Saturday 18th January, 2025

The JVP-led NPP asked for a working majority in Parliament to carry out what it called a clean-up campaign on the cards. Believing in its rhetoric, the people gave it a two-thirds majority instead. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake asked for mops and brooms for the grand clean-up, but the people gave him a bulldozer, so to speak. They did so because they wanted to strengthen his hands to overcome challenges and obstacles, upend the existing systems and serve their interests, but the government has not even been able to tame the millers’ cartel and private bus operators who have become a law unto themselves. It has even failed to make public officials fall in line.

Following a recent meeting between President Dissanayake and the Customs bigwigs, at the Presidential Secretariat, to discuss inordinate delays in container clearance, the government declared that the situation would be remedied in four days and the Customs would work 24/7. But that claim too has become a broken promise. Long lines of container trucks are still seen on the roads leading to the Orugodawatta terminal of the Customs.

Truckers have been struggling to gain access to food, water and sanitary facilities for days. They blamed the Customs for their suffering. One of them was heard saying on television yesterday that the people who had given President Dissanayake a huge mandate, expecting him to deal with errant state officials with a firm hand, felt badly let down. His view no doubt resonates with all others who backed the NPP overwhelmingly, hoping for a radical change.

Large-scale rice millers and private bus operators are running parallel governments to all intents and purposes; they scuttle the incumbent regime’s half-hearted attempts to control them. Even President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a former battle-hardened frontline combat officer, dared not take on the wealthy rice millers, who are known to throw money around and have governments on a string. Today, the situation has become so bad that even state officials are defying presidential directives with impunity.

Customs clearance delays cause huge losses to importers, who pass them on to customers. It is the public who bears the cost of delays caused by the Customs. A spokesman for importers has said there has been no increase in the import volume of late, and therefore the Customs clearance delays are unpardonable. He has said delays cannot persist if the Customs are working 24/7 in keeping with their promise to President Dissanayake. Curiously, the government has not cared to find out whether the Customs have streamlined their clearance operations.

Shouldn’t the government be considerate enough to take action to provide the truckers who have been waiting in their vehicles for days, with mobile toilets, food and water until the Customs grandees eliminate delays?

Of what use is a government that cannot ever so much as make public officials carry out their duties and functions efficiently? Where are the cantankerous NPP ministers?

Friday 17th January, 2025

The Opposition has been able to put the government on the defensive on the propaganda front. The JVP/NPP carried out a propaganda onslaught against its political rivals, and rallied enough popular support to win last year’s elections. The boot is now on the other foot.

On Wednesday, claiming that despite last year’s regime change, some big companies continued to import coconut oil fraudulently, causing huge losses to the state coffers, SJB MP S. M. Marikkar, said NPP’s much-flaunted mandate had a foundation of lies. The ruling alliance had lied its way to power, making a host of promises that it did not intend to fulfil, he said. The SJB is now saying about the incumbent dispensation what the NPP said about previous governments.

The NPP launched a successful campaign to delegitimise the SLPP’s popular mandate after the onset of the current economic crisis in 2022. The Opposition is now all out to assail the NPP government’s credibility and challenge its authority in a similar manner.

Legitimate mandates founded on honest campaigning, truthfulness and sincere promises are rarer than hen’s teeth in Sri Lanka. It is doubtful whether during the past several decades any government has obtained an unsullied mandate in this country, where election campaigns are characterised by half-truths, outright lies and false promises.

One may recall that in the run-up to the 1970 general election, the SLFP-led United Front (UF) promised to make rice freely available even if it had to be brought from the moon. The country experienced a protracted shortage of rice under the UF government.

The UNP came to power in 1977, promising to bring about a ‘Righteous Society’, but what the country witnessed was the very antithesis thereof. Democratic dissent was violently suppressed; elections were rigged and state terror claimed tens of thousands of young lives under that regime.

The SLFP returned to power in 1994, promising to eliminate state terror and corruption, as a national priority, but both evils flourished under that government. The UNP obtained a mandate to rule the country again in 2001, promising to end the war through negotiations, but it only jeopardised national security.

The SLFP-led UPFA administration promised a ‘Prosperous Future’, but only its leaders and their kith and kin prospered during that government. The UNP formed a government in 2015 with the much-advertised goal of ushering in good governance, but its rule became a metaphor for corruption.

The SLPP obtained a mandate in 2019 by pledging to carry out its manifesto, ‘Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour’, but it bankrupted the country in 2022. The NPP promised ‘A thriving nation and a beautiful life’, but the people are struggling to keep the wolf from the door. Rice is in short supply and the prices of essentials have gone through the roof. Overall, the NPP stands accused of doing the opposite of what it obtained a mandate for.

Most of all, the NPP government is on the reverse gear just like its immediate predecessor; it keeps making about-turns on its key promises. It has chosen to remain silent on its pledge to scrap the executive presidency although it has a two-thirds majority in Parliament to introduce constitutional reforms.

The SJB’s assertion that the NPP’s mandate has a foundation of lies may resonate with the irate people who are demanding pay hikes and tax and tariff reductions. However, the fact remains that even the SJB, which has taken the moral high ground, and is condemning the NPP for reneging on promises, would not have been able to deliver what it sought a mandate for if it had won the presidential and parliamentary elections last year. It pledged to amend the debt structuring agreement, but the IMF bailout conditions leave no room for such measures. Most of its election promises were also Machiavellian.

Thursday 16th January, 2025

Rising water levels in irrigation tanks are a blessing for the inhabitants of the dry zone, for they signal a time of plenty. Paradoxically, scores of families living in areas below the Senanayake Samudraya in Ampara are living in fear as the life-giving reservoir is fast approaching its maximum storage limit.

More than one hundred people were evacuated the other day because a bank of Gal Oya, in Suduwella and Kotawehera, is at the risk of breaching owing to severe erosion. Irrigation officials warned that if rains continued causing the sluice gates of the tank to be opened, the damaged bank might give way, flooding a vast low-lying area. The evacuees were bussed back home yesterday as the reservoir catchment had not experienced heavy rains the previous day.

Obviously, the erosion of the river bank did not occur overnight, and the residents of the area have said they had been evacuated on previous occasions as well. What have the irrigation authorities and other state officials been doing all these years?

According to some state officials, a sand bar has formed in a section of Gal Oya, making water flow along only one bank, which has suffered erosion as a result. The problem is far too serious to be managed with measures such as piling sandbags, the officials have said, noting that they will have to remove the sand bar, facilitating the river flow and easing the pressure on the damaged bank before repairing it. This task is best left to engineers, but the question is why no action has been taken so far to prevent a possible breach of the eroded bank, which continues to develop cracks. Are the officials waiting until the collapse of the bank to take action? Aren’t cynics justified in calling such individuals NATO (No-Action-Talk-Only) panjandrums?

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Opposition aiming for the stars

The SJB has given serious thought to forming a broad coalition of right-wing political parties as a countervailing force against the JVP-led NPP government, SJB MP S. M. Marikkar has told a media briefing in an answer to a question on the progress in efforts to bring the SJB and the UNP together. Stressing the need for a grand opposition alliance, he has categorised the NPP as a leftist coalition.

Whether a party/coalition is leftist or rightist should be judged by its policies rather than anything else. The NPP cannot be described as a socialist outfit; one sees hardly any difference between its policies and those of the SJB or the UNP. Even JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva has said the NPP administration is not leftist in the real sense of the term. He has, in a press interview, called it ‘a government of leftist, progressive democratic forces’, whatever that means. The Frontline Socialist Party, an offshoot of the JVP, has rightly called the NPP a ‘patchwork of ideological differences’.

The so-called right-wing parties have already begun to cooperate to some extent. They have joined forces to defeat the NPP in cooperative society elections, and achieved some success. Independent groups, backed by the SJB, the UNP, the SLPP and the MEP, have beaten the NPP in Homagama, Moratuwa, Kelaniya, Angunukolapelessa, etc. Their success in those contests may have prompted the SJB to consider forming a grand alliance with a view to turning the tables on the NPP. But the feasibility of such a political project is in doubt, given the competing ambitions of the Opposition politicians.

The SJB has even failed to hold its own coalition partners together; some of them have voted with their feet. The same goes for the SLPP and the UNP. They themselves have suffered crippling splits. So, it is doubtful whether a group of political parties facing internal problems will be able to set aside their differences, overcome the ambitions of their leaders, and unite for a common cause in the long term.