Saturday 12th October, 2024

The headline of today’s comment is a joke doing the rounds in political circles. Roughly rendered into English, it means that although Ranil is gone, his policies have remained intact under the new dispensation.

Sri Lanka’s economic recovery programme, which Ranil Wickremesinghe courageously implemented, has survived his defeat in the presidential race. In other words, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has chosen to continue with Wickremesinghe’s key economic policies; he has agreed to the IMF-stipulated Debt Sustainability Analysis in spite of his election promise to renegotiate it.

The sobering economic reality has had a mellowing effect on President Dissanayake’s thinking, and signs are that the NPP will stick to the IMF bailout package for want of a better alternative even if it succeeds in obtaining a parliamentary majority at the 14 Nov. general election.

Wickremesinghe, who is still reeling from the humiliating defeat in last month’s presidential election, is among the political leaders who have decided not to contest next month’s general election, others being former Presidents Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena. In fact, it was a huge mistake for Mahinda and Sirisena to enter Parliament after holding the executive presidency. They should have retired gracefully. However, Ranil has decided against contesting the next general election not because he considers it infra dig to do so as a former President; he knows that it will be an uphill task for him to win a parliamentary seat from the Colombo District.

Some of the SLPP dissident MPs who sided with President Wickremesinghe have also decided not to contest the upcoming general election. Prominent among them is former State Minister of Finance Shehan Semasinghe, who helped President Wickremesinghe make the IMF programme a reality and clear obstacles to its implementation. They have said they are not contesting as they are disappointed that the people rejected Wickremesinghe’s successful economic programme, which helped save the economy. Semasinghe said so in a television interview on Thursday night.

The argument that Wickremesinghe lost the presidential election because the people rejected his economic policies smacks of reductionism. Those who elected Dissanayake President obviously did not want him to abandon the IMF programme and upend the existing economic recovery programme. True, Dissanayake endeared himself to the public by making attractive promises such as pay hikes, subsidies, fuel price decreases, and tax reductions, but it is doubtful whether anyone with an iota of common sense wanted an end to the current IMF programme. A plausible explanation of why the people rejected Wickremesinghe in the presidential race may be that they did not want him to secure the presidency for some reasons his loyalists have chosen to ignore.

President Wickremesinghe lost mainly because of his wrongs on the political front and his callous disregard for public opinion. He defended the crooks in the SLPP parliamentary group unashamedly, undermined the judiciary and the legislature and suppressed democratic dissent. He also put off elections arbitrarily and abused the privileges of Parliament to launch scathing attacks on the judiciary and issue warnings to judges. He unflinchingly shielded the corrupt in the cricket administration and surrounded himself with a bunch of crooked misfits. If he had cared to concentrate on the economic front and refrain from committing political wrongs, which were legion, he would have been able to put up a close fight against Dissanayake in the presidential race and even score a win.

Wickremesinghe lost in the presidential contest because he ruined things for himself politically as he had done previously. The only consolation for him may be that his economic policies have outlived his defeat.

Friday 11th October, 2024

Daisy Achchi’s bag of gems or menik malla has been catapulted to the centre of public discussion again due to a war of words between NPP trade union heavyweight Wasantha Samarasinghe and SLPP National Organiser Namal Rajapaksa. For the benefit of the uninitiated, Daisy Achchi has become a household word following an absurd claim the Rajapaksas made in a bid to justify the acquisition of their wealth, Daisy being the grandmother of the young members of the clan. The Rajapaksas claimed that Daisy had received a bagful of precious stones from an unknown person.

Daisy Achchi’s stash of gems has since become an epitome of audacity of politicians who have a very low opinion of the intelligence of the public. Political leaders who have acquired assets in a questionable manner and avoided accountability by making atrociously false claims must be made to account for their wealth. No government has made a serious effort to probe the assets of their opponents and bring them to justice for the illegal acquisition of wealth. The UNP-led Yahapalana government had the public believe that it was probing its rivals’ assets, but did not go the whole hog; Maithripala Sirisena, who won the presidency in 2015 by promising to throw the Rajapaksas behind bars for corruption, etc., joined forces with them three years later.

During the 2015 presidential election campaign, he claimed the younger members of the Rajapaksa family had bought a ‘golden horse’ (a palomino?) from Buckingham Palace and kept it in Nuwara Eliya, where they flew in state-owned choppers during weekends to ride it. He did not care to trace the horse or investigate the chopper rides after being ensconced in power. One may recall how the Yahapalana regime turned its operations to trace the undeclared assets of its opponents into a political circus; it went so far as to have coconut estates dug up in search of luxury cars believed to have been buried there! The Prime Minister in the Yahapalana government, Ranil Wickremesinghe, became President with the help of the Rajapaksa family seven years later! Thus, why politicians do not go all out to throw one another in prison for corruption is clear. The public became disillusioned and their resentment became rocket fuel for the JVP-led NPP’s recent presidential election campaign in 2024.

Now, the NPP is coming under increasing pressure to honour its election pledge to prosecute the corrupt and recover the stolen funds. It cannot convince the public that it needs time, for it kept on claiming, months before the 21 Sept. presidential election, that it would win the presidency for sure and was ready to nab the corrupt immediately afterwards. It said it had 400 files containing evidence against the corrupt and has since pledged to take action against the beneficiaries of Daisy Achchi’s mysterious riches. The new government however ought not to be selective in probing politicians’ assets.

It is public knowledge that the UNP stood to gain from the Treasury bond scams under the Yahapalana government; its key members benefited from the largesse of the Treasury bond racketeers while the UNP and the JVP were honeymooning. Will the JVP/NPP government order a fresh probe into the Treasury bond scams and do everything in its power to have former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran extradited from Singapore to stand trial for those rackets. It should make a formal request to Singapore for his extradition. The SJB went on a spending spree before the presidential election, giving away various things. It has not accounted for the funds it spent generously to further its political interests. It must be made to explain how those funds were raised.

Most of those who have been in power over the past several decades acquired assets, which they have not accounted for. Worse, they obtained compensation for their houses destroyed by mobs in 2022 although most of them had not disclosed how funds were raised for building them. The Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government should have ascertained whether those assets had been lawfully acquired before compensating their owners. What does the NPP administration propose to do about this?

The JVP/NPP leaders claim to be beneficiaries of the generosity of some individuals who, they claim, look after their needs by gifting them various things including shirts, trousers and shoes. Its opponents have demanded to know whether it received donations from any business tycoons for the construction of its party headquarters. The JVP/NPP, too, owes the public an explanation as regards its funds.

Thursday 10th October, 2024

SLPP National Organiser and unsuccessful presidential candidate, Namal Rajapaksa, seems to believe that attack is the best form of defence. He has chosen to go on the offensive; he keeps daring the NPP to carry out its election pledge to bring back billions of dollars which, it said, the Rajapaksa family had stashed away in Uganda. He has offered to cooperate with the law enforcement authorities fully if an investigation gets underway! The NPP’s response to his challenge has been to make even more allegations against him and his family and obfuscate the issue.

Most systems in this country have been rigged to protect the corrupt in positions of power. Crooks at the levers of power can cover their tracks. One may recall that anti-corruption activists, the Opposition and the media had to fight quite a battle for months to have the then Minister Keheliya Rambukwella arrested and prosecuted for the procurement of fake and substandard medicinal drugs.

The best opportunity for the self-proclaimed anti-corruption activists to trace and recover Sri Lanka’s stolen funds presented itself after Maithripala Sirisena’s upset win in the 2015 presidential race. The UNP-led Yahapalana government, backed by the JVP, squandered that opportunity by conducting a series of show probes and show trials. The Rajapaksa regime had become a metaphor for corruption, and that was one of the main reasons why the people voted it out of power in 2015, but the politicisation of investigations into allegations of corruption made the Yahapalana anti-corruption drive fall short of its goal, and helped the Rajapaksa family play the victim, gain public sympathy and make a comeback. Worse, the Yahapalana government made a mockery of its commitment to good governance by carrying out the Treasury bond scams and various other rackets. The JVP backed that corrupt regime to the hilt.

The NPP heavyweights who have taken upon themselves the task of bringing the corrupt to justice and recovering the country’s stolen funds are all hat and no cattle, so to speak. During the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government, the JVP/NPP made a public display of a slew of files, which numbered more than 400, claiming that they contained irrefutable evidence against those who had cut corrupt deals and amassed ill-gotten wealth. What has happened to those files is anybody’s guess.

In July 2024, the then President Ranil Wickremesinghe, during a function at the Presidential Secretariat, claimed that most of the files being exhibited by the JVP/NPP were empty and others contained photocopies of original documents, which, he said, were in his possession. Will the NPP government take action to obtain those documents from their erstwhile Yahapalana chum, Wickremesinghe? What one gathered from Wickremesinghe’s snide remark at issue was that the files the NPP was displaying had belonged to the Anti-Corruption Secretariat, which was set up at Temple Trees during the Yahapalana administration. How come those files have ended up in the hands of Wickremesinghe and Dissanayake?

Those who have mastered the art of helping themselves to public funds are adept at hiding their wealth. They use various fronts and shell companies for that purpose, as disclosed by Panama Papers and Pandora Papers. Efforts to disable the rogue global finance industry have so far met with limited success for many reasons, some of which being its sheer size and complexity, political influence, the absence of transparency and its remarkable adaptability. Public Security Minister Vijitha Herath has reportedly ordered a probe into revelations made by the Pandora Papers about some Sri Lankans. This is a welcome measure.

Efforts to trace Sri Lanka’s stolen funds and institute criminal proceedings against the corrupt who have enriched themselves at the expense of the public must go on, but equally important is the task of building robust mechanisms and introducing stringent laws to prevent corruption, and the next Parliament must carry it out as a national priority.

The public may not take Namal’s challenges to the NPP seriously, but having won last month’s presidential election basically on an anti-corruption platform, the NPP will have to make good on its solemn pledge to bring the corrupt to justice and recover the stolen funds. Gone are the days when bribes were carried in briefcases. Today, millions of dollars change hands electronically in faraway money laundering hubs. So, there is absolutely no need for anyone to transport loads of greenbacks in planes.

There is something the NPP government can do expeditiously to stop the barks of crooks. Instead of biting off more than it can chew in trying to nab the corrupt, it must order a fresh probe into the Airbus bribery scam. A British court revealed that Airbus had offered a huge bribe of USD 16 mn to the wife of a SriLankan executive to land a high-value contract here, and paid her USD 2 million initially. It is public knowledge that the person who accepted the bribe only acted as a collector. The NPP must find out who the real beneficiary of the Airbus backhander was. Will Namal dare the NPP to do so?