White Flags, Fonseka And Eroding Confidence After The Conflict
By Rajiva Wijesinha -May 6, 2013
Prof Rajiva Wijesinha MP
Political Machinations: Eroding Confidence After The Conflict
The beginning of the implosion of the President’s pluralistic vision, which had led him to sideline Sarath Fonseka and his hardline views in the aftermath of the war, began I believe with Fonseka’s effort to remake his image. He did this through his interview with the Sunday Leader where, assuming the Americans were right in their report of what he had said in Ambalangoda in August, he did a 180 degree turn, and accused his erstwhile superiors of having done what earlier he had claimed to do himself.
The Americans had cited a speech Fonseka had delivered which was publicized by Lankanewsweb, one of the many sites associated withMangala Samaraweera. That had reported Sarath Fonseka as having said, ‘I managed the war like a true soldier. I did not make decisions from A/C rooms. I was under pressure to stop the war even during the final phase. I got messages not to shoot those who are carrying white flags. A war is fought by soldiers. They do so by putting their lives on the line. Therefore, the decisions about war should be taken by the soldiers in the battlefront. Not the people in A/C rooms in Colombo. Our soldiers have seen in life the kind of destruction carried out by those people before they decided to come carrying a white flag. Therefore, they carried out their duties. We destroyed any one connected with the LTTE. That is how we won the war,’ Fonseka said at an event held in Ambalangoda to felicitate him on July 10.’
This gung-ho approach was not however suitable for someone aspiring to be a common candidate. In December therefore he told the Sunday Leader the opposite, declaring that it was in effect those in air conditioned rooms who had ordered that those carrying white flags be shot.
This seemed a sensational revelation, targeting as it clearly did Fonseka’s former superior and erstwhile comrade in arms, the Secretary of Defence, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. Government promptly decided to have a press conference to refute the claim, and as previously when dealing with allegations of excesses on the part of the Sri Lankan forces, asked Mahinda Samarasinghe, the Minister of Human Rights, to handle the event.
It was then however that government became too clever by half, and decided to use the pronouncement for electoral gain. Samarasinghe had asked me as his Secretary to attend the press conference, but I was in Kandy and suggested that it be delayed. However when I rang back, having received from our consultant on Human Rights the details of what Fonseka was supposed to have said in August, it was to find that Samarasinghe had been sidelined. Unlike at all previous press conferences in this particular field, he was now to be only a bit player, with the main role being given to Wimal Weerawansa.
Weerawansa went to town, and laid claims then to being the most forceful campaigner for the President in the election that was due in January. He did this however not by pointing out that Fonseka had lied, but rather by claiming that he was a traitor. It had evidently been decided that this was the best strategy to adopt for the election, to stress patriotism rather than any other considerations.
The intensity with which Fonseka was criticized for letting down his troops led him to retract his statement. The Leader was bitterly disappointed, and claimed that he had ‘walked into the government’s trap…. Fonseka’s garbled and gradual retraction destroyed his credibility’. It claimed nevertheless that Fonseka ‘never showed any enthusiasm for the denial always admitting that he had said what he had said’, and indicated that the UNP was not upset about the stance Fonseka had taken. The Leader’s view was that the retraction was insisted upon by the JVP, which had always been as hard on the LTTE as Fonseka had been before his emergence as a common opposition candidate – and which continued to back Fonseka to the last, whereas the UNP leadership seemed to have second thoughts about him as the campaign progressed and Fonseka asserted himself more and more.
Weerawansa’s solid support for the President put paid to what the Americans might have hoped, that what they saw as the hardline Sinhalese vote would be divided. The opportunity the campaign strategists grasped to establish the President and his supporters as patriots, as opposed to traitors determined to do down the brave Sri Lankan forces, led to a polarization that must have been far from the President’s mind when he resisted Fonseka’s proposals for an aggressively majoritarian post-war settlement.
But in another sense this outcome served better perhaps the long term interests of the Americans and the UNP than any other result. Had Wickremesinghe won the Presidential election on a minority vote, with the majority split between the other two and not transferring because of the bitterness that had been engendered, he would have found governing difficult. Had Fonseka won, he would probably have followed his own predilections, having sidelined or got rid of Wickeremesinghe as the perceptive BBC correspondent in New Delhi envisaged. But with President Rajapaksa beholden to the extremists who had loyally supported him against Fonseka, the stage was set for stagnation.
President Rajapaksa had made bold decisions during his first term of office, to pursue a military victory when what was termed the international community advocated continuing negotiations even though the LTTE had made it clear they did not want a negotiated solution. But such bold decisions were not so easy against those who had backed him against the various forces that had opposed his re-election. The political, educational and economic reforms that were essential were put off since the government felt it had to consolidate itself. And in the process the confidence in a peaceful pluralistic future, essential for the investment the country needed to take off after the years of conflict, faded away.
The government’s decision to raise the electricity price to realistic values, and its decision on May day to bring down the price for those consuming less than 60 units may not have been policy decisions that were arrive at in a rational manner. However, these happen to be exactly the right decisions in the context of Sri Lanka’s development trajectory.
Why is the rise in electricity tariffs such a blessing in disguise? Will it not slow down our industrial sector? The blessing comings from the fact that the new tariffs make solar energy (and new types of jobs), an attractive competitor among the available energy sources. The current usage pattern of 0.3-0.4 kWh per household will increase an order of magnitude within a decade, and future energy bills would be quite horrendous.
The Electricity Tariff Hike – A Great Salutary Step Forward
By Chandre Dharmawardana --May 6, 2013
Chandre Dharmawardana
The government’s decision to raise the electricity price to realistic values, and its decision on May day to bring down the price for those consuming less than 60 units may not have been policy decisions that were arrive at in a rational manner. However, these happen to be exactly the right decisions in the context of Sri Lanka’s development trajectory.
At a talk I gave at the presidential secretariat in July 2009, (and also to a number of learned societies in Sri Lanka) I pointed out that the cost of electricity was too low in terms of the mode of utilization of power in Sri Lanka. More details can be found in that talk which is available on the internet (dh web.org/place.names/posts/dev-tech.ppt/). Many of the new installations are hotels, airports, offices etc., that use large amounts of electricity for air-conditioning and comfort, rather than for manufacturing and production.
Electricity is one of the most efficient forms of energy (compared to heat energy whose efficiency is controlled by Carnot’s theorem, as discussed in simple language, e.g., in my recent book – A physicist’s view of Matter and Mind). Electricity should be reserved for high-end purposes, and other energy sources should be used for low-end non-productive purposes.
During the last decade Japan, a country with no oil or hydro-power strongly subsidized roof-top solar panels for public and corporate buildings and homes. However, with the new tariffs in Sri Lanka, no such subsidies are needed. It is now just good business to install solar panels on buildings for air conditioning and other domestic needs, while the main power-grid is the steady source. Solar energy becomes even more sensible when we note that in India today, solar electricity has fallen to about 8-9 Indian rupees per kilowatt-hour compared with 18-20 rupees for diesel-power. This is not due to improvements in the efficiency of ordinary solar panels (15 to 20 per cent efficiency). The inefficiency is outweighed by their new low price.
Luxury hotels think nothing of installing expensive marble, Jacuzzis and many high-end items in their construction. However, most architects and urban planners, unaware of solar technology simply dismiss it out of hand as `too expensive’. Similarly, given the equipment costs that go into building an airport, covering its roof with solar panels is in fact a negligible budget increment. Given today’s energy tariffs, and anticipating future tariffs, not installing solar panels is stupid. Unlike diesel or coal-power installations, solar panels need no further fuel as the fuel is delivered by the sun’s rays. The maintenance is much less costly and produce no pollution compared to traditional power generation, as we can see from the horror stories coming from the Lakvijaya powerstation in Horagolla (Horagolla is the traditional name of Norochchollai – see http://dh-web.org/place.names/).
Another technological development that cuts the cost of lighting by a factor of 10 is the use of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for ceiling illumination panels. The cost of LEDs as gone down, while their efficiency has increased substantially.
Unfortunately, in Sri Lanka, instead of doing the obvious technological solution to a technological problem, we convert it to a political problem and quote Marx or Friedman, hold meetings or go on demonstrations. So at last, the force of circumstances have forced our policy makers to do what should have been done many years ago. The turn of events is like the removal of rice subsidies carried out during Dudley Senanayake’s time, and will have similar benefits.
It is now up to the engineers, architects and construction managers in the private and public sectors to include solar panels and LEDs as integral parts of their design practice. The garment manufacturing industry can become energy self-sufficient with such installations. A private home designed with solar panels on the roof, and a heat pump which uses the cool underground water table to cool the house can easily sell energy to the main grid. Everyone cannot afford this additions to the construction bill, but here the banks can give installation loans, to be paid up from future electricity savings.
So let us have a round of applause to high electricity tariffs for grid-based electricity. Keep them up and UP.
