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US Election Down to the Wire, Sri Lanka has Turned the Page

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Kamala Harris and Donald Trump

by Rajan Philips

In about ten days, on November 5, the US will have its quadrennial presidential election along with its biennial House and Senate elections. The presidential election is literally down to the wire, and the two candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, are fighting it out at the margins in the so called seven swing states. At the time of writing, it is a total toss up and there is no certainty about the outcome.

In a presidential election year, the American voters mark their ballots to elect their president for four years, a third of their 100 senators for six years, and all 435 members of the House of Representatives for two years. The elections to the Senate and the House are called the ‘down ballot races’, below the main presidential runoff.

Traditionally, voters used to vote the same way (either Democrat or Republican) up and down the ballot. Not anymore. And the candidates up and down the ballot are also vigorously minding their own races without too much of a co-ordinated effort to sustain a unified campaign.

Trump doesn’t care if the Republican Senate and House candidates are winning or losing. He only cares about his result for he needs to win the election to make sure that he puts an end to all the court cases against him. If he were to lose, he is more than likely to be convicted and jailed over one or more of the many charges against him.

Kamala Harris would normally be concerned with down ballot races to make sure that her party does well enough to gain control of both the Senate and the House for her to be effective and consequential as president. But with all the races being so tight, it has become a case of each one for oneself and money for all.

One ray of optimism is that if Vice President Harris were to win the election and see off Trump, it will also free the Republican legislators from Trump’s stranglehold and make a good number of them amenable to co-operate with their Democrat counterparts for passing critical legislation and authorizing funding for executive initiatives. That is the way, bi-partisan consensus in the middle, the American system has been working for nearly two centuries.

The scary and not at all unlikely scenario is the Republican jackpot – Trump winning the presidency and the Republicans taking control of both the House and the Senate. Trump will get rid of all the cases against him, and he will slash corporate taxes and create a deregulated environment for billionaire businessmen. Many of them led by Elan Musk are openly bankrolling Trump’s election campaign.

With a jackpot victory, the Administration will force Republican legislators to pass enabling laws to implement the loony agenda of ‘Project 2025’, the handbook of action items for Trump’s second term prepared by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank group. The Supreme Court with its super majority of conservative judges is well set up to give judicial cover to whatever the second Trump Administration may want to do.

Turn the Page

In another ten days after the US election, on November 14, Sri Lankans will be voting to elect a new parliament that will have to cohabit the island’s state with its new President – AKD. Cohabitation in presidential parlance refers to the situation in which the executive president and the prime minister in parliament belong to two different political parties. The implication is that a presidential-parliamentary system works best when the president and the prime minister are from the same party. When they are not, cohabitation will ensue with all the risks that it entails. That is the system that is in France that Sri Lanka has copied with expedient changes. The US system is different.

The late JR Jayewardene, the father and the mother of Sri Lanka’s presidential system, had a fondness for envisaging Sri Lanka’s new presidential system and the old parliamentary system evolving into being in a marital relationship. That presupposes the president and the prime minister belonging to same party. But JRJ did not quite pay much attention to the possibility and attendant risks of the two belonging to different parties. He may have tried to forestall this possibility by contriving to keep the UNP permanently in power, but his schemes ran out of steam after 17 years in 1994. And it has been a slow death for the UNP ever since.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is not facing the possibility of being a cohabitation president. His NPP is generally expected to win at least a simple majority (113+) in parliament. A two-thirds majority will be a far shot. But the same pundits who described AKD as a ‘minority president’ because he did not get more than fifty percent of the votes or even a majority of the second and third preferential votes, are now worried that the NPP may end up getting a two-thirds majority of over 150 MPs in parliament. Their fears stem from the total disarray among the opposition parties.

Sajith Premadasa who lost his second presidential election in succession to different opponents, just like his bête noire Ranil Wickremesinghe in 1999 and 2005, pompously declared himself as the Prime Ministerial candidate for the parliamentary election. An absurd assertion that only shows how the presidential ethos has corroded the institution of parliament even as presidential powers have subordinated the legislature to the executive.

Mr. Premadasa has since gone quiet because of internal dissension and lack of any external traction. It is the same with every other political party. They are all in disarray. Disarrays that have long been in the making and have now come to pass. The NPP is not the cause but the fortuitous beneficiary of the overall opposition disintegration. Regardless of all the forebodings about an AKD presidency and an NPP government, Sri Lanka is better off having AKD and the NPP in government than any combination of all of the others who were in the last parliament. It is a breath of fresh air as some of have been saying. The challenge is to keep the new regime going the way it has been so far.

It is still too early to make sense of how the results of the parliamentary election will turn out. But based on the September presidential election results and accounting for proportional allocation of seats in the 22 electoral districts including the National List of 29 MPs, the NPP should get around 93 seats in parliament and that would be 20 short of a simple majority.

With the general enthusiasm around the NPP after the presidential election and the opposition disarray, the NPP could conceivably get an additional 20 seats for a simple majority. Getting to 150 seats will need an electoral tsunami. For comparison, in the 2020 parliamentary election, the SLPP polled 59% of the vote and obtained 145 seats. Within four years the SLPP and the Rajapaksas have gone from heroes to virtual zeros. So much for the impermanence of power and the fickleness of parliamentary sweeps.

Turning to the opposition candidates in September, the votes polled by Premadasa and Wickremasinghe respectively correspond to about 75 and 40 seats in parliament. But the vote totals of Premadasa and Wickremesinghe at the presidential election include significant proportions of votes from the Northern, Eastern and Central provinces and they will not accrue to the SJB and (Ranil’s) New Democratic Front in the parliamentary elections. So, the SJB and the NDF will get fewer seats than 75 and 40, respectively.

Overall, the opposition parties should be able to garner over 100 seats in the new parliament. That would be entirely because of the system of proportional representation, and it will not at all be reflective of the political vibes in the country. In a first past the post system, the NPP would win a landslide majority, like the United Front in 1970 and the UNP in 1977. But the people and the country are tired of both parliamentary tyrannies and presidential dictatorship. The NPP is promising something different.

The uncertainty is about voter turnout. In the presidential election, the voter turnout dropped by 5% from 84% in 2019 to 79%. For a second election in as many months, the turnout is likely to be even lower. The turnout was 76% for the 2020 parliamentary election, an 8% drop from the 2019 presidential election. Even though the Covid pandemic was a factor in 2020, it should not be surprising if the turnout for October 14 drops to be in the low 70s%. With the NPP the most organized for mobilizing its turnout, a low voter turnout overall will be disadvantageous to the opposition parties.

There is also election fatigue among the people. Elections of one form or another have been anticipated for nearly two years ever since aragalaya drove Gotabaya Rajapaksa out of power. As interim president, Ranil Wickremesinghe tired everyone by playing games with election timing until he could not do anything about the timing of the presidential election. Ideally, the two elections could and should have been held together. That may have even saved some political bacon for Mr. Wickremesinghe. But he was always too clever by half, but cleverness alone does not win elections.

Vice President Kamala Harris has been pitching her campaign with the slogan to ‘turn the page’ after a decade of Trumpian politics in the US. Whether or not she will succeed remains to be seen. But Sri Lanka has turned the page quite effortlessly, so to speak. The bigger task now is to start writing the next chapter. That should start the day after November 14.



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Features

From moonshine to whiskey and beer

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Austin Cambridge A50 (L) / The quiet Kiragara Road that runs past my house

by GEORGE BRAINE

I moved to Boralessa, my ancestral village, in 1977. Many villagers – who made a living as masons, carpenters, workers in tile factories and brick kilns – supplemented their income by brewing pot arrack. The main ingredient, coconut toddy, was readily available and so was the demand. Pot arrack was a cottage industry: the males did the brewing and the women sold it from home. Some of my immediate neighbours were brewers, the small-time mudalali across the road being the main supplier for the area. In the evenings, a steady clientele of regulars could be seen going into his house. As the evening drew on, drunks, mainly middle-aged men, would be staggering down the road, some singing bawdy songs and others picking quarrels with anyone around, using the foulest language.

Clearly, the producing and selling of pot arrack was illegal. So, why didn’t the police crackdown? The MP for the area, who also happened to be a cabinet minister, had requested the police to go easy on the pot arrack dealers. Those who indulged in the business were not well off and it provided an essential supplementary income to “feed their families”, never mind the damage done to the consumers’ health and family harmony. Anyhow, not to be put off, the police also went around to the dealers every month collecting their cut!

Distribution

When the supply exceeded local demand, the brewers found a ready market in nearby Negombo and further afield in Colombo and the suburbs. Transport was through two modes, train and car. In those days, I was teaching at the Kelaniya University and took the “office train” to work. Boralessa has a tiny railway station, manned by an agent (not a station master), with no security whatsoever. Men with four-gallon plastic containers filled with pot arrack would be hiding in the bushes around the station, and, as the train was pulling off, make a mad dash and scramble on to the train. The containers would be quickly hidden in the toilets or under seats. Although this was a daily spectacle witnessed by hundreds of passengers, not once did I see a raid by railway security, the police, or excise officers.

Transport by car was more spectacular. The chosen model was the sleek Austin Cambridge A50, vintage 1950s, perhaps the fastest and most manoeuvrable car in those days of tight import restrictions. Cars loaded with pot arrack would set off for Colombo, both day and night. The natural boundary between the north western province, where Boralessa is located, and the western province, where Colombo is, happens to be the Ma Oya river, crossed by the legendary Kochchikade bridge. Once the cars carrying pot arrack crossed the bridge, they were under a new jurisdiction and at the mercy of the police. Avoiding the main road on which a number of police stations were located, the drivers took circuitous back roads, but the police did their best to stop the cars. So it was a cat and mouse game – roadblocks, checkpoints, ambushes, gunfire, and high speed chases, the stuff of thriller movies. One of these drivers, I’ll call him Primus, recently told me of being fired on when he sped past the police. He is still alive to tell the tale, about 90 now.

Dankotuwa, a nearby town that was surrounded by large coconut plantations (providing the essential ingredient for pot arrack), also supplied the brew to the Colombo area. The best of the liquor, on par or even better than the legitimate variety, whether from Boralessa or Dankotuwa, was known as “Dankotuwa Special”. Many local musicians in those days were heavy drinkers, and a top musician told me not long ago that whenever he managed to get a bottle of the coveted “Dankotuwa Special”, he would get together with another well-known musician to enjoy the treat.

From pot arrack to kasippu

In the 1980s, due to various reasons, the supply of coconut toddy declined, but the demand for illicit liquor prevailed. Ever creative, villagers found a new way to continue with production. Instead of toddy, they began to use sugar dissolved in water, with generous doses of added yeast, to produce alcohol. This was kasippu.

The 1980s were a turning point for Boralessa because a large number of villagers began to travel to Italy, both illegally and legally, in search of work. Because the “Italians” had brought more prosperity to the villagers, the local MP, took a hands-off approach to the illicit trade; the police were given a free rein and could arrest and prosecute illegal brewers.

In the manufacture of kasippu, the fermentation process would take place in large, rusty barrels over a few days, and the barrels had to be hidden from the police. The village had enough hiding places – coconut groves, a weed-choked irrigation tank, long abandoned paddy fields, culverts, a thickly wooded area – for the purpose. The bottom of my property has a pond surrounded by overgrown shrubs, and one day I found two barrels there. After I spoke with the prime suspect, the barrels disappeared.

Not all barrels were properly sealed, so passing lizards, rats, snakes and other creepy-crawlies would fall in. To improve the “kick”, ammonia fertiliser, rusty barbed wire, and anything handy was added. Kasippu, unlike pot arrack, is very much a poison brew.

A grocery store not far from my house probably sold tons of sugar every week. This could be estimated from the lorry loads of sugar that were unloaded there. It also showed how much illicit liquor was brewed in the village.

The Italian sojourn brought prosperity and some villagers developed a taste for whiskey. The dealer across the road, who had given up his illicit trade because he now had two sons in Italy, once boasted to me that he now drank only “whiskey”.

Effects on the Lifestyle

A large number of villagers, both young and the elderly, consumed kasippu. I now realise that many, who worked as masons and carpenters, were alcoholics and this caused problems well beyond the immediate households.

Sundays were reserved for heavy drinking, which meant that being severely hungover, nobody turned up for work on Mondays. A head carpenter I knew, who built roofs (backbreaking work under a blazing sun), with a small team of assistants, dreaded Tuesdays because getting his men to turn-up for work took all morning. First, Anthony would call them, and they dutifully promised to turn-up at the worksite. But often, they didn’t. Then, Anthony would have to go around to their homes in a hired tuk, pleading and coaxing the men to join him. This was repeated weekly and Anthony was fed up till the pandemic hit and put an end to house construction.

Kasippu

also affected family harmony because the men were habitually drunk, broke, and in poor health, leaving the womenfolk to keep the home fires burning. Domestic abuse was common. I know of broken homes where the women had fled, unable to bear their misery.

Beer

About ten years ago, a liquor store opened in Boralessa. Hard liquor was too expensive for most locals but beer sales exceeded expectations. The consumers were mainly young men, who had not developed a taste for the hard stuff. Perhaps, they had also seen the scourge that kasippu caused, even within their families, and spurned the stuff. Most evenings, they would converge on the beer shop and hang out for hours, even sitting on the railway tracks.

Boralessa had come a long way from the days of pot arrack. People still drank, some copiously, but I no longer see anyone staggering down the quiet Kiragara Road that runs along my property, singing bawdy songs. Most of the heavy drinkers have passed away, and the younger generations, bolstered by cash infusions from abroad, have become “respectable”. But I do miss the old Boralessa, where moonshine was king and daredevil drivers played cat and mouse games with the police.

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Partnership between govt. and other parties necessary to resolve national issues

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by Jehan Perera

The NPP’s main attraction at the presidential election, and one of its key campaign promises, was to bring a halt to the corruption that has increasingly held the country in its thrall. Large scale corruption from top to bottom and encompassing both the public and private sectors became normalised following the opening up of the economy in the late 1970s. Huge development projects and foreign aid provided opportunities for corruption to those in positions of power. The collapse of the economy in 2022 and accompanying hardships to the masses of people has stiffened the resolve of the general population to get rid of corruption and those implicated in it. As a political party that never wielded political power, only the NPP, among front running parties, was spared the blame.

The issue of cleansing the country of its Augean Stables has come to the centre of people’s governance concerns and nothing else can overshadow it. The vain attempt by some of the opposition parties to whip up ethnic nationalism is not gaining any traction. With the sole exception of the NPP, there is no mainstream political party, with those accused of corruption in their midst, that can convince the electorate that they will have the political will to tackle the problem of corruption. Therefore, arguments of the opposition political parties that the government is failing to deliver on its promises, such as increasing the salaries of public servants and reducing the cost of living, are not having an impact on an electorate whose primary aspiration is to get rid of corruption and those who have been complicit in that corruption.

The arrest and incarceration of two key members of the former government would satisfy the electorate for the time being that the government is serious about tackling the problem of impunity that has accompanied corruption. One of those arrested on charges related to an unregistered luxury vehicle has a history of violent behaviour. But he has never been arrested before, perhaps due to his family ties with the country’s pre-colonial nobility and perceived ability to pull in the votes of that sector of society. However, the government has now arrested both him and another former member of the government, who has himself behaved violently in parliament no less, on the relatively minor charges of possessing unregistered vehicles. This is not comparable to the billions that many others of their compatriots have been accused of misappropriating. But it is a start.

MAIN ISSUE

In the eyes of the electorate, therefore, the NPP government is seen as being serious in delivering on its promises as it has begun to tackle the main problem of corruption without delay and taking on some of the giants of the previous government. The charges against the two former government members will be difficult to dispute because they are based on evidence at hand, which are unregistered motor vehicles. The more complex cases involving billions, for which evidence is harder to obtain, can lead to lengthy legal procedures and eventual acquittal as has happened many times in the past when corruption cases were brought before the courts by previous governments. But the present cases are more straightforward with less likelihood of acquittal.

As a result, the opposition’s critiques of the government are not gaining traction amongst the people at this point of time. This is particularly the case with regard to the IMF agreement which was negotiated by the previous government. Another criticism being made is that it is not delivering on its election time promise to increase salaries of public servants and reduce the cost of living. However, while the people will want their economic hardships to be mitigated as soon as possible, they also realise that the government has been in power only a month and needs to pass a new budget to redistribute resources from areas of less priority to areas of high priority. Changes of tax structures will require a change in laws which is not possible at this time as parliament is dissolved.

Also, the economic promises made by the NPP need to be seen in the context of promises made by its rivals at the presidential election. These included incredible relief packages, claiming they would increase the monthly welfare payments for vulnerable groups and debt relief initiatives, such as raising allowances for disabled individuals and the extremely poor and waiving specific farmer loans, provide instant cash relief or reduce taxes significantly, creating millions of jobs and raising salaries across the board, promising higher wages for government workers and essential sectors and obtain massive foreign investment or debt relief within a short timeframe, which was unlikely given the country’s credit rating and international relations. It has now become a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

LIKELY PARTNERS

The desire for change in the overall system of corrupt governance, which was summarised as “system change” by the Aragalaya protest movement, will continue to be the campaign theme with the greatest resonance to the electorate at the forthcoming parliamentary elections. There is a likelihood that even those who did not vote for the NPP at the presidential election would now vote for the NPP as they too want a corruption-free government. On the other hand, as seen at the Elpitiya local government election last month, people also tend to vote on a sentimental basis for those they personally know or who have helped them, which would benefit former government members who have done favours at the local level. At Elpitiya, the NPP obtained 47 percent of the vote and secured half of the seats on offer but with a larger percentage voting for other parties.

The situation in those parts of the country in which the ethnic and religious minorities predominate would also make it difficult for the NPP to win the majority of seats. The NPP’s main focus of attention has previously been the majority community and the party’s top leadership is also drawn from the same ethnic and religious background. This suggests that the natural inclination of the ethnic and religious minorities will be to vote for parties championing their sectional interests rather than opt for a national party that has not worked much amongst them. However, the minorities are also disillusioned by their own political leaders and the younger generation in particular are more interested in integrating with the mainstream society and the national economy rather than to live segregated.

The conclusion from this analysis is that the government is unlikely to win a 2/3 majority that would enable it to engage in constitutional amendment by itself. But it may be able to win a simple majority, though that, too, is not given. The best case scenario for the country is if the government will need to work in partnership with the other parties that will be elected to parliament to pass new laws and to institute constitutional amendments. This will require consultation, compromise and consensus with the opposition as opined by former President Ranasinghe Premadasa. The litmus test for the opposition parties would be to cooperate with the government when it comes to enacting new laws relating to putting an end to corruption and impunity unlike in the past when corruption and impunity dominated the scene. The NPP may find its most likely partners in the ethnic and religious minority parties that have not become compromised by being in the governments of the past.

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Features

The Voice of Australia… no Sri Lankans!

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Reuben De Melo: Major plans with the prize money

Although we do have lots of Sri Lankans, living in Australia, we haven’t heard of a Sri Lankan artiste taking the honours at some of the major competitions Down Under, except for Andrew De Silva who won the Australia’s Got Talent competition, some years ago.

The winner of the 2024 The Voice of Australia hails from Goa and no sooner Reuben De Melo’s name was announced, Goans around the world were jubilant that one of their very own had won the prestigious singing contest in Australia, after the public voted during the grand finale on Sunday.

He won a cash prize of Australian $100,000, and an all-inclusive recording package.

Reuben (31), now based in Perth, Western Australia, says that with a recording development package now in his hands, his top priority is to pursue a full-time career in the music industry “rather than having to always worry about finances.”

The father of three went on to say that the prize money is probably going to help them out with a lot of repayments, like their mortgage, and a bit of work around the house as well.

While his standout vocal performances on the series may have blown audiences away, Reuben also credits his connection with all-star coach LeAnn Rimes as a factor in his success on the show.

“Even though she’s an absolute star in this industry, she’s come down to my level and just really guided me through and empathised with me the whole time. She went above and beyond to get me over the line, and I owe a lot of stuff to her.”

Reuben De Melo performed the song ‘House Of The Rising Sun’ at the finals.

His next step, he says will be to release music with others, collaborate with other artistes, and just release music.

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