National List MP Diana Gamage’s exit from parliament last week, on the basis of the unanimous determination of a three-judge bench of the supreme court ends a saga that dragged on for as long as four years. For Sajith Premadasa’s Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) this was a heaven sent opportunity to bring back former MP Mujibur Rahman to the legislature. Rahman resigned his parliamentary seat to run for Mayor of Colombo on the SJB ticket at the scheduled 2022 local elections. For his (and the country’s) ill fortune, the Wickremesinghe-Rajapaksa government, fearing a post-aragalaya electoral thrashing canceled these elections after nominations were received on a flimsy ‘no money’ excuse. As a result, Rahman lost his parliamentary seat that is now being restored to him.

Many politicians, wherever they are active at home or abroad, subscribe to the theory that ‘bad publicity is better than no publicity.’ The unlamented Mervyn Silva who occasionally gets a television spot even today despite his long ago disappearance from the national scene, we believe, is one of them. Diana Gamage certainly enjoyed the spotlight for right or wrong reasons. Although Ranil Wickremesinghe conceded the UNP’s presidential election ticket to Sajith Premadasa to run against Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2019, he was unwilling to permit his then deputy to assume the leadership of the green party. The result was the breakaway of a formidable section of the UNP to form the SJB under Premadasa’s leadership. The UNP’s abject zero elected seat performance at the 2020 parliamentary election, when it polled a dismal total of less than 250,000 (2.15%) votes countrywide, was the consequence.

But the SJB was not a recognized political party when it was formed, i.e. it had no formal recognition from the Elections Commission. That was when Diana Gamage and her Apey Jathika Peramuna came into the picture. This party which, like dozens of other recognized but dormant political parties in the Election’s Commission books, was taken over by Premadasa at a price. This being a national list place in parliament for Gamage (the only non-former MP appointed on the SJB’s seven-member list) after the August 2020 election.

Although she sat in parliament until last week, she broke ranks from the SJB and voted with the government for the 20^th Amendment to the Constitution in October 2020 helping it to get the required two thirds majority and winning herself a state ministry. This cost Gamage, a former actress, her membership of the SJB, where she had once been assistant secretary, by being expelled from that party. It also could have been a reason for her losing her parliamentary seat like former Minister Nazeer Ahmed who’s now been appointed Governor of the North Western Province.

However, the attempt to ‘unseat’ Gamage from parliament was pursued on another ground – that she was a British citizen. Readers will recall that film star Geetha Kumarasinghe also lost her parliamentary seat on account of her Swiss citizenship. She’s since renounced it and returned to the legislature where she, like Gamage prior to her unseating, serves as a state minister. It was not that long ago that Gotabaya Rajapaksa had to divest himself of his United States citizenship to run for the presidency in 2019.

He went on public record that the barrier against dual citizen entering parliament was an attack on the Rajapaksa family, wanting that prohibition lifted via the 20^th Amendment. Politicians like Wimal Weerawansa and Udaya Gammanpila agreed to vote for the amendment on that occasion on a solemn assurance that no dual citizen would be brought to parliament. But that pledge was broken with dual citizen Basil Rajapaksa’s entry to the legislature through the ruling party’s national list and subsequent appointment as finance minister.

There is no legal recourse left to Gamage over her unseating although she’s said that while having “utmost respect for the court” she’s “unable to accept the judgment” which she says was the result of a political conspiracy of the SJB. She says she’s in consultation with her lawyers about possible future action but this is not a possibility. She has also insisted, following a judicial imposition of a travel ban on her, that she is not planning to leave the country.

“Why should I leave the country? This is my homeland; I was born here and my family has deep roots is the south spanning generations,” she was quoted to have said at her first press conference following the supreme court judgment.

She had earlier claimed that the SJB belonged to her. There was some to and fro whether she, as a non-citizen, could transfer the Apey Jathika Peramuna of which her husband, Senaka de Silva, was leader and she secretary. De Silva was a key aide to General Sarath Fonseka when he ran for president as a common opposition candidate against Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2010.

However, when Premadasa et al took control of Gamage’s party, Sajith assumed leadership and appointed Ranjit Madduma Bandara as secretary. The vital office in any political party for official business is that of secretary and the SJB had covered itself on that flank on aquiring Gamage’s party.

Nobody would be surprised a the SJB’s desire to get rid of Gamage from parliament which she entered on their national list and subsequently switched sides. Matters that arose in court, including the reference in the supreme court judgment about the majority 2-1 decision of the appeal court in Gamage’s favour, as well as matters relating to CID investigations and the department of immigration and emigration require intensive examination which, hopefully, would be forthcoming.

Saturday 11th May, 2024

Now that Diana Gamage has lost her parliamentary seat owing to a Supreme Court ruling that she is not eligible to be a member of Parliament, a campaign has got underway to have state funds spent on her as an MP and State Minister recovered from her. The fact that she, a British citizen, had herself appointed a National List (NL) MP and held a ministerial post amounts to deception, according to her critics. This argument is tenable.

Ironically, among those who are all out to have ex-MP Gamage pay back taxpayers’ money spent on her for nearly four years are some SJB MPs, who have taken the moral high ground and are condemning her. The SJB leaders are deriving some perverse pleasure from Gamage’s predicament and are twisting the knife, so to speak. However, there is no way the SJB can absolve itself of the blame for Diana’s appointment to Parliament.

Those who formed the SJB, after leaving the UNP, struck a deal with Gamage and took over her party prior to the last general election. They made Gamage one of their NL nominees and subsequently appointed her to Parliament as part of their deal with her. The holier-than-thou SJB MPs had no issue with her NL nomination or her appointment to Parliament. They would not have been out for her scalp if she had not defected to the government. They claim to be privy to the government’s inner workings, Cabinet secrets, and clandestine deals the ruling party politicians cut. The SJB, therefore, cannot claim that it was not aware of Gamage’s British citizenship when it made her one of its NL nominees. The SJB leaders, in our book, are as culpable as Gamage on this score.

We believe that the SJB has a moral obligation to pay back 33.3% of the state funds spent on its NL MP Gamage and tender an apology to the public, whose franchise it violated with her appointment to Parliament.

The Rajapaksa government engineered Gamage’s crossover, and rewarded her with a ministerial post. Having benefited from Diana’s defection and caused a loss to the public purse, the government is duty bound to pay back 33.3% percent of the taxpayers’ money spent on her. One may recall that it went out of its way to suppress evidence against her to the point of making one wonder whether anything would come of the investigations into her citizenship issue. Thankfully, it failed in its endeavour.

Gamage, who had herself appointed to Parliament, in spite of being aware of her disqualification, ought to pay back the remaining 33.3% of the state funds spent on her. It may not be fair to make her pay the entire amount.

It is believed that there are several dual citizens in the current Parliament, drawing salaries and enjoying various perks at the expense of the public. The Department of Immigration and Emigration must be made to reveal information about the citizenship status of every MP. It is incumbent upon the party leaders to ensure that their MPs are not either foreign citizens or dual citizens. Opinion is divided on whether dual citizens should be allowed to be MPs, as we pointed out in a previous comment, but the lawmakers must abide by the provisions of the existing Constitution. The need for a new law to make it a punishable offence for anyone disqualified by the Constitution to enter Parliament cannot be overemphasised.

Friday 10th May, 2024

Derrick Borte’s edge-of-seat psychological thriller, ‘Unhinged’, has an appropriate tagline: ‘He can happen to anyone!’ We were reminded of this suspense flick full of gratuitous violence, and its catchphrase while reading newspaper reports that former Minister Mervyn Silva had recently been granted bail in a case pertaining to an incident which took place at the state-owned Rupavahini Corporation headquarters 17 years ago. The police must be asked to explain why they took so long to institute legal action against him. The mere mention of his name evokes dreadful memories of a dark era, when pro-government goons operated even alongside the police to crush political dissent and were free to kill anyone and carry out arson attacks.

The Sri Lanka police are known for their high-octane performance. They swing into action, arrest offenders and haul them up before court in double quick time. But they do so only when the culprits happen to be members of the marginalised sections of society, such as poor children who steal coconuts, unable to dull the pangs of hunger or pay school fees. These ‘brave’ men in uniform cringe and cower before powerful politicians and politically-connected thugs. That is why Mervyn and the members of his private army, who did dirty work for the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, remained above the law. It may be recalled that Mervyn tied a public official to a tree in full view of the police, in 2010, for being late to a meeting he had summoned. No action was taken against him for that serious offence.

In 2007, Mervyn and some thugs stormed the Rupavahini headquarters, demanding to know why a speech he had made in Matara, a few days before, insulting Mangala Samaraweera, had not been telecast. He turned aggressive only to be gheraoed and roughed up by the irate Rupavahini workers. It was a case of the hunter being hunted, and the police had to step in to secure the release of Mervyn and his netherworld chums.

The Rajapaksa government, true to form, defended Mervyn to the hilt. It was the Rupavahini workers who were interrogated by the police over the 2007 incident! A few months later, some of them came under knife attacks and the victims suffered in silence.

The culture of political violence and impunity is far from over, and the blame for this sorry state of affairs should be apportioned to successive governments and their leaders as well as others who have used violence as a means to achieve their political goals.

Dangerous underworld figures such as Kalu Lucky and Gonawala Sunil carried out attacks on the political opponents of the J. R. Jayewardene government, suppressed the media, stoned judges’ houses and stuffed ballot boxes; the Ranasinghe Premadasa administration had underworld armies led by the likes of Soththi Upali to suppress democratic dissent, terrorise the Opposition and the media, and rig elections. The Chandrika Kumaratunga government, which came to power promising to eliminate political violence, used criminals such as Beddegana Sanjeewa and the Presidential Security Division personnel to terrorise and harm its opponents; the Rajapaksa regime had many underworld figures such as Wambotta to crush protests and attack opposition activists, journalists and media organisations. In the late 1980s, the JVP used numerous sparrow units to carry out political assassinations, and its ‘enforcer’, Lionel Ranasinghe, killed 41 persons including Vijaya Kumaratunga, according to his confession to the police, published verbatim in Dharman Wickremaratne’s book, ‘Comrade Lionel’. The TNA defended the LTTE, acted as its mouthpiece, and sought to justify its terror.

Pareto has said that when a regime change occurs one set of elites is replaced by another, and he has called this process ‘the circulation of elites’. It can be argued that something similar happens in the underworld with criminal gangs replacing one another when regime changes occur. Mervyn switched his allegiance to President Maithripala Sirisena, who promised to usher in good governance, after the fall of the Rajapaksa government in 2015. Today, he is one of the bitterest critics of the Rajapaksas, whose slippers he once offered to lick to prove his loyalty to them.

Different as all political parties that have been in power or are seeking to savour it may be, in some respects, a common denominator among them is their readiness to resort to violence to protect self-interest. As for the upcoming elections, the Sri Lankan public has been left with a choice between some capitalist parties that do not hesitate to unleash violence to protect their interests and a bunch of pseudo-Marxists who are unrepentant about their past crimes.