Editorial

Calling out the Armed Forces has seemingly been President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s last throw of the dice – declaring a State of Emergency on Friday night following the hartal earlier in the day, members of Parliament besieged by radicalised students and trade unions threatening to extend strike action on a daily basis from next week until the President and his Government resign.

A botched attempt by the Opposition to defeat his tottering Government in Parliament over the election of the Deputy Speaker was expected to give the President and his brother-Prime Minister a lifeline. A no-confidence motion against the Government seemed also ‘dead in the water’, given the humiliating defeat suffered by the Opposition. Yet, the President must have felt he remained on shaky ground. He seemed willing to sacrifice his PM, one of the demands of the ongoing popular uprising in a bid to turn the tide against him and his Government. His political decisions have been questionable ever since he took the mantle of the Presidency, relying heavily on the military all along to deliver him the goods – from the battle against COVID to introducing organic fertiliser and running the public service. But this was the last resort in the face of crippling strikes in essential services on the cards from next week and mounting agitation turning from peaceful to aggressive, with provocateurs eager for blood-letting.

The President may well have listened to State Intelligence reports that the mass uprising has been infiltrated by adventurist radical elements taking advantage of the political instability and economic chaos to push through extra-parliamentary, extra-constitutional solutions to overthrow the democratic framework of the country. Even        Opposition MPs cocky as they were got roughed up outside the Legislature on Friday by vocal undergrads and had to beat a hasty retreat through a by-lane. Others, like the Bar Association, however, think otherwise, and fear the step the President has taken will only further complicate efforts at restoring political stability in the country.

This political instability is interwoven with the economic situation. The Finance Minister told Parliament that the country’s usable reserves are down to USD 50 million. Some Sri Lankan individuals have more money stashed away in offshore bank accounts than the Government has in its pockets right now.  Politically, the President is now almost a lame duck. There has been no visibility of him in recent weeks. He has not generated any public confidence that he’s conferring with those in charge of the economy or the public service. The ship of state he commands has hit an iceberg and is capsizing his own efforts at trying to steer the damaged vessel to safe shores. His Government is in disarray and the entire Government machinery and industry is grinding to a halt. He has gone back to the military where he is most comfortable. The Finance Minister gave a frank assessment of the state of the economy to Parliament this week. His confession that the Government delayed in going to the IMF in the face of a collapse of the economy last year, and the foolish cuts in taxes itself are grounds to send this Government home.

He spoke of the aid in the pipeline from the World Bank, IMF and ADB as well as India and China, but gave little explanation and held out lesser hope on how his Government, with only USD 50 million in the public purse, hoped to pay here and now for the next shipment of food, fuel and medicines.

 

Bringing the corrupt to justice

The keynote speaker at the UNESCO-Sri Lanka Press Institute partnered World Press Freedom Day event at the BMICH on May 3 made the important point: Sri Lankans seem to have overnight started making the connection between corruption and the depletion of reserves, the absence of money to pay off foreign loans taken to build those corruption-riddled, cost-inflated roads and other infrastructure.

The emptiness of state coffers has prompted “a tsunami wave of anger and discontent over inflated tenders, commissions – the dressy terms for bribes, vanity projects. Suddenly everyone wants to follow the money,” she said.

The day before that, the leader of the JVP dramatically dumped a cartload of files before the media and showcased the rampant corruption documented in recent years. He spared no one in the Government or Opposition hierarchy reinforcing the party’s long-held theme that there’s no difference between the two when it comes to corruption and that one provides protection to the other despite all the rhetoric and accusations from public platforms to hoodwink the voters.

This week an Australian broadcaster aired sordid details of corruption in that Anglosphere with part of the programme devoted to a corrupt deal in Sri Lanka. These revelations are nothing really new if one kept a keen eye on what has appeared in the media all these years, only to be relegated to the limbo of forgotten things. Nobody really cared, and nobody dared to bring any finality to the many bogus investigations that were carried out.

Feeble attempts through Presidential Commissions of Inquiry were merely to defuse public demands momentarily. The reports and recommendations were relegated to the cupboards of the Presidential Secretariat gathering dust, a waste of time, money and paper. The Bribery and Corruption Commission has been a wicked joke played on the country by the politicians. The perpetrators only needed to duck for cover from passing storms.

The Organisation of Professional Associations (OPA), the Bar Association (BASL) and the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICASL) have to come forward, as they have right now on legal and constitutional reforms, to sift through for verifiable evidence already in the public domain and bring at least some of the well-known crooks to book. Professionals and ordinary citizens need not wait for Godot.

There is a precedent. Former President Chandrika Kumaratunga was brought to justice by two ordinary law abiding citizens for corrupt practices in the Waters Edge case (the local Watergate), and fined by the Supreme Court no less, for inter-alia, violating the Doctrine of Public Trust. There was no Police or Attorney General, or Presidential Commissions involved in the case, just two ordinary citizens. It remains the only case of an Executive President and Head of Government so far to have been dragged to court, found guilty, and fined for corruption.