Wednesday 12th February, 2025

The tragic collision between two private buses in Kurunegala on Monday snuffed out four lives and left 25 others injured; five of them are battling death, according to media reports. The police say the bus that caused the mishap was plying at 90 km/h, which is close to the maximum speed limit on local expressways.

Speeding is the order of the day on roads in Sri Lanka, where deaths caused by accidents average seven or eight a day, but nothing much has apparently been done all these years to ensure road safety. It is said that in the days of yore, people would write their last wills before embarking on pilgrimages to faraway places such as Kataragama, given the perils of their arduous journeys. The modern-day Sri Lankans are not entirely free from such trepidation; they cannot so much as cross the road without fear of being run over by speeding vehicles.

It was reported last month that 30 advanced speed guns worth Rs. 91 million had been imported for the traffic police. Didn’t any of the police stations in the areas through which the aforesaid ill-fated buses plied have a speed gun?

Sri Lankan bus drivers are a dangerous lot, as is public knowledge. They are capable of making even atheists pray. Their vehicles are veritable mobile shrines, but the various religious icons displayed therein are redundant, for their spine-tingling driving alone is sufficient to keep their passengers reminded of deities and the Buddha.

Expressways are equipped with speed cameras, which have had a deterrent effect on drivers with lead feet, and help cash-strapped governments rake in a lot of money by way of traffic fines. Given Sri Lankans’ propensity for speeding and committing other traffic offences, installing speed cameras along the roads where accidents frequently occur will not only help save lives but also prove a boon for the incumbent government, which is under pressure to increase its revenue substantially to qualify for the next tranche of the IMF loan.

Police Spokesman, SSP Buddhika Manatunga yesterday urged the public to speak up if the vehicles they travelled in were driven in a reckless manner because it was their precious lives that were in danger. One cannot but agree with him. Passengers usually do not voice their concerns, much less fight for their rights. Curiously, those who ousted an Executive President by taking to the streets suffer in silence in private buses whose drivers ride roughshod over them besides exposing them to danger. Their submissiveness only fosters indiscipline among bus crews. Hence the need for passengers to pluck up the courage to challenge issues such as dangerous driving.

The Police Spokesman also requested the public to inform the police of instances of reckless driving, etc. They should do so for their own sake, but what guarantee is there that the police will respond swiftly to such complaints. Most of all, how can passengers convey such information to the police? Are there special telephone numbers and dedicated personnel to entertain passengers’ complaints?

True, the police alone cannot tackle the menace of reckless driving, and they need public cooperation. But they themselves must take stern action against wild drivers. A few weeks ago, the police used plainclothesmen to travel in private buses and record offenses committed by their drivers, who were made to face legal action subsequently. That method yielded the desired results, but the bus workers and owners started protesting. They have apparently had the last laugh thanks to their political connections. The government stands accused of giving kid-glove treatment to powerful rice millers who exploit the public, and the private bus mudalalis who not only thrive at the expense of commuters but also endanger the latter’s lives with impunity.

Let the government and the police be urged to resume their road discipline campaign.

Tuesday 11th February, 2025

Most detractors of the NPP claimed, before last year’s elections, that Sri Lanka would find itself in the same predicament as Oceania in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, if the JVP-led alliance was voted into power, but thankfully their prognostication has not come true although the NPP parliamentary group is said to be under the spell of a kind of Big Brother, as evident from their regimented conduct. However, it looks as if the current dispensation needed a Ministry of Excuses, as it were, a la the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Love and the Ministry of Plenty in Oceania, given the sheer number of excuses the NPP leaders trot out on a daily basis albeit ineffectively.

Sri Lanka has suffered what may be described as the biggest shock at the hands of a monkey since Hanuman’s arson attack mentioned in Ramayana, if a statement made by the Minister in charge of the power sector, Kumara Jayakody, about Sunday’s countrywide power outage is anything to go by.

Power cuts have returned due to the latest breakdown of the Norochcholai coal-fired power plant. Minister Jayakody lost no time in attributing Sunday’s power failure to ‘a monkey coming into contact with a transformer’ at the CEB’s Panadura Grid Substation. Subsequently, he and other government politicians started blaming the previous governments which, they said, had not developed the national grid.

The NPP government considers itself infallible and blames its predecessors and even wild animals whenever something goes wrong. Some of its members have blamed the current coconut shortage on depredation by monkeys, making one wonder whether those animals intensified raids on coconut cultivations after last year’s regime change.

An NPP minister continues to draw heavy flak for having faulted the public for consuming coconut oil and pol sambol excessively thereby worsening the current coconut shortage. The government has also claimed that the rice shortage is attributable, inter alia, to the practice of Sri Lankans feeding their pets with rice! Before last year’s elections, the JVP/NPP accused large-scale millers of hoarding rice, and manipulating the paddy/rice markets to exploit both farmers and consumers alike, and pledged to end millers’ exploitative practices with a single stroke of the presidential pen. But that promise has gone unfulfilled and the millers’ cartel is far from tamed.

Some former military officers who contested the last general election on the NPP ticket thundered from election platforms that they needed only two months to wipe out the underworld. Today, they are in power, but hardly a day passes without underworld killings being reported.

The NPP government should seriously consider setting up the Ministry of Excuses fast so that it will be able to present its excuses, ruses, etc., in an effective manner and prevent its members from making contradictory statements by way of self-exculpation.

Ironically, in the late 1980s the JVP unleashed mindless terror purportedly to save the country from a ‘monkey army’ (derogatory term it used for the Indian Peace Keeping Force). It destroyed countless CEB assets including transformers in a bid to cripple the economy. Fortunately, it failed in its endeavour.

Going by Minister Jayakody’s aforesaid claim, the JVP leaders must be feeling ashamed that in the late 1980s they failed to achieve a task that even a monkey is equal to—causing a countrywide power failure. Today, those who promised to defeat an entire ‘monkey army’ are in power, but they cannot even protect an electricity substation against monkeys!

Monday 10th February, 2025

There seems to be no end in sight to the JVP-led NPP government’s diversionary tactics. Having revealed the values of the official residences occupied by some former Presidents and their imputed rents, the government has now made an issue of the amounts of state funds paid to 43 SLPP politicians as compensation for their properties burnt down by mobs on 09 May 2022 and afterwards.

Media Minister Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa has pointed out, in Parliament, that the amounts paid to the SLPP politicians as compensation are far above what the victims of natural disasters receive. Government politicians have been flogging this issue very hard in a bid to cover up their failure to address numerous problems.

The SLPP has said the damage to its MPs’ properties, attacked by rioters, was estimated by the Valuation Department, which, the government says, also assessed the values of the state-owned houses occupied by former Presidents. The NPP insists that the SLPP administration abused its power to have the values of those properties inflated. One can use that claim to cast suspicion on the credibility of the valuation of the former President’s official residences!

The NPP’s argument that one of the conditions on which the SLPP MPs elected Ranil Wickremesinghe in Parliament was that they be compensated for their properties destroyed by rioters sounds tenable. Those beleaguered MPs also wanted Wickremesinghe to ensure their safety.

When news emerged of a government plan to pay compensation for the aforesaid properties, we argued editorially that first of all it had to be ascertained how funds had been raised for the acquisition of those assets. Most Sri Lankan politicians invest black money in real estate, as is public knowledge. The NPP had three MPs in the last Parliament—Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Harini Amarasuriya and Vijitha Herath—and why didn’t they protest when the SLPP government paid compensation for the destruction of its MPs’ houses? They cannot claim that they were unaware of the payment of compensation at that time, for they even named the countries where the leaders of the past governments had allegedly stashed away stolen funds, which the NPP promised to bring back, didn’t they?

True, it was the SLPP that triggered a tsunami of retaliatory violence on 09 May 2022 by carrying out an unprovoked attack on a group of peaceful protesters on the Galle Face Green. However, that fact cannot be cited in extenuation of the subsequent wave of disproportionate counter violence, which claimed the lives of SLPP MP Amarakeerthi Athukorala and his personal security officer besides leaving a vast trail of destruction.

The NPP government must ensure that all those who assaulted the Galle Face protesters are brought to justice. An investigation must be conducted into the issues the NPP government has raised about the payment of compensation in question and legal action must be instituted if there has been any wrongdoing. Similarly, the need for a thorough investigation into the incidents of retaliatory violence on 09 May 2022 and the subsequent abortive mob attack on Parliament cannot be overstated.

The perpetrators of the attacks on the SLPP MPs’ houses, operated openly, and there have been complaints their victims made to the police, and therefore it will not be difficult to identify the culprits and prosecute them. The SLPP has alleged that some JVP/NPP activists were involved in those violent incidents. The government has denied the allegation vehemently. There is no reason why it should hesitate to order a high-level probe if it has nothing to hide.

The NPP should bear in mind that the possibility of a situation similar to what we witnessed in May 2022 occurring again cannot be ruled out. Gotabaya Rajapaksa secured the executive presidency outright and SLPP had a two-thirds power in Parliament, but less than three years after the 2019 regime change, the SLPP leaders had to head for the hills. That can happen to anyone.