Columns

Would you believe it! Well, it sure beggars belief. But then anything is possible in the motherland. Nothing seems to surprise the citizenry any longer, not even Deshabandu’s Damoclean sword brushed up as the PTA, dangling over their heads.

While the money-making business leaders continue to fatten themselves with the help of the governing class, never mind what political hue they sport, and a reinvigorated hotel industry with puffed-up chests threaten protesters not to tax its patience in a new-found exhibition of power, the ordinary citizens are too busy trying to fend for themselves and feed their children, to have noticed an unusual news story. But to that, a few paragraphs later.

If early one morning they hear in the media that the cabinet had ballooned to 50, multiplying mediocrity even beyond constitutional limits, they are more likely to turn around and return to their sleep, so accustomed they are to profligacy, cronyism and the entrenchment of impunity that nothing seems to matter anymore, leaving it to karmic forces to dispense justice where all else appear to fail.

Recently when Britain had its second prime minister in so many days and Liz Truss was struggling to hold court with a “Third Eleven” in the cabinet, one commentator wrote that chimpanzees sitting in the government front benches would actually be an improvement on the current lot.

Not long after Liz Truss who in her final hours boastfully uttered in parliament that she was a fighter and not a quitter, gave up the fight the next day, surrendering her short tenancy at the prime minister’s residence at No 10 Downing Street.

Now the British people are saddled with a third prime minister who is one of the richest men in the country but his inclination to cronyism and bad judgment have seen one minister bloated with self-importance resigning following allegations of bullying officials and fellow MPs and misconduct, and another key minister struggling to survive. And the prime minister keeps looking over his shoulder for suspicious Cascas or Brutuses lurking in the back benches.

The Sri Lankan people are not accustomed to seeing their cabinet ministers resigning whatever the cause unless an aragalaya chases them out. Or, like in older times when politics attracted respectable, competent and educated individuals, ministers such as Gamani Jayasuriya (an old Royalist from civilised days) resigned on matters of policy or a prime minister such as Dudley Senanayake (an old Thomian of even earlier vintage) who also resigned on policy issues and stayed out of politics for some years until encouraged back.

Instead, what Sri Lankans have encountered in recent years are persons of disrepute and moral turpitude or those ready to sacrifice whatever party principles they supposedly held for personal gain, being elevated to cabinet rank or state ministership ignoring more upright or outspoken persons of decided prowess.

But it seems that not even they would have been ready for the news from the Maldivian Parliament where questions have been raised as to how its former president and more importantly its current Assembly Speake, Mohamed Nasheed ended up at the COP27 UN climate change summit in Egypt’s resort city of Sharm El Sheikh, as a member of the Sri Lanka delegation.

When the issue was raised in the Maldivian parliament, it was stated on November 5 that the state budget was not used for Nasheed’s trip as part of the Sri Lanka delegation.

News reports from the Maldives said former President of the Maldives Democratic Party and former Attorney General Dr. Mohamed Munnawar had criticised Nasheed’s trip in a tweet on November 5, questioning Nasheed’s loyalty to his own country when he was going on trips to represent another country.

“Where’s the country? What about being loyal to the State?” Dr. Munawwar questioned. Former Maldivian President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom echoed the same. Former Attorney General Diyana Saeed, the first Attorney General under Nasheed’s Government, also supported Dr. Munawwar’s remarks, noting: “It’s a matter with a legal burden. It’s actually a legit issue.”

“The question is whether the Speaker representing another country is permissible,” Saeed noted. Former Assistant Commissioner of Police Abdullah Fairoosh, in a series of tweets, questioned whether Nasheed’s prioritisation of another country while acting as Speaker posed a conflict of interest, news reports said.

What is strange is that the Maldives sent its own delegation to the conference. The nation was represented by Maldivian Vice President Faisal Naseem and Environment Minister Aminath Shauna while Speaker Nasheed was clinging on to the Sri Lanka delegation.

So the obvious question is: how did Speaker Nasheed end up where he did — as part of a neighbour’s delegation when Nasheed’s own country which is faced with greater and more immediate climate change issues as it is a nation of a multiplicity of atolls, some of which are hardly six feet above sea level, than Sri Lanka currently does?

It is claimed that Nasheed’s trip was funded by the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) which is a group of countries most affected by climate change. It does seem strange that Nasheed did not apply for funding from the CVF which represents the most affected countries by climate change to join his country’s delegation if he was so concerned about his own country and the adversity it faces.

It appears that recently Nasheed was appointed as a special adviser on climate change by President Ranil Wickremesinghe. It must have come as a surprise to many Sri Lankans who are not only experts on climate change issues but others who are highly concerned about the potential impact on their country, that Speaker Nasheed has some special qualifications relating to climate change that he fits the role of a special adviser with expert knowledge on Sri Lanka’s climate change questions.

Nasheed might have some knowledge about Maldive fish which, of course, Sri Lankan people relish. It might have been more appropriate to hire him to advise us on that. But on climate change — now that’s surely a new one for our own citizenry.

Is Sri Lanka so bereft of expertise that we have to turn to the Speaker of the Maldivian parliament? Don’t we on our own doorstep, as it were, our own who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize as vice-chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — Prof Mohan Munasinghe?

But Nasheed is not the only one from outside Sri Lanka that is considered worthy of a presidential appointment. Quite recently Norwegian Erik Solheim who considered himself a competent peace negotiator in our three-decade-long war with the LTTE and cost the country dearly, was in Colombo this time to provide expertise on climate change as another special presidential adviser.

It appears that Sri Lankan leaders have little faith in their own people and keep looking elsewhere irrespective of whether they are fit for purpose or not. But why select persons whose reputation has already been badly sullied and have had to resign from international positions they held, as did Erik Solheim, now trying to quietly creep back into meddling in Sri Lankan affairs as though the damage he had done was not enough?

Precisely four years ago Solheim was asked to resign from his post as head of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) after an internal audit found him hugely over-spending, absent from office 80% of the time, and other irregularities that led to three northern countries — Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden — publicly announcing they were suspending funding.

The audit report said Solheim was a “reputational risk” for an organisation dedicated to fighting climate change. Now he turns up here as an adviser on climate change, having failed as a peace negotiator, promising to bring “green” investment to the country.

Another appointment was made the other day. London-based Niranjan de Silva Aditiya also known as Nirj Deva, was made some kind of diplomatic envoy.

Space and time do not permit more comment. As they used to say “let sleeping dogs lie” — for the time being at least.

(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)