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Editorial

The new normal after six weeks

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While the relaxing, not lifting, of the quarantine curfew which ran for an extended period of six weeks was compelled by socio-economic rather than preventive imperatives, it is obvious that the country cannot let down its guard. Cognizance of this reality by the decision makers is demonstrated by the fact that the “lockdown,” as it was commonly called, has not been totally lifted. The night curfew continues to be in force from 10 pm to 4 am and inter-provincial travel is still not possible. Health guidelines widely disseminated include restrictions on eateries, restaurants, salons and various other social gatherings including weddings, funerals and parties. The whole country without exception will hope that we are gradually returning to normal and the gains of the past two months will not be frittered away as was the case with the disastrous New Year relaxation.

Those of us who left our homes during the weeks of the lockdown, for valid reasons or otherwise, are well aware that the now relaxed restrictions were not tightly enforced. Police did not stop vehicles on the roads and question occupants on where they were headed, except on very few occasions. While the pre-pandemic traffic gridlocks were not in evidence, there nevertheless were a large number of vehicles moving particularly on city streets. While many businesses were closed, several remained open. People must obviously eat and procure their essential supplies so that a total lockdown was neither practical nor possible. Certainly public transport, meaning buses and trains, were not running but it was possible for those not fortunate enough to own a vehicle, be it a car or a motorbike, to find without much difficulty a three-wheeler to get to wherever they needed to go. Most people did not go to work and that accounted for much of the reduced traffic and movement on the roads. But this is now going to change to probably somewhat less than the bad old days. We must wait and see what the availability of public transport will be under this new order and also how employers, whether private or government, will minimize work attendance or insist on workplace presence.

The latest published numbers do reveal a significant decrease in infections and fatalities. But all of us must be fully aware of how quickly this can change as it has both in this country and elsewhere. It is human nature to place the best construction on impending events and there will be the temptation to return at least to near normal. This is most likely to happen for selfish reasons regardless of both personal risk and that to the wider community. Clear breaches of social distancing rules were visible, for example, when liquor shops were permitted to open during the tail end of the so-called lock down; and even physical brawls were seen outside the ubiquitous wine stores. There is no escaping the fact that the cash-strapped government, battling sharp revenue downturns, needed the excise revenues that are a major contributor to state coffers. The decision to reopen liquor shops would have, we believe, been taken totally mindful of the dangers in order to achieve a fine balance. The fact that they were not closed again even in the context of what happened when they were reopened clearly tells its own story.

Of course restrictions, or the lack of them, have their own imperatives. All of us are only too well aware of the sorry state of public transport in this country even in the best of times. Buses and trains are badly congested particularly during peak hours and it will be a job and a half, to use a common colloquialism, to prevent overcrowding and enforce social distancing in them during the new normal effective from dawn on Friday. Although there have been assurances by private bus operators to observe health protocols, accompanied by demands for fare increases on grounds of being compelled to run half-empty buses, how long, if at all, will that last? Like almost all businesses and most ordinary people, bus owners too are feeling the pandemic crunch. So will the police go all out to strictly enforce the rules? Probably not, and if they do, will the bus owners react by withdrawing services? All these are matters that still remain to be seen.

A vitally necessary effort has been made and continues to get the tourism industry restarted to whatever extent present conditions permit. Perhaps this industry, along with self-employed daily paid workers eking out a hand-to-mouth existence, has suffered the most from the pandemic and its economic consequences. There are signs that tourists, particularly from the west, are keen on dodging the forthcoming winter and are tempted to take holidays in warmer climes. They are further enticed by attractive packages on offer. We need not belabor the fact that hundreds of thousands in this country, directly and indirectly, are dependent on tourism for their living. The economic cost to the country as a whole from the drying out of that vital source of foreign exchange is also huge. But how successful these efforts will be even in the context of travel restrictions being relaxed at home and abroad remains to be seen in the weeks ahead. The relaxation of the rules last Sinhala and Tamil New Year was, no doubt, at least partly influenced by the need to give the hotel industry at least the benefits of selling rooms to domestic tourists. But that boomeranged.

What is now necessary is the need for all of us to exercise commonsense in the new normal that dawned last week. We must all continue to wear our masks outside our homes, despite some discomfort, frequently wash our hands, refrain from unnecessary travel, observe social distancing and continue to take necessary precautions under current conditions. Remember at all times that you can be an asymptomatic covid carrier and behave accordingly.



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Editorial

A question of legitimacy

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Monday 5th June, 2023

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, speaking at the National Law Conference, in Nuwara Eliya, on Saturday, urged the political parties represented in Parliament to join forces and help rebuild the economy. One cannot but agree that all political parties are duty bound to sink their differences and unite, for the sake of the country, to put the economy back on an even keel, for all of them have contributed to the process of ruining it albeit to varying degrees. The President also said that political parties should do so instead of calling for elections. There’s the rub! Does this mean that elections will not be held until the economy is turned around? How long will the government take to accomplish that task? What guarantee is there that it will succeed in doing so? What if it fails to straighten up the economy in the foreseeable future? Will the country be without elections indefinitely in such an eventuality? Efforts to revive the economy, we believe, must not be at the expense of the people’s franchise.

President Wickremesinghe argued that none of the parties with parliamentary representation enjoyed the support of 50% of voters. Opinion may be divided on whether his claim holds true for all political parties; those who endorse or challenge this argument will do so without empirical evidence. The best way its validity can be tested is for the government to hold the much-delayed local council elections, which will not lead to a change of government but enable the people to exercise their franchise, express their will, and, more importantly, help defuse the build-up of anger in the polity.

The SLPP has lost popular support though it polled more than 50% of the total number of valid votes at the presidential election in 2019 and the parliamentary polls in 2020; President Gotabaya Rajapaksa quit and Mahinda Rajapaksa stepped down as the Prime Minister due to public protests. They would not have done so if they had been confident that the people who had voted for them overwhelmingly were still with them. The UNP polled only about 2% of the votes countrywide at the 2020 general election and has only one MP. Thus, the SLPP-UNP administration lacks legitimacy to govern the country, and that is why an early general election has to be held so that the people can elect a new parliament; ideally, it ought to stop manipulating numbers in the current Parliament to retain its hold on power and seek a fresh mandate from the people by holding a snap general election, or at least face local government/Provincial Council elections without further delay.

Public resentment is palpable, and the government has become dependent on the police and the military for its survival, and keeps postponing elections. Political stability, which is a prerequisite for economic recovery, will be at risk as long as the people remain resentful of a failed government, which clings on to power in spite of having bankrupted the country. What the current regime is doing is tantamount to a rapist retaining the custody of his victim! It is only natural that the people have lost faith in the government.

President Wickremesinghe also said at Saturday’s National Law Conference that the majority of people had lost faith in elections, and politics, and whether it was the parliament, the judiciary, the media, trade unions or professionals, the people lacked trust in the entire system. There is a general consensus on this assertion.

The abuse of the National List (NL) mechanism by political parties to bring in defeated candidates and persons of their choice as appointed MPs is one of the main causes of the erosion of public faith in elections. The NL is a constitutional wormhole, as it were, which has to be sealed. Thankfully, all is not lost if relatively high voter turnouts at elections are any indication. Anti-politics, which means people’s hostility towards established political systems, parties, institutions or practices, is manifestly on the rise, and this situation is attributable, among other things, to the presence of many undesirable persons among politicians and people’s representatives, rampant corruption, the abuse of power and public funds, and the prevailing culture of impunity.

Most of the factors that gave rise to last year’s socio-political upheavals are still there; they have the potential to trigger another popular uprising of tsunamic proportions. Hence the need for the government to mend its ways and tread cautiously without suppressing democracy and provoking the public.

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Editorial

Tea snapshot

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The publication of Merril. J. Fernando’s autobiography last month is a useful peg to hang a discussion on the Ceylon tea industry – we advisedly call it Ceylon tea rather than Sri Lanka tea – as the former is the name by which this unique product is known globally. Merril Fernando, of course, needs no introduction. He is very well known in this country as the creator of the Dilmah brand he coined from the names of his two sons, Dilhan and Malik, which he took to the world outside making it the best known nationally owned tea brand in Sri Lanka. As we said in a review of the book last Sunday, MJF is not the country’s biggest tea exporter but his is the best known nationally-owned brand of Ceylon tea in the tea drinking world.

During the British colonial years and the early post-Independence period, tea was our major export and foreign exchange earner. But decades ago garments overtook tea and also, remittances from blue collar workers striking out overseas to support their families back home became a reckonable factor in the country’s foreign exchange budget. Net earnings from tea, obviously, was far higher than what garments, that had by far become the country’s largest manufacturing industry fairly quickly, brought in. That was because the imported input into tea was a fraction of what the clothing factories had to import to manufacture their product. This included not only fabrics but much more. The labour was the major value adding factor in the domestic garment industry.

The major imported input into the tea industry is fertilizer. Like garments, tea growing too is a labour intensive industry. Onetime Finance Minister Ronnie de Mel who presented 10 national budget for the J.R. Jayewardene regime from 1977 to 1988 once famously said that Sri Lanka’s economy sits on a tripod of women workers – those slaving on the tea fields, working in the garment factories and venturing out as domestic servants largely to the Middle East. Never were truer words spoken. The British brought in indentured Tamil labour from India to work on their tea estates under harsh conditions because the upcountry peasantry was reluctant for various reasons to work on the plantations. These were created at tremendous environmental cost on land sold for a pittance under the infamous Waste Lands Ordinance of 1840.

This stipulated that “all forest, waste, unoccupied or uncultivated land was to be presumed to be the property of the Crown until the contrary is proved.” This resulted in the denuding of the country’s mountain slopes clothed with montane rain forests providing the sponge-like catchments for the rivers flowing through the valleys. The price paid was irreparable ecological damage to first plant coffee and then tea. The upcountry peasantry lost their common grazing land and much more to this despoliation that brought fame and fortune to British plantation owning companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange. Ceylon tea soon earned the reputation of being the world’s best and Merril. J. Fernando in his memorable over six decade long journey through the industry retains at age 92 a passion for the product that was the foundation of his success.

Apart from very readable accounts of his upbringing and early years covered in the book, Fernando has dwelt on the exploitation of Ceylon tea by the British whose chief focus was the bottom line. He writes that during the period of his training as a tea-taster in the UK he was greatly distressed “by the ruthless exploitation of our tea industry and its workers that took place in London.” He had developed a great respect for the British as a result of his friendship with many Brits resident her e as well as his employers who controlled much of the tea export trade. But all that was shaken when he realized what was being done in London to Ceylon tea by the British who dominated the global tea trade in Mincing Lane, “the world’s undisputed tea center controlling and manipulating the distribution and marketing of tea from grower countries.” He says that resulted in producers, especially those in Ceylon, being held to ransom adding that we were then more vulnerable to market manipulation than any other grower as about 90% of national production was being exported, a large proportion going to the UK.

A major service rendered to Ceylon tea by Merril Fernando was his resistance to efforts to make Sri Lanka a so-called ‘tea hub’ by importing cheap teas and blending them with Ceylon tea. This would have been a profitable business but at the cost of both the unique character and reputation of Ceylon tea. In the middle seventies, as result of the JVPs 1971 adventure attributed by the then rulers to land hunger, the land reform laws compelled the sale 150,000 acres of British-owned sterling estates at a price of Rs. 1,125 an acre (pounds 42 and 50 pence). It was agreed that the compensation would be “prompt, effective (meaning may be remitted) and adequate.” Payment was concluded over four years. Rather than alleviate land hunger, the plantations were vested in two monolithic state corporation, the Sri Lanka State Plantations Corporation and the Janatha Estates Development Board.

Despite the presence of 23 Regional Plantation Companies managing state-owned plantations leased to them in 14 regions, 70% of Sri Lanka’s tea is produced by nearly half a million smallholders mostly in the low country. Today the industry is hard-pressed for labour with the tea workers lot way below minimum norms. But the industry remains a vital segment of the Sri Lankan economy.

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Editorial

Fish or cut bait!

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Saturday 3rd June, 2023

Long lines of vehicles were seen near filling stations yesterday as well, and it may be a couple of days before the situation is brought under control. Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera has threatened tough action against the fuel stations that did not maintain adequate stocks due to speculation about fuel price reductions. But the government’s bark is worse than its bite.

Worryingly, the country is experiencing a crippling fuel shortage while the GCE O/L examination is on. About 472,500 candidates are sitting it at 3,568 centres. More than 35,000 persons, mostly teachers, are reportedly on examination duty. The government apparently has no concern for these students.

Ruling party politicians bellow rhetoric, but fuel station owners always have the last laugh, for most of them have political connections. They do not place orders for fuel if they get wind of possible downward price revisions in a bid to avoid losses but make a killing when fuel prices are increased. Thus, they have the best of both worlds at the expense of their customers, who have to grin and bear it.

The Ceylon Petroleum Corporation and the Ceylon Petroleum Storage Terminals Ltd., would continue fuel distribution over the weekend as well, Minister Wijesekera said on Friday. The need for such measures would not have arisen if the government had acted wisely. An increase in the petroleum sector overtime bill will cost the state coffers dear, and its losses will be passed on to the public.

The government should have known better than to increase the fuel quota on the eve of price revisions, without taking steps to ensure that fuel would be freely available for a steep increase in the demand to be met. It couldn’t have been unaware that the easing of fuel rationing, and price reductions would lead to a huge increase in the demand for petrol and diesel and there would be a shortage thereof unless action was taken to meet the shortfall in the fuel supply. One can only hope that it will learn from its mistakes in dealing with the filling station owners, who are manically focussed on furthering their interests and maximising profits with no heed for the public or the economy.

It is a mistake for the government to effect fuel price revisions on a specific day every month since it cannot ensure that all filling stations maintain adequate stocks in case of price reductions. At present, fuel station owners do not have supplies replenished for days on end if they fear price decreases, and there is no one to regulate them. They are apparently guided by Rafferty’s rules or no rules at all. The cantankerous government politicians should be asked to exercise control over their restless tongues, and refrain from announcing fuel price reduction in advance.

The government ought to do everything in its power to ensure that all filling stations maintain sufficient stocks regularly, price revisions or no price revisions. It has to get tough with those who fail to do so and muster the courage to revoke their licences. It should fish or cut bait.

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