Eyes Wide Shut: Ranil’s Governance
Sarath de Alwis
‘Eyes wide shut’ was the title of a film by famed director Stanley Kubrick. Loaded with Freudian subcurrents, the film was about an occult society that eliminates any one who cross its path. A theme that would no doubt appeal to a buccaneer primary dealer in sovereign bonds!
The enigmatic title is a play on the familiar phrase ‘eyes wide open’. It conveys a subconscious urge to circumvent inconvenient truth.
This writer was reminded of Kubrick’s movie title when reading the spuriously succinct statement from the Prime minister’s office. “Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is prepared to offer clarifications at any time to the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into bond auctions in view of references to him during proceedings,”
If the President was satisfied with the clarifications from the Prime minister, he need not have taken the trouble to appoint a commission.
The statement unclothes the man. It is contemptuous of the intelligence of the average citizen. It’s snooty indifference, to what has unfolded before the commission probing the bond scam, is incredible.
Ranil
At the time of writing this missive, on 17th October, the Presidential Commission has officially concluded hearing of evidence. The commission according to reports has said that it will re-sit for a special hearing if clarifications from the Prime Minister were needed.
The Prime minister’s views on auctions and direct placements are recorded in the Hansard. It is also replete with his Horatio like dogged defenses of Arjuna Mahendran, the man he handpicked to implement his macroprudential supervision of the country’s financial institutions and monetary policy.
To meet the charge of conflict of interest, Arjuna Mahendran’s counsel elicited the information that his predecessor Niward Cabraal had his first cousin, brother in law, sister in law and the daughter of his brother in-law in banks that were supervised by the central bank.
Quite apart from the puerile theatrics, the revelation has a deeper implication. The oligarchy under the Mahinda autocracy is very much alive and thriving under the UNP wing of the hybrid coalition.
We do not know if the commission report would find who authorized the Chief Dealer of the Bank of Ceylon to bid Rs.13 Billion on behalf of Perpetual Treasuries.
Mahendran
Arjuna Mahendran, Niward Cabraal and their ilk are people with advantages, as are their patrons. They have one common denominator. They regard themselves as inherently worthy of the leveraging power they possess. Their possessions and privileges are natural adjuncts of an elite class.
Why Oh Why, did Sirisena appoint this commission? No body breakfasting on bonds and billions expected a probe by a Presidential Commission. So, let us be grateful for small mercies.
Prime minister Wickremesinghe is entitled to the luxury of looking at the fiasco with eyes wide shut. That does not mean that we must buy it.
What the nation expected was his testimony under oath and subject to cross examination as was done in the case of his protégé who whined ‘ask the prime minister ‘not once but several times.
Our challenge today is to face the fate our good governance experiment full in the face. Or else, we can watch good governance evaporate with our eyes wide shut!
Malik Samarawickrama and Kabir Hashim Chairman and General Secretary of the UNP have both assured the Bond Commission that Perpetual Treasuries Ltd did not make any cash donations to the United National Party.
Cabraal
Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Defense Secretary at the time of the Welikada prison carnage has assured the committee of inquiry appointed to probe the bloodbath, that he did not order deployment of 798 STF troops that resulted in the deaths of 27 inmates and injuring many more.
Are they to be believed? In the last two years, we have discovered that truth no longer matters. We are not even skeptical any more. Mahinda defined our truths. Under Maithri, Ranil is constructing his own truths.
It took two years for the Prime minister to table the report of the committee of inquiry in to the Welikada incident. The Sunday Times which published some of its findings informs us, that it had to make an application under the Right to Information Act to access a copy of the report tabled in parliament in whose custodial care, lies sovereignty of ‘we the people.’
The Bond Commission was appointed two years after the first scandal tainted bond issue surfaced. In the intervening two years, the Prime Minister doggedly defended his handpicked Governor of the central bank. The record will show that he insisted that Arjuna Mahendran should be reappointed for a full term.
The Leader of the House, Lakshman Kiriella never tired of insisting that the dismissal of a petition by three public interest litigants by the Supreme court was a total refutation of all allegations of iniquity, corruption or misconduct.
Only the naïve would assume that the Prime Minister wanted a presidential commission on the bond controversy. Only absolute blockheads would assume that the revelations before the commission surprised the UNP leadership.
