Wednesday 4th December, 2024

The Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government was responsible for turning the electoral process into a mess. It arbitrarily postponed the Local Government (LG) elections. The Election Commission (EC) had made all arrangements for the mini polls to be held when President Ranil Wickremesinghe, ably assisted by the SLPP, threw a monkey wrench in the works in defiance of a court order; he refused to allocate funds for the elections.

The LG polls have been rescheduled for 2025, and the Cabinet has reportedly decided to amend the Local Authorities Elections Ordinance to call for fresh nominations. It has in fact chosen to cut the Gordian knot. Amending the LG election laws is the only way to cause the previous nomination lists to lapse. Many of those who secured nominations to contest the LG polls last year have either changed political parties or left the country or gone the way of all flesh. Some of them have entered Parliament.

It has been reported that the LG polls are likely to be held either in January or February 2025. The Supreme Court has ordered that the LG elections be held as soon as possible, and why the EC is in overdrive is understandable.

Ideally, the LG polls should be conducted under the Proportional Representation (PR) system until the Mixed-Member Proportional system is streamlined; the current electoral system has led to a huge increase in the number of local council members from about 4,000 to more than 8,000.

The upcoming LG polls will assume the importance of a national election because it will serve as a litmus test on the new government’s popularity. The NPP’s impressive victory in the general election will still be fresh when the country goes to the polls to elect local councils, but the government’s maiden Budget will have been unveiled by that time, and the people will be able to see how serious the ruling alliance is about fulfilling its main election promises, especially pay hikes for state employees, substantial tax revisions and relief for the needy.

The government has admitted that the IMF will have a say in the formulation of Budget 2025, and therefore it is doubtful whether the NPP will be able to carry out some of its key promises. More importantly, the government will have to reveal its position on the imputed rental income tax, which is required to be introduced early next year.

The government already stands accused of having reneged on some of its main election promises. Before the September presidential election, the NPP vowed to slash fuel prices, claiming that they remained high due to unconscionable government taxes and corruption. The people were given to understand that electricity tariffs would be reduced substantially, and some NPP politicians claimed that a 30% decrease in electricity prices was in the realm of possibility, but they are now humming a different tune. The police have used brutal force to crush a development officers’ protest near the Education Ministry. Most of those protesters backed the NPP in the presidential and parliamentary elections. The Prevention of Terrorism Act, which the JVP/NPP pledged to abolish immediately after forming a government has been used against some social media activists. Millers have created a rice shortage and jacked up the prices of all varieties of rice. The government has baulked at taking tough action it promised against the unscrupulous millers whom its leader blamed for hoarding paddy and fleecing consumers and farmers, during the NPP’s parliamentary election campaign. Coconut prices have gone through the roof. Farmers affected by floods are crying out for relief; they are resentful that the government has offered only Rs. 40,000 per acre as compensation for crop losses.

The biggest challenge before the government ahead of the LG polls will be to retain its approval ratings vis-à-vis the Opposition’s all-out efforts to whip up anti-incumbency sentiments and regain lost ground.

Tuesday 3rd December, 2024

Incompetent governments that fail to live up to people’s expectations turn to the media as a convenient scapegoat, attributing their failure and declining popularity to bad press. Never do they own up to their bungling, much less mend their ways. This is particularly true of Sri Lanka, where the media has suffered at the hands of successive unpopular regimes. The culture of media bashing has caught on in this country; the newly-elected JVP-led NPP government has already thrown down the gauntlet, indicating its readiness to curb media freedom.

The hunt for social media activists who refuse to kowtow to rulers has begun to all intents and purposes. Digital platforms are not entirely blameless, though. Many of those who call themselves social media influencers are in fact polluters of the digital realm. These purveyors of hate speech, fake news, deepfakes, etc., abuse social platforms in such a way that their sordid operations bolster arguments being peddled in some quarters for stronger laws to regulate social media; they are ruining the potential of social platforms to evolve into a real alternative public media space. Guided by Rafferty’s rules, they carry out vilification campaigns and even offer their services as propaganda hired guns. They are an asset to oppressive governments, paradoxical as it may sound, for they create conditions for rulers who are intoxicated with power to suppress media freedom across the board and silence dissent. However, on no grounds can the Big Brother tactics that governments employ to railroad social and mainstream media into toeing the official line be countenanced.

The JVP-NPP combine is acting as if it had already forgotten that social media enabled it to gain a turbo boost for its efforts to capture state power. The present-day rulers abused the digital space to their heart’s content to disseminate countless half-truths, mistruths and lies, demonise their political opponents and project themselves as saviours. Today, the boot is on the other foot, and their rivals are giving them a dose of their own medicine; they are at the receiving end of what can be described as piranha attacks in the digital realm. Their reaction has been to try to muzzle user-generated content platforms in a bid to intimidate the media into submission. They have gone to the extent of making the police use the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which they promised to abolish during their presidential and parliamentary election campaigns, to arrest some social media activists for posting online content pertaining to the recent commemoration of slain LTTE leaders. The matter, which is now before a Magistrate’s Court, is best left to the learned judge concerned.

Meanwhile, those who commemorate dead terrorists responsible for killing thousands of civilians, destroying properties worth billions of rupees and suppressing the people’s democratic rights including franchise are without any moral right to advocate democracy. Strangely, all victims of terror, except those who perished in the Easter Sunday attacks, have been forgotten. There is a pressing need for a mass movement to seek justice for the victims of terrorism unleashed by the LTTE, the JVP and governments.

As for the arrests at issue, the question is why our brave police have chosen to give kid-glove treatment to those who commemorated the dead Tigers in violation of a ban. This turn of events makes us wonder whether Kekille, a legendary eccentric king in folklore, who allowed wrongdoers to get off scot-free and punished others, actually lived in this country, for Sri Lankan leaders of all political hues have the same absurd traits as he and therefore can be considered his descendants. Those who expected a hiatus in the Kekille rule after the recent regime change must be disappointed.

Let the government be urged to stop blaming the media, get its act together and make good on its election pledges, which are legion. It had better realise that mammoth majorities alone do not make strong governments, as evident from the fate that befell the governments of Mahinda Rajapaksa and his sibling, Gotabaya, who also enjoyed a two-thirds majority in Parliament but had to show his pursuers a clean pair of heels in 2022.

Having talked the talk, the JVP-NPP leaders must walk the walk without taking on the media and testing the people’s patience lest only their National List MP Sugath Thilakeratne, a former champion runner, should be safe in case of a situation similar to the one we witnessed in 2022 arising again––absit omen!

Monday 2nd December, 2024

India’s Adani Group has been in the news of late —for all the wrong reasons. It has come under fire for very serious corporate malpractices for the umpteenth time. This time around, it has had legal action in the US to contend with. The US Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York, has made an official announcement that a five-count criminal indictment was unsealed on 20 Nov., 2024, in federal court in Brooklyn, inter alia, charging Adani Group Chairman Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain, and some executives of the Indian Energy Company, with ‘conspiracies to commit securities and wire fraud and substantive securities fraud for their roles in a multi-billion-dollar scheme to obtain funds from US investors and global financial institutions on the basis of false and misleading statements.’

Curiously, legal action against the Adani Group bigwigs, in the US, does not seem to have caused much concern to Sri Lanka, which has been described by the international media as one of the four countries that have come out in support of the Indian conglomerate under a cloud. Other backers of the Adani Group have been named as Israel, the UAE and Tanzania.

Cabinet Spokesman and Media Minister Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa has gone on record as saying that the NPP government is looking into the matter and reports have been called from ministries involving the Adani projects here. But the Sri Lanka Ports Authority reportedly lost no time in declaring its continued confidence in Adani’s role in expanding Sri Lanka’s port infrastructure, according to media reports. This, it has done although the outlook of several Adani companies which are affiliates or parents of project companies in Sri Lanka have been cut to negative by global rating agencies, after the institution of legal action in the US against the group. Sri Lanka should have been particularly concerned about the reports that the US International Development Finance Corporation, which is partially funding the Colombo port terminal, has reportedly said it continues to conduct due diligence to ensure that all aspects of the project meet its rigorous standards before any loan disbursements are made, and it hasn’t concluded a final agreement on the loan worth $500 million to the Adani Group under scrutiny.

When the indictment of the Adani grandees in the US became known internationally, one expected the JVP-led NPP government, which has embarked on a crusade against corruption, to seize the opportunity to order a high-level investigation into the questionable deals its predecessor entered into with the Adani Group. Environmental outfits, Opposition parties, and good governance activists have been calling for the cancellation of Sri Lanka’s agreements with the Adani Group.

The NPP government should have emulated Bangladesh in handling the very serious issue at hand. A review committee formed by Bangladesh’s interim government has recommended assigning an investigation agency to probe power agreements inked by ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s regime with the Adani Group, and others. That is the way a country should act to ensure that its national interest prevails over everything else.

The JVP-NPP combine very effectively campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, condemning its opponents as corrupt, mostly on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations, and won elections pledging to rid the country of bribery and corruption. Having done so, it ought to explain why it has allowed Sri Lanka to be bracketed with the countries that are supporting the Adani Group despite a host of damning allegations against it, especially in the US. Such a categorisation is the last thing this country needs at a time when its image, which suffered immense damage under previous governments, has to be repaired to attract foreign investors. Is the NPP government under pressure from India to back Adani, who is a close ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi?

Let the NPP government, which pontificates ad nauseam about the virtues of transparency, integrity and corporate best practices, be urged to muster courage to order a thorough probe into Sri Lanka’s agreements with the tainted Adani Group.