Connect with us

Editorial

Lurking danger and ‘NATO’ officials

Published

on

Thursday 16th January, 2025

Rising water levels in irrigation tanks are a blessing for the inhabitants of the dry zone, for they signal a time of plenty. Paradoxically, scores of families living in areas below the Senanayake Samudraya in Ampara are living in fear as the life-giving reservoir is fast approaching its maximum storage limit.

More than one hundred people were evacuated the other day because a bank of Gal Oya, in Suduwella and Kotawehera, is at the risk of breaching owing to severe erosion. Irrigation officials warned that if rains continued causing the sluice gates of the tank to be opened, the damaged bank might give way, flooding a vast low-lying area. The evacuees were bussed back home yesterday as the reservoir catchment had not experienced heavy rains the previous day.

Obviously, the erosion of the river bank did not occur overnight, and the residents of the area have said they had been evacuated on previous occasions as well. What have the irrigation authorities and other state officials been doing all these years?

According to some state officials, a sand bar has formed in a section of Gal Oya, making water flow along only one bank, which has suffered erosion as a result. The problem is far too serious to be managed with measures such as piling sandbags, the officials have said, noting that they will have to remove the sand bar, facilitating the river flow and easing the pressure on the damaged bank before repairing it. This task is best left to engineers, but the question is why no action has been taken so far to prevent a possible breach of the eroded bank, which continues to develop cracks. Are the officials waiting until the collapse of the bank to take action? Aren’t cynics justified in calling such individuals NATO (No-Action-Talk-Only) panjandrums?

****

Opposition aiming for the stars

The SJB has given serious thought to forming a broad coalition of right-wing political parties as a countervailing force against the JVP-led NPP government, SJB MP S. M. Marikkar has told a media briefing in an answer to a question on the progress in efforts to bring the SJB and the UNP together. Stressing the need for a grand opposition alliance, he has categorised the NPP as a leftist coalition.

Whether a party/coalition is leftist or rightist should be judged by its policies rather than anything else. The NPP cannot be described as a socialist outfit; one sees hardly any difference between its policies and those of the SJB or the UNP. Even JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva has said the NPP administration is not leftist in the real sense of the term. He has, in a press interview, called it ‘a government of leftist, progressive democratic forces’, whatever that means. The Frontline Socialist Party, an offshoot of the JVP, has rightly called the NPP a ‘patchwork of ideological differences’.

The so-called right-wing parties have already begun to cooperate to some extent. They have joined forces to defeat the NPP in cooperative society elections, and achieved some success. Independent groups, backed by the SJB, the UNP, the SLPP and the MEP, have beaten the NPP in Homagama, Moratuwa, Kelaniya, Angunukolapelessa, etc. Their success in those contests may have prompted the SJB to consider forming a grand alliance with a view to turning the tables on the NPP. But the feasibility of such a political project is in doubt, given the competing ambitions of the Opposition politicians.

The SJB has even failed to hold its own coalition partners together; some of them have voted with their feet. The same goes for the SLPP and the UNP. They themselves have suffered crippling splits. So, it is doubtful whether a group of political parties facing internal problems will be able to set aside their differences, overcome the ambitions of their leaders, and unite for a common cause in the long term.



Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Editorial

Groping in the dark

Published

on

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.

Continue Reading

Editorial

Buses as Chariots of Death

Published

on

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.

Continue Reading

Editorial

Needed: ‘Ministry of Excuses’

Published

on

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!

Continue Reading

Trending