People take part in a protest against the government of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte in front of the Philippine consulate in the Manhattan borough of New York, U.S., December 10, 2017. Source: Reuters/Eduardo Munoz
WITH the Marawi siege over, the extension of martial law in Mindanao is unconstitutional and should be scrapped to avoid worsening human rights abuses in the southern Philippines by state forces.
New proposal is significantly more hawkish than Obama-era policy
Critics call development of new weapons ‘dangerous, Cold War thinking’
Control centre Norad ( Cheyenne Mountain ) near Colorado Springs. The new nuclear policy is significantly more hawkish that the posture adopted by the Obama administration. Photograph: Ulrich Baumgarten/U. Baumgarten via Getty Images
Julian Borger in Washington-Tue 9 Jan ‘18 19.43 GMT The Trump administration plans to loosen constraints on the use of nuclear weapons and develop a new low-yield nuclear warhead for US Trident missiles, according to a former official who has seen the most recent draft of a policy review.
Jon Wolfsthal, who was special assistant to Barack Obama on arms control and nonproliferation, said the new nuclear posture review prepared by the Pentagon, envisages a modified version of the Trident D5 submarine-launched missiles with only part of its normal warhead, with the intention of deterring Russia from using tactical warheads in a conflict in Eastern Europe.
The NPR also expands the circumstances in which the US might use its nuclear arsenal, to include a response to a non-nuclear attack that caused mass casualties, or was aimed at critical infrastructure or nuclear command and control sites.
The nuclear posture review (NPR), the first in eight years, is expected to be published after Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech at the end of January.
Wolfsthal, who has reviewed what he understands to be the final draft of the review, said it states that the US will start work on reintroducing a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile, as a counter to a new ground-launched cruise missile the US has accused Russia of developing in violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.
Wolfsthal said that earlier drafts of the NPR was even more hawkish. The final draft drops proposals to develop a nuclear hyper-glide weapon, and to remove assurances to non nuclear weapons states that the US will not use its nuclear arsenal against them.
“My read is this is a walk-back from how extreme it was early on. It doesn’t have as much terrible stuff in it as it did originally,” Wolfsthal said. “But it’s still bad.”
“What I’ve been told by the people who wrote the thing was what they were trying to do was to send a clear deterrent message to Russians, the North Korean and the Chinese. And there is pretty good, moderate but strong language that makes clear that any attempt by Russia or North Korea to use nuclear weapons would result in a massive consequence for them and I think that’s actually moderate, centrist and probably very much needed.”
“Where they go overboard, is where they say that in order to make that credible the US needs to develop two new types of nuclear weapons,” he added.
Wolfsthal said the modified Trident warhead, with just the primary (fission) part of its thermonuclear warhead, was “totally unnecessary” as the US already has low-yield weapons, B61 gravity bombs and air-launched cruise missiles, in its arsenal.
He also said it was “pretty dumb” to put a low-yield “tactical” weapon on the planned new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, because firing it would give away a submarine’s position.
“We spend $5bn per submarine to make it invisible and we put a lot of warheads on each submarine and so what they want to do is take one missile, put one small warhead on it and launch it first, so the submarine is vulnerable to Russian attack.” Wolfsthal said. “That strikes me as being unsustainable from a naval strategy point of view.”
The development of a low-yield warhead for a sea-launched ballistic missile is based on the belief that in any conflict with Russia on Nato’s eastern flank, the Russians would use a tactical nuclear weapon early on, to compensate for their relative weakness in conventional arms. The Russians, the argument goes, would count on US reluctance to use the massive warheads on its existing weapons, leading Washington to back down.
Hans Kristensen, the director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists, said that justification for developing the new weapons was incoherent.
“It assumes that the intelligence community has determined that one or several adversaries out there are gambling that the US would be self-deterred from using a ballistic missile warhead because they have larger yield. Thats just not the case. We have never, ever heard anyone say that is so,” Kristensen said.
“I don’t think any adversary – certainly not Russia, – would gamble that if they did something with nukes that were low yield that we would not respond. That’s completely ludicrous,” he added. “I think this is about having some warhead work at the laboratories and exploring options. I don’t see this as a real mission.”
Daryl Kimball, the head of the Arms Control Association, said that the development of new weapons in the US nuclear arsenal was “dangerous, Cold War thinking”.
“The United States already possesses a diverse array of nuclear capabilities, and there is no evidence that more usable weapons will strengthen deterrence of adversaries or compel them to make different choices about their arsenals,” Kimball wrote on the Arms Control Todaywebsite.
He also cautioned against moves to broaden the circumstances in which nuclear weapons would be used.
“The use of even a small number of these weapons would be catastrophic,” Kimball said.
“Threatening nuclear attack to counter new kinds of ‘asymmetric’ threats is unnecessary, would increase the risk of nuclear weapons use, and would make it easier for other countries to justify excessive roles for nuclear weapons in their policies.”
The chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee should use his last year in office to reverse the unprincipled silence and moral weakness of Republicans in Congress.
Rep. Ed Royce speaks during a conference on countering violent extremism, in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 23, 2017. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
BYDANIEL B. BAER-
Rep. Ed Royce, the California Republican who is the powerful chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announced on Monday that he would not seek re-election this year. Before he goes, will he change course and hold the administration to account for its incompetent foreign policy?
Royce has a reputation for being a canny legislator and operator in Washington. Like Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Royce is now free from personal electoral considerations and has an opportunity in the year ahead to do what he has failed to do so far: hold the Trump administration accountable for its harebrained foreign policy and seek to curb the damage being done at the State Department.
When I served as deputy assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor in the Barack Obama administration, Royce and his staff repeatedly called on me to explain or defend some aspect of our human rights policy. I welcomed their interest. Even though I always got a bit nervous when I went to Capitol Hill to brief members of Congress and their staffers, or to testify at hearings, I always felt grateful during the drive back to Foggy Bottom. I was experiencing something that was central to the legitimacy and strength of the American system — the legislative branch was holding the executive branch to account. As an advocate for democratic values, I couldn’t not embrace that.
While the disgrace and incompetence of President Donald Trump and his White House seems limitless, and while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s much-heralded management skills have proven to be a hoax, in some ways the most stunning disappointment of the last year is the almost universal failure of Republicans in the House and Senate to use their considerable power to hold the administration accountable and to mitigate the harm being done. When we look back at the Trump era, the collective spinelessness of those on Capitol Hill will go down as one of the principal moral travesties that endangered the country.
When we look back at the Trump era, the collective spinelessness of those on Capitol Hill will go down as one of the principal moral travesties that endangered the country.
Trump is irredeemable. But there are some smart, ethical, sane people who are in positions of power in the Congress — and they are acting not as leaders, but as accessories to the catastrophe that is the Trump administration. They know Trump is unfit, but they say nothing. They know what Tillerson is doing to the State Department will weaken American diplomacy for a generation, but they stay silent. These people know the impact of not doing anything. And their weakness, their complete lack of courage, their feeble commitment to principle, their willingness to offer empty rationalizations, is a more significant moral failure than the chaotic incompetence perpetrated by the addled mind in the Oval Office.
I’ve written before here about how Corker could use his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to help mitigate some of the damage being done to the State Department. Royce, who has been the chair of House Foreign Affairs Committee since 2013, also has the power to hold the administration to account. But it would require a change of course for Royce, because so far, he’s done a lousy job of scrutinizing and pushing back on the administration’s numerous follies.
A bit of data: From Nov. 1 of last year through Jan. 10, 2018, Royce’s committee has held or scheduled 18 committee or subcommittee hearings on topics related to U.S. national security and foreign policy. In only three of them has the committee had a witness from the administration — that is to say, a member of the executive branch responsible for design or implementation of the relevant policy. Now, not every hearing needs to have an administration witness — part of the value of hearings is exposing members of Congress to the testimony of independent experts. But many hearings, especially those pertaining to crucial areas of foreign policy where Congressional oversight is warranted, do merit a presentation by the executive branch. For example, it seems strange that while committee held full committee or subcommittee hearings on “The Future of NAFTA,” “The Latest Developments in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon,” “U.S. Policy Toward Tibet,” and “Russia: Counterterrorism partner or fanning the flames?” — there was not a single administration witness at any of them. (There were some very good Obama administration alums as witnesses at several hearings.)
For comparison’s sake, during the same period of 2015 to 2016, toward the end of the Obama administration, Royce’s committee held 20 hearings and had administration witnesses at eight of them. So, 40 percent of the hearings included administration witnesses who had to defend the executive branch’s policies two years ago, while less than 17 percent of them have in the last couple months. Why was Royce nearly two-and-a-half times more likely to call on the executive branch two years ago than he is today?
It can’t be that things have just been quiet. Here’s a quick reminder of just a few of the foreign-affairs-related bombshells of the last couple months:
In November 2017, we learned that in addition to his decimation of the State Department’s professional diplomatic corps, Tillerson was inexplicably refusing key security briefings.
In December 2017, in a move without a strategy, Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — throwing a grenade on the peace process, such as it is, and dealing a setback to those who hope for a peaceful Israel with Jerusalem as its capital. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, responded to the predictable backlash at the U.N. by stoking the fire and modeling her diplomatic approach on the movie Mean Girls: hosting a party and not inviting the ambassadors she was mad at.
The president released a new National Security Strategy in December 2017 that abandoned the centrality of a rules-based order and democratic values to U.S. national security policy — an approach that has been well established since World War II in both Democratic and Republican administrations.
To usher in 2018, Trump mean-tweeted at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, childishly raising the prospect of nuclear war and further eroding a taboo on nuclear threats that has allowed a post-Cold War generation to come of age without the fear of nuclear annihilation.
The president used Twitter to go after Pakistan, undermining diplomatic efforts with a particularly difficult partner and making the issues that he purports to be concerned about more difficult to address.
A chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee could call a hearing on each of the above issues (and several others — like the most violent year since 2014 in Russia’s war against Ukraine, or Russia’s continuing attempts to dictate outcomes in Syria, including its late-November meeting with Turkey and Iran), but the fact that Royce’s committee and its Republican-chaired subcommittees haven’t called the administration to testify on any of them is a surprising abdication. Royce put out an anodyne statement welcoming the new National Security Strategy, and though the statement identified human rights as a key element of U.S. foreign policy, he failed to note that the president’s strategy does not.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee is supposed to play an oversight role, to serve as a check on the administration’s foreign policy and the work of its foreign affairs agencies. Instead it is, through its negligent silence, enabling Trump’s dangerously incompetent approach to foreign affairs and endangering the interests and security of U.S. citizens.
So why is that? Despite the fact that he votes with Trump more than 96 percent of the time, Royce works hard to try to project himself as a moderate.
Despite the fact that he votes with Trump more than 96 percent of the time, Royce works hard to try to project himself as a moderate.
And he doesn’t have a reputation for being wacky or under the thumb of the Russians, unlike his fellow California Republican, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher.
Why isn’t he serving as a responsible voice in Congress, demanding that the administration explain how its moves in the Middle East fit within a broader strategy? Why isn’t he asking Tillerson to testify about how he plans to keep U.S. diplomats and their families safe if he refuses security briefings? Why is he not insisting that the administration explain how it is leveraging its deep investment in the relationship with Saudi Arabia to generate positive outcomes in the region? Trump traveled recently to China: Why is the administration not asked to explain why he failed to forcefully raise human rights, including in Tibet, with Chinese President Xi Jinping? And why — when the administration is deeply entangled in possibly criminal relations with Russia — do Royce and his fellow Republicans not wish to ensure that the Trump administration understands clearly that Russia is a destructive, untrustworthy actor?
Whatever the reason for his relative silence, Royce’s failure to use his powerful committee chairmanship to hold the administration accountable is a dereliction of duty that makes him an enabler of a reckless foreign policy.
Last week, Trump announced his intention to nominate Royce’s wife, Marie, to a plum job as assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs — a top job in one of the agencies for which Royce’s committee is supposed to provide oversight. Perhaps Royce has been going easy on the Trump administration because he didn’t want to incur the president’s famous wrath and jeopardize his wife’s appointment. But now that she’s been nominated, and now that Royce has announced his retirement, he has one year to use his newfound freedom to do the job that his constituents, and all Americans, count on him to do: withhold legislative authorization to stop bad policies, force the secretary of state and other officials to testify so that they have to articulate and defend strategies for any State Department reform or new approaches to global challenges, speak out loudly in support of an American foreign policy grounded in universal values, and call out the Trump administration’s backward, 19th-century worldview as a detriment to U.S. prosperity and security.
This is your moment, Royce. Be purposeful, principled, and noisy on your way out. Your constituents and your conscience will thank you for it.
Published time: 8 Jan, 2018 07:19
The gold accumulated by China and Russia could be seen as part of a strategy to move away from international trade denominated in US dollars, according to Singapore’s BullionStar precious metals expert Ronan Manly.
Manly exclusively told RT that there is a shift occurring regarding the two countries building up their gold reserves, to perhaps returning to gold-backed currencies in the future and a move away from the global dominance of the US dollar, which is no longer supported by gold.
“China and Russia have both been aggressively accumulating their official gold reserves over the last 10 - 15 years,” he said, adding that only a decade ago each of them held around or less than 400 tons. “But now both these nations hold a combined 3670 tons of gold.”
“Interestingly, both Russia and China publicize and promote their accumulations of gold and publicly refer to gold as a strategic monetary asset. They make no secret of this. But on the flipside, the US does the opposite, and constantly downplays the strategic role of gold.”
According to Manly, for Russia and China gold is the only strategic monetary asset that could provide independence from the US dollar.
Manly said the sides could conceivably be holding a lot more gold than they declare in their official reserves due to many channels through which they could buy the precious metal.
“If China and Russia combined showed that they held more gold on a combined basis than the US, this would, even symbolically, be a blow to the US dollar and to the position of the US in the global economy,” the expert concluded.
As some critics question President Trump's mental fitness, many psychiatrists are being reminded of the Goldwater Rule. Here's what you need to know about it.(Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post) By Philip Rucker and Ashley ParkerJanuary 8 at 7:09 PM
The White House is struggling to contain the national discussion about President Trump’s mental acuity and fitness for the job, which has overshadowed the administration’s agenda for the past week.
Trump publicly waded into the debate spawned by a new book, “Fire and Fury” — Michael Wolff’s inside account of the presidency — over the weekend by claiming on Twitter that he is “like, really smart” and “a very stable genius.” In doing so, the president underscored his administration’s response strategy — by being forceful and combative — while also undermining it by gleefully entering a debate his aides have tried to avoid.
Trump privately resents the now-regular chatter on cable television news shows about his mental health and views the issue as “an invented fact” and “a joke,” much like the Russia probe, according to one person who recently discussed it with him.
Doubts about Trump’s state of mind have been whispered about in Washington’s corridors of power since before he was elected and have occasionally broken into the open, such as when Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said last August that Trump lacked “the stability” and “some of the competence” to be successful as president.
But Wolff’s book has thrust the topic to the forefront of public debate, prompting the White House to confront the issue directly.
At a news conference at Camp David Jan 6., President Trump responded to a question from a reporter about a tweet he posted on his mental state earlier that day.(The Washington Post)
So far, Trump’s advisers have adopted a posture of umbrage and indignation. Rather than dignifying questions about whether their 71-year-old boss is fit to be president, they attack the inquisitors for having the gall to ask.
In an emailed statement Monday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders slammed what she called “ridiculous reports from detractors” and described an “outpouring of support from a totally indignant staff.”
“The White House perspective is outrage and disgust that people who do not know this President or understand the true depth of his intellectual capabilities would be so filled with hate they would resort to something so far outside the realm of reality or decency,” she said.
Asked Monday by reporters whether Trump’s physical exam, scheduled for Friday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, would include a psychiatric component, deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley barely engaged the question. He replied, simply, “No.”
Former Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller charged that there were partisan motivations behind the talk of Trump’s fitness. “The political left wants this to become a debate about made-up attacks against the president rather than the president’s successes and the success of the country,” he said. “This is a pretty pathetic move.”
White House officials are trying to present Trump as hard at work doing his job. A long-planned working retreat at Camp David over the weekend became a showcase for the commander in chief.
Trump aides and administration members attacked Michael Wolff, his new book "Fire and Fury," and Stephen K. Bannon on Jan. 7.(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
The traveling pool of reporters was invited to the presidential getaway in Maryland, where Trump parried their questions Saturday while Vice President Pence, Cabinet members and Republican congressional leaders flanked him with approving nods and applause.
“Just from a visual standpoint, it shows a very united front,” one White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share an internal assessment, said of the Camp David news conference. “Everyone’s on the same page. There are no fractures. From an optics standpoint, it works very well.”
Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist who works for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said Trump can best help extinguish emerging doubts by advancing his policy agenda, including proposals for new spending on infrastructure projects. “This needs to move beyond talking heads and be met with action and discipline,” Reed said.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley also fired back against critics on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, emphasizing the president’s accomplishments rather than his state of mind.
“As much as everyone wants to talk about stability, was he unstable when he passed the tax reform?” she asked. “Was he unstable when we finally hit back at Syria and said no more chemical weapons?
Was he unstable when we finally put North Korea on notice? Was he unstable when he said, ‘Wait, we need to look at Iran because this is getting to be a dangerous situation’? Was he unstable with the jobs or the economy or the stock market?”
But Monday, as Trump delivered a speech on agriculture policy in Nashville, neither CNN nor MSNBC carried his full remarks live. Instead, anchors Jake Tapper and Nicolle Wallace, respectively, interviewed journalists and pundits about Wolff’s book and Trump’s reaction to it.
Some Trump allies voiced frustration that the White House does not appear to have implemented a full-scale crisis communications plan.
“When you raise an issue like the mental acuity of the president, there is no organized effort to push back,” said one ally, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly. “How do you disprove a fallacy?”
After several days of blanket coverage of Wolff’s book, the Republican National Committee sent some talking points to Trump allies Friday evening. The memo, titled “Pundit Prep,” urged Trump’s defenders to first focus on “jobs, jobs, jobs,” and offered tips on discrediting Wolff and his tome. The document did not address how to answer questions about Trump’s fitness for office.
White House officials said organizing a public response has been relatively easy, as administration aides and allies have been naturally frustrated and eager to push back. A number of Cabinet members and other people who have worked closely with Trump over the years have come forward with testimonies of the president’s mental capacity.
“He is absolutely no different than the day he got elected, and he has used this unconventional but very effective manner of managing for the 30 years that I’ve known him in business, finance, media and now governing,” Thomas J. Barrack Jr., Trump’s longtime friend and inauguration chairman, said in an interview Monday.
“It’s not mental instability,” Barrack added. “It’s management by controlled and orchestrated chaos.”
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said Monday on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show that his boss is “focused, he’s determined, he’s a business guy. He asks tough questions, and expects solid answers.”
When Hewitt asked if Trump was “really smart,” as the president claimed in his tweet, Perdue replied: “I think he is really smart. He’s instinctive. He has a unique, inherent gift of just being able to figure stuff out. It’s like street smarts.”
CIA Director Mike Pompeo, appearing Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” talked about Trump’s engagement during the near-daily intelligence briefings that Pompeo helps deliver.
“We engage in complex conversation about some of the most weighty matters facing the world,” Pompeo said, adding: “He asks really hard questions. He delivers policy outcomes based on the information that we provide him.”
A more combative defense came from Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior policy adviser, who tangled with Tapper on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Miller trashed Wolff as “a garbage author of a garbage book.”
“One of the other tragedies of this grotesque work of fiction is its portrayal of the president,” Miller said. “The reality is, is the president is a political genius.”
As Miller repeated himself again and again, he and Tapper began talking over each other, and the interview grew so contentious that the CNN host eventually cut it — and Miller — off.
Afterward, Miller was delighted. He told others he was proud of his performance and thought the exchange went well. So did the president, who chimed in with Twitter praise, saying his policy adviser had “destroyed” the “Fake News” Tapper.
The once-a-week pill would look much like any other regular drug capsule
Human trials of a once-a-week oral pill for HIV could start, after successful tests in pigs, claim US scientists.
8 January 2018
The slow-release tablet could free patients from having to take daily medication, they say.
It looks like a normal capsule, but on reaching the stomach its coating dissolves and a special structure packed inside unfolds.
This 4cm (1.5in) star-shaped scaffold stays in the stomach for seven days, steadily releasing its cargo of drugs.
More tests in other mammals, including monkeys, are recommended but the researchers say trails in people could begin within two years.
HIV experts said the prospect of a new treatment option was to be welcomed, but that a once-a-week HIV pill for people was "still a way off".
Image copyright
The star is too large to move out of the stomach but still allows food to journey through to the small intestine.
Once it has delivered its payload, the star begins to degrade and passes on through the digestive tract.
In the pig trial, the researchers dosed it with enough of three antiretroviral drugs - dolutegravir, rilpivirine and cabotegravir - to last for seven days.
The researchers say, in the future, the oral drug delivery device could be used for a wide range of diseases, not just HIV.
Slow release
Preliminary tests in pigs have already been done with a malaria drug called ivermectin and the star remaining in the stomach for up to two weeks.
Researcher Giovanni Traverso, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brigham and Women's Hospital in the US, said: "We wanted to come up with a system to make it easier for patients to stick to taking their treatments.
"Changing a medication so it only needs to be taken once a week rather than once a day should be more convenient and improve compliance.
"Once-a-month formulations might even be possible for some diseases."
A company called Lyndra is now developing the technology and plans human trials of the long-lasting oral delivery pills within the next 12 months. Tests with HIV medication could begin after that, subject to approval and more animal tests.
Dr Traverso said: "There are lots of patients this could help, including people with dementia or mental health disorders such as schizophrenia."
Some slow-release drugs could already be given by injection, he said.
A spokeswoman from the British HIV Association said: "This research is still in the early stages of development and there is clearly some way to go from testing in pigs and mathematical modelling to human trials before its effectiveness can be assessed."
A Terrence Higgins Trust representative said: "Medical advances have come on leaps and bounds for HIV in the UK in recent years, however we do know that taking a pill each day does present practical barriers for some people living with HIV.
"We welcome the prospect of a treatment that removes these barriers, and presents all people living with HIV with further choice, provided that it is no less effective than current options available."
The HIV research, published in the journal Nature Communications, was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Brigham and Women's Hospital.
When the news of irregularities in the issuance of Central Bank bonds under the newly elected government came to light in March 2015 it seemed to be another story that would end up as only a story. Many had voted for the new leaders because they promised to be transparent and non-corrupt. Human beings have a great need to believe in something good that will come in the future to sustain their hope and thereby their lives. The hope of those who voted for the new government was that its leaders would not be corrupt and they would have the capacity to lead the country to become a developed one like many countries of Southeast Asia have become in a short period. Denials of wrongdoing on the part of government leaders were therefore convenient to accept by many who had voted for a change.
However, when the Commission of Inquiry appointed by President Maithripala Sirisena began their hearings, which were publicized in the media, the faith in the probity of government leaders became eroded. There is a strong desire in the country that the practice of corruption especially at the top should not be permitted to continue. The commissioners, who had proven track records of competence, conducted themselves in a restrained manner but did their task well. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe volunteered to come before them and give evidence. There is criticism that the Prime Minister was not subject to the tough cross examination that some of the others who came before the commission had to cope with. But this did not stop the commission from issuing strictures on him too. The report of the bond commission has stated that the prime minister should not have believed the Central Bank officials on the bond issue.
The significant fact is that a sitting Prime Minister was summoned before the commission and went before it. He was questioned by the commissioners and gave his evidence before them. This has set a precedent that all are equal before the law. This is a practice in developed countries but not in the less developed countries. Sri Lanka is now on the path to being a developed country and there needs to be pressure from civil society, political parties and the courts of law to take it there. The Prime Minister has called for an early debate on the commission report in parliament. This will be an opportunity to discuss institutional reform that will ensure non-recurrence. Even if the past cannot be undone, the future can be different.
POLITICAL TIGHTROPE
The commission report has given the president the opportunity to reaffirm his commitment to the political platform on which he sought election in January 2015. It also comes at an opportune time when he leads his party at the local election campaign. The main plank of that political platform at the presidential election three years ago was the issue of corruption in the acts of the previous government. In his election campaign the president pledged to eliminate corruption and to bring in good governance. However, the tight monitoring of corruption that was anticipated did not materialize. Instead sections of the government have careened into large scale corruption so much so that it have provided those in the former government to become a case study of the pot calling the kettle black.
In this context, President Sirisena’s statement to the nation on the report of the presidential commission he appointed to investigate the Central Bank bond issue would have elevated his stature in the eyes of the general public. At a time when exemplars of non corruption and restraint in political life are few and far between, the President may be able to capture the space. It is notable that in his public statement the president was careful to restrict his comments regarding the Prime Minister and minimized his involvement in it.
In taking action on the recommendations of the Bond Commission the President has to walk a tightrope. On the one hand he has had to disclose the content of the report as there is a public demand for this. On the other hand, he has to be mindful to protect the government of which he is an integral part. The government of national unity is essentially a coalition between the UNP and SLFP. It is the UNP component of the government that is in the dock on account of the Central Bank scam. The President has been politically astute to utilize the commission report on the bond issues of 2015 to seek an investigation to previous abuses of Central Bank bond issues which would include the abuses by members of the previous government.
CHECKING IMPUNITY
It has been frequently observed that Sri Lanka’s track record of acting on reports of commissions of inquiry has been poor. Hardly any commission report has been acted upon. Where the government is composed of one dominant party, the dominant party would be able to suppress inconvenient truths. Even in this particular case, when the Prime Minister appointed a team of lawyers associated with the UNP to do an assessment of the Bond Scam, they basically said things were okay. It needed the President’s intervention to get another investigative body appointed which would be more independent. The recommendations of the commission might not be implemented in full. But the check and balance exerted by the SLFP will most likely ensure that some action will be taken. This will be better than before.
The value of the government of national unity is to be seen in the manner in which the abuse of the Central Bank bond issue of 2015 has been exposed. This was not the first occasion on which there were misgivings about the way Central Bank bond transactions took place. But the abuses of the past were never investigated in a comprehensive manner as they have been on this occasion. The difference is that this time two parties are responsible for governance. If there was only one party responsible for governance, it is easier to suppress inconvenient truths. But when there are two parties, the truth tends to emerge. Now that President Sirisena has set the course it is important that he see it through. The key would lie in the strengthening of institutions, so that the rule of law prevails, and not the rule of men.
Sri Lanka has many difficult challenges to face. The problem of corruption is only one of them. There is also the issue of the reconciliation process. The problems are difficult to resolve and have eluded solutions by governments of the past, but the two parties together can solve them much better than any single party. In the case of the reconciliation process, land held by the military still needs to be returned to civilians, the office of missing persons needs to be set up, and the constitutional reform process must not be abandoned. In the case of the Central Bank bond scam those identified by the commission need to be held accountable. We must anticipate a day that will surely come when even the highest in the land is not immune from prosecution for wrongdoing that harm the country, like occurred recently in South Korea and many South American countries.
By 
Rep. Ed Royce speaks during a conference on countering violent extremism, in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 23, 2017. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
