Columns

These days when allusions to military doings of one sort or the other seem quite au fait, a reference to the charge of the Light Brigade is quite in place surely. Especially so if it refers to the ill-conceived and thoughtless actions of the SJB-led opposition that charged at the solid phalanx of the government ranks though its target was a solitary minister of a minor party in the alliance.

Alfred Tennyson recounting the disastrous charge of the British cavalry against the Russian troops in the Crimean War of 1854 wrote that “Someone had blundered”. Indeed someone had and the blame could be pinned on Lord Cardigan.

But who was responsible for the macho verbal charge against Energy Minister Udaya Gammanpila last week with a “No Confidence Motion”? Did the SJB and its advisers misread the unexpected burst of anger within the SLPP for the sudden rise in fuel prices or did some in the SJB think that Gammanpila would offer an easy target?

While public anger and disquiet within the SLPP was evident and presented a justifiable political issue to raise in the midst of other acts of misgovernance and tightening of personal freedoms and rights, it added to the woes of a struggling society burdened with spiralling living costs and shortages.

The furore started when the ruling SLPP’s general secretary Sagara Kariyawasam MP, issued a statement asking the Energy minister to step down from his post over the increase in fuel prices. Sagara Kariyawasam said “the subject minister must take complete responsibility for pushing the people into more difficulties” with a fuel price hike amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Blaming Gammanpila he said: “The government has been put into a difficult position of increasing the fuel prices by the subject minister due to his failure to make the necessary decisions by realising that such a situation could arise.”

Kariyawasam says they have “a suspicion as to whether this situation was created on purpose to create displeasure among the public regarding the leaders who are committed to the development of the country amidst various challenges.”

“Thereby, the subject minister is directly responsible for this situation and should take responsibility and resign from his post, the SLPP said” reported a news site considered supportive of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

What added fuel, if a pun might be permitted, to the fuel price issue was the prevailing speculation that Kariyawasam, said to be a close associate of Basil Rajapaksa, issued the statement at the bidding of Basil who was away at his home in the US.

True or not that story was doing the rounds. There were no signs of Kariyawasam retracting the statement or trying to explain away what he intended to say though the statement was clear enough for even the most uneducated MP to understand.

Understandably,  Gammanpila stood firm because he knew as did many others including top leaders of the party that it was not simply his sole doing. In this he had the support of leaders of other minor parties in the coalition.

Surely, the SJB could not have been ignorant of the fact that the decision to increase the fuel price was not taken by the Energy Minister alone. It was far too crucial an issue for Gammanpila to make a unilateral decision and announce it. There are SJB economists who would have known of the serious consequences of such a fuel price hike.

It was subsequently known the decision was taken by a committee that included President Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Rajapaksa. An informed and alert opposition would have been aware of it.

But still they ventured on, the SJB-led opposition drafting a no-confidence motion zeroing in on Gammanpila when it was a collective decision taken by those at the top of the totem — the president and the prime minister who was then also the finance minister.

That it was a collective decision could not have been unknown to the top rung of the SJB whose blunder was worse than that of Lord Cardigan who led his cavalry to the “valley of Death”. So why did the opposition pick on poor Gammanpila when the responsibility for the decision lay elsewhere with the energy minister a party to it.

One possible answer is that the opposition miscalculated the impact of Kariyawasam’s statement believing that if Basil Rajapaksa initiated the move there would be a ‘Basil Block’ in parliament that was prepared to dump Gammanpila or at least cut him down to size at a time when he was seeking more power, as some media reported.

So the SJB, weak at the knees, thought some SLPPers would answer to the Kariyawasam call and vote for a motion against Gammanpila creating some rift in the ruling party and the opposition showing some signs of life.

But that scenario came unstuck when the SLPP decided to close ranks in support of the energy minister.

Or was the SJB’s original intention to use a motion against Gammanpila to castigate the government as a whole for its performance that some have come to call the “Three-year Follies” topped with an ever-thickening layer of a pandemic.

As I write this on Wednesday morning without access to a fair cross-section of opinion expressed during the two-days of debate, it is naturally difficult to say from here what arguments were adduced to buttress the opposition motion.

From the 1950s even before my time as Sketch Writer (erroneously called Lobby Correspondent) of the Daily News from the late 1960s and later as Parliamentary Editor and then as Deputy Editor Parliamentary Affairs until sometime in the late 1980s I think, the Daily News would carry three to four full pages of the previous day’s parliamentary proceedings.

That was understandable. The Daily News for several decades had been the leading English newspaper which teachers in many schools recommended students read the CDN for their  edification.

Morever the contributions made by MPs then were, by and large, highly educative, intelligent, well researched and analytical made by professionals and educated elected representatives. That is unlike today when parliament even refuses to disclose the educational qualifications of the present lot.

If the opposition intended to lay bare the Government’s political innards and did so why did it fight shy of enlarging the motion to include the cabinet or the cabinet committee that was responsible for deciding on the fuel price hike.

Ranil Wickremesinghe, back in parliament after a long break, tried to do so with an amendment to the original motion. But it was shot down by the prime minister and rejected by the Speaker.

Surely there is somebody in the opposition who could enlighten the public whether this was a genuine attempt to show some life or was some kind of charade. Or is there some deep, dark secret that cannot be revealed.

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