Friday 7th March, 2025

Former Minister Mervyn Silva and two others, arrested by the CID for allegedly selling a block of state-owned land in Kelaniya by preparing a forged deed, were remanded yesterday. We do not intend to discuss a matter that is under judicial scrutiny. However, it needs to be said that legal action against Silva and others of his ilk for blatant violations of the law during the Rajapaksa government, is long overdue. The CID is only scratching the surface of the problem of forcible land acquisition.

The CID has made quite a few arrests under the current administration, but its high-octane performance has been selective. Minister Wasantha Samarsinghe, who is also facing a fraud charge, was not arrested. Is it that the police continue to consider the ruling party politicians ‘more equal than others’ despite last year’s regime change? A court case is now pending against Samarasinghe. The police once arrested two small schoolgirls—one for picking a few coconuts from her neighbour’s land, and the other for stealing a five-rupee coin! But they baulk at arresting politicians allegedly involved in forgery and land grabs.

Many people lost their properties to organised gangs that operated with impunity under the UNP/SLFP led governments. Let the police be urged to ask the victims of land grabs in Colombo as well as elsewhere to come forward and file complaints. Underworld gangs working for previous governments not only grabbed valuable properties belonging to ordinary people but also intimidated their victims into silence. Sadly, some members of the legal fraternity have sold their souls to the criminals in the garb of politicians.

Silva was above the law during the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, and stood accused of masterminding savage attacks on the Opposition and media institutions. It was political patronage that prevented him from going to jail for a cheque fraud. The Attorney General’s Department under political pressure opened an escape route for him. Sadly, the UNP-led Yahapalana government did not care to probe such incidents, and President Maithripala Sirisena unashamedly appointed Silva an SLFP organiser, making a mockery of his commitment to good governance.

Silva is one of those responsible for the collapse of the Rajapaksa government in 2019. President Rajapaksa shielded the likes of him, mistakenly believing that since he had a two-thirds majority in Parliament and the Opposition was weak, he could go on doing as he wished. The arrogance of power cost him the presidency in 2015. However, there are no permanent heroes or permanent villains in politics; heroes become villains and vice versa, and the people tend to re-elect villains when the heroes fail.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa became a hero in 2019, despite the ouster of the Rajapaksas in 2015, and mustered a two-thirds majority in the legislature, but a resentful public took to the streets in their thousands and he headed for the hills. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was firmly in the saddle, and things were looking up for her strong government. She even crushed a wave of anti-government protests last year, but eventually she had to flee the country.

As for the villains in Sri Lankan politics, one may recall that the country erupted in euphoria when the demise of JVP leader Rohana Wijeweera was announced in 1989; people lit firecrackers, ate milk rice and danced in the streets. But in the 2004 general election, they voted overwhelmingly for the JVP, which was part of the UPFA coalition at that time, enabling it to secure 39 seats. Two decades later, they voted the JVP-led NPP into power. Whoever would have thought that Donald Trump, who lost the 2020 presidential election and incurred much public opprobrium for inciting a riot to sabotage the elevation of Joe Biden to the presidency would be re-elected?

Thus, anything is possible in politics. This is something the NPP government should bear in mind. Unless it learns from its predecessors’ mistakes, and lives up to people’s expectations by fulfilling its main campaign promises, it will face the same fate as the past governments with supermajorities. Political dog-and-pony shows and rhetoric won’t do.

Thursday 6th March, 2025

Sri Lanka is no doubt a land like no other––for racketeers and fraudsters. Trade Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe has told Parliament, in answer to a question from SJB MP Chaminda Wijesiri, that substandard coconut oil unfit for human consumption has flooded the local market. He has made no revelation. That coconut oil produced by some companies is substandard is public knowledge, but ordinary people consume it for want of a better alternative.

Minister Samarasinghe informed Parliament yesterday that the Consumer Affairs Authority (CAA) had confirmed, after conducting sample tests, the presence of harmful coconut oil in the market. Some local manufacturers released low-quality coconut oil to the market to maximise profit by keeping production costs low, he said.

When MP Wijesiri demanded to know how the government proposed to prevent the substandard coconut oil from entering the market, Minister Samarasinghe said legal action would be instituted against the errant manufacturers. However, some racketeers formed companies to market substandard coconut oil and closed them a few months later to avoid legal action, the Minister said. This racket has been going on for decades, with successive governments doing precious little to eliminate it for obvious reasons. It is hoped that the NPP government will do everything in its power to bring the coconut oil racketeers to justice and protect public health.

It was heartening that the government and the Opposition, for once, discussed an issue of public interest without engaging in a slanging match. However, the two sides were only scratching the surface of the problem of substandard edible oils in the local market. Sri Lanka is awash with low-quality, harmful cooking oils, which are mostly imported. The media has shed light on low-quality palm/vegetable oils, which are mixed with coconut oil or sold separately. Racketeers have been conducting their sordid operations with impunity.

In 2021, aflatoxin, a carcinogen, was detected in coconut oil manufactured by a local company, which was ordered by the CAA to withdraw its product from the market. The issue fizzled out a few days later, and whether the public has been consuming coconut oil contaminated with aflatoxin is anybody’s guess. There is a pressing need for food items to be tested thoroughly on a regular basis to ensure their safety. The CAA should be provided with necessary resources for that purpose. If it is experiencing a shortage of personnel, some of the excess workers in other state institutions can be retrained and attached to it. The government should also seriously consider increasing fines for illegal trading practices such as selling substandard food items that pose a serious threat to public health.

There is another long-standing racket involving edible oil. The consumption of used cooking oil is taken for granted in this country although it is known to have harmful effects on health. Edible oils, when reused, undergo chemical changes, causing the formation of harmful compounds that contribute to inflammation and increase the rise of kidney and heart diseases and cancer, according to medical researchers. In Sri Lanka, cooking oil used in star-class hotels finds its way to restaurants elsewhere, which sell it to wayside eateries, where it is used countless times. Worryingly, food served in eating houses is not tested for harmful chemicals. There is reason to believe that food items such as substandard and recycled cooking oil contribute to the prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in this country, where around 70 percent of the disease burden is due to NCDs, according to the Department of Census and Statistics. NCDs account for about 83% of deaths in Sri Lanka, according to the World Health Organization data.

The NPP government has launched a programme to take a census of crop-raiding animals, especially monkeys, by counting them simultaneously countrywide. Whether it will be able to achieve the desired results remains to be seen, but it may be able to nab errant traders and restaurateurs if it launches simultaneous raids nationwide with the help of the Public Health Inspectors, the CAA personnel and other state employees to ensure food safety. It can be made part of the government’s multi-pronged Clean Sri Lanka Initiative.

Wednesday 5th March, 2025

The political health of any government, however powerful it may be, is in peril when doctors and nurses down tools, for the healthcare system is a cornerstone of social stability. The Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) threatened a strike in protest against what it calls allowance cuts, but put it off until 21 March, when the final vote on the 2025 Budget is scheduled to be taken.

Has the government promised any committee-stage changes to the budget to accommodate the doctors’ demands? The public sector salaries are as interconnected as the gears of a clock, and an ad hoc adjustment to any one of them is bound to cause intractable anomalies and send the whole system haywire. There’s the rub.

Some nurses trade unions are also on the warpath. Speaking in Parliament yesterday Minister of Health Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa defended the budget proposals pertaining to salaries and allowances in the health sector, but the warring trade unions have refused to buy into his claims. So, there will be a showdown unless the government meets their demands.

The moment of truth for any new government is its maiden budget, which is expected to fulfil everyone’s expectations. This may not be fair, but that is the way the cookie crumbles. The JVP/NPP, while in the opposition, inveighed against the SLPP administration and organised protests and work stoppages, demanding higher pay for workers despite the economic crisis. The boot is now on the other foot.

Talking the talk is one thing, but walking the walk is quite another. Hence, brilliant orators in the Opposition become poor performers when voted into power. There are some exceptions, but they only serve to prove the rule.

The SLPP had a phalanx of orators whose platform speeches would mesmerise the public, so much so that Gotabaya Rajapaksa became President in 2020, and the SLPP secured a near supermajority in Parliament the following year. But those smooth-tongued rhetoricians became abject failures in the SLPP government. The same apparently holds true for their successors who came to power, making a bazillion promises.

The public sector trade unions which are demanding pay hikes, etc., and threatening strikes ought to act responsibly. True, the economy has improved since 2022; the IMF itself has confirmed this fact, but it is not out of the woods yet. Unless the government meets its revenue targets and rebuilds the country’s foreign currency reserves, the economy––currently in remission––is likely to relapse. The warring trade unions have to ensure that their members work hard, earn their keep and help enhance national productivity, a prerequisite for economic development.

The NPP government is in the current predicament because President Anura Kumara Dissanayake made the mistake of raising the state employees’ hopes beyond measure by promising an unprecedented pay hike. He would reiterate that pledge on numerous occasions. Naturally, the public sector workers, who voted overwhelmingly for the NPP in the last two elections, expecting salary increases, etc., in return, were disappointed when the 2025 budget was presented to Parliament.

When it was in the Opposition, the JVP/NPP had a government mindset. Now, the JVP-led NPP government acts like an Opposition party. Instead of using its supermajority to take decisive action to solve the burning issues affecting the public, it resorts to sloganeering and political circuses in a bid to cover up its failures but without success.

One can only hope that the government will negotiate with the trade unions that are spoiling for a fight and do everything possible to prevent strikes, which will make the country’s economic recovery even more difficult.