As former foreign minister A. C. S. Hameed was given the honour of open ing the budget debate on Monday, (Nov 10) his leader Ranil Wickremesinghe walked into the chambers.
Only a short while earlier, incumbent Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar has taken his seat between the two Muslim cabinet ministers – A. H. M. Fowzie and M. H. M. Ashraff — who are known to be at odds with each other. He has come specially to listen to his predecessor and old friend.
Mr. Kadirgamar’s presence in the House is indeed a rare occasion to savour. Since September he has seldom been seen by lobby correspondents. What with trips to the UN General Assembly, Washington, Islamabad (for three hours to meet premier Nawaz Sharif), London, then Malaysia, Colombo for (one day), London, Edinburgh, Washington, New York and, phew! back to Colombo. A Foreign Minster in every sense.
So naturally, all eyes were on the foreign minister. Oblivious to this attention by the lobby correspondents, Mr. Kadirgamar was seen penning a note and sending it across the floor of the House via a red sashed parliamentary peon to none other than the Opposition Leader. All eyes focused on Mr. Kadirgamar were now alight.
What could it be? And then, Mr. Wickremesinghe sends a note back and the reporters fail to take down Mr. Hameed’s dissection of the budget.
The next thing we know is of a Press Trust of India dispatch datelined Colombo Nov. 10 which appeared in some Indian newspapers – “Kadirgamar asked to help in UNP-Tamil parties deadlock over package,” says the report.
The report quotes “Sources in the TULF, the oldest Tamil party ” as the basis for this report but our own investigations revealed that no such thing is afoot. At least not yet.
But what of the UNP-Tamil parties deadlock if any over the package?
According to the UNP leadership, the deadlock is not between the UNP and the Tamil parties but within the Tamil parties.
They point out that the EPDP, the party that was very much created under the UNP’s administration, has thrown its whatever weight with the UNP’s official line.
And what is UNP’s official line given the views of the likes of Mr. Hameed and former finance minister Ronnie de Mel on the one side and those of the likes of Susil Moonesinghe and Dr. Stanley Kalpage on the other.
UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe himself gave the party’s official line as of this week. The UNP stand is that it supports the 13th Amendment (to the Constitution) introduced in1987 after the Indo-Lanka Accord of that year. This means Sri Lanka shall retain its nine existing provinces. It also supports the Mangala Moonesinghe committee report of later years and Mr. Wickremesinghe says “whatever other proposals that may be accepted by all parties.”
‘All parties?’. Now does that include the LTTE?
To which Mr. Wickremesinghe responds with a question himself. “Isn’t the LTTE a key player in this entire exercise?”
The govt. seems to opt for a package that will not include the LTTE. The Foreign Office has obtained a copy of the petition filed in the United States by the firm of one-time Attorney General Ramsay Clarke pleading for the rescinding of the US ban on the LTTE.
But there seemed to be no reference as indicated in the local media, in that petition about LTTE’s willingness to sit down and talk to the Sri Lankan government.
In the meantime, the PA’s devolution package carving out four sub divisions in the eastern province in a merged north-east province (subject to a referendum) has run into a storm within the TULF, the SLMC and most of the Muslims in the two main parties, the SLFP and the UNP.
While SLMC leader M. H. M. Ashraff has won for himself a separate Muslim region in the east, others in the SLMC and most certainly, Minster A. H. M. Fowzie are opposed to this.
Within the TULF, Batticaloa MP Joseph Pararajasingham is not in favour of what seems a M. Sivasithamparam-Neelan Thiruchelvam-G. L. Peiris orchestration of the devolution package.
He has not attended the meetings with the UNP team entrusted with the task of talking to Tamil parties - A. C. S. Hameed, Tyronne Fernando, Ronnie de Mel etc.
So what the UNP leadership says is that rather than there being a UNP-Tamil parties deadlock, there is a Tamil parties-Tamil parties deadlock and a Muslims-Muslims deadlock.
The complicated picture is further comfounded with a legal opinion given to the UNP leader that the present PA proposals are tantamount to making Sri Lanka a confederation - not just a federation.
Mr. Wickremesinghe has appointed two committees, a working group of lawyers and a working group on options to study proposals now tabled in parliament.
And he has quite categorically ruled out the concept of a union of regions as being unacceptable to the UNP.
They have asked as a pre-requisite to supporting constitutional reforms an independent elections commission, an independent police commission, an independent public service commission and strengthening the independence of the Supreme Court.
This they say will erase the existing bitterness in the political climate of Sri Lanka and make way for a better environment for making Sri Lanka work.
They laugh at Minister S. Thondaman’s suggestion to Dr.. G. L. Peiris to adopt a constitution such as in China. The Chinese constitution states that China shall be a “unitary multi-national state built up of all the people.”
With Dr. Peiris already having studied constitutions of South Africa, Germany, France, Malaysia, UK and now with Thondaman suggesting a Chinese model, a UNP wag thought it fit to say that we might end up with a constitution the United Nations may wish to adopt one day.
At the last Working Committee UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said the draft of the UNP position was done by himself and sought approval of the Working Committee. Mr. Lokubandara raised the question about the shift from the unitary to united and indivisible. Mr. Wickremesinghe maintained that his position had been right along that it should be united and indivisible. Mr. Lokubandara accepted the position.
In the debate, Mr. Lokubandara dismissed the Working Committee decision and said it was wrong for the UNP members in the select committee to have taken position without them being referred to UNP MPs.
He maintained that there could be no change from the unitary character of the constitution and that there could be no devolution beyond the 13th Amendment.
This remark normally would have been attributed to Mr. Lokubandara and would have been considered as his personal views. But from the show of support from the backbenchers, it was clear that Mr. Lokubandara was voicing not his personal views alone but also the views of the strong section of the UNP. Right through the speech, he was cheered by the backbenchers while the frontliners chose to be quiet.
If one is to analyse Mr. Lokubandara’s speech and judge it from the reception it received for the UNP MPs, it is evident that the UNP is far away from the package.
Minister G. L. Peiris seized the opportunity and said that this is the first time in the budget debate a categorical statement has been made by the UNP on devolution.
Mr. Lokubandara’s demand for a Sinhala-Buddhist economy was also received enthusiastically by some UNP MPs. He however did not spell out the details of the Sinhala-Buddhist economy and maintained that the free market economy must go.
The govt. was not going to allow Mr. Lokubandara’s statement go unchallenged. He was subjected to heckling and asked to state what he was doing for 17 years when the UNP govt. introduced and implemented free-market policies.
Minister Kingsley Wickremeratne dubbed Mr. Lokubandara’s speech as an exercise in racism. Minister Mangala Samaraweera was hard and in his own blunt manner took Mr. Lokubandara to task and identified the UNP as a raw racist party.
The debate shows clearly that the gap between the govt. and the opposition is widening and that both parties are sharpening their knives. May be we would witness greater confrontation in time to come, though parliament looks dull and empty with only one or two ministers present and opposition benches not fairing much better.
The past weeks have seen the UNP hierarchy also conducting a string of seminars for its senior membership at a southern luxury beach complex – the Tangerine/Royal Palms hotels complex.
One of the subjects widely discussed focused on the UNP’s relationship with the national media — a matter which drew much fire from the former Finance Minister, Ronnie de Mel. He said that the party should make an effort to reach out to all the media in the country.
He said a future ruling party could not allow itself to be governed by only one English Sunday newspaper having a circulation of a few thousands. That circulation too catered to only a UNP base and did not reach out to what he called the ‘floating vote population.’
Mr. de Mel said only two copies of the newspaper in question reached his Matara area. That, he argued, showed that the newspaper in question did not have impact in the south. His strong assertions came after a Sinhala journalist declared that, unlike the SLFP, the UNP did not reach out to all sections of the media.
On November 3, the seminar focused attention on the security situation in the country.
Much prominence was given in last week’s The Sunday Leader by correspondent Suranimala to a UNP seminar held the weekend previous at the Tangerine-Royal Palms hotels complex at Kalutara.
Suranimala has used the full measure of journalistic licence to describe some of the events, blow by blow, giving the impression of a first hand on-the-spot account. Though perhaps the trend of this reporting may be on track, the picturising of incidents and dramatis personae are the kind of stuff that fiction writers revel in.
One of the highlights in a sub plot of the Tangerine/Royal Palms novel was the ‘head table’ conversation at dinner. Here, with great emphasis, Suranimala has quoted a purported briefing by Iqbal Athas of The Sunday Times to the UNP outlining the inside stuff relating to matters military regarding the transfer of high ranking officers etc.
He had further claimed that the ‘not so rosy’ comments made by Mr. Athas about the security situation were much made use of at the debate on the extension of the State of Emergency in Parliament on November 6. The Hansard does not bear this out except for extracts from an article by Mr. Athas to the Jane’s Defence Weekly (JDW). It is debatable whether the contents of the article were the subject at the so called ‘head table’ briefing in the context of the reference to this article at the debate.
The said article was published in the October 15 issue of the JDW which is available world wide.
According to Mr. Athas, there certainly was no Sunday Leader representative at the referred to ‘head table’. Indeed there was no head table at all unless one were to consider the placement of UNP leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe, as being seated on a high chair at a head table.
Mr. Athas totally denies any briefing was given at this dinner. Should The Sunday Leader want to verify, it should contact the others who were said to be seated at this table which information it appears to have first hand.
Mr. Athas was unable to comment on any of the substance, particularly seem to have been discussed at the seminar, because he was not present there. He was outside the hotel building busy with his cell phone carrying out a telephone interview with BBC’s Sandeshaya Producer, Chandana Keerthi Bandara. He was being interviewed on the mock questions and answer interview of the Air Force Commander, Air Marshal Oliver Ranasinghe, distributed by SLAF officials. The contents of this interview appeared in the Situation Report last week.
In point of fact, Mr. Athas was in the ‘Supper Club’ (Royal Palms) where the seminar was going on when Mr. Wickremesinghe invited him to sit on the dais. Also extending the same invitation was Anura Bandaranaike, UNP MP. He walked up to the dais and told Mr. Wickremesinghe he was unable to accede to his request. The UNP leader had earlier pointed out that Thushara Gunaratne of the Lankadeepa had briefed the participants at the seminar.
Mr. Athas declined this in the best interest of journalistic neutrality and was an observer at the start of the seminar. He left the hall a few minutes later after his cell phone rang.
When he returned, the meeting had ended and the participants had disbursed. At first, hotel staffers directed Mr. Athas to the Royal Palms, and after much confusion and telephone calls by the receptionist, to the neighbouring Tangerine hotel. That was some 30 minutes later.
There, in a well secured coffee shop area, the UNP leader and party were at cocktails. The atmosphere was very informal. Some sat around tables in the coffee shop area whilst others were in the outer verandah. Each group was engrossed in its own conversation seemingly light hearted.
Mr. Athas joined Mr. Wickremesinghe who was seated in a table within the cocktail area. Others at that table were Dr. Sarath Amunugama, MP, Razik Zarook and General T. I. Weeratunga.
It was Mr. Wickremesinghe who asked Mr. Athas what he thought of the recent changes in the military. He replied that they were all too sudden and too recent a matter to evaluate. In this context, he also mentioned that Major General Asoka Jayawardena was much respected for his military knowledge like many others who were fighting the war in the front. The names of other senior officers also figured.
After this brief conversation, Mr. Wickremesinghe separated from the group and went from table to table chatting to others present.
From the Tangerine Hotel cocktails, Mr. Wickremesinghe and party walked past several blocks, to the Royal Palms to the regular Hotel buffet. Here again, the tables in the dining area had been placed around the buffet table. There was no platform, no ‘head table’ or any seating plan. There were no speeches nor any formality.
How was it that Mr. Athas happened to be present at this occasion ? Earlier in the day, General Weeratunga had indicated to Mr. Athas that he had a meeting with Mr. Wickremesinghe at Kalutara. He inquired whether Mr. Athas could come along. This appointment was scheduled for 5 p.m. but due to extremely bad weather conditions, both Mr. Athas and Gen. Weeratunga were unable to make it to the hotel complex till 8 p.m.
After General Weeratunga’s meeting, it was their intention to make an evening of it and have dinner elsewhere. In fact their idea, weather permitting, was to have gone to Bentota.
The rest of the evening proceedings including the dinner invitation, both to Gen. Weeratunga and Mr. Athas, was not planned and totally unexpected. The invitations for cocktails and dinner were obviously extended in genuine sincerity with no motives attached as indeed it was accepted with equal sincerity and with no ulterior motives in mind. Much ado about nothing.
Meanwhile, in quite a different world is the fact that Sri Lanka’s Sprint Queen Susanthika Jayasinghe, rated with a good chance of becoming the fastest woman in the world, finds herself embroiled in a mysterious sex and money scandal that has all the dirty ingredients of party politics.
The Warakapola rocket, born in poverty but with the natural talent to run like a cheetah, has brought glory to Sri Lanka and was on the way to the even more glorious heights of a gold medal at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. But a senior government Minister on Thursday implied that she might be mentally unbalanced and used derogatory or racist remarks, comparing her to a “black South African man.”
Insiders allege that the Sports Ministry is something like a sex den. Earlier there were allegations that another top athlete had been trapped into a sex-for-favours racket by an official close to a VIP. Many wonder whether this same official had a hand in coaxing or forcing an innocent village girl into the clutches of political vultures.
Last Tuesday, Susanthika’s husband, Dhammika Nandasiri was suddenly summoned before a Panadura court in connection with a 1993 case where his family was allegedly involved in a killing. Police said they feared Susanthika and her husband might fly out to Brunei soon. On that basis, Dhammika’s passport was impounded by court. He was told that if he wished to go abroad with Susanthika, he should make an application for his passport through the Sports Ministry. Not quite a sporting proposition because the attack on Susanthika appears to be coming mainly from the Sports Ministry.
Questions are also being raised about the timing of the police action in the Panadura court. It came amidst a series of shocking allegations being made by Susanthika mainly against the Sports Ministry. It was too coincidental to believe that the police acted on their own or allowed the law to take its course. Did someone somewhere pull a string for the police to strike another blow at an already battered girl.
As part of this drama, there was also an adjournment debate in parliament. It was earlier scheduled for Tuesday, but postponed at the last moment, provoking UNP MPs to heckle Speaker K. B. Ratnayake and throw papers as he left the House. The debate eventually took place on Thursday.
The UNP’s Sarath Ranawake, representing the Kalutara District where Susanthika’s husband comes from, presented the information the party had got on the issue. He took on three ministers. The House discussed not only the inborn talents in her but also her inborn form and features and their minus and plus points.
Politics has become a sport and sport is politics. Sex, sleaze and scandal are now well and truly part and parcel of the body politic of Sri Lanka. God save us all.
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