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Editorial

Sins and crimes

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Saturday 22nd October, 2022

Chief Opposition Whip and SJB MP Lakshman Kiriella has told Parliament that the person responsible for bankrupting the country should be in a temple instead of an official residence, enjoying retirement at public expense. He has not named names, according to what has been reported of his speech, but it is obvious that his reference is to former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

One cannot but agree with Kiriella that no more public funds should be spent on maintaining the person on whose watch the country went bankrupt. In fact, none of the former Presidents should be provided with official residences or maintained at public expense. They may be given security based on proper threat assessments. No politician has died poor in this country during the last so many decades; the ex-Presidents can look after themselves well.

Kiriella, however, seems to have mistaken a serious crime for a sin that one can redeem oneself from simply by staying at a temple. The act of bankrupting a country and inflicting untold suffering on the people is, no doubt, a sin, but the legal aspects thereof should not be glossed over; it is a very serious economic crime. Those who commit such offences may go to temples or other places of worship and try to have themselves redeemed, but they have to be made to face legal action. Reflected in the Chief Opposition Whip’s statement at issue is Sri Lankan politicians’ leniency towards one another. They never go flat out to have their opponents imprisoned; they only bellow rhetoric.

No wonder the Yahapalana government, of which the current Opposition MPs were members, opened escape routes for its opponents while pretending to be out for their scalps. Its policy has paid dividends for its leaders. President Maithripala Sirisena threw in his lot with the Rajapaksas towards the latter stages of his term and avoided a whitewash at the last general election; the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has become the President with the help of the Rajapaksas, whom the Yahapalana government undertook to throw behind bars but protected on the sly. As a quid pro quo, the Rajapaksas did not have the Treasury bond scams probed after regaining power, and one need not be surprised if all the crooks who benefited from the bond rackets walk free. The people who voted for the Yahapalana government in the hope that it would ensure that the thieves of public wealth would be punished, and then supported the Rajapakasas to bring the Yahapalana crooks to justice are going through hell. Their suffering may be considered a kind of divine punishment for the sin of voting for crooks.

Gotabaya deserves all the flak he is receiving for what he did, as the President. But he is not alone in having ruined the country. All his predecessors earned notoriety for economic mismanagement, reckless borrowing, abuse of power, corruption and waste. Unsustainable debt, which sent the economy into a tailspin, is not of recent origin. The economy had experienced debt stress for decades under different Presidents, who did precious little to bring about debt sustainability. All those in the current Parliament, save a few, have contributed to the ruination of the economy, albeit to varying degrees.

Most of the holier-than-thou SJB MPs were in the Yahapalana government, which borrowed heavily thereby worsening the country’s debt burden, allowed corruption to thrive and neglected national security. They had no qualms about defending the Treasury bond scammers and other such crooks. The JVP is raking the Rajapaksas over the coals for corruption, economic mismanagement, abuse of power, etc––and rightly so––but the latter would not have been able to obtain power without the former’s help in 2005. It was the JVP which made Mahinda Rajapakasa’s victory in the 2005 presidential race possible. Its second uprising crippled the economy and led to the destruction of state assets to the tune of billions of rupees in the late 1980s. The TNA supported the LTTE, whose terrorism took its toll on the country’s economy besides destroying thousands of lives. The SLFP has also made a tremendous contribution to the ruination of the country on its own as well as by coalescing with the UNP and the SLPP. The less said about the UNP, the better. It is now shamelessly riding on the saatakas of the Rajapaksas!

It is only natural that the resentful people are demanding that all 225 MPs go home. Gotabaya should be severely dealt with for what he has done to the country, but others must not be allowed to get away with their crimes by bashing him.



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Editorial

An election day thought

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Tuesday 6th May, 2025

Elections to 339 local government (LG) institutions are set to take place today––at long last. The terms of the local councils, which were last elected in 2018, lapsed in 2022, but the then SLPP government extended them by one year. In 2023, President Ranil Wickremesinghe derailed the LG polls by refusing to allocate funds. A legal battle resulted in the Supreme Court ordering, last year, that the LG elections be held soon.

As many as 75,589 candidates are vying for 8,287 seats in local councils; there are 4,877 wards in all LG institutions. Having campaigned really hard, the main political parties claim to be confident of victory, but many councils are likely to be hung.

The LG polls are held under the mixed proportional system—60% of the councillors are elected on the ward basis under the first-past-the-post system; others are elected under the Proportional Representation system. The new electoral system has led to a two-fold increase in the number of local council members.

Sri Lanka has too many politicians and state employees, as is public knowledge. It is popularly said in this country that ‘if one kicks a wayside bush at random, more than a dozen politicians and state employees will jump out’. The ratio of state employees to citizens is 1:15. There are 225 MPs, 455 provincial councillors, and about 8,287 local council members. There is no fixed number of LG members; the number tends to increase due to the new electoral system, which allows for overhang seats––the LG members elected on the ward basis from a political party or an independent group in excess of its entitlement under the PR system.

It does not make sense to maintain so many elected people’s representatives at the national, provincial and grassroots levels.

The National List (NL), which provides for the appointment of 29 MPs on the basis of political parties’ or independent groups’ shares of the nationwide votes in parliamentary polls, has been abused all these years to appoint defeated candidates and others to Parliament. Some NL appointments even undermine the Constitution; political parties craftily use Section 64 (5) of the Parliamentary Elections Act No 1 of 1981, as amended in 1988, to fill NL vacancies which are engineered, in most cases, to circumvent Article 99A of the Constitution; thus, the persons of party leaders’ choice are appointed to Parliament via the NL. This sordid practice has severely eroded public trust in the electoral process. Successive governments have not cared to amend the Parliamentary Elections Act and the Constitution to prevent defeated candidates and others from being appointed as NL MPs, and therefore the NL mechanism should be done away with.

The Provincial Council (PC) system has become a white elephant, but successive governments have considered it a fait accompli due to Indian pressure. All nine PCs have functioned without elected representatives since 2017! Even the JVP, which is currently in power, as the main constituent of the NPP coalition, has bitten the bullet and chosen to ensure the perpetuation of the PC system, which it went all out to sabotage, albeit in vain, by unleashing mindless terror and destroying lives, in the late 1980s. Serious thought should be given to reducing the number of PC members.

The number of LG members must also be reduced drastically. Many local council wards can be merged, especially in urban areas.

There have been campaigns for controlling the populations of crop-raiding wild animals, such as monkeys. Curiously, no such effort has ever been made to reduce the number of people’s elected representatives, who cause far worse damage to the economy than all crop-depredating wildlife combined. The same goes for the ever-burgeoning public service, which has become a metaphor for inefficiency.

As for today’s election, every vote counts. Happy voting!

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Editorial

Polls and power

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Monday 5th May, 2025

The Election Commission (EC) has said that everything is ready for tomorrow’s local government (LG) polls. However, a trade union representing the Grama Niladharis (GNs), who play a crucial role in conducting elections, has complained that funds allocated for hiring generators to ensure an emergency power supply to counting centres, etc., are inadequate, and therefore those places may be left without back-up power systems tomorrow.

The GNs should not be held responsible if anything untoward happens in case of blackouts either due to technical defects or sabotage tomorrow, President of the United Grama Niladharis’ Association, Nanadana Ranasinghe, is reported to have said, demanding an explanation from the authorities concerned as to how such an emergency will be handled. He has asked whether they will use emergency lamps, candles or pandam (flambeaux) in the event of a power failure.

It is hoped that the government will not launch a witch-hunt against the GNs, and that the EC, etc., will act swiftly to solve the aforesaid problem. Nothing is so certain as power failures in this country, which experienced a countrywide power outage about three months ago.

We have witnessed numerous instances where governments led by the UNP and the SLFP resorted to barbaric violence and large-scale vote rigging to win elections; presidential polls in 1982 and 1988, under President J. R. Jayewardene’s watch, the 1989 parliamentary election under R. Premadasa’s presidency, and the 1999 North-Western Provincial Council election during President Chandrika Bandaranaike’s tenure stand out among them. The JVP has a history of trying to sabotage elections by unleashing mindless terror. In fact, it was the JVP’s terror campaign that enabled the then ruling UNP to stuff ballot boxes and win elections in 1988 and 1989.

Given Sri Lankan politicians’ tendency to manipulate elections, the possibility of governments resorting to electoral frauds to retain their hold on power in the future cannot be ruled out. Hence the pressing need for the EC to ensure that nothing is left to chance in its efforts to ensure free and fair elections.

One may recall that a power failure helped the UNP win a fiercely contested election in the early 1980s. President Jayewardene scrapped a general election which was due in 1982, for fear of losing his five-sixths majority in Parliament; he held a heavily-rigged referendum instead, undertaking to hold by-elections in the electorates where his government would lose. He had to hold 18 such by-elections in 1983; four of them were won by the Opposition in spite of large-scale rigging and violence unleashed by the UNP. Dinesh Gunawardena, Anil Moonesinghe, Richard Pathirana and Amarasiri Dodangoda won the Maharagama, Matugama, Akmeemana and Baddegama electorates, respectively. Violence and rigging enabled the UNP to win the other electorates, especially Mahara.

In Mahara, at the conclusion of the first round of counting, it became clear that SLFP candidate Vijaya Kumaratunga had won, but the UNP insisted on recounts, and then there occurred a blackout. When power was restored, UNP candidate Kamalawarna Jayakody had beaten Kumaratunga! The Opposition counting agents claimed that some election officials loyal to the UNP had literally swallowed dozens of votes polled by Vijaya, who had survived an attempt by the UNP to kill him in the run-up to the election.

Sri Lanka is no stranger to election malpractices although it has been free from them for some time. Anything is possible in high-stakes elections. It may be recalled that in 2020, the then US President Donald Trump claimed that his rivals had stolen America’s presidential election and engineered his defeat. So, a country like Sri Lanka has to take all possible precautions to ensure free and fair elections. Reliable back-up power systems must be available at all counting centres tomorrow.

History has a remarkable ability to repeat itself even after prolonged lapses; therein lies the rub. In a democracy, the integrity of elections must not be taken for granted. Constant vigilance is said to be the price of freedom.

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Editorial

Rule of law takes hit on expressway

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It is said that in times war laws fall silent. In Sri Lanka, this much-quoted Ciceronian aphorism seems to hold true even in peacetime when politicians in power, their family members and supporters happen to be on the wrong side of the law.

It was widely thought that last year’s regime change would bring about a radical change, and that unlike during past governments, the law would apply equally to everyone, but traffic laws apparently fell silent on the Southern Expressway on Thursday (01).

Some viral videos doing the rounds in the digital space show a large number of private buses transporting people to the NPP May Day rally in Colombo, unlawfully parked on the Southern Expressway, with the government supporters having lunch or strolling on a paved shoulder of the road.

It is a punishable offence for vehicles to stop in undesignated sections of expressways in non-emergency situations. Instances have been reported where people were fined or even prosecuted for doing so. The aforementioned videos show a highway patrol vehicle among the unlawfully parked buses, with the police personnel looking the other way. The culture of impunity seems to persist. No legal action had been taken against the errant drivers at the time of going to press. The police would have promptly ticketed them if they had been transporting Opposition supporters to a political rally. So much for the incumbent government’s pledge to restore the rule of law!

Some NPP politicians have sought to deny that the individuals seen in the videos are their supporters; if so, they should have the incident probed urgently. The registration numbers of the buses are clearly visible in the videos, or the vehicles and their drivers can be easily identified with the help of traffic camera footage. It is not difficult for the police to trace the errant drivers and passengers and take legal action against them if they care to do so.

Ordinary motorists who happen to violate traffic laws on an expressway invariably face heavy fines. The police must be made to explain why they did not take prompt action against the drivers of the buses and the political activists for the transgression at issue.

One of the main election promises of the ruling NPP was to ensure that everybody would be equal before the law in keeping with the cherished legal maxim—nemo est supra leges or no one is above the law. The NPP leaders, during their Opposition days, would flay their predecessors for violating traffic laws, among other things. They would condemn the VIP convoy security procedures, claiming that such measures worsened traffic congestion in urban areas and caused much inconvenience to the public. They promised a system change. But the status quo remains to all intents and purposes. The aforesaid video footage in circulation exemplifies a famous Orwellian paradox; are we to conclude that under the new dispensation all people are equal, but some people are ‘more equal’ than others?

Meanwhile, one may recall that the JVP leaders vehemently opposed the construction of the Southern Expressway, claiming that it was being built to transport malu ambulthiyal or the traditional ‘sour fish curry’ to the then ruling family all the way from Tangalle! Today, some NPP supporters stand accused of having eaten rice perhaps with malu ambulthiyal on the Southern Expressway in violation of traffic laws!

Unless stern action is taken against the bus drivers and the political activists who violated traffic laws on the Southern Expressway, others are likely to follow suit, making the highways as chaotic as other roads, some of which are partially closed for New Year festivals and bicycle races to be held much to the inconvenience of the public.

It will be interesting to see if the NPP government will practise what it preached to its predecessors about the rule of law, and direct the police to probe the expressway incident, which has tarnished its image, and taken the gloss off its successful May Day rally to some extent.

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