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Editorial

Hobson’s choice, swings and roundabouts

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Monday 20th January, 2025

The Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) has endeared itself to the people immensely by directing the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) to lower the power tariffs by an average of 20%. It was a case of Hobson’s choice for the NPP government, which insisted that a substantial electricity price reduction would not be possible within the next three years although it promised, before last year’s elections, to slash power tariffs by as much as 30% ‘in the near future’. The Opposition has mockingly asked whether ‘the near future’ is equal to three years.

The Opposition and some consumer rights groups have claimed the credit for the power tariff reduction. If they consider themselves so influential as to have power tariffs lowered, will they explain why they failed to have petroleum prices reduced?

True, the government only made a virtue of necessity by allowing the CEB to carry out the PUCSL decision on power tariff revision. If it had opted to do otherwise, the Opposition would have taken to the streets with the people joining it. But the fact remains that the NPP did not seek to railroad the PUCSL into doing its bidding. One may recall that the Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government prevented a downward power tariff revision by scuttling the PUCSL; it had some of the PUCSL members resign and removed its chairman by securing the passage of a motion in Parliament to that effect. The current administration did not do so despite having a two-thirds parliamentary majority. The Opposition says the government will strike back and smoke out the PUCSL members. It is hoped that the NPP will act prudently without providing its rivals with another rallying point.

The argument that the CEB should not be making profits at the expense of its consumers is tenable. The CEB has made huge profits. However, it has to repay its debts, and a fine balance needs to be struck between tariff reductions and debt repayment. Otherwise, it will be swings and roundabouts for electricity consumers, for the government will pass the cost of servicing the CEB’s debt on to the public in the form of tax increases. The proponents of power tariff reductions have chosen to gloss over this aspect of the issue for political reasons.

The NPP government finds itself in an unenviable position despite its mammoth electoral victory two months ago. The problem with raising the people’s expectations excessively is that a political party that captures power by doing so finds it extremely difficult to live up to them. The NPP resorted to sloganeering and made a host of promises as it was desperate to savour power. Its pre-election slogans, promises and demands are now boomeranging.

During their opposition days, the NPP/JVP leaders made fiery speeches tearing their political rivals to shreds and asking the SLPP-UNP government to slash taxes and tariffs and halve fuel prices forthwith; they insisted that all it would take to make rice freely available at affordable prices was a single stroke of the presidential pen; they condemned the Port City project as an environmental disaster sans any economic benefits to Sri Lanka; the NPP election manifesto promised biannual pay hikes for state employees among other things; it pledged to renegotiate the IMF programme, especially the Debt Sustainability Analysis; some former military officers who jumped on the NPP bandwagon promised to neutralise the netherworld of crime and narcotics in less than two months, and the NPP made a solemn pledge to have all the thieves of state assets thrown behind bars and recover the stolen funds posthaste.

Today, the NPP’s slogans, demands and unfulfilled promises, which are legion, have become grist for the Opposition’s mill. The government is dogged by its broken promises, which are likely to be its nemesis. Unfortunately, its confusion and incompetence have enabled a bunch of rogues who enriched themselves, ruined the economy and lost elections or skipped them for fear of defeat to crawl out of the woodwork and claw their way up.



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Editorial

Groping in the dark

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Thursday 13th February, 2025

Sri Lanka continues to be in the throes of multiple crises because their root causes usually go unaddressed. If the past governments, especially the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration, had cared to tackle the issue of the country’s national debt becoming unmanageable by taking steps to shore up foreign currency reserves and increasing state revenue substantially, the current economic crisis could have been averted.

A mega crisis has been developing in the power sector for decades, but nobody seems to care. Successive governments have only paid lip service to the pressing need to address it. Sunday’s countrywide power outage has left the government, the Opposition, the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) and other stakeholders behaving like the proverbial visually-impaired men who tried to figure out the shape of an elephant by touching different parts of the animal’s anatomy, and came to absurd conclusions. No sooner had the power failure occurred than Minister in charge of the power sector, Kumara Jayakody, declared that a monkey had done it! His claim had the whole world in stitches, with international media giving it much prominence owing to its high entertainment value. It also made one wonder whether Sri Lanka’s national grid was so primitive that it lacked resilience to withstand the shock from a monkey coming into contact with a transformer in a grid substation. Even ferocious Tigers could not shut down the national grid despite all their terror attacks on the country’s power infrastructure.

Senior CEB engineers lost no time in attributing Sunday’s power outage to an increase in solar power generation, which, they said, had rendered the national grid unstable on account of a drop in demand. That sounded a tall tale and betrayed the engineers’ prejudice against power generation from renewable sources. The CEB Technological Engineers Union has rubbished the engineers’ claim; it has said that according to a report prepared by a committee consisting of 35 experts including some of the serving CEB high-rankers, the national grid is capable of accommodating 2,600 MW of power from renewable sources, and solar power production amounts to only 1,400 MW at present. The CEB stands accused of short-changing the solar power producers in a bid to perpetuate the country’s overdependence on lucrative thermal power production. It will be interesting to see what the CEB engineers have to say about the aforesaid expert committee report.

There have been several previous instances where we experienced countrywide power outages that lasted for hours. During the past decade or so, every regime change has been followed by a nationwide power failure. The UNP-led UNF formed the Yahapalana government in 2015 after ousting the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration, and a countrywide blackout occurred in 2016. Grid defects were blamed for the eight-hour power outage, but no action was taken to find out what had really caused it.

The SLPP toppled the Yahapalana administration, and formed a government by winning the 2019 presidential election and the 2020 parliamentary polls; the country experienced a nationwide power failure in 2021. The issue was relegated to the limbo of forgotten things after the restoration of power supply and some half-hearted attempts to identify the causes thereof. Prolonged power cuts came thereafter for want of fuel to generate electricity.

Another countrywide power failure was experienced in 2023 about one year after the ouster of President Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe’s fortuitous elevation to the presidency. The latest nationwide power outage has come only a few months after a regime change.

Sunday’s power failure must be thoroughly probed and the causative factors identified as a national priority. It must also be ascertained whether some vested interests deliberately undermined the national grid to advance their own interests. Given the existence of various powerful lobbies, popularly known as Mafias, in Sri Lanka’s power sector, anything is possible.

The government should give serious thought to launching a clean-up of the power sector, which is rotten to the core, under its Clean Sri Lanka initiative.

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Editorial

Buses as Chariots of Death

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Wednesday 12th February, 2025

The tragic collision between two private buses in Kurunegala on Monday snuffed out four lives and left 25 others injured; five of them are battling death, according to media reports. The police say the bus that caused the mishap was plying at 90 km/h, which is close to the maximum speed limit on local expressways.

Speeding is the order of the day on roads in Sri Lanka, where deaths caused by accidents average seven or eight a day, but nothing much has apparently been done all these years to ensure road safety. It is said that in the days of yore, people would write their last wills before embarking on pilgrimages to faraway places such as Kataragama, given the perils of their arduous journeys. The modern-day Sri Lankans are not entirely free from such trepidation; they cannot so much as cross the road without fear of being run over by speeding vehicles.

It was reported last month that 30 advanced speed guns worth Rs. 91 million had been imported for the traffic police. Didn’t any of the police stations in the areas through which the aforesaid ill-fated buses plied have a speed gun?

Sri Lankan bus drivers are a dangerous lot, as is public knowledge. They are capable of making even atheists pray. Their vehicles are veritable mobile shrines, but the various religious icons displayed therein are redundant, for their spine-tingling driving alone is sufficient to keep their passengers reminded of deities and the Buddha.

Expressways are equipped with speed cameras, which have had a deterrent effect on drivers with lead feet, and help cash-strapped governments rake in a lot of money by way of traffic fines. Given Sri Lankans’ propensity for speeding and committing other traffic offences, installing speed cameras along the roads where accidents frequently occur will not only help save lives but also prove a boon for the incumbent government, which is under pressure to increase its revenue substantially to qualify for the next tranche of the IMF loan.

Police Spokesman, SSP Buddhika Manatunga yesterday urged the public to speak up if the vehicles they travelled in were driven in a reckless manner because it was their precious lives that were in danger. One cannot but agree with him. Passengers usually do not voice their concerns, much less fight for their rights. Curiously, those who ousted an Executive President by taking to the streets suffer in silence in private buses whose drivers ride roughshod over them besides exposing them to danger. Their submissiveness only fosters indiscipline among bus crews. Hence the need for passengers to pluck up the courage to challenge issues such as dangerous driving.

The Police Spokesman also requested the public to inform the police of instances of reckless driving, etc. They should do so for their own sake, but what guarantee is there that the police will respond swiftly to such complaints. Most of all, how can passengers convey such information to the police? Are there special telephone numbers and dedicated personnel to entertain passengers’ complaints?

True, the police alone cannot tackle the menace of reckless driving, and they need public cooperation. But they themselves must take stern action against wild drivers. A few weeks ago, the police used plainclothesmen to travel in private buses and record offenses committed by their drivers, who were made to face legal action subsequently. That method yielded the desired results, but the bus workers and owners started protesting. They have apparently had the last laugh thanks to their political connections. The government stands accused of giving kid-glove treatment to powerful rice millers who exploit the public, and the private bus mudalalis who not only thrive at the expense of commuters but also endanger the latter’s lives with impunity.

Let the government and the police be urged to resume their road discipline campaign.

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Editorial

Needed: ‘Ministry of Excuses’

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Tuesday 11th February, 2025

Most detractors of the NPP claimed, before last year’s elections, that Sri Lanka would find itself in the same predicament as Oceania in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, if the JVP-led alliance was voted into power, but thankfully their prognostication has not come true although the NPP parliamentary group is said to be under the spell of a kind of Big Brother, as evident from their regimented conduct. However, it looks as if the current dispensation needed a Ministry of Excuses, as it were, a la the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Love and the Ministry of Plenty in Oceania, given the sheer number of excuses the NPP leaders trot out on a daily basis albeit ineffectively.

Sri Lanka has suffered what may be described as the biggest shock at the hands of a monkey since Hanuman’s arson attack mentioned in Ramayana, if a statement made by the Minister in charge of the power sector, Kumara Jayakody, about Sunday’s countrywide power outage is anything to go by.

Power cuts have returned due to the latest breakdown of the Norochcholai coal-fired power plant. Minister Jayakody lost no time in attributing Sunday’s power failure to ‘a monkey coming into contact with a transformer’ at the CEB’s Panadura Grid Substation. Subsequently, he and other government politicians started blaming the previous governments which, they said, had not developed the national grid.

The NPP government considers itself infallible and blames its predecessors and even wild animals whenever something goes wrong. Some of its members have blamed the current coconut shortage on depredation by monkeys, making one wonder whether those animals intensified raids on coconut cultivations after last year’s regime change.

An NPP minister continues to draw heavy flak for having faulted the public for consuming coconut oil and pol sambol excessively thereby worsening the current coconut shortage. The government has also claimed that the rice shortage is attributable, inter alia, to the practice of Sri Lankans feeding their pets with rice! Before last year’s elections, the JVP/NPP accused large-scale millers of hoarding rice, and manipulating the paddy/rice markets to exploit both farmers and consumers alike, and pledged to end millers’ exploitative practices with a single stroke of the presidential pen. But that promise has gone unfulfilled and the millers’ cartel is far from tamed.

Some former military officers who contested the last general election on the NPP ticket thundered from election platforms that they needed only two months to wipe out the underworld. Today, they are in power, but hardly a day passes without underworld killings being reported.

The NPP government should seriously consider setting up the Ministry of Excuses fast so that it will be able to present its excuses, ruses, etc., in an effective manner and prevent its members from making contradictory statements by way of self-exculpation.

Ironically, in the late 1980s the JVP unleashed mindless terror purportedly to save the country from a ‘monkey army’ (derogatory term it used for the Indian Peace Keeping Force). It destroyed countless CEB assets including transformers in a bid to cripple the economy. Fortunately, it failed in its endeavour.

Going by Minister Jayakody’s aforesaid claim, the JVP leaders must be feeling ashamed that in the late 1980s they failed to achieve a task that even a monkey is equal to—causing a countrywide power failure. Today, those who promised to defeat an entire ‘monkey army’ are in power, but they cannot even protect an electricity substation against monkeys!

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