Friday 20th December, 2024

The JVP-led NPP’s ascent to power rekindled the hopes of good governance activists for a radical break from the past and a new political culture. The incumbent government came under pressure to ensure the independence and integrity of the parliamentary Financial Committees by allowing them to be headed by Opposition MPs. But the efforts of the campaigners for good governance have been only partially successful. SJB MP Dr. Harsha de Silva has been appointed the Chairman of the Committee on Public Finance (COPF), and the government has said one of the NPP members should head the COPE (Committee on Public Finance).

The government’s position is that the COPE will conduct investigations into what happened under the previous administration and therefore an NPP MP should chair it. The Opposition’s efforts to persuade the government to change its mind have been in vain. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake himself reiterated the NPP’s position in Parliament on Wednesday in response to a request from Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa that the government reconsider its decision.

The COPE plays a pivotal role in exposing irregularities in state enterprises and has the potential to restore public trust in Parliament. According to Standing Order No. 120, the duty of the COPE is to examine the accounts of public corporations, institutions funded wholly or in part by the state and of any business or other undertaking vested under any written law, with the assistance of the Auditor-General. One of the criticisms against the COPE is that its probes do not yield the desired results, and its reports gather dust. But there have been glaring exceptions.

The COPE under Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe’s chairmanship, during the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, played an activist role, paving the way for the reversal of a questionable divestiture programme—the privatisation of Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation and Lanka Marine Services. Similarly, the COPE under D. E. W. Gunasekara’s chairmanship was bold enough to produce a damning report on the first Treasury bond scam in 2015, but the UNP had Parliament dissolved, forestalling the submission of that vital document to the House. The COPE carried out its second probe into the Treasury bond scams under the chairmanship of the then Opposition MP Sunil Handunnetti. Thus, the COPE has proved its ability to safeguard the interests of the public, and the precedents it has set should be followed. Handunnetti, who is a powerful minister in the incumbent government, ought to lend his voice to those who are demanding that an Opposition MP be appointed as the COPE chairperson.

Situations could arise warranting investigations that adversely impact the interests of the incumbent government. If the COPE chairperson is a ruling party MP, he or she, under such circumstances, will not be able to act impartially owing to his or her party loyalty. This is why the campaigners for good governance insist that the parliamentary watchdog committees should be chaired by the Opposition.

The government’s argument that it has to appoint one of its MPs as the COPE chairperson because the irregularities to be probed occurred under the previous dispensation, whose MPs are currently in the opposition, is not tenable. The vast majority of the Opposition MPs in the current Parliament were not members of the previous administration, which became a metaphor for corruption, and therefore one of them can be appointed the COPE head.

The COPE will have to probe irregularities in state institutions during the current administration as well, and a ruling party MP functioning as its chairperson will be constrained to act in such a way that he or she is seen to be biased; the integrity of the watchdog committee will be compromised in such an eventuality.

One can only hope that the NPP will change its position and let an Opposition MP be appointed as COPE head.

Thursday 19th December, 2024

The JVP-led NPP government is quite upbeat about President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s India visit. However, if the joint statement Dissanayake and Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued on Monday (16 Dec.) is anything to go by, the NPP administration has endorsed what its leaders used to flay President Ranil Wickremesinghe for having undertaken to do at the behest of India, much to the interests of Sri Lanka’s interests. Wickremesinghe has thanked Dissanayake for endorsing the Economic and Technological Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) to be signed between India and Sri Lanka. This can be considered a backhanded compliment.

As for the projects of strategic importance mentioned in the joint statement, PM Modi has said nothing new; he has only reiterated what he expected the previous Sri Lankan governments to do. He has highlighted his government’s desire to see the completion of some vital projects such as the supply of LNG to Sri Lanka, a high-capacity grid connection between the two countries, a petroleum pipeline from India to Sri Lanka, and the further development of the Trincomalee oil tank farm. It is a case of Hobson’s choice for Sri Lanka.

The joint statement also mentions some benefits to Sri Lanka in areas such as energy development, education and technology and agriculture.

PM Modi and President Dissanayake have agreed to continue discussions on the development of airports in Sri Lanka. One can only hope that Sri Lanka will not come under Indian pressure to award contracts for airport development to the Adani Group, which is under a cloud. Congress MP Rahul Gandhi has accused the Modi government of ‘tweaking rules’ regarding India’s airport privatisation programme in favour of the Adani Group.

Meanwhile, PM Modi said at a joint press conference with President Dissanayake on Monday that they had discussed reconstruction and reconciliation in Sri Lanka, and he hoped that the Sri Lankan government would fulfil the aspirations of the Tamil people and its commitment to implementing the Constitution of Sri Lanka (read the 13th Amendment) fully, and conduct the Provincial Council elections. PM Modi also said he and Dissanayaka were in full agreement that ‘our security interests are interconnected’, his message being that Sri Lanka has to be mindful of India’s security concerns.

The biggest challenge before the NPP government is to justify the numerous about-turns of its main constituent, the JVP, which signals left but turns right erratically, and provides grist to the Opposition’s mill, in the process. JVP leaders are doing exactly the opposite of what they advocated as regards some crucial issues during their opposition days; their policy contradictions are legion. They have made U-turns on the IMF bailout programme, rice imports, taxes, tariffs, petroleum prices, the MPs’ perks and privileges, and a host of other issues.

Addressing a seminar under the theme, ‘Trading, Sacrifice and ETCA’, in Colombo in Sept. 2016, JVP leader Dissanayake said the agreement, if signed, would pave the way for an influx of ‘low-grade Indian IT professionals’ here at the expense of the Sri Lankan youth. According to a report published on the JVP’s official website (23 Feb. 2016), Dissanayake had this to say about ETCA, at the first of a series of seminars held under the theme ‘Denounce ETCA that sacrifices our economy to India!’: “There is a political gamble here. India is trying to intervene in politics in our country. Already, there are many RAW spies in Jaffna. Before our country is made a political playground India wants to gobble our economy. Already India has a monopoly in the vehicle, medicine and construction sectors. Already, they are controlling our economy. Through that they manipulate politics in our country. It is this political need that jumps out of Ranil’s mouth. We would never allow this agreement to be signed.”

The question is what those ‘RAW spies’ in Sri Lanka were doing during this year’s presidential and parliamentary elections.

In a video (dated 19 September 2023) doing the rounds on the Internet these days, Dissanayake opposes the Indo-Lanka connectivity project; he says the proposed projects such as the grid connection, the petroleum pipeline, etc., are detrimental to Sri Lanka’s independence.

It will be interesting to see what the opponents of ETCA, especially the professionals, who backed the NPP to the hilt in the presidential and parliamentary elections this year, have got to say about the incumbent government’s about-turns and acquiescence to India’s demands.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath is heard speaking of ‘bondages’ between India and Sri Lanka, during a brief television interview in New Delhi. Was it a mere lapsus linguae or a Freudian slip reflecting the JVP leaders’ subconscious antipathy towards what they once perceived as India’s suzerainty or hegemonistic interests?

Wednesday 18th December, 2024

A new Speaker was elected unopposed yesterday in Parliament. Dr. Jagath Wickramaratne has succeeded Speaker Asoka Ranwala, who had to resign last week due to his failure to prove his academic credentials. It is popularly said in this country that a person who has been beaten with a firebrand is scared of even fireflies. So, Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya and Leader of the House Bimal Ratnayake carefully avoided referring to Wickramaratne as ‘Dr’ when they proposed his name and seconded it, respectively. They may have done so lest they should provoke heckles from the Opposition members, who are making the most of the doctorate scandal in a bid to recover lost ground.

In the run-up to last month’s general election, the JVP-led NPP paraded the doctorates of its candidates to make them out to be superior to their counterparts fielded by other political parties. Its propagandists extolled their academic and professional achievements to the point of queasiness. Today, the government is wary of calling even a qualified medical practitioner a doctor upon his elevation to the Speaker’s post! Such has been the political cost of credential inflation that some NPP MPs resorted to boost their images.

Sri Lankan politics has not only caused the deterioration of economic, political, social, cultural and legal institutions but also led to the devaluation of concepts, ideas, ideals, and titles. Languages evolve and words acquire new meanings mostly through repeated association, which can be contextual, metaphorical, political, social, cultural or otherwise. We saw how the adjective, ‘righteous’, underwent semantic bleaching and drift due to being subject to sloganeering under the J. R. Jayewardene government, which promised to build a ‘righteous society’. ‘Righteous’ took on the exact opposite of its lexical definition and became synonymous with ‘unrighteous’, paradoxical as it may sound, in the political context in that socio-political milieu. The phrase, ‘righteous society’, evokes one’s dreadful memories of election malpractices, political violence, disproportionate counter terror, cronyism, corruption, etc., which the Jayewardene regime was notorious for. The Mahinda Rajapaksa government promised ‘a bright future’, which became a synonym for ‘pie in the sky’ to all intents and purposes. ‘Good governance’ or ‘yahapalanaya’, became devalued and took on a whole new meaning thanks to the UNP-led UNF, which misused it to dupe the public and capture power in 2015. ‘Prosperity and Splendour’, which the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government promised, eventually became coterminous with ‘bankruptcy and untold hardships’. The word, ‘renaissance’ is undergoing semantic bleaching under the incumbent NPP government as there has been no radical departure from the past either politically or economically, and what we are witnessing is stagnation.

The JVP-led NPP came to power by looking down upon almost everything previous governments had done since Independence. It called Sri Lanka’s post-Independence history a curse, and offered to put the country right and achieve progress. Its devaluation drive led to an unprecedented erosion of public trust in vital institutions, especially Parliament, which it vehemently condemned as a den of thieves. Some NPP MPs’ pretence to academic excellence has caused the public to treat academics and other professionals with suspicion and doubt their credentials. Worse, it is thought in some quarters that the courtesy title, Dr, can be as derogatory as ‘pickpocket’, etc., when used before the names of those who are neither doctorate holders nor medical practitioners! Hence, Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara’s complaint to the CID that there has been a sinister attempt to discredit him by placing the title, Dr, before his name on the parliamentary website.

The NPP sought a mandate to clean the Augean Stables by the Diyawanna lake and ensure that the national legislature would be full of educated, intelligent, patriotic men and women of integrity. It received an unprecedented mandate for that mission. But today it has had to put its own house in order by ridding itself of mountebanks who have been exposed for their fake academic credentials before it carries out its much-advertised clean-up campaign.