Friday 24th January, 2025

The Ceylon Chamber of Coconut Industries (CCCI) has called upon the government to import 200 million coconuts immediately to meet a shortfall in the domestic supply. Otherwise, the prevailing coconut shortage will take a turn for the worse during the upcoming festive season, the CCCI has warned. Widely consumed varieties of rice are also in short supply, and their prices are soaring. Red rice has become as rare as a snowflake in summer. The government is all at sea, and when the shortages of rice and coconuts will be over is anybody’s guess. It is busy sorting out issues related to food served in the parliament restaurants, which never experience shortages.

Leader of the House and Minister Bimal Ratnayake announced the other day that the government would ensure that the prices of food sold in the parliament restaurants reflected the costs, and the MPs would have to pay as much as Rs. 3,000 for breakfast, lunch and tea a day. The government has made another about-turn; it has lowered the aforesaid amount to Rs. 2,000, according to media reports.

It was the Opposition that raised the issue of subsidised food in the parliament canteens. SJB MP Hesha Withana told a media briefing in November 2024 that he would bring in a motion seeking to do away with subsidised meals, allowances and loans for the MPs and to have the Madiwela MPs’ housing scheme turned into a university hostel. He did not fulfil that pledge. So, the government members alone cannot be blamed for ‘overpromising’ and ‘underdelivering’. Their Opposition counterparts are also all mouth and no trousers, so to speak.

Denying anyone the pleasure of gratifying his or her gastronomical desires amounts to a breach of ingrained cultural norms of hospitality and generosity cherished by Sri Lankans. But shouldn’t the elected people’s representatives, who come to power, promising to share in the economic hardships of the masses, be reminded that they must not feast on delectable victuals while the electors are struggling to dull the pangs of hunger? The MPs shed copious tears for the ordinary people skipping meals, and the children affected by malnutrition and resultant growth disorders. Isn’t it morally reprehensible for the elected to feast while the electors are starving?

Before last year’s presidential and parliamentary elections, the JVP/NPP politicians had the public believe that, if elected, they would not live in the MPs’ quarters at Madiwela or eat subsidised food in the parliament canteens; they also said they would travel in crowded buses and trains like the ordinary people. Those who voted for them may have expected them to do as they had done while they were in President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s UPFA government from 2004 to 2005. The JVP had 39 MPs in that administration, and some of them including Anura Kumara Dissanayake held Cabinet portfolios. They earned the admiration of the public for their simple living.

The NPP government’s promise to discontinue the practice of serving the MPs subsidised meals will resonate with the public who cannot even afford rice and coconuts. But proof of the pudding is said to be in the eating. One cannot decide whether food prices are actually cost-reflective in the parliament restaurants until one sees what the menus feature there.

The holier-than-thou NPP politicians are in overdrive, asking the former Presidents occupying state-owned houses to pay rents commensurate with the government valuation of those properties or vacate immediately. They say they are also planning to auction the vehicles used by politicians during the previous government. So, why can’t they close down the parliamentary restaurants and ask all MPs to brown-bag their lunches?

Thursday 23rd January, 2025

Donald Trump is no stranger to controversy, but his nonconsecutive second term is going to be even more controversial than the first one if some of the executive orders he signed immediately after being inaugurated as the 47th US President on Monday are any indication. He rescinded about 78 executive actions of his predecessor, Joe Biden. He ordered that the US withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO), causing much concern to the entire world. He levelled some unsubstantiated allegations against the WHO in a bid to justify his decision. One may recall that during his first term, the US withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council, which US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley called ‘a cesspool of political bias’.

President Trump issued another controversial executive order, granting a presidential pardon to about 1,500 Republican supporters serving jail terms for storming Capitol Hill on 06 Jan. 2021 in a bid to disrupt a joint session of the Congress convened to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, where Trump lost to Biden. That blanket pardon came as a surprise even to some of Trump’s close associates. His sweeping approach to the issue is bound to be used by his critics to bolster their claim that the rioters acted at his behest in 2021. After all, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives led by Democrats for ‘incitement of insurrection’, but he was subsequently acquitted by the Senate.

Trump’s controversial pardon for the Capitol Hill rioters came close on the heels of a much-publicised statement by Vice President J. D. Vance that those who had committed violence on 06 Jan., 2021 should not be pardoned. Ironically, during his second presidential election campaign, Trump stressed the need to restore the rule of law, and promised tough action against lawbreakers, but his first day in office saw the hard work done by the FBI, etc., in the Capitol Hill probe, which reportedly became known as the largest-ever criminal investigation in the US, being undone. Trump’s pardon will surely find its way into history books just like the one granted to the Confederate rebels after the conclusion of the Civil War.

The US never misses an opportunity to take the moral high ground and pontificate to the rest of the world on the virtues of democracy, the rule of law, justice, etc. Perhaps, what is more disturbing than Trump’s blanket pardon at issue is the fact that the US people ‘pardoned’ Trump, who mercilessly assailed the integrity of the US electoral process by challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, brought the US into disrepute internationally, allegedly backed a riot that almost scuttled the certification by the Congress of the aforesaid election results, and, above all, was convicted of felony; they re-elected him President, enabling him to do more of what he drew much criticism for doing during his first term. Trump himself has been able to avoid punishment for felony thanks to his re-election. He received an ‘unconditional discharge’ from a New York court a few days before his inauguration.

President Biden granted a presidential pardon to his son, Hunter, who was to face sentencing on federal felony and tax convictions, last month, and went on to issue pre-emptive pardons for three of his siblings and two of their spouses, during the final minutes of his presidential term, claiming that they might be targets of ‘baseless and politically motivated investigations’. Those controversial pardons may have emboldened Trump to adopt a sweeping approach to the Capitol Hill riot issue.

Washington and Colombo are doubtlessly worlds apart, but one sees some striking similarities between the two cities where unfolding political scenarios are concerned. In Washington, a man who was accused of inciting an insurrection, which almost derailed the legislative certification of the outcome of a democratically conducted presidential election, in 2021, is now the US President. In Colombo, a political party, which has admitted to an abortive attempt to engineer a mob invasion of Parliament in 2022, is now in power, having secured the coveted executive presidency and obtained a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Some of the rioters have been elected to Parliament! Others who are facing legal action must be hoping for a blanket pardon.

Wednesday 22nd January, 2025

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR) is willing to vacate his official residence if the government makes a written request to that effect, his eldest son, Namal, has said. This has been MR’s response to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s recent statement that the former Presidents would be asked to pay monthly rentals determined by the Government Valuation Department for their official residences or vacate them immediately. He said MR would have to pay about Rs. 4.6 million a month as rent! Cabinet Spokesman Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa has said the government will make no such request, but MR should leave that house.

President Dissanayake is of the view that the official residences of all ex-Presidents and their imputed rents will be assessed so that the public will know how much they spend to maintain the former leaders. Similarly, the people have a right to know the total value of the vehicle fleets at the disposal of the President, the Prime Minister and the Ministers, and the imputed rentals for the President’s House, Temple Trees, the parliamentary complex, etc. Why can’t parliament be moved back to its original location by the sea? Most of all, the MPs’ housing scheme at Madiwela must be turned into a university hostel complex, as the NPP promised before last year’s elections.

Meanwhile, all losses politicians and their parties have caused to the state must also be estimated and recovered. Maithripala Sirisena, whom the JVP backed to the hilt, during his successful presidential election campaign in 2015, has said the JVP burnt down about 240 Agrarian Service Centres together with paddy storage facilities in the late 1980s. Besides, the JVP destroyed hundreds of buses, over a dozen trains and countless transformers and other such assets of the Ceylon Electricity Board.

President Dissanayake has made an issue of public funds spent on providing security to the former Presidents. No one in his or her proper senses will demand that the VIP security divisions be downsized; the President and the Prime Minister must be given maximum possible protection, but the public should be informed of how much it costs the state coffers to protect the incumbent government leaders.

The JVP-led NPP government has also pledged to recover Sri Lanka’s stolen assets. That will be a great service to this country, which is desperate for funds. The ill-gotten wealth of former government leaders and their kith and kin may not be in Uganda; it must be in some other countries. The government must redouble its effort to fulfil its promise to trace those illegal assets stashed away overseas and bring them back. A probe must also be launched to trace and recover vast amounts of gold and cash robbed by the JVP from banks, pawning centres, and members of the public during its second uprising.

How much does it cost the public to provide subsidised food and beverages to the MPs? We suggest that the parliament restaurants be privatised. The MPs must not be given official vehicles. If the lawmakers in affluent countries such as Sweden travel in buses and trains to attend the parliament, why can’t their counterparts in a bankrupt country like Sri Lanka do so? In Sweden, only the Prime Minister is given an official car and all others including the Speaker get only bus and train passes from the state. Now that the government has reportedly decided to use the official residences of ministers for tourism-related purposes to boost the economy, the Speaker’s House near the Parliamentary complex should be turned into a boutique hotel.

Most of all, since the government is in a cost-cutting mode, will it reveal whether it will scrap the Provincial Councils (PCs), which are a drain on the state coffers? The JVP went on a killing spree in the late 1980s to torpedo the PC system, albeit in vain. The PCs, which the JVP has publicly condemned as a white elephant, obviously cost the country much more than the former President’s official residences and security contingents, don’t they?

We are also burdened with a bloated public service with a state employee for every 14 citizens. There are about 1.5 million public workers whereas the actual need is for only about half of them. Will the government reduce the burgeoning public service to save state funds?