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Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa having a friendly conversation with protesting SJB parliamentarians outside the parliament chambers

Though Power Minister Gamini Lokuge had pledged to table the agreement in Parliament, he did not do so, while efforts by various Opposition politicians and activists to obtain a copy of the agreement through Right to Information (RTI) requests were also rejected. The fact that the RTI Commission was not reappointed to appeal did not help. As such, the contents of the agreement remained a mystery, until this Friday, when National People’s Power (NPP) Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake tabled what he called was a ‘True Copy’ of the agreement in Parliament.

Mr Dissanayake’s disclosure of the agreement, a copy of which had been leaked to him, overshadowed other developments of the final day of the debate on Budget 2022. Afterwards, he was swamped by requests from MPs, including Cabinet Ministers, asking for copies of the agreement. The NPP Leader told the media that it was actually through him that many Cabinet Ministers were now finding out the contents of the agreement as it had not even been presented to the Cabinet, let alone Parliament.

Though the Cabinet Paper seeking approval for the signing of the agreement had stated that it would be signed with a US company NFE, the agreement, signed on September 17, 2021, with Treasury Secretary S.R. Attygalle signing on behalf of the Government, was actually with “NFE Sri Lanka Power Holdings LLC,” a limited liability company organised and existing under the laws of the State of Delaware and registered in Wilmington, Delaware, USA. Mr Dissanayake queried how a company with the name “NFE Sri Lanka Power Holdings” came to be registered in the US.

Clause 13.1 of the agreement stresses that for a period of two years beginning from the date of signing of the agreement, “each Party undertakes to the other Party that, subject to Clause 13.2, it shall not, except with the prior written consent of the other Party, disclose to any Person any information (whether written, visual or oral)” relating to the agreement. Clause 13.2 deals with “Permitted Disclosure” that can be made with the agreement of both parties.

“How can they decide not to disclose the contents of an agreement regarding public property?” Mr Dissanayake queried. “This property belongs to the people of this country. It has not been bestowed on the Finance Minister or the Ministry Secretary by way of a deed.”

The NPP Leader’s disclosure will no doubt reverberate both within the Government and the country at large in the coming days. Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) trade unions have already warned of intensified trade union action in the near future if the agreement goes ahead.

Meanwhile, Cabinet Ministers Wimal Weerawansa, Udaya Gammanpila and Vasudewa Nanayakkara this week also filed objections before the Supreme Court supporting the Fundamental Rights petitions filed against the Yugadanavi power plant agreement. A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court will take up the petitions for consideration on December 16 and 17.

The actions by the three ministers have pitted them against their own Cabinet colleagues as the dispute within the Government over the agreement drags on. It is unprecedented for Cabinet Ministers to go to court against their own government and Power Minister Gammanpila has been bold enough to say they are prepared to take the consequences of violating the principle of collective cabinet responsibility. Their argument seems to be that this agreement was not agreed upon by the Cabinet.

BBS headache

Meanwhile, the Government is trying its best to ignore yet another self-inflicted headache brought on by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s decision to appoint Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) General Secretary Ven. Galagoda-aththe Gnanasara Thera as the Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on “One Country, One Law.” The firebrand monk, no stranger to controversy, continues to make headlines for the wrong reasons more than six weeks into the appointment.

This week, a series of leaked phone recordings alleged to be of Gnanasara Thera verbally abusing two other Buddhist monks went viral on social media. A further phone recording surfaced later in the week where the Thera is allegedly verbally abusing a talk show host, who tries to give back to the monk in the same measure as he receives verbal abuse.

The recordings have elicited condemnation from the Opposition. During the debate on the head of expenditure of the Justice Ministry, former Justice Minister and Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) MP Thalatha Atukorala questioned what action President Rajapaksa intends to take with regard to the latest allegations against the monk.

Even some Government MPs raised concerns about how much damage the reputation of the Task Force will suffer due to the alleged antics of its chairmonk. SLPP MP Premanath Dolawatte made a vain attempt to salvage the situation in Parliament by telling MPs to stop simply focusing on the Task Force head and focus on its mission.

SJB walkout

The final week of the debate on Budget 2022 got off without the participation of SJB MPs, who had walked out of Parliament last Saturday (4) after claiming their security was under threat. They returned to Parliament on Wednesday (8) after boycotting Parliament for two days during the Budget debate. The walkout came after the SJB accused Government MPs led by State Minister Kanchana Wijesekara of trying to assault Galle District MP Manusha Nanayakkara outside Parliament chambers.

Mr Nanayakkara had been involved in several fiery exchanges with Government MPs last Friday and Saturday. The first confrontation occurred last Friday, when Government MPs led by Chief Government Whip Johnston Fernando objected to giving an additional five minutes for him to complete his speech. Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena ultimately decided not to give additional time to the SJB MP, leading an angry Mr Nanayakkara to approach the Speaker’s chair, to put it in his words, “to seek an explanation.” Several Government MPs, including the Chief Government Whip, claimed Mr Nanayakkara was acting in a threatening manner towards the Speaker and said they had to intervene to protect him, with Mr Nanayakkara then alleging that some Government MP tried to attack him.

Tensions again came to a head last Saturday when, during the course of his speech in the Budget debate, Mr Nanayakkara linked Fisheries State Minister Kanchana Wijesekara to an alleged corrupt deal to release two container loads of fish. Mr Wijesekara strongly refuted the allegations, accusing Mr Nanayakkara of uttering lies that needed to be stricken from the Hansard. He also challenged Mr Nanayakkara to repeat the allegations outside Parliament, where the comments won’t be protected by Parliamentary privilege.

SJB MPs alleged that after the conclusion of his speech, Mr Nanayakkara was accosted by a group of Government MPs led by State Minister Wijesekera outside the chambers on the Opposition side. The group had allegedly tried to assault Mr Nanayakkara, who was only saved from physical harm by the intervention of some SJB MPs and Parliament staff, who managed to safely evacuate him.

After walking out of the Parliament chambers and protesting at the entrance to Parliament, SJB MPs also boycotted sessions on both Monday and Tuesday as well. Speakers who were supposed to speak during the debate held on these days instead held their own “Parliament Against Suppression” at the SJB head office. This involved making the speeches they were supposed to make in Parliament and inviting the media to cover them.

This, along with protests staged outside the Parliament complex, however, did not gain the kind of attention that the SJB had hoped for. For one, their ‘parallel parliament’ did not elicit the kind of media coverage they had envisaged. The nightly news of most television channels devote a special segment on the day’s happenings in Parliament, covering snippets of prominent speeches made that day. As such, the SJB’s “Parliament Against Suppression” came out as just another of the myriad other press conferences that are held daily. They were also upstaged by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, who briefly met some of the protesting SJB MPs at the Parliament complex on Monday for a friendly chat. His media unit promptly released a statement saying that during his chat with the Opposition MPs, the PM reminisced about his own history of political struggle and protests at the Parliament complex. The PM’s media unit said Mr Rajapaksa “stressed on the need to involve more MPs when organising a protest of this nature.”

The Government for its part, accused the SJB of boycotting sessions because it had nothing much to contribute, and even claimed that Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa had orchestrated the boycott because he did not want to be in the chamber when the debate on the head of expenditure of the Housing Ministry, of which he was the minister under the Yahapalana Government, was taken up. Mr Premadasa has been dogged by allegations of wrongdoing concerning funds spent on promotional campaigns during his time as Housing Minister.

Rural Housing State Minister Indika Anuruddha claimed the funds spent on Mr. Premadasa’s promotional campaigns amounted to Rs. 1 billion and were “enough to build 10,000 additional houses.” Chief Government Whip Johnston Fernando, meanwhile, said Mr Premadasa would end the boycott soon as he was afraid that United National Party (UNP) Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe was becoming more prominent in his absence and could end up stealing the post of Leader of the Opposition from him.

SJB MPs returned to Parliament on Wednesday (8) after Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena assured their security and also appointed a committee chaired by Deputy Speaker Ranjith Siyambalapitiya to probe the incidents that took place on December 3 and 4 both within the Parliament chamber and the Parliament premises. The committee also includes Chamal Rajapaksa, Bandula Gunawardena, Vasudewa Nanayakkara, Susil Premajayantha, Gayantha Karunathilake, Rauff Hakeem, Anura Priyadarshana Yapa, Vijitha Herath, Ranjith Madduma Bandara and M.A. Sumanthiran.

SJB General Secretary Ranjith Madduma Bandara, who is part of the committee, said he still thinks the Speaker could take a decision himself to take action against MPs responsible for the unruly incidents if he wished since he had access to resources such as CCTV cameras which recorded what happened. “We will, however, go with an open mind and hope they take this issue seriously enough to conduct a proper investigation.”

The committee had its first meeting on Friday.

“I hope the appointment of the committee is not intended as a time-buying exercise,” MP Manusha Nanayakkara told the Sunday Times. He also acknowledged that continuing a parliamentary boycott during the final week of the debate on Budget 2022 was counterproductive.

“We decided it would be counterproductive to keep boycotting Parliament as it would open the door for the Government to lead us towards a dictatorship. We are also losing the opportunity to expose the many acts of corruption of this Government and raise our voices on behalf of the people.”

Mr Nanayakkara pointed out that his party had already written to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and several other international parliamentary bodies complaining about the incident. “We don’t want to take the matter to the Supreme Court as we want to ensure the supremacy of Parliament, but if such incidents continue, we may be forced into that as well,” he remarked.

While the SJB’s boycott may not have gone as well as they had hoped, the allegations that some Government MPs attempted to physically assault a parliamentary colleague is a serious issue. Yet, considering that the House has repeatedly failed to hold errant MPs to account over unruly behaviour in the past, it is doubtful any substantive action will be taken. Consider the disgraceful scenes witnessed during the 52-day constitutional crisis, when numerous MPs, many of whom are also in the current Parliament, were caught on camera attacking each other and destroying Parliament property paid for at taxpayers’ expense. Despite a criminal probe launched by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), not a single MP was charged. Parliament also failed to take action against any of the offending MPs, with not a single MP even being suspended despite a committee recommending stern disciplinary action against several dozen MPs.

It is also rather rich that some of the Government MPs who claimed they had to step in last week to prevent any danger from befalling the Speaker and “protect the dignity of Parliament” were among those who hurled water bottles at former Speaker Karu Jayasuriya and also threw books, chairs and other missiles in Parliament during the height of the 2018 Constitutional crisis.

Financial crisis and other headaches

While he assured Parliament and the country that Sri Lanka would meet its debt repayment obligations next year despite a crippling financial crisis, Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa conceded just how difficult the situation is. A day prior to his speech to Parliament on the final day of Budget 2022, the Finance Minister addressed a function to promote the local dairy industry, where he disclosed that the Government’s ban on the import of vehicles would also be in place next year – a third year running.

The Finance Minister stressed that there would be no new recruitments to the state service next year and asked heads of institutions to make do with what they had. He also remarked that some state institutions had so much excess staff that at certain divisional secretariats, some employees did not even have chairs to sit on. The minister will also have a tough task of managing a situation where trade unions representing Government employees are threatening to launch an island-wide strike if their demands for a Rs. 10,000 pay hike for the state sector are not met.

References the Finance Minister made about milk powder imports also generated headlines, with some Opposition MPs charging that he had said that the Government would not allow milk powder imports next year. The Government ministers were forced to clarify that what Mr Rajapaksa meant was that if the local dairy industry could be uplifted, it wouod be a great help in reducing the foreign exchange spent to import milk powder.

Several other crises also continue to haunt the Government. The issue of explosions related to LP gas cylinders continues, with many such explosions including that caused injuries also reported this week. The Consumer Affairs Authority (CAA) this week ordered state-owned Litro Gas to withdraw unused gas cylinders issued prior to December 4 currently in shops and households. Litro is now distributing new gas cylinders said to conform to CAA requirements, but this too has been dogged by controversy, with some consumers claiming that those new cylinders are also causing explosions. Alarmingly, some have also alleged that at least some of the new cylinders are actually cylinders of the old stock with new labels.

Meanwhile, farmers continue to suffer in some areas due to a shortage of fertiliser, while concerns have been raised over several unexplained “explosions” of containers that contained newly imported nano-nitrogen fertiliser.

On Friday, President Rajapaksa also swore-in Admiral of the Fleet Wasantha Karannagoda as the new Governor of the North-Western Province. The former navy chief replaces Raja Collure, who passed away this week after a battle with COVID-19.

US sanctions on military officers

Admiral Karannagoda’s appointment as Governor has also touched off a firestorm of criticism as he was once the 14th accused in the case involving the abduction and disappearance of 11 youths during 2008-2009. A group of navy personnel were indicted in the case by the Attorney General. Recently, the AG, however, informed the High Court that he did not intend to proceed with charges against the retired Admiral and requested that the case be terminated.

The appointment came on the same day that the US State Department announced a list of 12 officials of foreign governments against which it will impose human rights related sanctions over gross violations of human rights. They include two military personnel from Sri Lanka.

The officials are Chandana Hettiarachchi, “a Sri Lankan naval intelligence officer, for his involvement in gross violations of human rights, namely, the flagrant denial of the right to liberty of at least eight “Trincomalee 11” victims, from 2008 to 2009.” The other is Sunil Ratnayake, “a former Staff Sergeant in the Sri Lanka Army, for his involvement in gross violations of human rights, namely the extrajudicial killings of at least eight Tamil villagers in December 2000.”

“The designation of these two Sri Lankan individuals is not the only action we are taking in support of accountability for gross violations of human rights in Sri Lanka,” the State Department stressed.