Thursday 17th July, 2025

The Court of Appeal (CA) has dismissed a petition, in limine, which sought an injunction to prevent Western Province Local Government Commissioner Sarangika Jayasundara from conducting elections by secret ballot to the posts of chairman and vice chairman of the Seethawaka Pradeshiya Sabha.

The CA decision is based on the existing election laws that provide for the Local Government Commissioners’ discretion in conducting elections to the posts of chairpersons/mayors and deputy chairpersons/deputy mayors of the hung local councils. The NPP lost no time in welcoming the CA decision.

In a country like Sri Lanka, there should be no legal provision for the discretion of public officials where elections to local council heads are concerned, for the government in power exerts pressure on state employees to do its bidding to further its political interests, or some public officials sell their souls to politicians.

The existing laws should be amended to make open votes mandatory in elections to top posts in all political institutions. Preferably, they should be roll-call votes or show of hands. The people have a right to know how their elected representatives vote in view of very serious allegations of bribery and corruption against the MPs, provincial councillors and local government members. Quite a few newly-elected Opposition local councillors are accused of having taken bribes to vote against their own parties. Secret ballots have stood these elements in good stead. No room should be left for secrecy in elections to top posts in the local councils.

One may recall that in 2007, following an abortive attempt by the then UNP-led Opposition to defeat Budget 2008 presented by the Mahinda Rajapaksa government at the height of the Eelam War IV, Dullas Alahapperuma, who was a minister at the time, disclosed, at a media briefing, that some MPs of the ruling UPFA had taken bribes to vote against the budget, as part of a conspiracy to topple the government and derail the war; they had been found in five-star hotels with foreign prostitutes, Alahapperuma said, claiming that it had been quite a battle to prevent them from doing what they had taken bribes for. The Rajapaksa government managed to win the budget vote. Alahapperuma stopped short of revealing how that task had been accomplished, but there is reason to believe that the Rajapaksas outbribed their opponents.

The ongoing dispute over secret ballots in hung local councils has bolstered arguments for amending the local government election laws, which are riddled with flaws. Ambiguities in laws, especially vague wording, conflicting rules and discretionary enforcement, breeds public distrust and disillusionment and undermines the legitimacy of the electoral process. A set of ministerial guidelines prepared to dispel confusion in respect of elections to the posts of heads and deputy heads of hung local councils has been deep-sixed, to all intents and purposes, allowing state officials to do as they please. This is not a healthy state of affairs, and the LG laws must be rid of flaws that successive governments have exploited to further their interests with the help of pliant state officials.

While on the subject of public officials’ discretion regarding the election of heads and deputy heads in no-majority local councils, there is a far more serious issue that has gone unaddressed all these years—discretion given to the leaders of political parties to manipulate the National List (NL). The Constitution and the Parliamentary Elections Act provide for undermining the people’s franchise where the NL is concerned! As we have pointed out in previous editorial comments, Article 99A of the Constitution allows ‘the persons whose names are included in the lists submitted to the Commissioner of Elections … or in any nomination paper submitted in respect of any electoral district by political parties or independent groups at that election’ to be appointed to Parliament via the NL. But in 1988, the then UNP government introduced Section 64 (5) of the Parliament Election Act, inter alia, as an urgent Bill, eroding the essence of the constitutional provisions pertaining to the NL appointments. It has now been revealed that in 1988, the J. R. Jayewardene government surreptitiously inserted a section into the Parliamentary Elections Act by having an amendment Bill changed, after its ratification, to allow political party leaders to engineer NL vacancies and appoint persons of their choice to Parliament. This provision has made a mockery of Article 99 (A) and Article 101 (H) of the Constitution. Moreover, in 2017, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government smuggled a slew of sections into the Provincial Council Elections (Amendment) Bill at the committee stage to postpone the provincial council elections indefinitely though Article 78 of the Constitution says ‘any amendment proposed to a Bill in Parliament shall not deviate from the merits and principles of such Bill’. Interestingly, all political parties—the UNP, the SLFP-led UPFA including its pro-Mahinda Rajapaksa faction called the Joint Opposition, the JVP, the SLMC and the TNA unflinchingly backed that rotten Bill, helping postpone the PC polls indefinitely. (The TNA is now demanding that the PC polls be held expeditiously!) No legal remedy is currently available because laws cannot be challenged in courts after their enactment. Hence the need for a constitutional amendment to enable post-enactment judicial review of legislation.

Bad laws not only make the public lose trust in the legal process but also give a turbo boost to anti-politics, which is on the rise.

Wednesday 16th July, 2025

Contests to elect heads and deputy heads of hung local councils are continuing, with the government and the Opposition making no-holds-barred efforts to gain control of those institutions. In doing so, they have revealed their true colours; they act out of expediency rather than principle. The outcome of Monday’s elections to the posts of chairperson and deputy chairperson in the Beruwala Urban Council is a case in point.

Sri Lankan politics arguably resembles a game of Cops and Robbers, where the government in waiting assumes the role of the cops, portraying those in power as robbers, vowing to catch them. The JVP-led NPP, while in the Opposition, branded all its rivals as robbers and sought a mandate to throw all of them behind bars. It secured the presidency and a supermajority to a strong government. In the run-up to the 06 May local government polls, it declared that it would never close ranks with any other political party/independent group to gain control of local councils. The SJB also made a similar vow, accusing the NPP of corrupt deals and abuse of power. However, the outcome of the mini polls has made both sides resort to horse trading to secure control of hung councils, letting their much-avowed policies, principles and scruples fall by the wayside.

The NPP councillors and their SJB counterparts are widely considered sworn enemies, but they closed ranks in the Beruwala UC on Monday to defeat an Independent group that had secured a plurality (07 seats) in that hung council. The NPP, which has only 03 seats, bagged the UC with the help of 06 SJB councillors! It was a case of the self-proclaimed cops honeymooning with the robbers.

Last month, a similar alliance was forged in the Norwood PS, where the NPP and the CWC have 06 seats each, the SJB 05 seats, the UNP 01 seat, the DNA 01 seat and Independent Group 01 seat. The councillors of the NPP and the SJB got together to gain control of that PS. The NPP said its councillors had acted without its blessings. The SJB made a similar claim. Both parties promised disciplinary action against their members over the controversial alliance. However, the situation in the Beruwala UC is different in that the NPP came a poor third there in the LG polls. It will be interesting to see what the NPP has got to say about the unholy alliance between its councillors and SJB members in the Beruwala UC. The SJB has reportedly said it will suspend the party membership of its six councillors.

Immediately after the declaration of the LG polls results in May, the NPP took up the position that it should be allowed to control the hung councils where it had obtained pluralities. Ideally, that is what the Opposition should have done. The parties or the Independent groups that obtained more seats than the runners-up in the non-majority councils should have been allowed to administer those institutions. The NPP should have adopted a conciliatory approach, and the Opposition led by the SJB should have reciprocated in the interest of the public. The NPP is still the most popular political party in the country though its popularity is on the wane, and the SJB, which is apparently recovering lost ground, should have come to terms with the ground reality and acted accordingly. Sadly, driven by expediency, the Opposition parties opted to join forces and make a determined bid to seize control of the hung councils. They have succeeded in defeating the NPP in dozens of such local government bodies, but their success achieved through tactical manoeuvrings and opportunistic alliances is not likely to help them win back popular support. In Beruwala, the NPP upended its own policy in respect of the hung councils.

Politicians and political commentators have blamed the Mixed Proportional system, under which the LG polls are conducted, for the mess in hung councils. This argument is not without some merit, but the real problem, in our book, is the rotten political culture in this country, where politicians and political parties lack maturity and subjugate public interest to political expediency.

It is commonly said in this country that a cobra and a mongoose, when caught in swirling flood waters, forget their enmity and cling to the same floating log and cooperate to maintain its balance so that they can stay afloat. The NPP and the SJB have done just that in Beruwala.

Tuesday 15th July, 2025

Sri Lanka, which is famous the world over for ancient, giant Dagobas, has earned notoriety for huge pyramids—albeit of a different kind. It has become a haven for various pyramid scams. Sri Lankans boast of their relatively high literacy rate in the region, but they are easy prey for racketeers, who are now using the digital space to carry out their illegal operations far more effectively than in the past. Victims who invest their lifelong savings in these fraudulent schemes on the sly, ignoring warnings, protest in public when they lose their money, cursing the government in power and asking it to intervene and help recover their losses. A surge in pyramid scams has prompted the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) to launch an ‘Anti-Pyramid Awareness Week’ under the theme, “Pyramid is a trap – don’t get into the wrong track”.

Pyramid schemes not only defraud individuals but also severely undermine financial systems; financial and banking sectors suffer heavily due to reduced liquidity and an erosion of public confidence in them. These frauds also bring about economic volatility and macroeconomic shocks due to the bursting of asset bubbles, etc., and lead to huge regulatory and legal costs, which the public has to bear. Sri Lankans must be educated on the mega crises caused by pyramid rackets in countries like Albania, Zimbabwe, and Romania. It is hoped that the CBSL’s cross-sectoral initiatives involving several key state institutions to protect the public against pyramid racketeers will reach fruition, with some sense being eventually knocked into the gullible members of the public, who must also be told in no uncertain terms that if they ever invest in such scams, they will be doing so at their own risk, and taxpayers’ money will not be used to compensate them under any circumstances.

It is a matter for relief that there are institutions like the police, the CBSL and the Finance Ministry to protect the public against organised financial frauds like pyramid schemes, or at least to make a serious effort to do so, but there is no one to save the people from the political pyramid scams, as it were, wherein the victims invest something much more precious than money—their future.

During the past several decades, Sri Lanka has seen a number of mega political pyramid scams that defrauded about 22 million people by making various promises and reneging on them. These scammers not only get off scot-free but also have themselves voted back into office to resume their frauds, savour power and enrich themselves. In the early 1970s, the people fell for the rice-from-the-moon scam but were left with hardly any rice to eat thereafter. Seven years later, they were duped by the infamous eight-pounds-of-grain racket coupled with a promise to usher in a Righteous Society and guarantee Shelter for All. Then came on the scene the political scammers promising economic relief and a country free from corruption and terror—dooshanaya and beeshanaya. The promised economic relief turned out to be pie in the sky; corruption and terror continued to thrive. An extension of that political pyramid scam came in the form of a project to ensure a ‘Prosperous Future’ for everyone; it was followed by the Good Governance fraud, which paved the way for the worst-ever financial crime in the country—Treasury bond scams—and various other rackets. Perhaps, the biggest-ever political pyramid scam in this country was the one that promised ‘Prosperity and Splendour’ as dividends but bankrupted the economy, causing unprecedented hardships to the public. It is against this backdrop the ongoing ‘Beautiful Life’ project should be viewed. The current leaders came to power, condemning the post-Independence period as a 76-year curse, and whether it will turn out to be ‘76-Year Curse Plus’ remains to be seen.

Manthri.lk, a platform of Verité Research, has launched the Anura Meter, an online tracker, to monitor the progress in fulfilling the key promises made in the 2024 presidential election manifesto of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. One hopes that the Anura Meter will help figure out whether the people are receiving the dividends they were promised when they invested their future in the Beautiful Life project. Unless their expectations are met, they, too, will take to the streets like the victims of the financial pyramid schemes or the Aragalaya activists.

Meanwhile, in combating the financial pyramid scams, the remarkable resilience, influence and adaptability of the wealthy scammers with political connections and international links must not be underestimated. The fraudsters adopt tactics such as hiring celebrities and other such popular personalities to lure the public. There is said to be a sucker born every minute. It may be recalled how tens of thousands of people fell for Dhammika peniya—a kind of herbal syrup—which a carpenter-turned-shaman touted as a cure for Covid-19. Nevertheless, the government initiative to keep the pyramid racketeers at bay deserves fullest public cooperation.