Editorial

The recent Supreme Court order to the Election Commission (EC) is to hold the local government (LG) elections “at the earliest possible” with due regard to its duty to hold other elections as required by law. It held that the LG elections were a foreseeable expenditure and it was the responsibility of the Government to hold those elections.

The argument that the Government didn’t have the funds was a dangerous one, but that the country was broke and so declared to the world was also not unknown. This argument is now passé. The question that must linger is: ‘Can this country of 22 million afford to have four separate elections for four tiers of elected representatives’?

Prior to 1978, it was only two tiers, viz., Parliament and local councils. A third tier was added with the Executive Presidency after 1978 and a fourth after 1987—the Provincial Councils. Whether democracy has flourished with all these elections, the public can judge.

Then, the local councils were the nursery to Parliament. Today, it is the Provincial Councils. As a result, the local councils throw up some third-rate representatives. Not that Parliament and the Provincial Councils don’t, but it shows the quality entering local councils.

Local councils are an important branch of government, responsible for the day-to-day, mundane, but vital issues that involve the citizens and their immediate environment.

If another Rs. 10 billion of public funds has to be spent to elect local councillors, cannot these polls be held simultaneously with the next parliamentary elections, which are expected shortly after the presidential poll? The EC seems somewhat reluctant to embark on such a project, arguing ‘practical difficulties’. No doubt there would be such difficulties, with the parliamentary elections being at the district level and local councils being geographically smaller ward levels. There would be the question of polling agents, etc., in the absence of digital voting, such as in more advanced countries.

In the USA, the presidential election comes along with elections to several state high posts. In India, a high-level parliamentary committee is already sitting, looking at ways and means of synchronising a ‘one nation; one election’ project to have the national and state elections on the same day or within a specific time frame. The Indian Government may have sprung this idea as it was winning national elections but losing in the states. After the June elections and the setback it faced, there may be a rethink. However, it is a pointer that even in such a large electorate as in India, there is thought about amalgamating elections.

It is time for Parliament and the EC to also think
outside the box.

Port calls: Hub or hubris

In the past few months, there has been an increasing frequency of vessels, from guided missile destroyers to submarines, from the navies of the USA, India, China, Japan, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, and Germany, making port calls in Sri Lanka ostensibly for refuelling and the customary R & R (rest and recreation) for their weary sailors.

A former Foreign Secretary writing to this newspaper in our 75th Independence supplement last year called this “strategic promiscuity” and suggested the need for an enlightened Port Calls Policy (PCP) consistent with ‘freedom of navigation’ and ‘innocent passage’ norms under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Such a policy, he pointed out, will encourage, subject to safeguards, all vessels plying the Indo-Pacific waters to visit Sri Lankan ports and thereby boost the incomes of these ports that have been built and renovated at huge costs.

Effective implementation of this policy, however, requires in parallel strengthening Sri Lanka’s naval technical and intelligence capacity to identify and exclude, by the country’s own sovereign assessment, covert and overt conflict-related naval missions of foreign powers.

The moratorium on research vessels now in force was a knee-jerk reaction from the Government to ward off intense pressure from external powers to exclude rival naval ships from entering Sri Lankan ports. If Sri Lanka got caught in the headlights in the middle of the debt crisis at the time, this reactive step now needs review from whatever administration is to come after September 21.

Resorting to reactive practices such as a moratorium in the absence of a declared PCP signifies unpredictability and selectivity and doesn’t serve the national interest.

The Defence Ministry’s existing SOP (Standard Operating Procedures), a technical exercise, should be an appendage to a PCP—a foreign policy one. No sovereign nation should compromise on a PCP that is consistent with the ‘rules’ in force under UNCLOS. While any compromises on PCP can harm the country’s economic interests, the SOP could be used pragmatically to negotiate—and even make compromises on ‘technical issues’ with countries that entertain security concerns about a particular port call by a third country.

The JVP has called for a ‘strategic foreign relations’ policy and the SJB for a ‘multi-aligned’ foreign policy whatever that may mean. The President’s manifesto is silent on its foreign policy, leaving the public to take its future policy as a continuation of its current policy.

Foreign policy issues like dealing with the anti-Sri Lanka diaspora in the West; the ‘new India’ wanting to graduate from a non-aligned ‘balancing power’ to a ‘leading power’ and now peddling theories about revisiting the Indo-Sri Lanka International Maritime Boundary Line; the ‘Sword of Damocles’ hanging over the country in Geneva’s UN Human Rights Council; or the issue of warships lining up for port calls in Sri Lanka have been deftly ignored or vaguely glossed over in the manifestos of the presidential candidates.

The stark reality of major power rivalry and entanglement in the country’s foreign policy with increased global warring in the neighbourhood is clear, viz., West Asia on the West, the Indo-Pacific on the East, and South Asia in the middle. The foreign policy of any future government needs to exercise prudence to safeguard the country’s sovereignty, security, and interests.

When a troublesome research ship is seen on the radar, Sri Lanka declares a self-imposed moratorium, and when an awesome warship lines up for a port call, a minister proclaims the emergence of a naval ‘hub’.

It would indeed be more appropriate to call such cases more hubris, than hub.