Wednesday 5th March, 2025

The political health of any government, however powerful it may be, is in peril when doctors and nurses down tools, for the healthcare system is a cornerstone of social stability. The Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) threatened a strike in protest against what it calls allowance cuts, but put it off until 21 March, when the final vote on the 2025 Budget is scheduled to be taken.

Has the government promised any committee-stage changes to the budget to accommodate the doctors’ demands? The public sector salaries are as interconnected as the gears of a clock, and an ad hoc adjustment to any one of them is bound to cause intractable anomalies and send the whole system haywire. There’s the rub.

Some nurses trade unions are also on the warpath. Speaking in Parliament yesterday Minister of Health Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa defended the budget proposals pertaining to salaries and allowances in the health sector, but the warring trade unions have refused to buy into his claims. So, there will be a showdown unless the government meets their demands.

The moment of truth for any new government is its maiden budget, which is expected to fulfil everyone’s expectations. This may not be fair, but that is the way the cookie crumbles. The JVP/NPP, while in the opposition, inveighed against the SLPP administration and organised protests and work stoppages, demanding higher pay for workers despite the economic crisis. The boot is now on the other foot.

Talking the talk is one thing, but walking the walk is quite another. Hence, brilliant orators in the Opposition become poor performers when voted into power. There are some exceptions, but they only serve to prove the rule.

The SLPP had a phalanx of orators whose platform speeches would mesmerise the public, so much so that Gotabaya Rajapaksa became President in 2020, and the SLPP secured a near supermajority in Parliament the following year. But those smooth-tongued rhetoricians became abject failures in the SLPP government. The same apparently holds true for their successors who came to power, making a bazillion promises.

The public sector trade unions which are demanding pay hikes, etc., and threatening strikes ought to act responsibly. True, the economy has improved since 2022; the IMF itself has confirmed this fact, but it is not out of the woods yet. Unless the government meets its revenue targets and rebuilds the country’s foreign currency reserves, the economy––currently in remission––is likely to relapse. The warring trade unions have to ensure that their members work hard, earn their keep and help enhance national productivity, a prerequisite for economic development.

The NPP government is in the current predicament because President Anura Kumara Dissanayake made the mistake of raising the state employees’ hopes beyond measure by promising an unprecedented pay hike. He would reiterate that pledge on numerous occasions. Naturally, the public sector workers, who voted overwhelmingly for the NPP in the last two elections, expecting salary increases, etc., in return, were disappointed when the 2025 budget was presented to Parliament.

When it was in the Opposition, the JVP/NPP had a government mindset. Now, the JVP-led NPP government acts like an Opposition party. Instead of using its supermajority to take decisive action to solve the burning issues affecting the public, it resorts to sloganeering and political circuses in a bid to cover up its failures but without success.

One can only hope that the government will negotiate with the trade unions that are spoiling for a fight and do everything possible to prevent strikes, which will make the country’s economic recovery even more difficult.

Tuesday 4th March, 2025

There is no dearth of depressing news these days both at home and overseas. Cheerful tidings that buoy up the public are very rare. Thankfully, some positive news has come at last amidst doom-mongering and doomscrolling. A special exhibition of the sacred tooth relic is to be held from April 18 to 27 at the Dalada Maligawa, Kandy. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has said on X that he is honoured to announce that the special relic exhibition is being held at his request. He deserves the credit for being so considerate as to grant the public an opportunity to find some spiritual solace, in these difficult times.

Is it that the custodians of the Dalada Maligawa cannot organise relic exhibitions of their own volition? President Dissanayake’s aforesaid social media post reminds us of a religious analogy President Ranasinghe Premadasa once used to convince an aide, who became the head of a state media institution subsequently, of the importance of obtaining maximum possible publicity for anything good politicians did; he said that when devotees put coins into bronze tills in temples, a reverberating sound emanated, filling the places with its echo and drawing the attention of others to the donor. Politicians, he added, should toot their own horn to make sure that everyone around became aware of the good they did. Members of the incumbent government are doing likewise. They are fast learners. In what could be considered a major policy U-turn, they now allow their names to be inscribed on ceremonial plaques and travel long distances to attend opening ceremonies; they solemnly pledged not to do so during their election campaigns last year.

One would have expected the special Dalada exhibition to take place in May, which is of immense significance to Buddhists, and not in April, which is an election month this year. One may recall that time was when the JVP, as an opposition party, would deride what it called Sri Lankan rulers’ over-religiosity, reflected in organising relic exhibitions, etc., which, it claimed, they leveraged to garner favour with the majority religious community and make up for lost ground on the political front. Its criticism was valid in that the governments under previous Presidents earned notoriety for using religious events and even prelates of all faiths to gain political mileage and distract the public from unsolved burning issues. President J. R. Jayewardene promised to create a righteous society and held relic exhibitions, which attracted huge crowds. But his dictatorial rule was marred by political violence, election malpractices, race riots and a protracted bloodbath, which left thousands of young men and women, and even children dead. Worse, in the late 1980s, under his watch, counterterror units invented a savage method, which they dubbed ‘dharma chakraya’ to torture Buddhist monks and others abducted on suspicion of their involvement in southern terrorism. The JVP also sought to ridicule previous leaders’ habit of visiting temples carrying trays of flowers and atapirikara as gimmicks to flaunt their religiosity and boost their declining popularity. It would also frown on politicians visiting holy shrines and religious leaders, with television crews in tow, seeking cheap publicity—a practice that is far from over despite last year’s regime change.

Kandy is bound to come alive with huge throngs gathering both in and around the Dalada Maligawa amidst significant challenges to public security when the upcoming relic exhibition gets underway. The past few weeks have witnessed a surge in organised crime, and the government has hinted at the possibility of a conspiracy to destabilise the country; people are gripped by a sense of foreboding. We are wary of sounding alarmist, but potential security risks need to be acknowledged and precautions taken in view of the relic exhibition to be held.

Let President Dissanayake be thanked for having remembered people’s spiritual needs amidst his heavy workload and extensive campaigning for his party in view of the upcoming local government polls also to be held in April.

Monday 3rd March, 2025

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky must be regretting that he ever tried to obtain NATO membership for his country and confronted Russia. Having received rousing welcomes in western capitals including Washington during Joe Biden’s presidency, he may not have expected to be thrown into a gauntlet at the White House last Friday. A meeting that was aimed at strengthening US-Ukraine relations and inking some agreements ended in disaster, with President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance berating Zelensky in full view of journalists before showing him the door. Trump told Zelensky in no uncertain terms that Ukraine would lose the ongoing war.

Zelensky apparently did not properly read Trump’s patronising remarks about his attire at the entrance to the White House, much less guard himself against his host’s volatile temper. Had he done so, he might have chosen to tread cautiously during their discussion on contentious issues. In his wisdom, he gave Trump and Vance an opportunity to castigate him.

President Trump has drawn fire from Europe for the way he treated Zelensky at the White House, but his assessment of Ukraine’s military strength and his prognostication about the war are bound to take their toll on the morale of the Ukrainian soldiers. There is no way Ukraine can sustain its military campaign against Russia effectively, without US help. Zelensky himself has said so.

European leaders have reportedly rallied behind Zelensky after his humiliation in Washington. European Union Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas lost no time in declaring, “The free world needs a new leader’. The transatlantic alliance has thus suffered a serious setback. But there is little that Europe can do to contain Russia without US backing. Trump accused Zelensky of ‘gambling with World War III’, and therefore any country that aids Ukraine’s continued military campaign will be seen by Washington as being complicit in that dangerous pursuit!

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Europe of trying to sabotage rapprochement between Russia and the US. However, Trump is not doing Russia a favour by pressuring Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire. Besides his antipathy towards war, he does not want to keep pouring dollars into a bottomless pit in Ukraine; he is seeking to recover, through a deal on Ukraine’s minerals, what the US has spent. His approach to any issue is transactional; his focus is always on what’s in it for the US. His announcement that the US will acquire the Gaza strip is also case in point.

Russia’s aggression cannot be countenanced, but Zelensky should not have provoked Russia by recklessly furthering the interests of NATO and providing Moscow with a casus belli in the process. An experienced leader would have been mindful of the disastrous consequences of fighting a war with a military superpower.

Trump apparently has some other reasons for his refusal to help Ukraine unconditionally. He is not well-disposed towards NATO, which he considers a liability. In 2019, he failed to make Zelensky endorse his claims about wrongdoing on the part of some of his political rivals, and he faced impeachment over that. Trump has given a big boost to the Ukrainian Opposition by calling Zelensky a dictator and creating uncertainty about the continuation of the lifeline of US arms to Kyiv. The New York Times has reported that when Zelensky visited the White House, he was aware that the flow of weapons and military hardware from the US to Ukraine had essentially stopped.

Now that Trump has told Zelensky it is his way or the highway, chances are that the latter will have to agree to a ceasefire and a peace deal with Russia. Might is right in this world. The United Nations exemplifies the perversion of equality one comes across in Orwell’s dystopian, allegorical novella, Animal Farm. All countries are said to be equal, but, in reality, the permanent members of the UN Security Council are ‘more equal than’ others owing to their wealth and power. So, the outcomes of conflicts among nations are determined not by the notions of right and wrong or justice and fair play but by military strength and economic prowess of the parties thereto. Hence, the need for the not-so-powerful countries to come to terms with this reality and tread cautiously without endangering the lives of their people.