Thursday 13th November, 2025

Former Minister Prasanna Ranatunga was arrested by the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption, yesterday, for having caused a loss of Rs. 4.7 million to the state-owned Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation, while he was serving as the Minister of Tourism and Aviation. He was granted bail.

All those who have abused power, helped themselves to state funds and cut corrupt deals at the expense of the public must be made to face the full force of the law. After all, that is what the people have given the NPP an extraordinary mandate for.

There are very serious allegations against the leaders and members of the previous governments, and all of them must be probed thoroughly and the culprits prosecuted. However, such investigations, arrests and prosecutions must be free from politics. Most of all, the wheels of justice must not be made to turn at a politically determined pace, for justice must be neither delayed nor hurried, for it is believed that justice delayed is justice denied, and justice hurried is justice buried. It may be recalled that many cases hurriedly filed against politicians and their associates during the UNP-led Yahapalana government, which was backed by the JVP, collapsed.

The JVP-led NPP came to power, vowing to rid the country of bribery and corruption and abuse of power. So, it has a moral obligation to put its own house in order before making its political opponents face legal action for corruption, etc. Worryingly, quite a few allegations and complaints against some government members have not been investigated. On Tuesday, the Opposition pointed out in Parliament that its request for a Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) to probe the questionable release of 323 red-flagged freight containers from the Colombo Port without Customs inspection in January 2025 had gone unheeded.

One should not be so naïve as to expect a PSC investigation to pave the way for the prosecution of those who mastermined the green-channeling of the aforesaid containers; a PSC, if appointed, will be packed with NPP MPs. However, the Opposition members will have an opportunity to question the Customs officers and others who released the containers without inspection, and make public their findings. It will not be possible to institute legal action against the culprits as long as the NPP stays in power. The NPP government has not even allowed a no-faith motion to be moved against Deputy Minister of Defence Major General (Retd.) Aruna Jayasekera, a former Eastern Province Security Forces Commander, over some matters related to the Easter Sunday carnage. It has thus made a mockery of its much-flaunted commitment to upholding accountability.

Besides the container controversy, there are other serious allegations against the NPP government, such as irregularities in coal and rice imports. It has also drawn severe criticism for having manipulated tender criteria in a bid to procure as many as 1,775 double cab pickup trucks through a company of its choice. The Opposition has called upon the government to scrap the vehicle tender.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has offered to allocate some of the pickup trucks to be imported to the MPs. The Opposition has turned down his offer out of hand. Before last year’s presidential election, the NPP declared that the MPs would have to use public transport if it formed a government. In fact, even in some affluent countries, the members of Parliament are not provided with official vehicles. In Sweden, only the Prime Minister is entitled to an official car, and all other members of Parliament, including the Speaker, are given only bus and train passes. The NPP ought to follow the Swedish example.

The legislators of a country struggling to revive its economy and pay back its foreign debt must make sacrifices. The NPP MPs during their election campaigns pledged to practise austerity and share in the people’s suffering. JVP/NPP stalwart Sunil Handunnetti went so far as to promise that the NPP politicians, including the President and the Prime Minister would travel in buses and trains just like the ordinary people! The government should cancel the pickup truck tender forthwith.

If the NPP has nothing to hide, it should stop trying to stonewall the parliamentary process to scuttle the Opposition’s efforts to have a PSC appointed to probe the container controversy.

Wednesday 12th November, 2025

The budget season is now on. But during the so-called annual budget debates, the budget itself often ends up an also-ran, with the members of both sides of the Houses devoting most of their time to raising unrelated issues and trading barbs. This shows that partisan politics, which takes precedence over economics, is the bane of this country.

On Monday, while taking part in the budget debate, SJB MP Sujeewa Senasinghe launched into a tirade against Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe, when the latter said the former had authored a booklet during the Yahapalana government, defending the Treasury bond scammers. Speaker Dr. Jagath Wickramaratne was caught in the crossfire. Senasinghe, who was picking holes in the budget, was distracted. So was the House. Why can’t the MPs remain intensely focused on the ailing economy at least during the budget debate?

While watching parliamentary proceedings, one is often reminded of Yuval Noah Harari’s multi-million copy best seller, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, especially the chapter on the post-Cognitive Revolution era. In comparing the gatherings of apes to those of Homo Sapiens, Harari argues that one on one or ten on ten, humans are embarrassingly similar to chimpanzees. ‘Significant differences begin to appear only when we cross the threshold of 150 individuals, and when we reach 1,000-2,000 the differences become astounding’. Homo Sapiens in large numbers, he says, create orderly patterns, such as political institutions. Yet going by the chaotic sessions of Sri Lanka’s 225-member Parliament, one wonders whether Harari’s argument might work in reverse in favour of the Chimpanzees. (Speaker Wickramaratne has ordered a probe into the increasing use of unparliamentary language during debates.)

Be that as it may, what we witnessed on Monday in Parliament was an instance of the pot calling the kettle black. Senasinghe’s booklet at issue was an abortive attempt to deny that there had been irregularities in the Treasury bond transactions in question. A UNP MP at the time, Senasinghe defended the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who shielded Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran involved in the scam. The JVP also made a similar attempt to help Wickremesinghe clear his name. Wickremesinghe has claimed that the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) which probed the Treasury bond scams did not hold him accountable for the scams in question. The COPE was headed by JVP MP Sunil Handunnetti at that time, and the Yahapalana members thereof went out of their way to defend the bond scammers and Wickremesinghe. They sought to dilute the COPE report with a slew of footnotes. So, the JVP is as guilty as those shameless Yahapalana MPs, some of whom are currently in the SJB, pontificating to the NPP government on the virtues of good governance! Ironically, the JVP and the UNP were together on an anti-corruption campaign during the Yahapalana regime.

The JVP would have the public believe that it is all out to bring back former Central Bank Governor Mahendran from Singapore to stand trial for the Treasury bond scams, and make Wickremesinghe face legal action over grave human right abuses committed by some counterterror units during the JVP’s reign of terror in the late 1980s. But it defended Wickremesinghe to the hilt during the UNP-led Yahapalana government. If not for the JVP’s support, beleaguered PM Wickremesinghe’s hold on power would have come to an end in October 2018, when President Sirisena appointed Mahinda Rajapaksa as the Prime Minister. The JVP fought a successful legal battle against Sirisena’s action, and enabled Wickremesinghe to muster a working majority in Parliament and retain the premiership.

The JVP had no qualms about supporting Wickremesinghe, whose scalp it is now after, claiming that he was involved in the Batalanda torture chambers in the late 1980s. Today, the estranged Yahapalana partners are at war, but they will not go so far as to try to destroy each other, for they know such a course of action would lead to mutually assured destruction, given the secrets they share from the past.

Tuesday 11th November, 2025

SJB MP Dr. Harsha de Silva opened the second-reading debate on Budget 2026 on Saturday, urging the NPP government to respect democratic dissent and walk back its controversial decision to import as many as 1,775 brand new double cab pickup trucks. Claiming that the government had manipulated tender criteria to favour a company or two of its choice, he said it had telescoped the 42-day bidding window into a mere 12 days. These are very serious charges, which, the Opposition says, it can prove, but the government is determined to bulldoze its way through. This is how government politicians behave when power goes to their heads.

Dr. de Silva accused President Anura Kumara Dissanayake of trying to overcome resistance from the Opposition to the shady vehicle deal at issue by offering pickup trucks to the MPs. He said the Opposition would continue to protest.

When alleged scams involving the members of the current regime, such as the release of 323 red-flagged freight containers from the Colombo Port, without Customs inspection, come to light, the incumbent leaders try to distract the public by bashing their predecessors for corrupt deals in the past. It was to punish the previous rulers that the people voted the NPP into power; they expected the NPP to fulfil its promise to conduct itself in an exemplary manner and bring about a ‘system change’. The JVP-led NPP government had the public believe that it would be above suspicion like Caesar’s wife, but it has failed to live up to their expectations so much so that it is now wary of holding the Provincial Council elections, which it promised, in its manifesto, to hold within one year of forming a government.

The JVP/NPP accused the previous rulers of corruption, abuse of power, nepotism, and running a kleptocracy that drained the nation’s wealth. The former leaders are now claiming that the current administration consisting of a bunch of neophytes has become a metaphor for inefficiency and kakistocracy. Inefficiency has been a defining feature of successive governments. Now that the incumbent government is drawing severe criticism for shady deals and abuse of power, just like its corrupt predecessors, a need has arisen for a portmanteau to be coined to describe the current system of governance this country has had to contend with—‘kleptokakistocracy’.

Following last year’s regime change, the NPP government made a show of a large number of vehicles returned by the politicians of the previous administration and the officials who had worked for them. Some NPP politicians claimed that they were all luxury vehicles, and the government would dispose of them. If they had been as valuable as they were made out to be, their sales would have helped the government raise enough funds to solve transport issues in the state sector. It has now been revealed that most of those vehicles were ordinary ones in running condition, and why they were not redistributed among the state institutions experiencing vehicle shortages is the question. Is it that they were sold so that the government could purchase brand new pickup trucks?

The rupee crisis is far from over although there has been a significant increase in state revenue due to import duties on vehicles. The Customs Department is bragging that it has generated a record revenue, but the tax bubble created by vehicle imports is bound to burst. Hence the need for frugal management of state funds and a strategy to increase the forex inflow substantially so as to avoid shocks when debt repayment resumes in 2028. The Opposition has said there will have to be foreign currency reserves amounting to at least USD 13 billion in 2028.

The government must cancel the questionable pickup truck deal forthwith and save funds. The JVP/NPP leaders had better bear in mind that they cannot hold on to power indefinitely, and the questionable vehicle deal is bound to be probed one day. A former Chief Minister has been sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for fraudulently obtaining about Rs 2.8 million as a fuel allowance.