A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Back to 500BC.
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Sunday, May 6, 2018
Sugar buddies caught with cash in a carpark as countdown begins for their bosses’ future
For starters today, I was planning this secular prayer: Let us first say
thanks for small mercies – for keeping Ravi Karunanayake out of the
cabinet in last Tuesday’s reshuffle. Two days later the thunderbolt
struck –the President’s Chief of Staff and the Timber Corporation
Chairman caught counting bribe cash in the carpark at Taj Samudra. How
brazen has corruption become? We knew it had already climbed high. But
thanks again for small mercies – to the Bribery Commission officials who
arrested the two government thieves. The Bribery Commission is having
better luck with real time culprits than it has been having with rogues
of the past. I will spare the details of the arrests and the arrestees
which are already virally known, and turn to their inauspicious effects
on the new session of parliament that is scheduled to open on Tuesday,
May 8.
Already, the presidential secretariat has exhibited its ineptitude in
taking three trial and error gazette notifications to properly announce
the May 8 opening. Now, President Sirisena will have to acknowledge and
address the embarrassment of the mid-afternoon bribery scandal involving
his Chief of Staff I.M.H. Mahanama and the Chairman of the Timber
Corporation P. Dissanayake. The President has already exonerated himself
by interdicting the culprits and claiming that the arrests of the two
men prove that his administration is being effective in the fight
against corruption. What it really proves is that things will work if
the law enforcement officials are given the freedom to do their job
without political interference.
President Sirisena or Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, or for that matter
former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, cannot so easily exonerate
themselves from their general record of protecting bribe takers and
corruption beneficiaries, and allegations of their own implications in
some of them. What will the President say, if anything, on the matter of
bringing state criminals to book? Apart from state corruption, will
there be answers to state murders of intrepid journalists and a young
sports star? Will anything happen before the President’s elected term is
over?
The people who thought there would be changes after 2015 are now fed up
and are resigned to the old curse to let ‘there be a plague’ on not just
two but, now, all three houses. The SLPP cannot absolve itself because
it has a new abbreviation. Name change is not rebirth. Its contents are
all old stock. The people are more concerned about their livelihood
woes. There is no economic commentary going around that is positive or
rosy, even without the unsolicited opinions of the former Central Bank
Governor. With his past locked in a glass house, Nivad Cabraal, should
stop throwing stones at the current regime. As for the economists with
professional credibility, what they are figuring out in their heads the
people are doubly feeling in their guts.
The economic woes
Sri Lanka’s economy like most national economies can keep growing at
what Nimal Sanderatne calls its ‘autonomous growth’ rate, regardless of
what governments might do to spur or stall growth. But when things go
wrong, it is the government that gets the blame, and rightly so as is
the case almost always in Sri Lanka. The current mainstays of Sri
Lanka’s economy - are tourism, exports led garment and tea and
sprinkling of manufacturing and agricultural products, agriculture with a
high proportion of rice production, and remittances from Sri Lankan
workers overseas (90% from the Middle East). Its chronic problem is the
external balance of payments – trying to keep as much foreign reserves
as possible to pay for essential imports, and often measured by the
number of months of import capacity. Encompassing everything is the
national debt which, as Mr. Cabraal has been crowing last week, has
grown to historical highs. This is a pointless argument. Hardly any
government has been able to reverse the debt trend, so every year the
country invariably makes history with its national debt.
The debt and deficits are also functions of our structural inability to
raise revenue levels or reduce non-discretionary expenditures (e.g.
public sector salaries). After about 60 years when income tax was first
introduced, only 7% of the labour force and companies reportedly pay
income tax. And the yahapalanya government with the gusto of a drunken
sailor increased public sector salaries in its first budget in 2015. Few
public servants remember that now, because those are less than crumbs
compared to what politicians and officials routinely make in bond
auctions or car park cash transactions.
At the household level, the pinch comes from the shortage, or the rising
cost, or both, of the imported essentials. Aggregate it nationally,
shortages and cost of living have been perennial political predicaments.
For the first 35 years after independence the contentious commodity was
imported rice closely bundled with wheat flour and sugar. Over the
second 35 years, rice has been replaced by fuel. Such was the
significance of rice in 1970, that a figurative opposition promise, "we
will bring rice even from the moon" became an election winning slogan.
Rice eventually came and in substantial quantities, not from the moon
but from the island’s paddy fields in the wet zone and in the dry zone.
No one is bold, or mad, enough now to promise to bring fuel from the
moon, and there is no hope for producing petroleum locally. The
government is in a bind to buy fuel globally at rising prices and enable
its supply locally at cost that is affordable to ordinary people. It
will be political suicide if the government were to simply let the
market prices determine the cost of local fuel supply. Equally, it will
be economic distortion to subsidize the supply cost of fuel, as it used
to be done with rice. The financial impacts will be significant and the
government will be flouting one of the key conditions of the IMF’s
Extended Fund Facility to Sri Lanka. Commentators like Nimal Sanderatne
have suggested a politically sensitive and economically responsible way
out – that is to locally cushion the impact of rising global oil prices
but cut funding elsewhere to make up the deficit, in the more
discretionary areas of government spending, such as perks and pensions
to parliamentarians and other government extravaganzas. It will be a
remarkable shift if the government were to make such a course change
from past practices.
While the present government is drawing much flak, but not
unjustifiably, for its handling of the economy, things were not very
different when the Rajapaksas were in power. In fact, it was often said
that more than astrology it was former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s
fear that the economy would change for the worse that prompted him to
call an early presidential election in January 2015. As blunders go,
there are enough similarities between the two governments before and
after January 2015. As far as the mainstays of the economy go, neither
government did anything spectacular to boost tourism, exports or
agriculture, apart from the 2016 restoration of EU concessions for Sri
Lankan exports. According the annual World Bank overview, Sri Lanka
continues to attract subpar volumes of the coveted FDI compared to peer
economies. More importantly, the same report, suggests that the recent
FDI inflow is "due mainly to the long-leasing of a port asset and a
large land reclamation project", which are the leasing of the port
operations and port lands in Hambantota, and the Port City development
in Colombo. This is only another version of what the Rajapaksas did with
Chinese loans for infrastructure development.
The (UNP) government has little to show for its economic strategies over
the last three years, which were centred on the promise of a million
jobs based on a knowledge-based social market economy, Western Region
Megapolis, free trade with anyone who wanted to talk trade with Sri
Lanka, and opening industrial clusters throughout the country. What the
government has been shown in return is the wrath of the people in the
neglected agricultural sector, and mostly rice producers, who were left
literally high and through two full paddy seasons of extreme drought.
Prime Minister Wickremesinghe acknowledged that the neglect of the
country’s agricultural population was a major factor in the UNP’s
crushing defeat in the February local government elections. It will be
interesting to see if the President’s Policy Statement to parliament on
Tuesday will signal anything new that we haven’t seen so far. Or, will
it be the same old, same old? The debate that will follow could be
expected to offer clues about the positions the main political parties
will be taking on the economy, the upcoming elections and constitutional
changes.
The countdown
The new sessions will also be the start of the countdown for the final
phases of the political careers of not only President Sirisena and Prime
Minister Wickremesinghe, but also former President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
They are the three crucial political figures and rivals of today. They
are also at the tail end of their political careers. All three of them
have choices to make. Two of them, Sirisena and Wickremesinghe, may want
to contest the next presidential election, which in theory one of them
could win, but in reality both of them may lose. All three of them, on
the other hand, have another common choice before them – and that is to
put an end to all future presidential elections by supporting the JVP’s
proposed 20th Amendment to abolish the executive presidential system in
its current form. They will still have one more kick at the can – to
contest the next parliamentary election as the prime ministerial
candidates for their respective parties.
No matter how and where it will end, the JVP’s 20th Amendment proposal
has become a cat among the pigeons in the main political parties. To
date, the UNP and the SLFP including President Sirisena and Prime
Minister Wickremesinghe have not said anything about the JVP’s proposal.
The newly minted UNP Secretary Akila Viraj Kariyawasam has let it be
known that Ranil Wickremesinghe will contest the next presidential
election as the UNP candidate and will win. The SLFP’s group of 16 were
once the chief promoters of a second Sirisena candidacy for President,
but it is not clear where they stand now given their self-selected no
man’s land between the Sirisena and Rajapaksa loyalists. However, the
SLFP Secretary Duminda Dissanayake has, like his UNP counterpart,
announced that President Sirisena will be contesting for a second term
as the SLFP candidate.
But both the UNP and the SLFP leaders will have a time explaining to
their 2015 allies and the general public why they are going back on
their earlier promises to abolish the executive presidency, and
presenting themselves as two opposing presidential candidates. Already
about 40 civil society organizations have expressed support to the JVP’s
proposal. The greater onus to explain will be on Maithripala Sirisena
who vowed to be only a one-term President. They may have quietly ignored
their promises and filed nominations as candidates, but the JVP’s
proposal has set a political trap in their tracks. They will have a
great deal of explaining to do if they choose not to support the JVP’s
20th Amendment.
The TNA also has indicated support for the 20th Amendment provided its
concerns on the ethnic problem are addressed in the amendment package.
That will leave Ranil Wickremesinghe in a particularly awkward spot
insofar as the Tamil votes are concerned. If the TNA supports the JVP
amendment and the UNP opposes it and defeats the amendment, Mr.
Wickremesinghewill have a hard time canvassing the Tamil vote. He may
even suffer a second Tamil boycott, but a totally voluntary one unlike
in 2005.
The Rajapaksas and the SLPP have their own set of calculations in coming
to terms with the JVP’s proposal. The No Confidence Motion against the
Prime Minister has already exposed the lines of division in the
Rajapaksa camp. Those who were gung ho about the NCM are the promoters
of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa for presidency. Basil Rajapaksa didn’t think much
of the NCM idea; he was more for forcing the dissolution of parliament
to be followed by a general election. Mahinda Rajapaksa would lead the
SLPP to victory and become Prime Minister. There could even be an
outside chance of a different 20th Amendment to rescind 19A and restore
18A. Then Mahinda Rajapaksa could be President again. Even Mohan Peiris
and Nivard Cabraal could return and together with Gotabhaya Rajapaksa,
again helping his brother as the quintessential doer functionary, they
could restore the old Tuesday-Tea triumvirate meeting to mull over state
business.
But Basil Rajapakasa is too sharp a person to miss out on reality
through day dreaming:it is best for the SLPP to focus on early
dissolution and a parliamentary election. The defeat of the NCM also
took the air out of the Gotabhaya balloon. Then came, the JVP’s proposal
and the SLPP leadership decided to test the political winds by letting
MP and former Minister) Bandula Gunawardaneannounce that the SLPP would
support JVP’s amendment if it included the provision for immediate
dissolution of parliament. That would solve two problems for the family
and the SLPP. ‘Abolishing’ the executive presidency would mean that the
family doesn’t have to split over choosing a presidential candidate. And
with dissolution and new parliamentary election, Mahinda Rajapaksa
could return to power as Prime Minister and Head of Government.
There are layers and layers of political pushes and pulls, including
admonitions from the Sangha, not to mention personal agendas and
priorities, which Sirisena, Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe will have to
deal with while deciding what to do about the JVP’s 20th Amendment. One
certainty that we can assure the three rivals is that if they decide to
support the 20th amendment and facilitate its successful passage, in
parliament and in a national referendum, they will leave behind a very
positive political legacy that they, their allies and progenies can for
ever be proud of. Conversely, they should convince themselves that they
are indeed proud of opposing the 20th Amendment before opting to oppose
it.