AMARATUNGA: Time to retire hurt

Veteran UNP MP and former Minister John Anthony Emmanuel Amaratunga announced this week that he intends to throw in his towel and quit politics.

After Sajith Premadasa’s presidential defeat, gone limp seems to be Amaratunga’s once stiff resolve to never go down without a fight but to keep his spirit raised even beyond the climactic hour. But age seems to have taken its toll and Big John seems to have finally come to terms with life and realized that ‘the younger rises when the old doth fall’.

On Thursday, he spoke to the media on why it is necessary for him to call it a day and make way for a younger person who can perform better than him.

He said, “I have been in Parliament for 41 years and I feel that the time is ripe for me to retire from politics. Contesting for an election is no easy task because now you have to contest for the whole district, I have done it about four or five times and I am now fagged out. Firstly, enormous sums of money is needed to contest an election today and it is quite tiring an exercise. So if there is any younger person ready to step into my shoes, I’m quite ready to let him. This is not something that we should cling to for life. There comes a time when we must let go.”

“Even Ranil Wickremesinghe had said he does not intend to be the UNP Leader for long.”

But is it a question of age and stamina to carry on alone that has made John think of hanging his boots and saying it’s time for young blood to take his virile place or is it the shock defeat that has given his ego a battering too severe to withstand. For there is no big generation gap between this 79-year-old former Minister and the newly elected 70-year-old President or the newly appointed 74-year-old Prime Minister and the 77-year-old State Minister of Defence,now is there? And see how remarkably well they are doing. No complaints of aches and pains and no grumblings about age catching up now is there?Power is not only a great aphrodisiac but also seems to be the elixir of youth.

President starts honeymoon  with city spring cleaning op

After wooing Lanka’s hand from August this year and winning it for five years in November, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa chose to start his hundred-day honeymoon with a spot of spring cleaning to give his immediate environs a touch up with his sparkling wand.

As part of his national effort to clean up the political, security, economic, environmental and the other thousand and one messes left by the Maithri-Ranil Government, Gota’s first focus fell on Colombo and its suburbs.

The subject and the location were right up his street. As the Secretary to the Urban Development Ministry between 2011 and 2014, his efforts to make Colombo beautiful had proved immeasurably successful and the city’s paved walks, its carpeted roads, its open, well-groomed and well-lit parks, its spick and span streets, its illuminated pavements all bear witness to his achievements, though a five year spell of the Yahapalana government that was more interested on trying to introduce new good governance than build and maintain good roads have dulled and dirtied the city’s once bright and clean face.

The environmental division of the Police was established a few years ago when the dengue threat sent alarm bells ringing, but which had fallen into a slumber were roused and further strengthened by cadres drawn from other divisions of the Police were given a new police beat: supervise the municipality and outsourced workers charged with cleaning duties. Suddenly the long arm of the law had been summoned to not only help keep the streets free of crime but also to help keep the streets free of grime.

HANDS ON COPS: Over 400 policemen down their uniforms to don civies to cleanup Wellawatte beach

And what a remarkable job they did. On Monday, the cleaning up began in many parts of Colombo and greater Colombo. In Maharagama, garbage was cleared within two hours by the Police and the municipal workers on the orders of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. President Rajapaksa had reportedly seen garbage piles in several places in Maharagama on Saturday, November 23rd while on his way to meet the Mahanayake of Kotte Ven. Ittapana Dhammalankara Thero at the Rukmale Dharmawijayaloka Viharaya in Kottawa.

Another instance was when more than 400 police officers cleaned a 6km beach stretch in Colombo between Kollupitiya and Wellawatte. The Police spokesperson said that 11 teams comprising 40 police officers each had been deployed. SSP Gunasekera said, “To establish a secure country, we need to create a safe environment.” It was a laudable effort, even though the Police took pains not to get their respected Sand Brown belt dirtied by emphasising that getting their hands soiled by cleaning city garbage would hopefully not be a regular chore on their list of duties. As SSP Ruwan Gunasekera emphasised to reporters during the exercise “we are doing this to set an example to the people”.

On Wednesday, after having appointed Lanka’s first 15 — the Cabinet of 15 members plus 1, namely, the Prime Minister – last week, the B team of State Ministers numbering 35 and 3 Deputy Ministers were appointed. A few hours later, the three Deputy Ministers were upgraded and retook their oaths as State Ministers.

One notable feature was that those who had crossed in a hurry to the SLPP were given the thumbs down unlike in the past when a crossover meant a guaranteed invitation to a seat of prime importance. The top pole vaulter Dayasiri Jayasekera, who had been rewarded with the nomination of Chief Minister of the Wayamba Province when he crossed over from the UNP and joined Mahinda’s camp in the middle of 2013, had to be content with the post of State Minister for Small and Medium Enterprises. Even if he had been happy with this small crumb hurled from the master’s table, he would have been aghast to find that the presiding Minister was Wimal Weerawansa, his former rival in the oratorical stakes and cringed to learn that he would have to follow Wimal’s directions.

Amateur pole vaulter Wasantha Senanayake, the UNP member who first crossed over the SLPP in 2007 and became a Minster in the Rajapaksa government and crossed over to the UNP in late 2014 when Maithri’s star was starting to shine in the northern hemisphere and became a Minister under his government and left it last year to join Mahinda Rajapaksa when he was appointed Prime Minister and returned to the UNP again with his tail between his legs when Mahinda resigned and joined the Pohottuwa party just two weeks before the Presidential Election was completely ignored.  If he is nursing his disappointment, not even being made a State Minister, he must be consoling himself that at least he has not been forced to play second fiddle to Gammanpila, the latter having been overlooked for a Cabinet post or even a State Ministerial one.

But if the chosen 38 State Ministers plus the 16 in the Cabinet had expected the post to come with a whole host of perks and privileges as had been the practice in the past, the lights would have gone out on the Christmas tree when told by the President that that these were not sinecures laden with perks and privileges but workstations of responsibility.

On Wednesday, the President said: “The ministerial portfolios have been allocated based on the areas which need immediate development. These are areas that I had been thinking about for some years. I also saw some areas that needed immediate attention when I was campaigning. These ministerial portfolios confer great responsibility on those to whom it is conferred. For instance, we have appointed a State Minister of Railway Services because this is an area that needs immediate attention; we have to make the service more efficient and expand the railway lines. The Ministers, State Ministers and Deputy Ministers will also have to take steps to make the state sector more efficient and people-friendly.”

Certain Ministers, the President observed, were not over the moon about their appointments. He said: “When a person got the Social Protection Ministry, he gave me a look as if to tell me he did not know what it was about. But it is a vital Ministry.”

There was also a welcome new approach taken by the new President when it came to revamping the loss making state sector. This week saw the publication of advertisements in the papers calling for qualified professionals to submit their applications for the posts of Chairman and Board of Directors of state sector institutions. These applications would be forwarded

The notice read, “The Presidential Secretariat is seeking EOI’s from experienced professionals to be considered for appointment as Chairpersons and Board Members of the following entities, with the goal of transforming them to perform efficiently and effectively, and state owned commercial businesses to become commercially viable and profit making organisations.”

At long last this breakaway from the practice of Ministers recommending their cronies to head these lossmaking institutions gives the hope that these white elephants could be turned around and their potential harnessed to contribute to the national coffers.

But what really made the private sector and a few others get up and dance was the news on Wednesday that a heap of taxes have either been abolished totally or reduced substantially.

The withholding tax on interest income will be removed for those whose monthly interest income is less than Rs.250,000, even as the PAYE tax will be abolished for those whose monthly income is less than Rs. 250,000. Tax imposed on religious institutions will be abolished, the Nation Building Tax too will be abolished. The Value Added Tax (VAT) will be reduced from 15% to 8% from December 1st. Debit tax will also be abolished. All taxes on the remittances made by expat workers will also be reduced. And phone calls will cost less with the telecommunication levy reduced by 25%. The construction industry too will be taxed at 14% instead of 28%.

The good news of measures taken to revitalise the economy, to give more incentive for investments and make the private sector a true engine of growth was reflected in the Colombo stock market. Stocks surged 1.6% and turnover exceeded Rs.1 billion in the first hour of trading on Thursday itself.

In his first interview after the election, President Rajapaksa spoke to an Indian journalist and admitted that it had been a mistake for the Lankan government to have given control of the Hambantota Port to China. He said that although China had been a good friend, he would consider it a folly of judgment to have leased the Port to the Chinese for 99 years.

He said, “I will request them to renegotiate and come with a better (deal) to assist us. Today, the people are not happy with that deal, we can think of one year, two years, five years, we have to think of the future, what will happen? So giving a small land for investment is a different thing. To develop a hotel or a commercial property is not a problem, that’s not an issue. But strategically important, economically important harbour, giving that is not acceptable. That we should have control. We have to renegotiate. Giving a terminal for an operation is a different thing, giving some location to build a hotel is different, not the control over a very important place, it is not acceptable. So that is my position. We want to work with India very closely.”

Coincidentally the following day the United States government seemed to harbor the same thoughts. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia at the US Department of State, Ambassador Alice Wells said that the US shared India’s concerns over projects that would not have an economic basis and led to countries ceding sovereignty and listed the Chinese constructed Hambantota Port as one of them.

“Sri Lanka is not the only country,” she said, “that has effectively ceded sovereignty over a key asset. We also see in Sri Lanka a number of Chinese-financed projects sitting vacant and unused, including a $104 million telecommunications tower and a $209 million international airport in the south with zero regularly-scheduled flights.”

Meanwhile on Thursday, the President took flight to New Delhi as a guest to Indian Prime Minister, this was his first State visit abroad. Modi had been swift to issue the invite shortly after his inauguration, whilst China said, “visit us when you’re settled down” and as Gotabaya Rajapaksa landed in New Delhi carrying with him his concern over Chinese control over the Hambantota Port and his own desire to work closely with India, it is clear that a new chapter of an Indo-Lanka friendship was in the making.