Wednesday 19th January, 2022

Protests were expected at the inauguration of the current session of Parliament yesterday, but the Opposition behaved; it only boycotted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s tea party. The President also struck a conciliatory note in his speech, calling for everyone’s support.

President Rajapaksa never misses an opportunity to make a public display of his long suit—protecting national security. He declared that the key issue facing the people when he became President in 2019 had been threats to national security. People had no fear of terrorism today, he said. Valid as his claim may be, the fact remains that threats to national security posed by the National Thowheed Jamaath, which carried out the Easter Sunday carnage, had been effectively neutralised by Nov. 2019, when the last presidential election was held. It is too early to assess the government’s performance as regards ensuring national security.

Interestingly, the President waxed eloquent on the virtues of the rule of law and transparency, and the need to strengthen democracy. He made specific mention of the steps taken to amend the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). The government is apparently giving in to pressure from the western bloc, which has called for the abolition of the PTA, protecting human rights and strengthening democracy.

The President took pride in having set up about 100 new police stations. The country, no doubt, needs more police stations, but the establishment of new police stations and courthouses alone will not help strengthen the rule of law; a prerequisite for accomplishing this difficult task is to abolish the existing culture of impunity and political interference.

Curiously, the section devoted to the government’s foreign policy, in yesterday’s presidential address, was unusually brief. One can only hope that the brevity of this section does not reflect the level of importance the government attaches to the country’s foreign relations!

The President said he would submit the recommendations of the Expert Committee he had appointed to help draft a new Constitution. It is hoped that the government will tread cautiously. Going by the widespread chaos its fertiliser policy has plunged the country into, how bad the situation will be if an attempt is made to force a new Constitution on the people is not difficult to imagine. Perhaps, if the 20th Amendment is abolished and the 19th Amendment reintroduced with some changes, we may be able to make do with the existing Constitution.

The President flaunted the recently unveiled 229-billion-rupee relief package as a progressive step to alleviate people’s economic woes. But the general public will not benefit from relief granted only to public officials, pensioners and Samurdhi beneficiaries. The government has not revealed how funds will be raised for the relief package, and therefore one tends to think that more money will be printed, and inflation will rise further, affecting everyone. The government’s wisdom of offering a 25-rupee increase in the guaranteed price for paddy to raise it to Rs. 75 per kilo by way of relief to protesting farmers stands questioned because private millers are already paying as much as Rs. 95 per kilo of paddy!

The President very modestly made mention of his government’s successful vaccination drive, which he could justifiably be proud of. But the government would have been able to control the pandemic better and mitigate its economic fallout more effectively if it had taken timely action public health experts called for. The protracted lockdown in the latter part of 2021, which made the economy scream as never before, could have been averted if the government had taken under advisement health professionals’ call for travel restrictions in April in view of the traditional New Year, and acted accordingly.

The President has said he is determined to go ahead with his green agriculture programme. He, however, should not be in a hurry; he should cross the river feeling the stones if he is to avoid further trouble. It was a colossal mistake for the government to impose a blanket ban on agrochemicals overnight. It should have taken steps to reduce the use of chemical fertilisers, etc., over a period of time, with the participation of all stakeholders, and then assessed the situation before moving on to the next phase of the project. Unfortunately, it chose to act like a bull in an agrochemical shop.

It was widely thought that given the manner in which the government had bungled on many fronts and been left with egg on its face, the President would be left without anything to say in Parliament yesterday. But he managed to say something sensible in his policy statement, and it in itself could be considered an achievement!

Tuesday 18th January, 2022

Tennis star Novak Djokovic is in a league of his own with his fans spread across the globe. He has all what any sportsperson could dream of—talent, fame and wealth. But he seems to lack one thing—common sense. He found himself up the creek without a paddle in Australia, and faced deportation because he did not play the game there, so to speak. He failed to realise that he was taking a huge risk when he travelled to Australia to take part in the Australian Open because he was unvaccinated. He should have known that he would receive the same treatment as any other unvaccinated foreigner in Australia, and his ranking as World No. 1 would not be factored in where vaccine mandates were concerned in that country. The blame for this unfortunate situation should be apportioned to the organisers of the Australian Open as well.

Anyone who seeks to enter Australia or any other country, for that matter, has to comply with laws, rules and regulations there or be prepared for deportation. The Australian government has been fighting quite a battle to save lives and keep the economy ticking vis-a-a-vis the pandemic; there have also been protests against lockdowns, etc. It has had to keep anti-vaxxers at bay, and this task is perhaps even more difficult than controlling the runaway virus.

There was no way Australia could give Djokovic special treatment while its own citizens were facing severe anti-pandemic restrictions. It has drawn heavy criticism for its action. Its visa approval process has even been described as ‘convoluted and shambolic’ in some quarters, and some critics claim that the cancellation of Djokovic’s visa will be a blow to the Australian Open.

Some Australian officials dragged some issues unnecessary into the controversy; they claimed that if Djokovic was allowed entry, it would be considered a victory for anti-vaxxers, who are all out to undermine the ongoing jab drive. They had a point in that Djokovic is said to have been vocal in his opposition to vaccine mandates. But they should have simply said no unvaccinated person would be allowed to enter Australia and everybody was equal before the law. The Victorian state government has made it abundantly clear that all players, staff and fans attending the Australian Open must be fully vaccinated unless there is a genuine reason why an exemption should be granted. Djokovic and his lawyers failed to prove that there was genuine reason for him to refuse to be vaccinated.

Not that one loves Djokovic less, but one loves the pandemic-hit humans more. It is science, and not sports, that can save the world from the pandemic. Even those who have recovered from Covid-19 have to be vaccinated, according to medical experts. Had the Australian government chosen to bend the rules and let Djokovic in, simply because he has recovered from Covid-19, it would have set a very bad precedent at a time when vaccine hesitancy has stood in the way of the global fight against Covid-19.

Imagine what would have happened if an unvaccinated star like Djokovic had arrived at the Bandaranaike International Airport and been denied entry? One of our jobless government grandees would have tucked up his sarong and made a beeline for the BIA, given the legend a bear hug and taken selfies with him or her before escorting him or her out. (Our is a land where even convicted rapists, murderers, drug dealers and other such anti-social elements serving sentences have been given presidential pardons!) It is believed that the spread of Covid-19 got out of control here in 2020 because scores of workers were allowed to be brought in from a neighbouring country without being tested for Covid-19, and that led to the formation of the Minuwangoda garment factory cluster.

Australia has done what is good for its people in spite of international pressure and thereby shown the way where pandemic control is concerned. It is hoped that other countries will not hesitate to adopt such tough measures in fighting the virus. One feels sorry for Djokovic, whose career has suffered a heavy blow, at what is described as his most successful Grand Slam tournament, but the fact remains that nobody, however famous or powerful he or she may be, should be allowed to trifle with vaccine mandates.

Monday 17th January, 2022

Now, anyone could import rice, paying as little as 25 cents a kilo as duty. Trade Minister Bandula Gunawardena has said the government decision is aimed at preventing a rice shortage and bringing rice prices down. But the question is whether enough foreign exchange is available for rice imports. Minster Gunawardena himself has admitted that there are already 500 freight containers of rice at the Colombo Port pending clearance. The power and energy sectors are in a mega crisis as the country is without enough dollars to pay for fuel imports. Most industries dependent on imported raw materials are struggling to stay afloat; some of them have already gone belly up. Will the Trade Minister or any other SLPP grandee claiming to be well versed in the dismal science explain how forex will be found for rice imports?

The rice shortage and attendant price increases have come about for two reasons. One is the fertiliser shortage, which has resulted in a sharp drop in the Maha yield, and the other is hoarding by big-time millers and wholesalers. The government is not willing to change its fertiliser policy, which has run into stiff resistance from resentful farmers, and it is too impotent to take on the Millers’ Mafia, which has become a law unto itself as politicians benefit from its largesse during elections.

Rice imports are only a band-aid remedy. True, any essential commodity has to be imported in case of a severe shortfall in the domestic supply thereof, but such measures must necessarily be short-term; the government does not seem to know when it will be able to stop rice imports. Unless the fertiliser crisis is resolved urgently, rice imports will go on until the end of time, and several other agricultural products, too, will have to be imported. The country’s food security will be pie in the sky in such an eventuality.

SLPP MP and former President Maithripala Sirisena has, in an interview with Siyatha TV, said he wonders whether there is a move to discourage farmers from engaging in agriculture and drive them to sell their lands to private companies. Multinational corporations have already acquired large extents of land for commercial agriculture here; prominent among them is an international banana producer, which got a foothold here during the previous Rajapaksa government. The present-day leaders seem relentless in their efforts to turn this country into a banana republic.

Meanwhile, let Sirisena be told that his family is also responsible for farmers’ woes; his brother, Dudley, is one of the millers who make unconscionable profits by exploiting both the farmer and the consumer alike; and his relative, State Minister Siripala Gamlath, is also a miller thriving at the expense of the poor paddy farmers and hapless consumers. Shouldn’t he put his own house in order instead of shedding copious tears for farmers and consumers?

Whether the government is working according to a secret plan to make farmers fed up with agriculture, one may not know, but its wrong agricultural policies are fraught with the danger of discouraging the farming community. When farmers suffer massive yield losses, and cannot recover production costs, much less redeem their valuables pawned to raise funds for cultivation purposes, they will be left with no alternative but to vote with their feet. Some of them have already done so, and unless this trend is arrested urgently, the country’s economic crisis will worsen with more dollars having to be spent on food imports. Besides, rural poverty will increase exponentially, and the farmers reduced to penury are likely to migrate to urban centres looking for jobs that are not there. The country may run out of dollars at this rate, and therefore the people will have to starve if imports are promoted as government policy at the expense of the local production of main food items. (We might achieve self-sufficiency only in turmeric!)

The government’s decision to promote imports as a solution to the rice shortage instead of addressing the root causes of the problem is like using a loincloth to control diarrhoea, as a local saying goes.