Friday 14th November, 2025

The NPP government, led by the ‘Marxist’ JVP, continues to signal left and turn right. Having come to power promising to share in the suffering of the masses and travel in buses and trains, the NPP leaders have become embroiled in a vehicle tender controversy—a bid to procure as many as 1,775 4WD double-cab pickups for the MPs and state officials. They are seen moving about in state-owned luxury vehicles just as their predecessors did.

The Opposition has said that the pickups to be imported will cost the state coffers a staggering Rs. 42 billion. Some government politicians have sought to obfuscate the issue by claiming that those vehicles will be acquired on lease. Still, the public will have to pay through the nose for them. What one gathers from the ruling party politicians’ rhetoric is that the government is determined to go ahead with the questionable vehicle tender.

Before last year’s elections, the JVP/NPP leaders gave the public the impression that they would practise austerity and emulate Jose Mujica, who was the President of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. Known as the world’s poorest President, Mujica, refused to move into the President’s House, and lived on a farm with his wife; his most notable asset was a 1987 Volkswagen Beetle. He donated his presidential salary and waited in queues with ordinary people in government hospitals, where he received treatment. He died a few months ago.

The JVP leaders have the same politico-military background as Mujica, who was a founding member of the Tupamaros National Liberation Movement, a leftist urban guerrilla group. As for government policies, the only similarity one sees between the Mujica administration and the NPP government is their lax attitude towards cannabis. Mujica legalised the recreational use of cannabis, and the JVP/NPP leaders have permitted the cultivation of cannabis for export.

It is believed that transport issues in the public sector in this country can be resolved without procuring more vehicles if the state-owned vehicle fleet is properly managed. The government claimed that hundreds, if not thousands, of vehicles, used by former government politicians and their appointees, had been returned following the 2024 regime change. They could have been reallocated to the state institutions facing vehicle shortages.

Funds set aside for new vehicles for politicians and state officials could be put to better use. Many state institutions are badly in need of resources. The Ceylon Teachers’ Union has said that more than 1,500 underprivileged schools have been earmarked for closure countrywide. The government can allocate enough funds for developing these poor schools, enabling them to attract more students. The SME sector is in deep crisis due to unpaid loans and the resultant parate executions. The government can grant the SME sector some relief. The SMEs play a pivotal role in developing a country. Farmers are up in arms, unable to dispose of or store their produce.

Why can’t the government utilise the funds it is planning to allocate for vehicle imports to build storage facilities? Many poor families have fallen prey to loan sharks in urban, rural and estate sectors. Microfinance companies are accused of exploiting their customers ruthlessly with impunity. Now that the government has claimed that the state coffers are overflowing, and it can afford to spend billions of rupees on new vehicles for politicians and officials, it ought to intervene to liberate the poor from the clutches of the heartless microfinance Shylocks. Universities are complaining of shortages of teachers and physical resources.

The government must allocate more funds for developing the state universities instead of buying new vehicles. State-run hospitals are facing shortages of drugs and equipment. Thousands of patients are wait-listed for surgeries. Billions of rupees to be spent on vehicles can be used to equip the state hospitals. (We are yet to see an NPP MP or Minister waiting in a queue at a government hospital for his or her turn, the way Mujica did!) The Sri Lanka Transport Board is in need of more buses. Why can’t the government allocate more funds for developing the state-owned bus service and Sri Lanka Railways?

It is high time the government set its expenditure priorities right.

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.