Friday 6th December, 2024

Sri Lanka is facing a severe rice shortage, and the situation is bound to take a turn for the worse unless remedial action is taken forthwith. The country has produced enough paddy, according to the Department of Agriculture, and the government itself has said there are sufficient stocks of paddy! If so, why has a rice shortage occurred?

Minister of Trade and Commerce, Food Security and Cooperative Development Wasantha Samarasinghe told Parliament on Wednesday that rice millers had agreed to release 200,000 kilos of rice daily to be sold at the maximum retail price (Rs. 220 a kilo) through the Sathosa retail outlets. Implying that all necessary action had been taken to break the back of the rice crisis, Samarasinghe claimed that a banking issue that had prevented millers from increasing the amount of rice released to the market had been sorted out with a presidential intervention. He should have revealed what that issue was. The NPP leaders are beginning to sound like apologists for the powerful millers, just as their predecessors did.

Sathosa has only 443 retail outlets countrywide, and obviously they cannot cater to more than 22 million people belonging to about 5.1 million families. The Ministry of Agriculture informs us that Sri Lanka’s daily rice consumption is about 6,500 MT and the amount of rice the millers have reportedly offered to release a day is woefully inadequate to meet the demand for rice.

The harebrained manner in which successive governments have sought to tackle the rice issue exemplifies a local saying; what they have been doing is ‘like using a loincloth to control dysentery’.

The government says it has decided to lift restrictions on rice imports temporarily and the State Trading Corporation and Sathosa will import 70,000 MT of rice urgently. When imported rice stocks will arrive here is anyone’s guess, and the possibility of private importers colluding to keep the price of imported rice artificially high cannot be ruled out; the paucity of regulations as well as the impotence of governments and the Consumer Affairs Authority (CAA) allows anti-competitive practices to thrive at the expense of consumers.

In October 2024, addressing an NPP election rally in Polonnaruwa, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake declared that there were sufficient stocks of rice in the country and ruled out the possibility of importing rice. A senior economist attached to the Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute, reportedly informed President Dissanayake at a meeting, in October, that the country had sufficient rice stocks, according to the Agriculture Department database, and there was no need for rice imports. He brought to the notice of the President that rice shortages occurred whenever millers were asked to adhere to the prices stipulated by the CAA. Minister Samarasinghe and NPP MP and National Organiser of the All Ceylon Farmers’ Federation, Namal Karunaratne, have also confirmed that the country has sufficient rice stocks. Thus, it is clear that the large-scale millers have created an artificial shortage of rice to jack up prices.

On listening to President Dissanayake and other NPP stalwarts during their election campaigns, people must have expected them to get tough with the millers, after forming a government, and ensure that the interests of consumers and farmers would prevail. But the action they have taken to solve the rice crisis is anything but tough. The President’s recent meeting with a group of powerful rice millers responsible for market manipulations looked like a convivial confab.

When rice imports get underway, the large-scale millers usually release more rice to the market, as we have seen over the years, and imported rice remains unsold as Sri Lankans prefer local rice varieties. Most of all, changes in market dynamics cause paddy prices to fall during harvesting periods much to the detriment of farmers’ interests. Millers laugh all the way to the bank. Everything possible must be done to prevent unsold imported rice stocks from ending up as animal feed.

The government must summon courage to grasp the nettle if it is genuinely desirous of safeguarding the interests of rice consumers and paddy farmers. Ad hoc remedies and mere rhetoric won’t do.

Thursday 5th December, 2024

Monday’s police attack on a group of Development Officers (DOs), who are attached to state-run schools as teachers, during a protest near the Education Ministry, Battaramulla, has given the public a foretaste of what is to come. Governments in this country readily go to any extent to safeguard their interests and nip protests in the bud to prevent them from snowballing. Only President Gotabaya Rajapaksa chose to handle protests differently; he even designated an area near the Presidential Secretariat for agitations. His strategy backfired; the Galle Face Green became the cradle of an uprising that led to his ouster. The SLPP-UNP regime under Ranil Wickremesinghe’s presidency went on the offensive and had protests crushed in the most brutal manner; in most cases, riot police personnel outnumbered protesters! The incumbent dispensation has apparently taken a leaf out of Wickremesinghe’s book in handling protests.

The DOs on the warpath are demanding that they be absorbed into the teacher service immediately. The government claims that they protested while a discussion was in progress in the Education Ministry on how to solve their problems, and the police moved in to maintain order. The protesting DOs, most of whom are believed to be NPP sympathisers, may have thought that they would be able to crank up pressure on ‘their government’ to redress their grievances expeditiously, without being roughed up by the police.

The JVP-led NPP government, whose leaders used to shed copious tears for protesters and take up the cudgels for trade union rights, has faulted the DOs for having staged what they call an unnecessary protest; it has sought to absolve itself of the blame for the police action at issue. General Secretary of Ceylon Teachers’ Union, Joseph Stalin, who took on previous governments with might and main, to the extent of crippling schools with trade union action, to win teachers’ demands, has made only a whimper of protest against Monday’s incident. Curiously, he has condemned the police action while urging the government to look into it. He has thereby sought to separate the police from the government in a sharp contrast to what he used to do; he would lay the blame for police crackdowns on workers’ protests at the feet of previous governments. He is beginning to sound conformist. The JVP trade union leaders in the current Parliament have also been critical of the protesting DOs.

There was something disconcerting about Monday’s protest in Battaramulla. Three police personnel involved in dispersing the protesters suffered cut injuries and had to be rushed to hospital. The protesting DOs were obviously unarmed, and the question is who attacked the police. Deputy Minister of Public Security Sunil Watagala said in an interview with ITN, on Tuesday night, that razor blades had been used to injure the police officers. Were the attacks carried out by some agents provocateurs who infiltrated the demonstration to discredit the protesters’ cause and provoke the police into unleashing force? If so, who sent them there? The protesters themselves caught a suspect and handed him over to the police. He was later identified as a military intelligence operative, according to a report we published yesterday.

The police and intelligence outfits usually cover protests from all angles, and even obtain drone footage to capture aerial perspectives of such events, as is known to the media. They must have done so on Monday because the DOs’ demonstration was held on the eve of the commencement of the first debate in the 10th Parliament—on President Anura Dissanayake’s Policy Statement. So, the police should be able to trace the person or persons responsible for attacking them. If they cannot find the culprit/s, who operated in the open on Monday, how can they be expected to solve far more serious crimes committed on the sly?

It behoves all trade unions leaders who are genuinely committed to serving the interests of workers and safeguarding their rights to pressure the law enforcement authorities and the government to have Monday’s attacks on the police thoroughly probed and the perpetrators thereof brought to justice immediately.

Wednesday 4th December, 2024

The Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government was responsible for turning the electoral process into a mess. It arbitrarily postponed the Local Government (LG) elections. The Election Commission (EC) had made all arrangements for the mini polls to be held when President Ranil Wickremesinghe, ably assisted by the SLPP, threw a monkey wrench in the works in defiance of a court order; he refused to allocate funds for the elections.

The LG polls have been rescheduled for 2025, and the Cabinet has reportedly decided to amend the Local Authorities Elections Ordinance to call for fresh nominations. It has in fact chosen to cut the Gordian knot. Amending the LG election laws is the only way to cause the previous nomination lists to lapse. Many of those who secured nominations to contest the LG polls last year have either changed political parties or left the country or gone the way of all flesh. Some of them have entered Parliament.

It has been reported that the LG polls are likely to be held either in January or February 2025. The Supreme Court has ordered that the LG elections be held as soon as possible, and why the EC is in overdrive is understandable.

Ideally, the LG polls should be conducted under the Proportional Representation (PR) system until the Mixed-Member Proportional system is streamlined; the current electoral system has led to a huge increase in the number of local council members from about 4,000 to more than 8,000.

The upcoming LG polls will assume the importance of a national election because it will serve as a litmus test on the new government’s popularity. The NPP’s impressive victory in the general election will still be fresh when the country goes to the polls to elect local councils, but the government’s maiden Budget will have been unveiled by that time, and the people will be able to see how serious the ruling alliance is about fulfilling its main election promises, especially pay hikes for state employees, substantial tax revisions and relief for the needy.

The government has admitted that the IMF will have a say in the formulation of Budget 2025, and therefore it is doubtful whether the NPP will be able to carry out some of its key promises. More importantly, the government will have to reveal its position on the imputed rental income tax, which is required to be introduced early next year.

The government already stands accused of having reneged on some of its main election promises. Before the September presidential election, the NPP vowed to slash fuel prices, claiming that they remained high due to unconscionable government taxes and corruption. The people were given to understand that electricity tariffs would be reduced substantially, and some NPP politicians claimed that a 30% decrease in electricity prices was in the realm of possibility, but they are now humming a different tune. The police have used brutal force to crush a development officers’ protest near the Education Ministry. Most of those protesters backed the NPP in the presidential and parliamentary elections. The Prevention of Terrorism Act, which the JVP/NPP pledged to abolish immediately after forming a government has been used against some social media activists. Millers have created a rice shortage and jacked up the prices of all varieties of rice. The government has baulked at taking tough action it promised against the unscrupulous millers whom its leader blamed for hoarding paddy and fleecing consumers and farmers, during the NPP’s parliamentary election campaign. Coconut prices have gone through the roof. Farmers affected by floods are crying out for relief; they are resentful that the government has offered only Rs. 40,000 per acre as compensation for crop losses.

The biggest challenge before the government ahead of the LG polls will be to retain its approval ratings vis-à-vis the Opposition’s all-out efforts to whip up anti-incumbency sentiments and regain lost ground.