Columns

So 30 new State ministers are to be appointed some time soon. Given the state of the country, what is 30 more to buttress a government with a galaxy of brains already in the cabinet? And this injection of more brain power is all to come from the Pohottuwa party (as though it has anything to spare) that propelled Ranil Wickremesinghe into the presidency.

Last week’s news report, which has still not been denied or dismissed as misreporting, fake news or some derivative of denial oft resorted to by government spin doctors, said the Pohottuwites or Pohottuwans or whatever you might call this gaggle of peoples’ representatives, had asked that 40 of them be elevated as servants of the state.

They are hardly likely to label themselves as servants for they see themselves as important appendages in governance without whom the state would grind to a halt, forgetting, of course, that they all got together and drove the economy to the ground.

That is why in the public eye they serve as useful a function as the appendix to the human body. An anatomical nuisance it might well be but certainly not a burden on the public purse like ministers, what with luxury vehicles, security to guard their worthy bodies, a bundle of perks and pensions after just five years as representatives of the people.

Still, there are those who feel that President Wickremesinghe has done them wrong by accepting 30 and no more. As the story goes it was the Pohottuwa majority that voted him into the seat of power a month or more ago. That is true of course.

But by the same token it was the several-months-long Aragalaya calling for then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to drop the presidency and run home and for the rest of Rajapaksas to pack their bags, return any state assets and stay out of the way, that paved the way for Ranil Wickremesinghe’s return from political obscurity.

So the Aragalayists deserve even more recognition and the president’s ear than some nondescript Pohottuwites who are more representatives of themselves than the people

Still, those who enabled Ranil Wickremesinghe’s tenth or whatever coming, are being rounded up, and incarcerated under the PTA, one of the most obnoxious pieces of legislation that violates the basic norms of natural justice, while others are remanded on charges that make justice a joke.

For instance, charging a person who was probably a sightseer rather than an activist, for taking away a beer mug from the President’s House as memorabilia surely, is not only the height of absurdity but turning justice into a domestic and international joke.

To those who now read this as ingratitude say it is like kicking away the ladder after getting to the top.

Still to come, of course, is the impending expansion of the cabinet when more Pohottuwites armed with suspicious baggage from the past, will reappear and join others with dirty faces and dirty deeds. Will one of them be that despised Johnston Fernando whose antics in parliament some four years ago when he weaponised the chairs in parliament to throw at others are still visually on record?

His shenanigans from that time were resurrected the other day when those videos reappeared showing Fernando in a business suit about to hurl a chair. Whether it was at The Speaker or at the police who had been summoned into the chamber to restore order, was not shown.

Despite Cabinet Spokesman Bandula Gunawardena’s verbal idiocy, this is surely an offence under ordinary law. But curiously even the law used against other people does not appear to apply to Johnston Fernando.

But what is unpardonable is that those who threaten MPs and staff with physical violence and bring parliament into disrepute as these videos go round the world, not only escape unscathed but are elevated again and again into cabinet ranks, while the common man is charged for far lesser offences.

The other day I read that Prasanna Ranatunga, Minister of Urban Development and Housing, is trying to extort some millions of rupees from those who were camped at GotaGoGama for supposed damage done to the grass and the ground on Galle Face Green.

Never mind the angels but he should tread gingerly when he tries to extort payment out of them, for he already carries a conviction of two years rigorous imprisonment for trying to extort 64 million rupees from a businessman.

Before he tries to do any more arm twisting, it is well to remember that though he did not serve the sentence it is still suspended for five years. Though he might have paid off the Rs 25 million fine and another one million owed to the complainant, the Rs 64 million question is how he has the gall to remain in the cabinet and the gall of those who appointed him to a new portfolio and continue to keep him as chief government whip.

In any other country where political decorum and parliamentary rules and decency prevail, Ranatunga would not be retained as chief whip, he would be whipped out of the party and the cabinet. But in this country like no other, he is elevated and shamelessly allowed parliamentary time to censure others.

Although there is a code of conduct for MPs that remains a dead letter for if it were to be strictly observed how many of the 225 MPs would be untainted. Is this one reason why those who rightfully call for the current lot to be kicked out cry out for system change?

I have often heard Dr Colvin R. de Silva say in his learned contributions to parliamentary debates that those who come for equity must come with clean hands or words to that effect. One wonders whether there is any use in trying to quote such wise words to the Urban Development minister. Would he understand them anyway?

It is a pity that President Wickremesinghe pulled Ranatunga out of the Tourism Ministry. He would surely have been a tourist attraction worthy of public display. Where else would you find a serving cabinet minister with a conviction of two years’ rigorous imprisonment preaching homilies to others? 

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London)