Thursday 30th January, 2025

It has almost become a pattern in Sri Lanka that regime changes are followed by scandals, which undermine public trust in the new governments. The UNP-led Yahapalana administration, which came to power in January 2015, promising good governance, facilitated a Treasury bond scam within a few weeks of its formation and benefited therefrom. The UNP, which had been struggling to pay water and electricity bills at its headquarters, Sirikotha, while it was out of power, came into a fortune and outspent its rivals in the run-up to the parliamentary polls that followed! No sooner had the SLPP formed a government in 2020 than it committed a sugar tax fraud, which enabled some of its financiers, especially the main sponsor of Viyathmaga (an association of self-proclaimed intellectuals backing the SLPP) to make huge profits to the tune of billions of rupees by importing sugar with a nominal special commodity levy thereon. They and their political bosses laughed all the way to the bank.

People voted overwhelmingly for a system change last year only to be disappointed. The JVP-NPP government stands accused of having secured the release of as many as 323 red-flagged freight containers without Customs inspection from the Colombo Port. The Customs Trade Union Alliance has expressed shock at the green-channelling of those containers that required mandatory Customs inspection.

The Opposition says those containers, released allegedly at the behest of an influential minister, were imported by an NPP financier. The government has said it takes full responsibility for the release of the containers. First of all, it must disclose what those boxes contained. Did they carry weapons, narcotics, clinical waste or automobiles? How would the self-righteous JVP leaders have reacted if so many containers had been released via the green channel while they were in the opposition? They would have taken to the streets, demanding the resignation of the Minister of Ports and Shipping or the entire government.

The Colombo Port has become a major entry point for narcotics, and therefore the government must reveal who ordered the release of the aforesaid containers without inspection, as we argued in a previous editorial comment. In 2013, more than 131 kilos of heroin were found in a shipping container which a coordinating secretary to the then Prime Minister D. M. Jayaratne sought to have cleared on a priority basis by sending a letter to the Customs to that effect. In July 2017, a consignment of cocaine weighing 218 kilos was detected in a container carrying sugar, at the Ratmalana Economic Centre. There have been many other instances where Customs checks yielded huge amounts of dangerous drugs concealed in freight containers. Besides, a private company had to ship back 263 containers filled with hospital waste listed as used mattresses, carpets and rugs; they had been imported from the UK in 2017 and 2019. During the UNP-led UNF government (2001-2004), some LTTE leaders were allowed to go abroad via the BIA without any checks for ‘peace talks’, and they were also allowed to bring in huge bags full of undeclared goods sans Customs inspection when they returned. It is believed that they brought warlike equipment. The UNP and SJB politicians who are now crying blue murder about the release of the aforesaid red-flagged containers were in the UNF government, which advanced its political agenda at the expense of national security in the early 2000s. However, that does not mean they should not crank up pressure on the NPP government to disclose who ordered the release of the containers at issue and what they carried. In fact, that is all the more reason why they must amp up their efforts to get to the bottom of the container controversy; they ought to atone for their past sins.

The need for a high-level probe into the green-channelling of the red-flagged containers cannot be overemphasised. It is hoped that the Opposition, civil society organisations, trade unions and the media will join forces to frustrate the government’s efforts to sweep the issue under the rug.

It is being argued in some quarters that there are sufficient grounds for a no-faith motion against the minister who ordered the release of the containers in question. The NPP has a two-thirds parliamentary majority and can easily torpedo a no-confidence motion, but one may recall that the SLPP government also abused its parliamentary majority to defeat a no-confidence motion against the then Minister Keheliya Rambukwella over the procurement of fake immunoglobulin, but it could not save him; it only dug its own political grave.

Tuesday 28th January, 2025

It looks as if the JVP-NPP government considered the occupation by three former Presidents of state-owned houses as the biggest problem facing the country. Hardly a day passes without President Anura Kumara Dissanayake mentioning the values of those houses and their imputed rentals and asking the former Presidents to vacate them. He renewed his call, on Sunday, while addressing an NPP rally in Anuradhapura.

Gone are the days when politicians retired penniless in this country. Today, politics has become an El Dorado for the practitioners thereof; power and influence they wield are pathways to wealth and personal gain rather than a means of public service. So, it defies comprehension why retired politicians should be looked after by the state. However, the withdrawal of any entitlements of the former Presidents must be in accordance with the law.

The housing matter in question could have been handled better. The government could have used its two-thirds majority in Parliament to change the Presidents Entitlements Act and do away with the former Presidents’ perks and privileges once and for all, or it could have offered alternative accommodation to the former Presidents and made a polite request in writing that they vacate the houses they are occupying. After all, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said he will leave the Wijerama residence if a written request is made to that effect. However, the government has, true to form, opted for a political circus, which, it may have believed, would help distract the public from unresolved burning issues and its unfulfilled election pledges.

One cannot but agree with President Dissanayake that the state-owned houses occupied by former Presidents are too large for them. The government has said the official residence of Rajapaksa has about 35,000 sq. ft, and the floor area of former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s house is about 15,000 sq. ft. Similarly, one would like to know the cumulative square footage of the buildings the JVP destroyed in the late 1980s. Former President Maithripala Sirisena has revealed that the JVP burnt down 245 out of 545 agrarian service centres countrywide together with storage facilities belonging to the Paddy Marketing Board, during its second uprising. What is the total value of those buildings and other such state assets destroyed by the JVP?

In the run-up to last year’s elections, the JVP/NPP pledged to abolish the perks and privileges of the former Presidents and the pensions of the MPs. So, one can argue that President Dissanayake is duty bound to carry out that promise. But why isn’t he so keen to fulfil other election pledges? More importantly, the question is why the JVP, which is against the provision of state-owned houses to former Presidents, did not make an issue of the State looking after the family of JVP leader Rohana Wijeweera, who plunged the country into bloodbaths twice.

Wijeweera was responsible for the destruction of tens of thousands of lives and public properties worth billions of rupees; he and his party almost succeeded in making the economy collapse so much so that the then President Ranasinghe Premadasa offered to come blindfolded for discussions with the JVP leaders to find a negotiated solution. Eventually, Wijeweera met his match in Premadasa and died a painful death while in custody. The State did not provide for the families of the political leaders killed by the JVP for defending democracy. Following Vijaya Kaumaratunga’s assassination, his wife, Chandrika and their two children were not looked after by the State. They had to flee the country. One can argue that the JVP must pay the rent for the house where Chandrika is currently residing and let her stay there; that is the least it can do by way of atonement for its sins.

Minister Sunil Handunnetti has gone on record as saying that President Dissanayake is now wielding the same executive powers as President J. R. Jayewardene, who bragged that the only task he could not accomplish was to make a man a woman and vice versa. President Dissanayake also controls Parliament, where his party has a two-thirds majority. So, he can change the Presidents Entitlements Act, which he has taken exception to, instead of complaining in public. Let the government be asked to fish or cut bait.

Monday 27th January, 2025

Daisy Achchi’s estate is in the news again. A son of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa has been arrested over an issue related to it. A bag of gems belonging to Daisy Achchi received much publicity during the Yahapalana government (2015-2019), whose allies including the JVP dismissed her claims about how she inherited her property as a tall tale, but the Rathu Sahodarayas’ own assertion that they are leading the good life thanks to the generosity of some undisclosed well-wishers is no less absurd. They and their unnamed benefactors remind us of orphan Pip and his huge fortune, in the classical Dickensian bildungsroman, Great Expectations.

The JVP/NPP leaders speak ad nauseam about the market values of some former Presidents’ official residences and their imputed rents. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa has said he would leave the state-owned house he is occupying if a written request/directive is made to that effect. So, all that the NPP administration has to do to see the back of him is to send him a letter, requesting/directing that the house at issue be handed over or a rent commensurate with the government valuation of the property be paid. That is the proper way to set about the task. The NPP should stop labouring under the delusion that the VIP housing issue will help it distract the public from its incompetence, numerous U-turns and broken promises and arrest the decline in its popularity.

There are still long lines of fully-loaded container trucks around the Colombo Port, awaiting Customs clearance; importers and truckers are up in arms against inordinate delays. Shortages of rice and coconuts persist with the prices of those commodities remaining in the stratosphere, but large-scale millers are buying paddy currently being harvested, at unconscionably low prices, much to the resentment of the farming community, who voted for the JVP-led NPP, enabling it to savour power. Rice growers’ appeals for a guaranteed price for their produce have gone unheeded. Usually, governments wait until the big-time millers who help them in numerous ways finish purchasing paddy to introduce a minimum price. Private buses have knocked down the highway segment of the Clean Sri Lanka initiative, so to speak. The NPP government has apparently given up its efforts to have former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran extradited from Singapore to stand trial here over the Treasury bond scams. It has made a mockery of its election pledge to solve the passport crisis overnight; it has said the problem will not be over until August 2025. The country is reportedly beginning to experience a salt shortage as well!

It is said that everything that King Midas touched turned to gold. We have had governments, whose touch turned everything into an unholy mess. Prominent among those bungling, blundering dispensations were the Yahapalana government, which made a dog’s breakfast of national security, and the Gotabaya Rajapaksa (GR) government, which became a metaphor for chaos itself. The incumbent NPP administration has also got into the same rut as its predecessors, with its leaders talking incessantly without delivering results. Interestingly, after the UNP and the SLFP-led UPFA fell out in late 2018, and the then President Maithripala Sirisena made an all-out yet abortive attempt to dislodge the UNP-led Yahapalana rump, the JVP propagandists famously said that when a clown got into a palace, instead of becoming a king, he turned the palace into a circus. They said so during the GR administration as well. The NPP government will have its opponents using that slogan against it unless it gets its act together.

If the current regime is not to face the same fate as the Yahapalana regime and/or the GR government, it will have to stop the ongoing political dog and pony show and knuckle down to the formidable tasks it undertook in its election manifestos. The GR administration failed and lost popular support although it mustered a two-thirds majority in Parliament. The NPP ought to learn from the failure of the Yahapalana government, which it backed to the hilt, to retain popular support by means of rhetoric, gimmicks and show trials which were intended to create an illusion of justice and justify politically-motivated arrests. What marked the beginning of the end of that UNP-led government was a setback it suffered in the 2018 local government (LG) polls.

The NPP administration has a lot of concerns weighing on it. Above all, it will have to face the LG elections slated for April 2025 while its popularity is on the wane, with many issues remaining unsolved. It has also been facing setbacks in the co-operative society elections.