Friday 17th January, 2025

The Opposition has been able to put the government on the defensive on the propaganda front. The JVP/NPP carried out a propaganda onslaught against its political rivals, and rallied enough popular support to win last year’s elections. The boot is now on the other foot.

On Wednesday, claiming that despite last year’s regime change, some big companies continued to import coconut oil fraudulently, causing huge losses to the state coffers, SJB MP S. M. Marikkar, said NPP’s much-flaunted mandate had a foundation of lies. The ruling alliance had lied its way to power, making a host of promises that it did not intend to fulfil, he said. The SJB is now saying about the incumbent dispensation what the NPP said about previous governments.

The NPP launched a successful campaign to delegitimise the SLPP’s popular mandate after the onset of the current economic crisis in 2022. The Opposition is now all out to assail the NPP government’s credibility and challenge its authority in a similar manner.

Legitimate mandates founded on honest campaigning, truthfulness and sincere promises are rarer than hen’s teeth in Sri Lanka. It is doubtful whether during the past several decades any government has obtained an unsullied mandate in this country, where election campaigns are characterised by half-truths, outright lies and false promises.

One may recall that in the run-up to the 1970 general election, the SLFP-led United Front (UF) promised to make rice freely available even if it had to be brought from the moon. The country experienced a protracted shortage of rice under the UF government.

The UNP came to power in 1977, promising to bring about a ‘Righteous Society’, but what the country witnessed was the very antithesis thereof. Democratic dissent was violently suppressed; elections were rigged and state terror claimed tens of thousands of young lives under that regime.

The SLFP returned to power in 1994, promising to eliminate state terror and corruption, as a national priority, but both evils flourished under that government. The UNP obtained a mandate to rule the country again in 2001, promising to end the war through negotiations, but it only jeopardised national security.

The SLFP-led UPFA administration promised a ‘Prosperous Future’, but only its leaders and their kith and kin prospered during that government. The UNP formed a government in 2015 with the much-advertised goal of ushering in good governance, but its rule became a metaphor for corruption.

The SLPP obtained a mandate in 2019 by pledging to carry out its manifesto, ‘Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour’, but it bankrupted the country in 2022. The NPP promised ‘A thriving nation and a beautiful life’, but the people are struggling to keep the wolf from the door. Rice is in short supply and the prices of essentials have gone through the roof. Overall, the NPP stands accused of doing the opposite of what it obtained a mandate for.

Most of all, the NPP government is on the reverse gear just like its immediate predecessor; it keeps making about-turns on its key promises. It has chosen to remain silent on its pledge to scrap the executive presidency although it has a two-thirds majority in Parliament to introduce constitutional reforms.

The SJB’s assertion that the NPP’s mandate has a foundation of lies may resonate with the irate people who are demanding pay hikes and tax and tariff reductions. However, the fact remains that even the SJB, which has taken the moral high ground, and is condemning the NPP for reneging on promises, would not have been able to deliver what it sought a mandate for if it had won the presidential and parliamentary elections last year. It pledged to amend the debt structuring agreement, but the IMF bailout conditions leave no room for such measures. Most of its election promises were also Machiavellian.

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?

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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.

Wednesday 15th January, 2025

Wildfires in the US, engulfing parts of Southern California, have left the world agape. They have already claimed 24 lives and gutted countless properties including 12,000 houses and caused an economic loss of over USD 150 billion so far. Besides, thousands of wild animals are believed to have perished in the blazes. The environmental cost of the unfolding wildfires is said to be incalculable. Particle pollution has added another dimension to the catastrophe, rendering millions of people vulnerable to heart and lung diseases.

Los Angeles was bracing for more extreme winds and flames at the time of writing. The residents in vulnerable areas have been warned of a possible explosive fire growth. It is feared that if meteorological forecasts hold, the horrors of fire-weather will continue into the summer and perhaps spread to the northern parts of California as well—absit omen!

Wildfires in California, which is no stranger to such blazes, were expected to occur with the official arrival of La Nina conditions in the Pacific Ocean a couple of weeks ago, heralding a drought in the southern parts of the state, but nobody thought they would develop into an inferno of this magnitude. Nothing is so certain as the unexpected where extreme weather events are concerned.

It is doubtful whether anything worse could have happened to southern California; the average rainfall has been about 2% of normal for areas like Los Angeles, and Santa Ana wind gusts reached a record 100 mph. According to weather forecasters, there will be no rains in Southern California until the end of January. The predictability of even usual weather events is diminishing owing to climate change. This is a disconcerting proposition for not only the US but also the rest of the world.

One particular dimension of wildfires such as the raging ones in California has not apparently received much attention. It is the possibility of fire weather conditions being weaponised. All it takes to wreak havoc on a country which experiences extreme weather events is a match stick or a lighter during a dry spell, which turns vegetation into highly combustible fuel, with winds matching the speed of freeway traffic. The California wildfires have demonstrated the vulnerability of even a super power like the US while big powers are reportedly experimenting with ‘tectonic weapons’ capable of triggering seismic events.

While hearts are going out to the victims of the catastrophic wildfires in the US, the world must spare a thought for the Palestinians who are enduring a humanitarian tragedy in Gaza, devastated by Israeli airstrikes carried out with US help.

US Vice President Kamala Harris, whose government has been helping Israel reduce Gaza to rubble by generously providing Tel Aviv with funds and weapons despite widespread protests, came very close to realising what it was like to lose one’s own house, when her private residence in Los Angeles was threatened by the Palisades blaze. It is hoped that outgoing President Joe Biden will redouble his efforts to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza before leaving office.

Ironically, the California wildfires have occurred a few days before the inauguration of Donald Trump, one of the leading climate change deniers, as the 47th US President. Unless the Republicans, during Trump’s second nonconsecutive term, care to take cognisance of the obvious and act accordingly, the US will find it even more difficult to face disasters supercharged by climate change. BBC has reported, quoting scientists, that rapid swings between dry and wet conditions in California—known as whiplash—due to climate change have yielded a huge amount of tinder-dry vegetation that is ready to ignite. Many other countries, especially those in the tropics, are equally vulnerable to the ill-effects of climate change, such as whiplash and blazes of extreme intensity.