Editorial

The ayes had it

Published

3 years ago

2022/12/11

The first budget proper of the Ranil Wickremesinghe presidency was concluded on Thursday with the third reading vote comfortably passed. So also the second reading. This was widely predicted and there were no surprises at voting time. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and some of the other northern MPs absented themselves during the vote as they had earlier assured they would while former Justice CV Wigneswaran abstained as he had done on the second reading. This reflected Tamil expectations of something tangible coming out of the president’s promised effort to take steps to finally resolve what has been called the Tamil National Question – a matter outstanding in the national agenda from 1956 if not earlier.

President Wickremesinghe, wearing the finance minister’s hat as two of his predecessors, Presidents Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa did before him, was a frequent presence in parliament during the budget debate, much more so than either CBK or MR had been when they were similarly placed. Wickremesinghe clearly is a parliamentary president who, given his history of an unbroken presence in the House from 1977 to August 2020 when he lost his seat, obviously enjoys its hurly burly. This was clearly demonstrated in the just concluded budget debate where he made it a point to be in the chamber or otherwise be physically present in his parliament office to exercise his constitutional right to participate or intervene in the proceedings of the legislature.

It has been widely speculated that Wickremesinghe, who was elected the ninth president of this country by the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) on July 20 this year to serve out Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s balance term, has been under considerable pressure to expand his present 20-member cabinet. Such pressure is believed to have increased with the return to the country of Basil Rajapaksa credited to be the puppeteer pulling the SLPP strings. RW of course is very well aware of the public hatred of politicians, particularly those very visible during the Rajapaksa Raj demonstrating affluence beyond their known means. The Rajapaksas were kept out in the first round of cabinet making. But eldest brother Chamal’s son was one among the new state ministers. MR’s ambitions for Namal is a given. But will the president cave into a demand that Mahinda’s son returns to cabinet office? Is he strong enough to resist that if push comes to shove?

Many have beens have been knocking on the cabinet door anxious to remount their previous pedestals. Wickremesinghe who would have far preferred to have a lean and mean cabinet, particularly at this time when many sacrifices are demanded of the common man, braved unpopularity to appoint a clutch of non-cabinet state ministers last September after the cabinet appointments in July. This was under SLPP pressure but several seniors of that party and other claimants are still out in the cold. Following the final budget vote on Thursday, parliament watchers have been wondering whether there were signals from the voting that some cabinet and state ministry appointments are due shortly. It was noted that a Tamil Progressive Alliance MP abstained courting disciplinary action by his party. Dr. Sudarshini Fernandopulle and Duminda Dissanayake voted in favour provoking speculation that they may return to office.

The outcome of the voting obviously signals that there is no political instability in the country that the opposition wishfully hopes for. The steam generated by the aragalaya, as claimed by the government during the budget debate, has now died down to a large extent. There are no kilometers long petrol/diesel queues, cooking gas is freely available although the recent price reduction has been reversed, milk powder is available though at a largely unaffordable price that has depressed demand, and the power cuts are tolerable thanks to the rain gods. State Minister of Finance Ranjith Siyambalapitiya did try to credit the present administration for these favourable developments during the closing stages of the budget debate. But as pointed out by JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the fact that we have stopped repaying our foreign debt some months ago and are not servicing interest has eased pressure on the critical foreign exchange problem and enabled what appears to be some flexibility.

State Minister Diana Gamage, whose parliamentary seat is at risk if ongoing investigations establish that she is a British citizen made some waves during the concluding stages of the budget as our front page news story reports today. Gamage who wants to grow ganja commercially and is advocating a night economy in the interests of the tourism industry has threatened the SJB in Parliament saying “If I go down, you go down with me.” The state minister who claims that the Samagi Jana Balavegaya belongs to her is now on record in Hansard saying that this party would be ‘null and void’ if she is deemed to be a foreign citizen. There is no doubt that the hurriedly cobbled SJB took over a party already recognized and registered with the Elections Commission to run at the last general election in August 2020. Gamage was, of course, rewarded for this with an SJB national list seat in the incumbent parliament.

While she has now joined the government and taken office as a state minister for which she has been pilloried not so long ago, what direction the whole business will take remains to be seen. The SJB wants to kick her out of the party she says belongs to her. Such expulsion will cost her national list seat. She, like Geetha Kumarasinghe before her, will also lose her seat if it is determined that she held the citizenship of another country when nominations for the last parliamentary election was received. But these are still early days. A lot of ground will have to be covered in Hultsdorp before there’s finality. Given the laws delays, whether this will happen before the next election is anybody’s guess.

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Editorial

Reforms, frogs and tortoises

Published

12 hours ago

2026/01/15

Sahan Weerasooriya

Thursday 15th January, 2026

The government finally swallowed its pride and postponed the implementation of education reforms meant for Grade 06. It has said its reform initiative is on track, but it is very likely to avoid a headlong rush. It may not concede defeat, but it is obviously wary of performing another high-wire act without a safety net amidst protests.

The government has done itself a favour by shelving the education reforms for Grade 06. Protests tend to snowball, and the Satyagraha campaigns, rallies and marches against the education reforms have the potential to develop into another ‘go-home’ movement.

The opponents of the current education reforms are now demanding that the government deep-six its reform package wholesale and ensure that the architects thereof bear the cost of error-ridden modules, amounting to about Rs. 70 million. Their message is loud and clear; those who wasted state funds for printing those modules will face legal action when the NPP loses power.

The Opposition and the trade unions critical of the proposed education reforms are still out for Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya’s scalp, blaming her for the reform mess in the education sector. They are also making many unsubstantiated allegations against her. Trouble is far from over for her and the government.

Now that all stakeholders have agreed that the education system needs reform, the government should begin formulating education reforms anew while adopting an inclusive approach. The best way to set about the task of introducing reforms in any sector is to consult all key stakeholders and secure their concurrence.

The NPP government led by the JVP, which is a great admirer of the Chinese Communist Party, should have adopted the gradual trial-and-error approach recommended by Deng Xiaoping, and crossed the river by feeling the stones. Instead of taking one experimental step at a time and adapting to circumstances, the NPP government made the mistake of plunging headfirst into reforming the education system.

It has been proposed that the government set up a Presidential Task Force consisting of experts, political representatives, trade unionists and other stakeholders to reform the education system. This proposal deserves serious consideration. A broadly representative task force will help ensure the smooth implementation of education reforms. Well begun is said to be half done.

Meanwhile, Tuesday’s meeting between President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and some trade unions representing teachers and principals has been viewed in some quarters as part of a divide-and-rule strategy, for it has caused a rift between the trade unionists invited by the President and others, who claim that the event was scripted. However, those who met the President on Tuesday have thrown their weight behind the campaign to recover the cost of poorly crafted learning modules that have been shelved.

President of the All Ceylon United Teachers’ Association Ven. Yalwala Pannasekera Thera, one of the trade unionists who met the President on Tuesday, has given a karmic twist to the education reform issue. Tearing into the NPP politicians and state officials responsible for printing the badly drafted modules, he said yesterday those who misused funds meant for children would be reborn as frogs in Beira Lake and tortoises in the Kandy Lake.

Politicians who misuse state funds and abuse power may find themselves in the company of frogs and tortoises even before they go the way of all flesh. One may recall that in 2022, some politicians of the previous dispensation and their supporters swam with frogs in Beira Lake, where angry mobs plunged them. The same fate is likely to befall all politicians who let power get the better of them, resort to highhanded action, flaunting mandates and supermajorities, and thereby test the public’s patience.

Editorial

Ubiquitous scams

Published

2 days ago

2026/01/14

Sahan Weerasooriya

Wednesday 14th January, 2026

The police have warned of an escalation in online financial scams. There have been numerous complaints of such frauds, and fraudsters often offer online employment opportunities, investment schemes or other financial benefits, luring victims into transferring money to their accounts, the police have said.

The commonest online scams in Sri Lanka, according to cybersecurity warnings during the past two years, are deceptive loan schemes, phishing links, fake job offers, work-from-home frauds, love traps, pyramid schemes, investment and crypto frauds, lottery prize and shopping rackets, and duping people into sharing their banking details with unknown parties. Common precautions against these scams are said to include ignoring suspicious links, never sharing passwords or OTPs with others, and being sceptical of lottery wins and unsolicited employment or investment offers.

Scams are as old as the hills; they have proliferated during the past couple of decades due to the phenomenal expansion of social media. Humans have a penchant for trust and leaps of faith. One of the earliest known scams occurred in 300 BC, when two Greek sailors sank their cargo ship to cheat money lenders. Historians inform us that some members of the Praetorian Guard ‘sold’ the Roman Empire, of all things, after murdering their master. Sir Isaac Newton struggled to outwit forgers following his appointment as the Warden of the Royal Mint. A con-artist sold the Eiffel Tower to an unsuspecting buyer about 100 years ago. Such instances abound in world history.

Scams mushroom at all levels of society in this country, and it is not possible for the police and other state institutions to crack down on all of them. There’s said to be a sucker born every minute. The same is true of scammers. Most Sri Lankans do not heed warnings and invest money and even their nest eggs in fraudulent schemes only to regret. The scam victims, except those who invest their black money, deserve sympathy and help, and everything possible must be done to bring the scammers to justice. Various factors drive the ordinary people to take such risks and fall prey to scammers, one being low banking returns, but it is debatable whether taxpayers’ money should be used to compensate those who lose their clandestine investments.

Besides online scammers, loan sharks operating in the guise of microfinance companies have become a curse. They exploit the poor, especially those in the rural sector, with impunity. Many borrowers end up losing their belongings, including agricultural equipment put up as collateral. They have no one to turn to. On Monday (12), the Sectoral Oversight Committee on Economic Development and International Relations approved the proposed Microfinance and Credit Regulatory Authority Bill, subject to amendments. It is hoped that we are not going to witness another false dawn, and the laws this vital Bill seeks to make will help liberate the poor from the clutches of the microfinance Shylocks.

Perhaps, the biggest scams in this country are not in the financial sector but in politics, and they are taken for granted. Remember the much-advertised political promises that helped politicians hoodwink the public and savour power—‘rice from the moon’, ‘eight pounds of grain plus a righteous society’, ‘a country free from corruption and violence’, ‘a prosperous future’, ‘good governance’ and ‘a beautiful life’? The best way to deal with those who are responsible for such politico-social scams is to make election manifestos and campaign promises legally binding, and change the existing electoral system to introduce the recall mechanism so that it will be possible to unseat the crafty politicians who secure state power by making umpteen Machiavellian promises and betray people’s trust. But the question is whether the politicians who alone can make such laws will ever legislate for the politico-social scams in question to be brought to an end. We are reminded of a question Juvenal famously asked about two millennia ago: “Who guards the guards?”

Editorial

A dirty political war

Published

3 days ago

2026/01/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

Tuesday 13th January, 2026

What began as a debate on the government’s education reforms has descended into a dirty political war, with the propaganda brigades of both the JVP/NPP and the Opposition carrying out vilification campaigns against the key figures in the rival camps. Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, who is also the Minister of Education, has become a victim of a savage character assassination campaign, which no reasonable person will hesitate to condemn unreservedly. Shame on those who have stooped so low as to carry out personal attacks on her!

What has led to the current dispute in the education sector is basically the government’s intransigence. While claiming to be willing to consider dissenting views, it is all out to shove its reform package down the throats of other key stakeholders who unfortunately want the baby also thrown out with the bathwater, so to speak. A prerequisite for resolving the current conflict, which has the potential to cripple the education sector, is for both warring parties to soften their stands and negotiate.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is scheduled to meet the representatives of the trade unions representing teachers and principals shortly, we are told. One can only hope that two sides will move towards a rapprochement, which is the need of the hour.

The government ought to stop cherishing the delusion that its mandate is carte blanche for it to do as it pleases with no heed for dissent. It is only wishful thinking that the government will be able to ensure the implementation of its education reforms without the fullest cooperation of the frontline stakeholders—school teachers and principals.

Even the staunchest opponents of the education reforms at issue agree that the education system has to be reformed. What they are opposing tooth and nail is the manner in which the government has set about the task of introducing education reforms and its attempts to impose a fait accompli on other key stakeholders. The Opposition is not without a political agenda where its campaign against the education reforms is concerned; it will go to any extent to gain political mileage.

The government has erred by compressing the process of formulating education reforms into a year or so and proceeding at a pell-mell pace to implement them. Teachers’ and principals’ trade unions are of the view that some modules were prepared in just three months.

By rushing to reform the education sector, the government has provided the Opposition with a fresh rallying point and the latter is making the most of it. Various associations have sprung up overnight purportedly to ‘save free education’, and some Opposition politicians are planning to launch fasts against the education reforms.

A collective of Opposition parties held a protest in Matugama, the other day, claiming to safeguard free education. A group of NPP supporters staged a demonstration in the same township against the malicious propaganda attacks on Prime Minister Amarasuriya. They vehemently condemned the Opposition for insulting women. Their message must have struck a responsive chord with the public regardless what the Opposition politicians and their propaganda hitmen may say about them. Worryingly, the female JVP/NPP supporters have remained silent on scurrilous attacks the pro-government propagandists carry out on women in the Opposition; they have launched a vilification campaign against a young woman who spoke at a joint Opposition rally at Nugegoda recently. Politicians and propagandists in both the government and the Opposition must do unto others as they would have others do unto them.

Since all stakeholders agree that the education system needs reform, the government should put its controversial reform package on hold immediately and invite teachers, principals, the Opposition and others to a serious discussion.

The government would do well to refrain from crossing the Rubicon and be flexible enough to listen to the other stakeholders and make a course correction. It is hoped that the focus of the talks to be held between the government and the opponents of the education reforms will be on how to retain the baby while throwing away the bathwater.