Sri Lanka: Elections, Electricity Prices, and odds and ends

Guest Column: Dr Kumar David- Dated 12-May-2013

I will deal with the long overdue provincial council elections in the Northern Province, a political storm that has broken out as a consequence of an electricity price hike imposed with effect from 20 April, and two minor issues.

There is a vigorous campaign in the media, no doubt the government is pulling the strings from behind, that it is dangerous, undesirable, or whatever excuse one wishes to trot out, to hold provincial council elections in the Northern Province. The irony is that the Provincial Council system was created so that the Tamil areas could have a degree of self-administration, and the Tamil North is the only province in the country that has never had an elected provincial administration!

There is a fifty-fifty chance that the government will dish out some cock-and-bull excuse and rescind the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) elections. Nothing can be put beyond its craft and cunning, its sordidness and duplicity. But this leaves us with a fifty percent chance that elections may be held in September, and if so the TNA will win. So says everybody even government henchmen. It is perfectly obvious that this is why the government desires to scuttle the elections if it could get away with it. After the bloody nose in Geneva and the promises of NPC elections in September reluctantly extracted from it by the international, one section in the government is afraid to rescind the elections. Extremists, monks on the warpath and the militarised fascistic factions want to give the Tamils a kick in the teeth and squash the elections, hopefully in eternity.

Authoritarians are totalitarians in that they survive on control of the totality of power; even one pocket of resistance is perilous for autocrats. The Rajapakse Government is in panic about even one Provincial Council escaping from its control and becoming a point of challenge. The whole apple cart can be thrown into turmoil. The regime’s instincts are right, and conversely it is precisely for this reason that it is important that the Tamils win control of the NPC. This is a foot in the door; it opens a way to confront the would-be dictators. Every chink in the armour - electoral defeat, economic setback, or spotlight on graft and abuse - is another abscess through which to drive the dagger and twist the blade. An independent PC with a mind of its own, not kowtowing at the beck and call of the Rajapakses, is not a chink but a gaping tear in the armour. Defeating the regime at the NPC elections has a value that cannot be exaggerated, for the denizens of the province, and nationally.

It is true that provincial councils, elected provincial administrations, and chief ministers, are statutorily near impotent. Decision making can be wrested away and exercised by a governor who is no more than a puffed up yes man of the president. It is also true that PCs are miserably funded and after Divineguma their resources further depleted. However, control of the NPC will give Tamils pole-position to prosecute the fight for greater autonomy; statutorily impotent but politically potent! This regime must be prevented from grabbing this political instrument and taking it away from elected representatives of the Tamils. It would be disastrous for Tamils if the government grabs the NPC.

Tamils cried themselves hoarse all over the world that they are denied an instrument of self-administration – albeit an emasculated one – and have demanded an elected council. Notwithstanding the limitations of the PC system, internationally, it would be a gross contradiction if the Tamils pull out of the NPC elections and hand over the council to Rajapakse’s agents.

The programme of the winning Tamil party must focus on two aspects; usual or conventional programmatic issue (education, agriculture/fisheries, transport/communications and demilitarisation are priorities) and the politically vital issue of using the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) as a platform for pushing forward real devolution of power to Tamil areas.

Electricity tariff cock-up

The government has made an ass of itself by implementing a moronic, I am not exaggerating, tariff system on the 20 April. The public outcry and expression of exasperation from expert quarters was so stormy that it was forced to backtrack within 20 days and announce changes that abandoned some, but not all, of the most asinine features of the proposal. (Interested readers may visit my articles in the Sunday Island – www.island.lk - of 28 April and 19 May).

There are three matters of concern; technically, the design of the tariffs is silly, if revenue was the concern prices can be raised by intelligently designed, and transparent to the public, changes. The second concern is price increases per se; action groups and trade unions are mobilising and the first step is a general strike planned for 20 May or thereabouts. The third issue is that the government is at sea on industrial policy.         It has no industrial policy ands lives by day to day decision making. It has undertaken a great deal of infrastructure development, some of it very creditable, some useless white elephants, but on industrial policy it is cluless. I was in Taiwan for a few days overlapping May Day and saw at first hand what a dirigisme economic policy with long term planning, not only of the state sector but also in partnership with private investors, has achieved.

 Electricity price increase will render exports less competitive, discourage investment and further slow down growth that has been stalling since August 2012. There is no long-term thinking, planning or strategy. The mish-mash in the electricity sector, the President jumping this way and that, the inability to reform the Ceylon Electricity Board for enhanced productivity (I am not a CEB basher and I do not support wholesale privatisation) and a similar state of affairs in the petroleum sector, all have the same root; absence of, policy, managerial discipline, and political will or understanding. You can’t teach old dogs new tricks; this government will not learn or reform.

Odds and ends

 It seems now that GoSL has wrapped up the Commonwealth Heads Meeting due November this year. Protests by human rights activists and diaspora Tamil groups have failed to deter British PM Cameron who is keen to wrap up an order from the national carrier for Rolls Royce engines. Australia too is keen to keep on the good side of GoSL because it is desperate for help in stopping boat-people refugees. Canada’s one time threat to boycott the event if held in Colombo ended up a damp squib, and Manmohan Singh’s India, anyway, has always been in Rajapakses pocket. We can be fairly sure that the meeting will go ahead, but I am not sure how extensive protests against authoritarianism, that are unavoidable, are likely to be. It will depend on how two Rajapakses (Mahinda and Gothabahaya) behave themselves in the interim and on much further the now declining economy further erodes. The government cannot unleash unbridled repression because that will play into the hands of critics.

This relates to the final point I wish to touch on, the Azarth Salley episode. Sally was a fellow traveller of the UNP initially and then climbed on Rajapakse’s bandwagon. Recently he formed a radical Tamil-Muslim party. As politicians go he is a plain opportunist. But even opportunists cannot be arrested and ill-treated on trumped-up charges when they oppose the government and expose its repression and abuses. Salley made a statement, carried in a Tamil Nadu magazine that if the Mahinda-Gothabaya state continues to encourage the BBS (roughly Buddhist Power Army) which has been engaged in anti-Muslim extremism and violence, then a revolt or uprising (I am not sure of the exact wording in Tamil) is unavoidable. Now to me that sounds like a statement of the obvious; didn’t we all say the same thing about the Tamil youth before the war started?

But they decided to teach Salley a lesson and make him an example to anyone who critics the BBS (patron saint Gothabahaya) or the government. He was detained for 90 days under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act 9PTA0; a horrible piece of legislation which deserves to be rescinded from the statutes of any civilised society. Then, when it transpired that they had no case, the police tried sending out cock-and-bull stories that he was arrested in connection with numerous allegations of fraud. When asked, “Why under the PTA and not normal law?” they were dumbfounded. Unable to face the mounting criticism Mahinda Rajapakse (with or without the concurrence of his sibling) capitulated and released him. The only good thing about this episode is that the government has burnt its fingers and learnt that its days of riding roughshod over the public are over.