I refer to the news Report in the Daily Mirror of 5h December, under the heading “Instability will end in a week”, where views expressed by the President,Maithripala Sirisena, at the Annual Convention of the SLFP,were given, and also to his latest new theory, that is a “struggle between National and Foreign thinking “, which appeared in the Daily Mirror of 10th December. I wish to comment on bot
The President made triple actions, one after another, which can be described in the popular Sinhala market language as “Māra”, which I guess is devilish, and far from Maithri. (a) He sacked the Prime Minister of the Country in one shot, and appointed Mahinda Rajapaksa as new Prime Minister (b) Prorogued Parliament to preempt a Motion of No Confidence against the new PM, allowing space to garner sufficient majority from the Opposition by bidding a price, like at the IPL auction, to entice the would be Hop, Step Jumpers.
Petitions filed in the Appeal and Supreme Courts
The President had declared at the outset at the Convention that “I would honour and accept whatever ruling passed by the two apex Courts in the Country.” In the same breadth, he pronounced a counter view of the people, which really is his view that “people in the Country hold different views on the recent Orders given by the Courts. Some say it was a good one and others say it was like the Chief Incumbent of a temple making a preaching that should have been delivered by the Mahanayake of the Nikaya”. This is certainly not the mark of a person who would “honour and accept” the rulings of Judicial Courts. This is, contemptibly denigrating the highest Judicial Courts to that of a Temple Incumbent. What matters is not the opinion of the public, but the Judicial decisions of the Courts. The Courts are temples of Justice, higher than the temples of Mahanayakes.
The Rationale for Quitting the SLFP
The President MS says that “I quit the SLFP to fight against corruption, selling of State assets, waste and collapse of the rule of law”. But deliberately omits to mention under whose rule these happened. Also states that on 26th October, “I took a decision, on the same reasons, to fire Ranil Wickremasinghe, PM and appoint Mahinda Rajapaksa to replace him”. Isn’t it sheer lunacy to restore the same corrupt Mahinda Rajapaksa as PM, whom he vigorously fought to get rid of?The Prez says the two decisions he took (a) to quit the SLFP and (b) fire Ranil as PM “were correct, prudent and timely decisions”. Decision (a) is not disputed. But (b) is questionable. It is not his subjective view of what is correct, prudent and timely is, what is required, but scrupulously and stringently acting according to the Constitution of the country.Further, he says that the “objective of those judgments were to restore decency, the rule of law and spiritual cleanliness in the Society”.
The events that followed showed how true it was. We saw this being launched in the solemn Assembly, the Parliament, by unleashingindecency, law of the jungle, spiritual depravity, violence, thuggery, hooliganism, and man-handling the Speaker and usurping his Chair.
In 1972, the new Republican Constitution, declared Sri Lanka a “Republic” and the monarchy abolished. Thereby the office of the Governor-General was replaced by that of President as head of state and the Prime Minister continuing to serve as the head of government.
In 1978, the second amendment to the Constitution moved from a Westminster System into a Presidential System with the President serving as both head of state and head of government. An elected presidency with a longer term and independence from Parliament was thus created. The President would be the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, head of the cabinet of ministers and could dissolve parliament (after one year has passed since the convening of parliament after a parliamentary election). The Prime Minister would serve as the deputy to the President and successor.
Sri Lankan presidents are involved with every aspect of the government and are able to hold cabinet portfolios, or can bypass the cabinet posts by delegating decisions to the Presidential Secretariat.
Cutting a long story short on 28th April 2015, The Nineteenth Constitutional Amendment implemented restrictions on the powers of the presidency by removing much of the changes made by the eighteenth amendment. It limited the presidency to two, five year terms.
The amendment mandates that the president consult the prime minister on ministerial appointments.
It curtails any president’s immunity by making him liable to fundamental rights litigation on any official act.
Dr. N. M. Perera prophesied when addressing a seminar in 1978 on the proposed JRJ Constitution, he said, “The fact that the President has the authority to assign to himself any topic or function which he desires to take over, he can at will reduce or remove any function already agreed to the PM or to any other minister.
In these complicated circumstances:
What happens to the left majority in the House supporting a left Prime Minister who is saddled with a President sponsoring an opposite policy in conflict with the declared policy of a majority in the Parliament?
How is this conflict to be resolved?
Will that President be prepared to swallow his pride and foreswear his convictions adumbrated, intimated and summarised in his own declared policy when he assumed office?
If neither is prepared to give way, there will be a deadlock.
The whole governmental machinery will come to a standstill.”
Today, it is a prophecy come true.
It was indeed ironic for the people of Sri Lanka to experience the fact that all those who were subsequently elected as Presidents, after Mr. Ranasinghe Premadasa, rained insults on the constitution calling it the “Bahubootha Vivasthava” – Feather-brained Constitution and promised in their election manifestos that the first thing they will do is totally eliminate, exterminate and abolish this monstrous constitution.
After stepping in to that seat, all of them, without exception, enjoyed every privilege, to the maximum, and totally forgot their promises and commitment, because of the power they wielded.
The J R Jayawardene Constitution was designed for political leaders with probity, complete and confirmed integrity; having strong moral principles; but unfortunately down the line, including the present crop of politicians lacked quality, competence and character.
The Presidents favoured and encouraged the prostitution of talents to the unworthy and the corrupt mainly for personal and financial gain. State offices and services were spewed out on whim, venality and corruption.
We would like to intervene at this juncture to address, as citizens of this country to advise and suggest to Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe what his future governance should be. In that he turns strategies and plans into actions in order to accomplish strategic objectives and goals.
Political parties usually shape the behavior of their members by adopting internal party rules. Arguably, the most draconian rule is expulsion from the party.
Because this sanction has little effect on a person who threatens to leave the party anyway, internal party rules are ineffective in producing parliamentary cohesion when members are willing to defect rather than submit to party discipline.
Therefore, it is imperative that legislations against crossing the floor – a phrase often used for party switching or defections – should not be mere “laws;” they must be enshrined in our national constitutions; to the effect that elected members of parliament and other local bodies shall forfeit their seats if they change political parties.
The anti-defection legislation, must emphasise the fact, if a candidate of a political party had been elected to the House of Representatives or Provincial Council or other local bodies, as a candidate of that political party, defects or crosses the floor, he should resign from that political party forthwith.
A by-election to that electorate will give him the option to contest under the political party of his choosing thereby giving the party under which he was elected to prove their right by placing another candidate for elections. If he wins – well, it is the will of the people.
If Laws against party – switching, defecting, or floor-crossing are not implemented, the whole democratic election process turns into a joke. What is the point in people voting for a party when the candidate whom we voted in under a party symbol decides to defect for his personal gain? All those who voted for him will look like utter fools.
It is also pertinent to mention, that it is a big question mark, that all citizens in a country will think positively before exercising their franchise. There are voters who do not have anything like coherent preferences. Among them most people pay little attention to politics; when they vote, if they vote at all, they do so irrationally and for contradictory reasons.
This makes it all the more the reason for anti-defective legislation, regulations, treaties and other legal instruments to come to have legal force and effect to make this a reality and to remove this demonic defections in parliaments as well as in other local bodies.
The other suggestion is that we would also like to emphasise the fact that the position of Presidency should be totally abolished. We do not even need a figurehead of a president. There is no necessity to pay out an additional stipend to a dormant individual, when such monies could be used for more important work in the country.
Shall conclude with the immortal words of Andrew Carnegie:
“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.”
Since inception, Groundviews has dedicated itself to discussion on issues pertaining to human rights. The following is a selection of content from the site, juxtaposed with the relevant articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This list is by no means exhaustive, but is an attempt to cover the many different ways in which Sri Lanka has grappled with rights issues, over decades. Article 1.
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Yet, in Sri Lanka, discrimination along lines of caste persists.
Article 2.
“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion. Let’s examine how Sri Lanka’s divisions along lines of race, religion, sex and language has led to exclusion.”
On language: Read here on how Sri Lankans continue to be impacted by violations of our language policy.
On gender identity: Read here on the continued discrimination against members of the LGBTIQ community, even as countries in the region move towards decriminalization.
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security – read a discussion on whether or not it is a fundamental right here. Also read this on Sri Lanka’s history grappling with capital punishment here.
Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Read about Sri Lanka’s broken system and the ongoing use of torture, even post-2015, here and here.
Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. Read about the legacy of the PTA here, here and here.
Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Read about the privacy implications of the e-NIC project here and concerns raised on surveillance here.
Article 14.
Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
Read about Sri Lanka’s treatment of refugees here and here.
Article 15.
Everyone has the right to a nationality. Read about the estate community, disenfranchised under the Citizenship Act of 1948, and still one of the most marginalised communities in the island here.
Article 16.
Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
Read about the struggle to reform Muslim personal laws, and the impact the current Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act has had on the community here.
Article 17.
(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Read the many ways communities across Sri Lanka, from Colombo to Jaffna, have been deprived of land here, here, here and here.
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
Read about attacks on minority religions, especially the Muslim community, including most recently during violent riots in Digana here. Read here about how this discrimination has resulted in violence in the past here and here.
Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. Read a recent piece on the shrinking of space for freedom of expression here. See a selection of content on freedom of expression here.
Article 20.
Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. Read here on the protest in Weliweriya where that right was tragically and violently disrupted.
Article 22.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization…of economic, social and cultural rights – Read a discussion on the inclusion of socio-economic rights in Sri Lanka’s constitutional reform process here.
Article 23.
Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. Read a piece on Sri Lanka Telecom’s mistreatment of its contract workers here.
Article 26.
Everyone has the right to education. Sri Lanka has a high literacy rate and free education, but read how some children are excluded with the incident of a Kuliyapitiya schoolchild here. Read here on the barriers that members of the Malaiyagha community face in ensuring their children receive education.
Article 27.
Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
Read how the pursuit and preservation of culture has sometimes come at the expense of minorities here.
How can we look for and work towards a better understanding and preservation of fundamental human rights? This piece by Savitri Hensman has some food for thought:
“A focus on human rights as a whole, for everyone, may have a chance of bringing together a broad cross-section of society.
“The challenges of building an ethos of rights for all should not be underestimated,” she adds, “But if those too young to have lived through the events of July 1983 and their aftermath are to be spared such horrors, it may be necessary to work towards a recognition that all deserve basic freedoms, recognition of human dignity and the necessities of life.”
Mahinda Rajapaksa issued two press releases on the 3rd of December. One in Sinhala, the other in English. The press release was in response to the interim stay order issued by the Court of Appeal, basically putting Rajapaksa out of the job he was unconstitutionally appointed into and hasn’t to date demonstrated any capacity to retain, even illegally. The English version was, unsurprisingly, terse and succinct. However, when juxtaposed with the Sinhala version, immediately obvious, even visually, was the difference in length. The Sinhala press release was three paragraphs longer than the English version. In a rough capture of the significant differences first posted on Twitter, I noted that the strong emphasis on duty, patriotism and nationalism present in the Sinhala, was entirely absent in the English. Further, Rajapaksa deviously conflates partisan, parochial loyalty with civic responsibility, entwining citizenship with, essentially, mindless enslavement to his politics and party. The tone and expression employed also suggested Rajapaksa expected to be supported in his endeavours, or in other words, wanted blind allegiance independent of what he did, and how. Even if it meant violating the constitution.
The fact that the press release was never issued in Tamil is also its own story. To be fair by Rajapaksa, Tamil, much like the community, is an after-thought for mainstream political parties save for, ironically, the Tamil National Alliance, which regularly puts out its press releases in Sinhala. More interesting is the selective approach to Tamil translations and content. Soon after the coup, Namal Rajapaksa tweeted in Tamil noting that the issue of Tamil political prisoners would be looked into. That tweet was never translated into Sinhala and posted on his official Twitter account, despite repeated calls to do so. This was at the time both father and son were courting the TNA. Dog-whistle politics stoking up communalism is a forte of the SLPP, for whom the political binary of being with them or against them is never out of fashion. They and only they love Sri Lanka, in a manner they alone define. Anyone else, daring to stand against or even question this – as we know from how they governed for ten-years – courts violent pushback or worse. Online, a cult of personality hides an authoritarian bent, where especially since late November – when it was very obvious that the coup was failing on every front – everyone who stood up Mahinda Rajapaksa or members of the SLPP was painted as a terrorist and pro-LTTE. In addition to everyone from human rights NGOs, anyone who took part in a protest as well as anyone on social media holding Sirisena and Rajapaksa accountable, LTTE cadre ostensibly now include the two dramatists who refuse to acknowledge and shake hands with the SLPP MPs present on stage at the State Drama Festival Awards. The racist rhetoric of violent division and separatism isn’t just coming from pages and accounts the Rajapaksas can claim they have no influence over or control of. The racism is ingrained in and featured on official accounts, where the text and imagery both explicitly and implicitly hold Tamils to be, by nature, separatists and the TNA to be, by default, terrorists.
All this, in 2018. It’s like the war never ended, and the primary reasons for the war to start, not even remotely comprehended. In a race to the bottom, the one thing worse than and perhaps flowing from the disregard of and disdain for constitutionalism, is racism. It is not a light charge. If we limit ourselves to just the weeks after the 26th of October, there is one family that is most frequently and overtly associated with racism. The Rajapaksas. There is one party that most frequently uses racism.
The SLPP. There is one individual around whom an entire constellation of accounts have mushroomed that are in spirit, visual content and expression, racist. That person is Gotabaya Rajapaksa. There is another constellation of pages anchored to Sinhala-Buddhist organisations or collectives, without exception deeply aligned to Mahinda Rajapaksa. They are all racist. There are card-carrying defenders of Mahinda, Gotabaya and Namal Rajapaksa on Twitter, who put out racist content. Official spokespersons of high-ranking SLPP politicians put out racist content. The dog-whistle politics of official communiques of Mahinda Rajapaksa stokes racism. The evidence is in the data, and it is both quantitatively and qualitatively, stark. The Rajapaksas are racist to the core, either by the silence around what others say, or by putting out content which exacerbates existing socio-political, communal and religions divisions.
It is all very depressing. Despite the significant power they wield to harness out better angels, the SLPP tragically and tellingly persists in promoting racism as a legitimate response to political difference, criticism or pushback. The result is that their impressionable following on social media see this heinous language and framing as entirely normal, and legitimate.
The coup, in a way, has forced us to confront many things civil society, government and the international community were acutely aware of and for some time, but didn’t want to address head on. For this, we must thank Sirisena. Instead of an entropy that entertains the luxury of plausible deniability or wilful ignorance, we have endured a rapid, inescapable descent into chaos that has clearly marked Maithripala Sirisena, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the SLPP, sections of the mainstream media, some countries, sections of the business community, high ranking members of the clergy, some members of the Bar Association and even sections of civil society as those who do not care about the rule of law, constitutionalism, due process, ethics or principles. This is a good thing, for we all know where each other stands.
That’s the yin, or the darkness. The yang, or light, comes from a historic opportunity to reboot our political culture and constitutional architecture. The Executive Presidency, along with its incumbent, must be disposed of. Pronouncements by Sirisena last week alone indicate that authoritarianism’s first and best refuge, is the office he now holds. It simply must go, and I would argue a mandate much broader and deeper than January 2015 now supports it. Violent, corrupt MPs must be named, shamed and shunned. Unprincipled, spineless MPs who switch party allegiance daily must be ridiculed, reviled and repulsed. Everyone who supported the coup long after it was abundantly clear that the President’s actions had no constitutional or legal basis, must never be forgotten and must also never be allowed to forget. All those who took up official positions under Mahinda Rajapaksa’s power grab, must be exposed. The set up and nature of all state media must be completely overhauled. Radio and TV licenses need to be reviewed and in some cases, revoked, with a transparent, accountable system for dealing with spectrum management established.
For years, if not decades, all of this has been half-heartedly tabled, promised, discussed and forgotten. If we are serious about non-recurrence, all this must be done, and soon. There is nothing more important. Nothing.
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” ~Aristotle 2018-12-12
When an electorate gets carried away with the candidate’s veneer of simplicity that concealed all the oozing that was rotting away within the presumed ‘common man,’ consequences are seldom concealed. When he couldn’t match his flowing rhetoric with actual accomplishments on and off the field of politics, his acquired purity fades into nightmarish shadows. When the Executive does not realise that the office he holds is bigger than the person, the scope and expanse of office shrinks -- and that happens only in the puny mind of the holder of office -- instead of the holder controlling the office, the office starts controlling the person, the holder.
What was described above is no psychoanalysis of an ordinary man of yesteryear. It is not an unimportant examination of an unimportant man on the streets. It is the living tale of our current constitutional crisis. One cannot take a powerful organism such as a written Constitution of a country for a toy in the hands of a toddler; nor is it a tool in the hands of a sinister and under-equipped set of rulers. Crafty rulers in the past resorted to navigating affairs of government through various nefarious means. They violated the Constitution as if they were obsessed by the very existence of such a document. The Constitution of Sri Lanka is the very source of our law; it frames the legal and lawful structure within which all our citizens have to exercise their rights and privileges. The one who chooses to go beyond the precincts of that Constitution does it at his own peril. The law of the land, the Constitution through one of its three pillars, the judiciary, will pursue him or her whoever he or she be, how powerful or powerless, how rich or poor and regardless of the language he or she speaks or one’s ethnicity, and will punish him or her. That is what makes us Sri Lankans, civilized and an organised community of brothers and sisters.
Gathering storms against violations of our Constitution are noticeable. The storms have enveloped the body-politic of the country and the social media seems to be passionately infatuated with a movement that is still at a juvenile stage. Every trishaw driver, every boutique owner, every junior and senior executive in the private sector, every government servant and every street vendor, barring some who would not desert the Rajapaksa clan are making their own moves, sometimes willy nilly to express their opinions and views via social media, the most popular media methodology of the twenty first century. The smart phone is the vehicle through which these numerous views and counter-views are being exchanged.
In this age of ‘smart and progressive’ social evolution, the chief executive of the country needs to craft and adopt a sensible and strategic approach to any developing problem. A minor problem should not be allowed to grow into crisis proportions. A minor irritant could always develop into a crisis if one opts to deal with it on a retail or piecemeal basis instead of adopting a strategic methodology to resolve such minor irritants. The current constitutional crisis is the birth child of such a foolish and untoward series of mistakes and blunders in statecraft. As was enunciated in my previous column, one violation was committed in order to cover up a previous violation. The unending series of lies and violations of our Constitution began turning its unpleasant and murky cycle; what seemed as a violation in the beginning turned into unmistakable rape towards an uncontrollable orgy, until an independent judiciary intervened.
When civility and political decorum gave way to unhinged behaviour on the part of the executive, a cascade of events began to flow; most hostile, uncivilized and shameless nature of our parliamentarians was exposed to the hilt. When the world at large was the audience, the television and smart phone screens screamed loudly and bared open the nudity and desperation of our lawmakers. The so-called guardians of our sacred machinery of governance were the very violators of that machinery.
The two men, the executive and Mahinda Rajapaksa, who could have controlled the chilling behaviour of our lawmakers on November 15 and 16 observed their silence. Another unabashed chapter of the story of Sri Lanka’s progress towards a developed democracy was etched with chili powder and water.
When a coalition government is formed, it is but inevitable that differences among its stakeholders, especially in the realm of policy and principles of governance, erupt every now and then. As and when such eruptions do occur, civilized leaders on either side of the differences usually get together and make genuine attempts to arrive at compromised positions without giving up the core principles of a working democracy. In such a potentially-dynamic political dialogue, gentlemen usually thrash out all differences within the accepted confines and make a deal (reach a compromise) in order to continue with a working formula in running a government. However, when one party, in this case the executive, makes a unilateral decision to fire the sitting prime minister and swears in a different one who does not enjoy a majority in the legislature, as prime minister, all that deal-making and compromises flow out of the window.
October 26, 2018 is indeed a dark day in the country’s seventy years of post-Independence history. What followed, some gruesome events both inside and outside Parliament, bore unmistakable signatures of mis-governance. No country in the world would enjoy being placed on the brink of chaos and anarchy. Man has advanced over centuries of untold misery and hard struggle against his own self-inflicted sins and crimes and arrived at the twenty first century with remarkable achievements that would eclipse all his mistakes and misadventures. Pundit Nehru remarked in his ‘The Discovery of India’ thus: “How amazing is this spirit of man! In spite of innumerable failings, man, throughout the ages, has sacrificed his life and all he held dear for an ideal, for truth, for faith, for country and honour. That ideal may change, but that capacity for self- sacrifice continues, and, because of that, much may be forgiven to man, and it is impossible to lose hope for him. In the midst of disaster, he has not lost his dignity or his faith in the values he cherished. Plaything of nature’s mighty forces, less than a speck of dust in this vast universe, he has hurled defiance at the elemental powers, and with his mind, cradle of revolution, sought to master them. Whatever gods there be, there is something godlike in man, as there is also something of the devil in him. The future is dark, uncertain. But we can see part of the way leading to it and can tread it with firm steps, remembering that nothing that can happen is likely to overcome the spirit of man which has survived so many perils; remembering also that life, for all its ills, has joy and beauty, and that we can always wander; if we know how to, in the enchanted woods of nature.”
One cannot take a powerful organism such as a written Constitution of a country for a toy in the hands of a toddler; nor is it a tool in the hands of a sinister and under-equipped set of rulers
With such polished diction and unlimited passion, Nehru described the ultimate summit a man could ascend. Being the closest neighbours and even closer than closest relatives of India, Sri Lankaand her leaders, could easily lend credence to these eloquent enunciations of the ‘spirit of man.’ That spirit seems to have evaded our political leaders. When one places oneself above the country, when one considers oneself more important than the basic principles and norms that define the very character of the people and nation that he or she leads, when one chooses to dwell in the dark and shadowy space of delusion and self-pity, the spirit of man seems a mirage receding one’s own eyes. Such tragedy has occurred in our midst today.
One should never try to interpret the political differences in terms of western and local. When one tries to do that, the hidden argument of patriotic against unpatriotic emerges and that is the very argument that holds true in the unsophisticated and unscholarly minds of the majority. When a simple personality becomes a simpleton, all hell can break loose. A close examination of the facts before all of us today indicate that there is strong possibility of such an occurrence. Sentries of democracy have fled; the moats of defence been clogged up and the sturdy walls, the last line of defence of democracy against unilateral onslaught by those who lack education, scholarly aptitude and wise decision-making is absent.
Discomfort and feeling of envy against those who could lend better and more informed judgment combine to make a leader dangerously close to implosion. We have not reached that uncomfortable and uncomplimentary state as yet. Controlling and navigating the State machinery is not a mean task. It requires immense aptitude and extraordinary patience and poise. It’s not too late to wish for such a sublime occurrence.
The writer can be contacted at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com
As economic management is in the hands of politicians, whatever happens in the political arena directly impacts on the economy. No matter how strong private sector is, no matter how efficient labor force is, no matter how useful natural resources is in the economy, when politicians whose job is to draft economic policies act foolishly, economy gets derailed, indicating a lot of repercussions where the business community cannot find any direction.
With the political crisis that is getting prolonged over nearly two months, Sri Lankan economy is badly hit in an unprecedented manner. It is needless to state that political stability is a must for economic development. Even though political stability was problematic for past few years, it went from bad to worse, due to the current political crisis which has disabled the entire economy, aftermath of which will have to be experienced shortly.
Stock market
Changing economic situation is always reflected by the stock market. Foreign investors play a pivotal role in the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), as local investment is not enough for boosting the market. However, it could be observed that foreign investors started withdrawing their funds from the Colombo Stock Exchange, as the country has not showcased any economic progress. When politicians struggle for power wasting time that would have been used for development, investors are not willing to put their money at risk. Accordingly, foreigners are selling their stakes even at blue chips, paving the way for local investors to buy at discounted prices. Stock market indices are going up slowly, but, stock prices are stagnant. This is because of high volume of stocks being traded at lower prices.
Over Rs. 30 billion foreign outflows from Sri Lanka’s bonds and stock market since crisis have been reported. This cannot be taken lightly, because the country is facing with rupee depreciation which accelerated its speed soon after the crisis. This also badly impacts on corporate earnings resulting in listed companies that pay lower dividend or zero dividend.
Depreciation
Whatever said or done, Sri Lanka is a country that highly imports. Hence, rupee depreciation has an adverse impact even on consumer at the grass-root level. Value of the rupee is decided by demand and supply in the foreign exchange market. With high level of cash outflow and slower inflow, the rupee can be further expected to be depreciating. The fact that the Central Bank pumps US dollars into the foreign exchange market is not a permanent solution. However, even though export sector must be encouraged to alleviate the possible repercussions of the depreciation, businesses are struggling to survive their operations amidst politically as well as economically unstable atmosphere. In my opinion, as currently politics is discussed more than economics in Sri Lankan context especially taking no action to curb the rupee depreciation; the economy will be pushed to the state where it cannot be rescued under any circumstance.
The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) said that that if President Maithripala Sirisena didn’t act according to the verdict of the Supreme Court (SC), they will take steps to impeach the President, stating that he is suffering mental and physical infirmity.
Addressing a media briefing today (10) at the Party head office, Parliamentarian Vijitha Herath explained, that according to Article 38 (2) of the Constitution, the President can be impeached by any MP, in writing addressing it to the Speaker, or giving notice of a resolution alleging that the President is permanently incapable of discharging the functions of his office by reason of mental or physical infirmity.
“President Sirisena promised to solve the current political crisis within a week, but for tomorrow (11) it’s been one week and nothing has been done so far. Now he’s saying that he will respect the verdict of the SC. Not just the President, but all persons should respect the verdict as citizens of Sri Lanka,” he added.
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Herath expressed that this President is one who can’t do the work as he promised.
“Speaking to a national newspaper recently, the President has said that he heard that some MPs had bargained themselves for sums as high as Rs 500 million and former President Mahinda Rajapaksa could not muster the majority because of the high price tags quoted by the MPs.”
MP Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa said that they only fight against the coup but not in favour of ousted Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe. He further expressed that their stance towards Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe remains the same and that they will not support any of them.
“It wasn’t perfect earlier but this is terrifying.”
This was a young female activist’s reaction to the events of October 26, when President Sirisena illegally appointed Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa to the post of Prime Minister, a move many are calling unconstitutional.
‘The Rajapaksa Era’ is a phrase that holds a range of sinister connotations. For human rights activists, it harkens back to a culture of threats, violence with impunity, and ‘white vans’. Individuals perceived as threats to the consolidation of Rajapaksa power, were deliberately targeted; including activists calling for members of the Rajapaksa family to be held accountable for human rights violations. In 2014, with next year’s Presidential Election on the horizon, the government continued its crackdown against independent media and human rights defenders with renewed vigour.
Space for dissent and discussion, and indeed steps forward, on issues related to human rights opened up with the election of President Sirisena in 2015. The lack of physical violence toward many of these activists was often cited as a sign that things had improved. However intimidation, harassment and surveillance continued to a large degree.
Groundviews spoke to activists on their memories of working in the field of human rights under a repressive regime. They compare these recollections with the unfolding political crisis, which continues without a resolution.
View the full story embedded below or directly on Adobe Spark here.
By Dr. Ranil Senanayake-December 10, 2018, 10:06 pm
The 24th COP of the Convention on Climate Change is just concluding and as usual we, the public have no idea as yet as to what our nation has to say in respect of our ‘readiness’ to face the oncoming changes. It is doubly embarrassing to be told that we are the second most vulnerable country to face climate change, yet our public are grossly uninformed as to what we should do. In addition, the ‘mega madness’ of our politicians have propelled us into a fossil carbon expensive future with buildings that are massively fossil carbon expensive and infrastructure with an equally high demand on fossil energy.
If, as the international assessments such as the Global Climate Risk Index 2019, states that, Sri Lanka is the second most vulnerable country to Climate Change, what have we done to advise our population or at least choose ‘development scenarios’ that make us less vulnerable to the effects of Climate Change? Not much! The future looks bleak. It is patently clear that we are totally incapable of addressing or even debating the issues here at home. It is with sadness that I reproduce an article written almost ten years ago on the subject. The points raised in it still remain unaddressed.
Climate Change 17.12.2011.
While awaiting to hear of the brilliant contributions that Sri Lanka has made to the just concluded United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), conference in Durban, the view from Durban is somewhat clouded. The global polluters are demonstrating extreme disdain of accepting any responsibility they have to the rest of humanity who share a common atmosphere with them. The unilateral move by Canada in withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol, a move endorsed by the fossil energy industry, demonstrates how much public interest has been eroded from political enclaves.
The UNFCC itself is a lame duck, it is still unable to recognize or identify the difference in value of carbon originating from biotic sources and fossil sources. This fact is commonsense; that while a diamond, petroleum, a lump of coal, piece of wood or piece of fruit is comprised of carbon, they are not the same, and they have different values. So in burning them up we have to recognize the value (cost) of each. The carbon dioxide that emanates from them by burning is also different. The carbon dioxide from biotic carbon will always have the carbon isotope C14, while carbon dioxide from fossil carbon will never contain C14. In time, the differences are in millions of years.
This much is common knowledge; most high school children are already aware of these facts. Then why has the UNFCC chosen not to ‘see’ that there is a value and temporal difference between biotic and fossil carbon cycles? A cynic might say that many are in the pay of the energy industry. But what about our Sri Lankan scientists, who attended Durban? Surely they will never sell out to the energy industry! Perhaps they have already identified these fundamental structural flaws within the UNFCC and we might see this stand reflected in their reports.
In the meanwhile, apart from the innumerable conferences and workshops that we could have, what should we do in Sri Lanka? This question has come sharply into focus with the news that Russian scientists have discovered hundreds of plumes of methane gas, some over 1,000 meters in diameter, bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean. Methane is about 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. Dr.Igor Semiletov of the Russian Academy of Sciences stated in a recent interview " Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of meters in diameter. This is the first time that we’ve found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 meters in diameter. It’s amazing."
All this points to the need for immediate action. Landscapes are slow to respond to rapid changes. The effect of the increase in storm force was apparent all last year. By now we should have had some national adaptation strategies. Yes, there has been a plethora of conferences around the subject, but what do I do if my drinking water runs out? What do I do if there is salt intrusion into my field? How do I deal with sudden windstorms? If the years spent on discussing adaptation had borne any fruit, we would now be seeing public education programmes on climate change preparedness by now.
So we wait with hope for information from the Climate Change Secretariat on the range of adaptation strategies that we could use in our respective professions in Sri Lanka. But it would behoove us to begin adaptive field studies with our farmers now, based on the predictive models that have a systematic data updating function. The Climate Change Secretariat needs to coordinate all agencies dealing with natural resources, in order to develop functional models for adaptation. From the signs about us we know will have to face the oncoming changes, we need a national plan that informs the public on how we should prepare.
That was 2011, as nothing was forthcoming, some suggestions on what should be addressed was presented once more in 2016
However, despite repeated calls and detailed studies on what might happen, as the studies prepared by the Ministry of Environment, there still has been no response on advising the public what we should do. For a nation dependent on perennial crops long term and rain fed agriculture, responsive models for changing agroecological zones should already be designed. Farming landscapes should also be planned to be responsive to the oncoming changes.
For all these years, climate change was ‘someone else’s problem’, not requiring urgent official attention. At least now, that we have been officially named the second most vulnerable country to climate change, can we expect a more proactive response from the government? Will this lot ever wake up to the fact that ‘development’ based on the consumption of fossil fuel, just pushes our vulnerability that much further !
Thousands of plantation workers in Sri Lanka are continuing their indefinite strike, launched on December 4, to demand a 100percent wage increase. They are among the poorest sections of the working class in the country. Currently their basic daily wage is 500 rupees ($US2.80), and they are demanding 1,000 rupees.
Signalling a direct confrontation with the workers, the plantation employers have repeatedly rejected the demand. A Planters Association of Ceylon (PA) statement last Friday declared that the demand far “exceeded” the revenue capacity of the Regional Plantation Companies (RPC). It could not agree to “a demand that would jeopardise an entire industry that involves not only growers but tea factory owners, exporters and the entire value chain.”
Claiming that the production cost of tea is high, with labour costs accounting for 70 percent, the PA said RPCs would have to absorb an extra 20 billion-rupee increase in wage and gratuity costs if the demand was accepted.
In other words, the plantation owners are insisting that their profits, and those of their international buyers, must be defended by subjecting workers to brutal exploitation.
The RPCs have agreed to increase the daily basic wage only by 20 percent, or 100 rupees, with a 33 percent increase for attendance incentives, up to 80 rupees, plus the productivity incentive and Price Share Supplement.
The employers argue that the workers could thus earn 940 rupees altogether. The so-called incentive allowances are just a gimmick, however. Workers often find it difficult to earn those allowances because of physical difficulties and other impediments such as bad weather and ailments.
What the employers are really demanding is the abolition of the current daily wage system and the implementation of a “revenue share” system that would transform the workers and their families into modern-day sharecroppers.
Under that system, each worker’s family is allocated a plot of land, with a certain number of tea bushes to maintain and harvest. Families are paid after deductions for the costs of fertilisers and agro-chemicals provided by the company, and also the latter’s profit. Workers would lose their minimal social benefits, such as the employee provident fund, employer trust fund and gratuity.
The PA statement claims that workers can earn up to 80,000 rupees per month under this new system. That has already been proved a lie. The workers on estates like the Mathurata and Kelani Valley plantations that have already implemented this system have denied those claims. They have complained that they have been unable to earn enough income to cover their living expenses, even though whole families, including children, have been compelled to work like bonded labourers.
The tea industry is one of the most labour-exploitative industries in the world, providing profits for a chain of global tea companies. The top ten companies are Tata Global Beverages, Unilever, Twinings, Nestle, ITO EN INC, Barry’s Tea, Dilmah, Celestial Seasonings, Harny’s and Sons, and Republic of Tea.
According to a University of Sheffield study paper published in May, “exploitation, including forced labour, is endemic at the base of the global tea and cocoa supply chains.” The study noted that employers extract profits by “under-paying wages” and “under-providing legally-mandated essential services such as drinking water and toilets.”
Professor Genevieve LeBaron, a member of the research team, told the media: “The exploitation we document is not randomly occurring abuse by a few ‘bad apples.’ Instead it is the result of structural dynamics of how global agricultural supply chains are organised.
“Highly profitable companies at the helm of these supply chains exert heavy price pressure on suppliers. This puts extreme pressure on tea and cocoa producers to cut costs, and creates a business ‘demand’ for cheap, and sometimes forced labour.”
When the PA statement insisted that conceding to the workers’ demand would jeopardise “the entire value chain,” it meant all these “highly profitable companies at the helm of these supply chains” that subject workers to super-exploitation.
The tea industry in Sri Lanka has faced increasing competition from other tea-producing countries like Kenya, China, India and Bangladesh. Sri Lanka’s share of the world tea production declined from 10.5 percent in 2000 to 5.4 percent last year.
Due to sanctions or currency issues, the buying power of the major markets, including in Iran, Turkey and Russia, has fallen.
While the average export price slightly increased by 4 percent this year, as compared to last year, the average price of Sri Lankan tea at Colombo auctions declined by 2.2 percent in the first six months of 2018. The export value has fallen by 23 percent since 2014.
The PA statement urged trade unions to “work in the best interest of the industry.” That is, to subordinate the interests of workers to the interests of profit. The unions have shown their commitment to do that through their real practice. As in other sectors, the plantation unions act as industrial police forces against workers. They have agreed to implement a productivity-based wage system.
The current strike was called by Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) led by Arumugam Thondaman with the aim of letting off steam and corralling workers who are justifiably angry over their appalling working and living conditions.
Thondaman and the CWC leaders are lined up with former president Mahinda Rajapakse, who was installed as prime minister on October 26 following the ousting of Ranil Wickremesinghe. Thondaman received a key ministerial post under Rajapakse.
The National Union of Workers (NUW), Democratic Workers Congress (DWC) and Up Country People Front (UPF) are partners in the Wickremesinghe-led United National Front (UNF). Leaders of those unions, P. Digambaram, Mono Ganeshan and P.Radhakrishnan respectively, were ministers in the UNF government. These unions refused to join the ongoing strike, saying the 1,000-rupee demand was unjust. However, members of those unions defiantly joined the strike.
The crisis of the plantation industry is a direct consequence of the crisis of capitalism. The workers are not responsible for that. The critical issues posed before the striking plantation workers are: Who should own the plantations, and how and in whose interest should they be managed? The answer is the plantations should be nationalised and operated under the democratic control of workers.
This can be done only in a struggle for a workers’ and peasants’ government, which will implement socialist policies, placing the main industries, banks and other economic nerve centres under workers’ control. This is a part of a broader fight for socialism in South Asia and internationally.
The plantation workers need to break from the unions and form their own independent action committees and unite their struggle with other sections of the working class in Sri Lanka and internationally, including plantation workers in other countries.
I refer to the news Report in the Daily Mirror of 5h December, under the heading “Instability will end in a week”, where views expressed by the President, Maithripala Sirisena, at the Annual Convention of the SLFP, were given, and also to his latest new theory, that is a “struggle between National and Foreign thinking “, which appeared in the Daily Mirror of 10th December. I wish to comment on bot
