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• THE LANKAN AVURUDHU SPRING ++ THE LANKAN AVURUDHU
• Lanka rushes headlong toward constitutional crisis

People Power reclaimed the sovereignty they had constitutionally delegated to the President and Parliament as mass protests throughout the country brought the Government to the brink of collapsing like a house of cards.

Last Thursday evening’s peaceful siege at the President’s private Mirihana residence until an extremist mob infiltrated the scene and turned it violent, had added new impetus to the spontaneous people movement and given spiritual momentum to mass dissent. Not even the invocation of emergency law on Friday nor the sudden imposition of an islandwide 36-hour curfew clamped on Saturday at 6pm, could prevent the fiery national mood exploding peacefully on the streets.

Neither did the social media blackout on Sunday but lifted by 3pm the same day, serve to muffle the voice of the people from spreading the good word as many downloaded free VPN apps to circumvent the ban to find out the buzz on the street.

Throughout the land, the nation’s collective conscious heard the singular call. The young, the old, the poor, the rich, people of all genders, races and faiths shed aside the petty divides that politicians had used to keep  them asunder, to rally as one to answer the nation’s cry. They joined any protest they could find, bringing with them their handwritten homemade placards all bearing the common message echoed in the chant they roared, demanding the President and Government to resign.

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Three little words, ‘Gota, go home’, became Lanka’s new national mantra.

On Monday morning, the entire cabinet resigned except the Prime Minister. Not even Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa, of whom Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa had declared just three weeks ago as one who ‘will not be removed under any circumstances,’ had been spared the guillotine. But many feared that though the spectre may have left the stage, he was still in the wings directing the cast according to the Rajapaksa script.

On Monday, ex-Justice Minister Ali Sabry was sworn in as the new Finance Minister. So was ex-Education Minister Dinesh Gunawardene sworn in as the new Minister of Education, along with Ex-Foreign Minister G. L. Peiris and Ex-Highways Minister Johnston Fernando, respectively sworn in as the new Minister of Foreign Affairs and the new Minister of Highways. Along with the Prime Minister, the foursome made up the new makeshift cabinet. While G. L., Dinesh and Johnston stood firm through the week, Sabry reversed direction the following morning and resigned.

If that was bad enough to have the all-important Finance Ministry and Treasury without a minister, worse was to follow when long-serving Treasury Secretary S. R. Attygalle resigned within the hour of Minister Sabry’s resignation.  To compound the crisis, Ajith Nivard Cabraal, the snooty Governor of the Central Bank, who had contemptuously held all monetary experts not agreeing to his homemade remedies to solve Lanka’s staggering forex crisis, also resigned. The two main monetary and fiscal edifices of the nation now stood leaderless.

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The exodus, too, had begun. In the early hours of Monday, Namal Rajapaksa’s wife and her parents, together with six others, left the country to an undisclosed destination. Neither was it revealed whether the Prime Minister’s two other daughters-in-law had also emplaned. Certainly the heat was on as on Tuesday, the President’s close confidant Avant Guard owner Senadhipathy also left with his family, as did ‘Pandora Paper’s’ Nirupama Rajapaksa, first cousin of the ruling family, leave for Dubai.

With the curfew lapsing at dawn on Monday, the protests intensified, with crowds surrounding many government MPs houses. Significantly, they also thronged Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa’s private Tangalle residence ‘Carlton’ with so much vehemence that the police were compelled to fire tear gas to disperse the people.  But wherever the people went, the message was the same, ‘the Rajapaksas must go’.  The writing was writ large on every wall.

But are the leaders reading the message? Are they listening to the tumult? Those who had not heard the rumble in the grassroots where it had first sounded, still remain aloof to the din when it is brought closer home to the seat of Government. The moat has been crossed, the drawbridge stands raised, the ramparts stormed and the citadel lies under a people’s siege but it seems they still remain in ivory towers, clinging to the fast vanishing vestiges of power, without addressing the masses’ demands and saving the nation from sliding to a burning hell.

On Monday afternoon, the Government lost its two-thirds majority in Parliament when its main constituent party, the SLFP announced that its 14 MPs will quit the Government to sit as an independent group. On Tuesday, the Speaker was informed that 42 MPs of the SLPP’s 11 constituent parties would henceforth sit as independent members.

The Government now only had a simple majority, which included the six Muslim MPs and the lone SJB national list MP Diana Gamage, the turncoats who had crossed over to the Government in 2020 to vote for Gotabaya’s 20th Amendment. Yet, undaunted by the simple threadbare majority they now held, the Government chose attack as the best defence.

First, the Government’s cheering squad leader Johnston Fernando ranted that come what may the President will not resign. He also emphasised that the President and the Government had not lost the people’s mandate. TNA MP Sumanthiran posed the pertinent question: ‘If you think you still have the mandate to govern, why did the entire cabinet resign?’

Then the Government threw the ball into the opposition’s court. They declared that with the resignation of the cabinet on Monday, the slate was now swiped clean and invited the Opposition to take over as the interim government. It was an easy volley they lobbed and the opposition smashed it out of the grounds.

All the Opposition parties rejected the invite, with Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa stating the party will never make an agreement or form an administration with the Gotabaya Rajapaksa-led Government. Calling for the proposal to abolish the Executive Presidency to be brought to Parliament that very week, he said a new mandate from the people is necessary to form a new government.

Sajith, who now plans to bring a no-confidence motion against the Government, declared: ‘There should be no voice in Parliament, apart from the voice heard from the streets. The people want a change in government and the Parliament must understand that. Power will only be obtained with the blessings of the people.’

The JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake, echoing the same, demanded the President to heed the calls of the public and resign. He said: ‘Forming an interim government was not the solution to the current issues, as one of the key demands of the people is for the President to quit the post.’

The Government taunted, saying ‘the opposition clamour to form a government, but when we offer it to the opposition, they refuse to take it.’

But the opposition’s logic is unanswerable. People Power had brought the nation to this momentous hour. Only a fresh mandate given by the people could legitimise any new government. Not a shabby offer by a regime that had forfeited the people mandate, to take over its heinous sins.

And, as for those who say, given the economic woes, this is not the time to hold elections, let it be told that, even as the 2020 elections were held in a COVID pandemic and cost an estimated Rs 10 billion,  where there is a will there is  a way. Unless the present lot are afraid of losing their seats, money at this hour should be no object. What’s the printing of a further Rs. 10bn to restore public confidence, compared to the Rs. 300 billion printed and spent ad hoc during this last two years? The fundamental need is to get the political set up straightened out.

This was hammered home by the new Governor of the Central Bank Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe who assumed the vacant chair on Thursday after the discredited Nivard Cabraal was forced out of office by the might of People Power. Addressing his maiden press conference on Friday, Dr. Weerasinghe said that he had decided to return only because of the people’s plight and on the condition that he is allowed to act independently without political meddling.

He declared: ‘My aim is to get the economy back on track as quickly as possible. My task will be enormously helped if the political instability of the Government and the people’s unrest are settled soonest.’ If the national priority is to get the systems right, what better way to resolve both than to grant the people their sovereign right to elect the government of their choice?

Why stint over its cost when it is to enable the people to exercise their sovereign franchise; and the result, whatever the people’s verdict may be, will help restore stability and build investor confidence. It will provide the ground conditions, Dr. Weerasinghe eagerly sought to expedite Lanka’s economic Phoenix to rise from the ashes.

Thursday’s brief appearance of the President in Parliament to the cheers of his backbenchers served only to raise the dwindling morale of SLPP’s rank and file, and added nothing more.  With its once solid 6.9 million voter base fast vanishing, with its once sure two-thirds majority vapourised in a flash, and now reduced to a pathetic wafer-thin majority in Parliament, for how long can the government wear a brave face to keep at bay its day of reckoning?

Can it do so by gratuitously granting two further holidays to make the season’s holidays replete, and let the people enjoy better the Avurudu fare on Indian credit? Or can it survive the gathering storm by attempting to disrupt Saturday’s scheduled protest at Galle Face, preventing entry to the Green on the feeble pretext that development work is being carried out on the grass? That didn’t stop a massive crowd from thronging it, last morn.

But if the Government has plans to sit out the crisis surrounded by all the paraphernalia of state power, the people, too, have shown they are prepared for the long haul no matter the long road, as they did on Friday when over 2000 students from the Kelani Uni marched 7 miles to the Diyawanna Parliament to brave a Government tear gas welcome at the Parliament roundabout. The national mood stayed upbeat as did peace vigils rage unabated with Lanka’s new-found mantra, repeatedly chanted to wreak the desired change.

What right had Sabry to claim he was still Finance Minister?On Monday morning, ex-Minister of Justice Ali Sabry was hastily sworn in as the nation’s new Finance Minister. But, alas, the sudden elevation of Ali Sabry from the familiar field of law to the convoluted world of figures, perhaps, may have proved beyond his ken, for the following morn, he tendered his resignation, even volunteering to surrender his national list seat to pave the way ‘for a suitable person to handle the situation.’ ALI SABRY: Legal flaw But Sabry need not have offered to make the supreme sacrifice any politician, who has crept into Parliament not by the will of the people but through its rear, would feel compelled to make in the circumstances. On Friday he tells Parliament: ‘Today I am addressing this House as the Finance Minister. I revoked my resignation as the Finance Minister as no one was willing to take over the ministry.’ Very gallant of him to take up the torch he had laid down three days earlier but after resigning on his own accord by sending a letter addressed to the President on Tuesday and released to the media, can Sabry assume to still be the Finance Minister without being freshly sworn in? Article 47 of the Constitution states that a Minister shall continue to hold office unless he ‘resigns his office by a writing under his hand addressed to the President.’ Clearly this does not make any provision for any private understanding between the President and the Minister nor hinge on the President refusing to accept the written resignation. Once the Minister has given notice of his resignation written under his hand addressed to the President, the Minister stands resigned. Only a fresh swearing in can make him a Minister again. As of Friday evening, Sabry had not been re-sworn in as the nation’s Finance Minister. Pray then, will the ex-Justice Minister, President Counsel Ali Sabry clearly explain what legal right he constitutionally had to claim on Friday afternoon in Parliament that he was the nation’s  Minister of Finance?