The fact that many politicians who have overstayed their welcome on the national scene will not be running for parliament at the November election was reported even before nominations closed at noon on Friday as this comment is being written. Obviously that was certainly not due to any altruism on their part. The results of the Sept. 21 presidential election made that crystal clear. For example, if Namal Rajapaksa’s pathetic tally island-wide at the presidential contest is duplicated by the pohottuwa at the forthcoming contest, he would barely be able to qualify for a national list seat. No wonder then why he has chosen a national list option when the alternative will be rejection by the voters even in the Rajapaksa’s Hambantota stronghold. Many other senior parliamentarians also saw the writing on the wall and are retiring on comfortable pensions by courtesy of the taxpayer. Others have taken refuge in national lists.

There is no escaping the reality that the NPP/JVP shook-up the country’s electoral scene like never before, opening the door for many new faces to enter the legislature. Who they will be, particularly in the malimawa side, will only become clear after nominations close. The AKD party has gone public on its target of winning a two thirds majority while Premadasa is aiming for a parliamentary majority and the prime ministry either in alliance or on his own. We have consistently argued in this space that tyrannies of absolute majorities are not good for ther. Mrs. Bandaranaike, with the two thirds majority of her old left-backed United Front in 1970 extended the life of that parliament by two years. JR Jayewardene, with his five sixths majority seven years later, “rolled up the electoral map” as he famously proclaimed, for one full parliamentary term.

History demonstrates that the powerful presidency held by one side and legislative power by another is inimical to political stability. This was clearly demonstrated in 2004 when CBK as president got rid of a Ranil Wickremesinghe government and dissolved parliament. In an interview at a critical juncture in Sri Lanka’s history, when the country was sliding into war, former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga said that she made a big mistake by sacking the pro-peace United National Party (UNP) government led by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in 2004. “It was wrong,” Kumaratunga told the editor of Sunday Leader Lasantha Wickrematunge “It was the JVP and those in my party who were keen to win the elections and take office who pushed me to dissolve (parliament),” she said.

Whether the NPP/JVP, capitalizing on the presidential election, can win comfortably on Nov. 14 will only be clear after the results are declared. But it will indubitably put up a strong performance as it did in September as it can attract those who did not vote last time round and others won over since the AKD victory. Also, groups that backed Premadasa and RW for the presidency are paddling their own canoes this time round and that will benefit the NPP/JVP ticket.

The many defections we saw in the run up to the presidential election had very little to do with the candidates running for office. It was all a matter of defectors placing themselves in what they hoped was the right side for the expected parliamentary elections now called. The NPP/JVP turned down those who knocked at their door – AKD went on record saying there were some of these though he named no names – so they had to seek refuge in either the SJB or the gas cylinder coalition RW cobbled together to run as an independent at the presidential election. He finished a poor third the and the pohottuwa was left with a pitiful rump of a once formidable majority. Most mainstream parties had appointed parliamentary aspirants as organizers for different electorates long before the last parliament was dissolved and elbowing them out to make room for newcomers was obviously no easy task as Patali Champika Ranawaka has found to his cost.

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s decision not to run this time was widely expected. He has looked very frail in recent television appearances and it is clear that he is not in the best of health. He would undoubtedly campaign to the best of his ability for the SLPP and his son although he is ending a very long political career where he scaled the highest peaks. The announcement that Daham Sirisena, son of former President Maithripala Sirisena, was running under the banner of Dilith Jayaweera’s Mawbima Janatha Party was a clear signal that the former president intended bowing out of the parliamentary race. Many will be happy to see the last of him. Despite attaining the presidency, he chose to return to parliament under Rajapaksa colours after defeating Mahinda Rajapaksa in an acrimonious election in 2015. Questions on whether he will continue attempts to regain control of the SLFP have also emerged. The results of this election will influence that. While it was obvious RW would not run after his defeat last month, his party’s statement significantly said he did not expect to enter parliament through the national list. But that was exactly what he did in June 2021, ten months after August 2020. The rest of course is history.

Saturday 12th October, 2024

The headline of today’s comment is a joke doing the rounds in political circles. Roughly rendered into English, it means that although Ranil is gone, his policies have remained intact under the new dispensation.

Sri Lanka’s economic recovery programme, which Ranil Wickremesinghe courageously implemented, has survived his defeat in the presidential race. In other words, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has chosen to continue with Wickremesinghe’s key economic policies; he has agreed to the IMF-stipulated Debt Sustainability Analysis in spite of his election promise to renegotiate it.

The sobering economic reality has had a mellowing effect on President Dissanayake’s thinking, and signs are that the NPP will stick to the IMF bailout package for want of a better alternative even if it succeeds in obtaining a parliamentary majority at the 14 Nov. general election.

Wickremesinghe, who is still reeling from the humiliating defeat in last month’s presidential election, is among the political leaders who have decided not to contest next month’s general election, others being former Presidents Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena. In fact, it was a huge mistake for Mahinda and Sirisena to enter Parliament after holding the executive presidency. They should have retired gracefully. However, Ranil has decided against contesting the next general election not because he considers it infra dig to do so as a former President; he knows that it will be an uphill task for him to win a parliamentary seat from the Colombo District.

Some of the SLPP dissident MPs who sided with President Wickremesinghe have also decided not to contest the upcoming general election. Prominent among them is former State Minister of Finance Shehan Semasinghe, who helped President Wickremesinghe make the IMF programme a reality and clear obstacles to its implementation. They have said they are not contesting as they are disappointed that the people rejected Wickremesinghe’s successful economic programme, which helped save the economy. Semasinghe said so in a television interview on Thursday night.

The argument that Wickremesinghe lost the presidential election because the people rejected his economic policies smacks of reductionism. Those who elected Dissanayake President obviously did not want him to abandon the IMF programme and upend the existing economic recovery programme. True, Dissanayake endeared himself to the public by making attractive promises such as pay hikes, subsidies, fuel price decreases, and tax reductions, but it is doubtful whether anyone with an iota of common sense wanted an end to the current IMF programme. A plausible explanation of why the people rejected Wickremesinghe in the presidential race may be that they did not want him to secure the presidency for some reasons his loyalists have chosen to ignore.

President Wickremesinghe lost mainly because of his wrongs on the political front and his callous disregard for public opinion. He defended the crooks in the SLPP parliamentary group unashamedly, undermined the judiciary and the legislature and suppressed democratic dissent. He also put off elections arbitrarily and abused the privileges of Parliament to launch scathing attacks on the judiciary and issue warnings to judges. He unflinchingly shielded the corrupt in the cricket administration and surrounded himself with a bunch of crooked misfits. If he had cared to concentrate on the economic front and refrain from committing political wrongs, which were legion, he would have been able to put up a close fight against Dissanayake in the presidential race and even score a win.

Wickremesinghe lost in the presidential contest because he ruined things for himself politically as he had done previously. The only consolation for him may be that his economic policies have outlived his defeat.

Friday 11th October, 2024

Daisy Achchi’s bag of gems or menik malla has been catapulted to the centre of public discussion again due to a war of words between NPP trade union heavyweight Wasantha Samarasinghe and SLPP National Organiser Namal Rajapaksa. For the benefit of the uninitiated, Daisy Achchi has become a household word following an absurd claim the Rajapaksas made in a bid to justify the acquisition of their wealth, Daisy being the grandmother of the young members of the clan. The Rajapaksas claimed that Daisy had received a bagful of precious stones from an unknown person.

Daisy Achchi’s stash of gems has since become an epitome of audacity of politicians who have a very low opinion of the intelligence of the public. Political leaders who have acquired assets in a questionable manner and avoided accountability by making atrociously false claims must be made to account for their wealth. No government has made a serious effort to probe the assets of their opponents and bring them to justice for the illegal acquisition of wealth. The UNP-led Yahapalana government had the public believe that it was probing its rivals’ assets, but did not go the whole hog; Maithripala Sirisena, who won the presidency in 2015 by promising to throw the Rajapaksas behind bars for corruption, etc., joined forces with them three years later.

During the 2015 presidential election campaign, he claimed the younger members of the Rajapaksa family had bought a ‘golden horse’ (a palomino?) from Buckingham Palace and kept it in Nuwara Eliya, where they flew in state-owned choppers during weekends to ride it. He did not care to trace the horse or investigate the chopper rides after being ensconced in power. One may recall how the Yahapalana regime turned its operations to trace the undeclared assets of its opponents into a political circus; it went so far as to have coconut estates dug up in search of luxury cars believed to have been buried there! The Prime Minister in the Yahapalana government, Ranil Wickremesinghe, became President with the help of the Rajapaksa family seven years later! Thus, why politicians do not go all out to throw one another in prison for corruption is clear. The public became disillusioned and their resentment became rocket fuel for the JVP-led NPP’s recent presidential election campaign in 2024.

Now, the NPP is coming under increasing pressure to honour its election pledge to prosecute the corrupt and recover the stolen funds. It cannot convince the public that it needs time, for it kept on claiming, months before the 21 Sept. presidential election, that it would win the presidency for sure and was ready to nab the corrupt immediately afterwards. It said it had 400 files containing evidence against the corrupt and has since pledged to take action against the beneficiaries of Daisy Achchi’s mysterious riches. The new government however ought not to be selective in probing politicians’ assets.

It is public knowledge that the UNP stood to gain from the Treasury bond scams under the Yahapalana government; its key members benefited from the largesse of the Treasury bond racketeers while the UNP and the JVP were honeymooning. Will the JVP/NPP government order a fresh probe into the Treasury bond scams and do everything in its power to have former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran extradited from Singapore to stand trial for those rackets. It should make a formal request to Singapore for his extradition. The SJB went on a spending spree before the presidential election, giving away various things. It has not accounted for the funds it spent generously to further its political interests. It must be made to explain how those funds were raised.

Most of those who have been in power over the past several decades acquired assets, which they have not accounted for. Worse, they obtained compensation for their houses destroyed by mobs in 2022 although most of them had not disclosed how funds were raised for building them. The Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government should have ascertained whether those assets had been lawfully acquired before compensating their owners. What does the NPP administration propose to do about this?

The JVP/NPP leaders claim to be beneficiaries of the generosity of some individuals who, they claim, look after their needs by gifting them various things including shirts, trousers and shoes. Its opponents have demanded to know whether it received donations from any business tycoons for the construction of its party headquarters. The JVP/NPP, too, owes the public an explanation as regards its funds.