would not even be possible to hold a Buddha pooja if the NPP formed a government! A video of an interview where Ven. Dhammarathana criticises Dissanayake, prior to the latter’s elevation to the executive presidency, for having shown scant respect for a Pirith noola, has also resurfaced.

The digital realm, where things persist online indefinitely and prop up due to algorithmic curation, has also been a source of embarrassment and trouble for the NPP government, which, in most cases, practises the opposite of what it said, did or promised before being voted into power. These contradictions have become grist to the Opposition’s mill. The juxtaposition of early videos and present ones, containing the government leaders’ speeches, can be considered far more effective as anti-government propaganda than the Opposition politicians’ rantings and ravings against the NPP.

The digital space has become a source of embarrassment for the Opposition parties as well. It has helped expose their glaring policy contradictions and hypocrisy. The previous regime’s austerity advocates who unflinchingly pushed for tax and tariff increases and other such measures to raise state revenue regardless of their crushing impact on the public, are now demanding tax and tariff reductions and raking the NPP government over the coals for following the IMF dictates!

Successive governments have sought to obstruct the flow of information into and out of the ‘digital pocket universe’ for obvious reasons, and the imperative to defeat such efforts cannot be overstated.

Wednesday 11th June, 2025

The Trump-Musk bromance is over for sure, and the US is now caught up in a titanic clash between the most powerful leader and the richest man in the world; the media is in a feeding frenzy. Not long ago, billionaire Elon Musk’s money talked, and Donald Trump listened. Today, President Trump’s power is doing all the talking, but Musk won’t listen.

Trump is reported to have ended Musk’s service on a high note. Musk received a special White House send-off before returning to his business empire, wherein lies his real strength. But their differences have since come to a head, with the duo trading swipes in public. Tensions flared over Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) proposing sweeping tax cuts, which are expected to add as much as USD 3 trillion to the US debt, and the inveterate austerity advocate, Musk, has called the OBBB a ‘disgusting abomination’ that will worsen America’s debt burden. Trump has warned Musk of very serious consequences if the latter backs the Democrats in next year’s midterm elections.

How the Trump-Musk battle will end is anybody’s guess. One, however, need not be surprised even if it has an anti-climax, with the two men giving each other bear hugs and patching up their differences. Musk is one of the key figures who enabled Trump’s return to the White House, and Trump therefore is not likely to go all out to engineer the former’s downfall despite his rhetoric and not-so-veiled threats. After all, money and power rarely part company. In an interesting turn of events, Musk has defended Trump to the hilt over the Los Angeles riots triggered by immigration raids, etc; he has also deleted a social media post wherein he called for impeaching Trump.

Second terms of most Presidents are usually jinxed the world over. They end up being disasters. Quite a few leaders ruin things for themselves during their first terms as well, the way Trump did, because power goes to their heads in double quick time. But as fate would have it, the US re-elected Trump as President. If Brecht were alive, he would say that unhappy is the land that sees a saviour in an individual like Trump.

The MAGA (Make America Great Again) believers may have expected an economic boom under Trump’s leadership, but there has been only a moderate economic growth falling short of the early momentum. The US economy expanded by 2.8% in 2024. S&P Global ratings and the IMF have forecast a lower growth in 2025 due to trade friction and policy uncertainty among other things. Trump’s tariff war, which disrupted supply chains and drove costs up impaired the US growth trajectory significantly. Two factors are however thought to offer some promise—consumer resilience and tax-led investment. But cautious business sentiments and rising debt are negative developments that the US will have to contend with. There has also been modest addition of new jobs—about 140,000 to 150,000 a month, with the unemployment rate remaining at 4.1%-4.2%. But there have been layoffs by DODGE (Department of Government Efficiency) and the private sector numbering 58,000 and 172,000, respectively.

The exit of Musk from the corridors of power may have come as some relief to Trump, who however may have realised that Musk was the least of his problems. There has been a mixed reaction to his controversial immigration policy with a vein of xenophobia and nativism; it has resonated with the conservative right in the US and overseas, but resistance is building up against it, as evident from riots in Los Angeles and protests elsewhere. The deployment of the National Guard and suppressive methods being employed to crush protests are bound to prove counterproductive. Immigration restrictions are said to have created a labour shortage in some industries like restaurants, where about 20% workers are reportedly foreign-born.

Trump has, in his wisdom, opened too many fronts and antagonised even his close allies including Musk. He is clashing with the judiciary and prestigious seats of higher learning like Harvard. It was reported yesterday that he had doubled the National Guard deployment in LA and even sent Marines there. The general consensus is that he has scored a clear victory in what has come to be dubbed the billionaire battle, but whether he will be able to prevail in conflicts such as the anti-ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) protests across the country remains to be seen. The problem with agitations is that they tend to snowball.