{"id":117237,"date":"2013-12-22T07:36:24","date_gmt":"2013-12-22T02:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=117237"},"modified":"2013-12-29T00:25:36","modified_gmt":"2013-12-28T18:55:36","slug":"a-presidents-embarrassments-budget-brawls-corruption-stinks-northern-stalemate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-presidents-embarrassments-budget-brawls-corruption-stinks-northern-stalemate\/","title":{"rendered":"A President\u2019s Embarrassments: Budget Brawls, Corruption Stinks, Northern Stalemate"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rajan Philips<\/span><\/a> –<\/b><\/p>\n

\"Rajan<\/a>

Rajan Philips<\/p><\/div>\n

The last few weeks have been particularly remarkable for a harvest of embarrassments for the President.\u00a0 It began with a string of budget upsets in quite a few Pradeshiya Sabhas throughout the South.\u00a0 In the North, the TNA provincial government presented its first budget to Council with due decorum, but not much by away of revenues and allocations.\u00a0 Devolution is a shell game, only the NPC<\/span><\/a> is exposing it.\u00a0 Worse, the President was severely let down by his Leader of the Opposition in the NPC.\u00a0 K. Kamalendran, who led the UPFA list in the NPC elections, and is now Leader of the Opposition, could not attend the budget speech because he is in police custody over murder charges.\u00a0 So the new Northern Provincial Council has quite a cross-floor contrast: a former Supreme Court Judge as (TNA) Chief Minister<\/span><\/a> and an accused murderer as Leader of the (Sri Lankan government) Opposition!\u00a0 Regardless, the unelected Governor of the Province is administratively handcuffing the elected Provincial government.\u00a0 He is under a public hallucination that he is the sole custodian of the Constitution in Jaffna, if not the whole country.\u00a0 So much for the peripheries!<\/p>\n

At the political centre in Colombo, salacious news stories have been going viral and no doubt shaming the President in their wake.\u00a0 There was the story about the sexual peccadillos of Lakshman Hulugalle<\/span><\/a>, for long the government\u2019s media face on National Security.\u00a0 Now he has been fired for his sins and, curiously, or not so curiously, with retroactive effect.\u00a0 The second story was about the purchase of a Chinese phosphate grinding machine at Rs. 560 million by Lanka Phosphate Ltd., under the chairmanship of Retired Navy Admiral Daya Sandagiri.\u00a0 He too was fired according to The Island, although the Admiral later tried to split hairs as to whether he was fired or got kicked sideways.<\/p>\n

The bitter icing on the scandalous week was the news about a political pipsqueak in the Prime Minister<\/span><\/a>\u2019s office asking customs to clear a ship of grease cans from Pakistan carrying 268 kilograms of hidden heroin.\u00a0 There is no firing as yet over this, but there is pressure mounting for the firing of not just the pipsqueak but of his PM boss as well.\u00a0 There have been rumours that DM Jayaratne will be removed and replaced by GL Peiris<\/span><\/a> as Prime Minister.\u00a0 To confound matters, the beleaguered Prime Minister has drawn support from an unlikely source: former SLFP Minister and now UNP opposition member, Mangala Samaraweera<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 While no government minister, or the President, appears to have said anything in support of Mr. Jayaratne, Mangala Samraweera made a spirited intervention in parliament, defending the Prime Minister and accusing of a conspiracy hatched by JHU and BBS<\/span><\/a> with blessings from the regime, to get rid of senior SLFPers in the government.<\/p>\n

Teflon President<\/b><\/p>\n

The downside of having all the powers is that when things start going wrong the blame for everything will also be directed towards the fount of all powers.\u00a0 As the fount of all powers in Sri Lanka is the President, it is the President who should be the target of blame as well.\u00a0 This was so with every President from JR Jayewardene, though R. Premadasa, to Chandrika Kumaratunga<\/span><\/a>. It was so with every Prime Minister before JRJ. \u00a0But it is not so with President Rajapaksa as nothing ever sticks to him.\u00a0 Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/span><\/a> is the Teflon politician.\u00a0 Even those who should know better blame the presidency and cheer the President.\u00a0 This is the feature of a staid monarchy, and not of a vibrant republican polity.\u00a0 It was not like this before, in Sri Lanka.\u00a0 It used to be different.<\/p>\n

From the time of independence, if not earlier, a clever, strong and informed opposition constantly held the government\u2019s feet to the fire within and without parliament.\u00a0 At times, the verbal fire could be scorching.\u00a0 Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike was once at the receiving end of this voluble Colvin (R. de Silva) blast: \u201cThe Prime Minister is not worth the rope from which he should be hanged!\u201d \u00a0Obviously, Dr. Colvin was on one of his rhetorical flights; he was delivering a political castigation and not a moral indictment of the Prime Minister.\u00a0 And there could be no such indictment against a man like SWRD Bandaranaike.\u00a0 His office would have been utterly unapproachable to business crooks and custom cheats. \u00a0He was killed by crooks and cheats whom he would not tolerate trying to buy influence in his government for their shady import deals.\u00a0 How things have changed.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s parliament, the government is a band of presidential cheer leaders, the official opposition is a party of political eunuchs, and TNA\u2019s Sumanthiran<\/span><\/a> occasionally stands tall among the dwarfs that surround him.\u00a0 Put another way, it is the genuflecting political culture and role abdication by the opposition that has made Mahinda Rajapaksa the Teflon man he is.\u00a0 It is not that nothing will stick to him, but there is no one in parliament who can make blame and criticism stick to the President.<\/p>\n

But while he might be avoiding blame, the President is not escaping embarrassment.\u00a0 None of this should be surprising to anyone who has been following with concern the goings on in the present government, but their coming together and being exposed one after the other during the budget season is something exceptional, and hugely embarrassing for the President.\u00a0 Why single out the President for embarrassment?\u00a0 Shouldn\u2019t the whole government be embarrassed? May be, but what we have in Sri Lanka after 1988, is government of the President, by the President, and for the President.\u00a0 Lincoln has been upended and home-grown.<\/p>\n

Budget fracases and political fallouts<\/b><\/p>\n

The budget season ran into some rough weather in, of all places, the Pradeshiya Sabhas (PS).\u00a0 Budgets were defeated in 16 UPFA controlled Pradeshiya Sabhas, namely, Alawa, Bentota, Boppe Podalla, Embilipitiya, Hanguranketa, Homagama, Imbulpe, Kesbewa, Matara, Medawachchiya, Mirigama, Peliyagoda, Rajangana, Ududumbara, Wattala, Wattegama, with UPFA members revolting against their Chairmen appointed directly or indirectly by the President.\u00a0 In most instances, the budget upsets were orchestrated by Vice Chairmen to get rid of the Chairmen and step into the vacancy.\u00a0 The Chairmen apparently were guilty on two counts: not only were they corrupt, but they also failed to \u201cshare the booty\u201d with their fellow SLFP Councillors.\u00a0 In Homagama, the Chairman was assaulted and had to be hospitalized.\u00a0 Even in Moratuwa Municipal Council, the budget is being challenged as having been passed fraudulently. The PS upsets created alarms in Colombo, with the SLFP General Secretary, Maithripala Srisena, moving to crack the whip on SLFP MPs and instructing them to be in attendance in parliament all through the budget debates until the votes are over.<\/p>\n

The MPs in Colombo are far more docile and submissive to whipping than the hotheaded Pradeshyia Sbaha members who are more at home throwing punches than making arguments.\u00a0 So the government does not need to fear a national budget revolt and defeat in parliament.\u00a0 That will be too easy for Ranil Wickremasinghe and the Leadership Council of the UNP. \u00a0But the troubles at the local level and the concern in Colombo are indicative of the creeping cracks not only within the UPFA, but also within the SLFP.\u00a0 As Opposition parliamentarian Harin Fernando pointed out, \u201cWe can see that the government seems to be falling apart, by looking at the position of Pradeshiya Sabhas. \u2026 When we attend Parliament, all the ministers and parliamentarians urge us to speak against the government because they have had enough.\u201d\u00a0 In other words, government ministers and MPs are asking opposition MPs, to attack the government in Parliament.<\/p>\n

The President held a special cabinet meeting last Monday, despite it being a Poya Day, at the auspicious hour of seven in the morning, to discuss the budget crisis in local bodies and the heroin scandal in the Prime Minister\u2019s office.\u00a0 He followed up two days later with another meeting, at Temple Trees, with the SLFP Chairmen\/Mayors or SLFP Leaders of Opposition of Pradeshiya Sabhas, Urban Councils and Municipal Councils.\u00a0 These are meetings to rally the troops and tide over the crises, and they cannot, nor are they intended to, address the fundamental problems of devolution and local administration, on the one hand, and the epidemic of corruption and abuse of resources, on the other.<\/p>\n

Given the state of local and provincial administrations in the country, the Central Government has a duty to provide \u2018education and training\u2019 in administration and financial management to elected officials in local bodies and provincial councils.\u00a0 It has an even greater duty in setting a national example of zero tolerance for corruption in the public administration.\u00a0 But these are not tasks that preoccupy the Rajapaksa Administration.\u00a0 To the Administration, local bodies and Provincial Councils are no more than SLFP\/UPFA branches.\u00a0 The sticky exception is the Northern Provincial Council.<\/p>\n

Beyond the Palmyra curtain: devolution vs branch plant operation<\/b><\/p>\n

What obtains in Sri Lanka is not devolution based on a system of provincial and local governments, but branch plant operations in the provinces and local bodies by the Rajapaksa government in Colombo.\u00a0 The centralized political party control over local bodies began after 1977, when the UNP government, taking advantage of its national landslide victory and an opposition in disarray, virtually swept the board in local government elections, outside the Northern and Eastern Provinces.\u00a0 Local councilors became party operators and local government was reduced to \u2018branch plant\u2019 operation.<\/p>\n

The introduction of Provincial Councils as an intermediate layer of government did not change the branch-plant mode of governance. Rather the Provincial Councils became new branch plants. The SLFP\u2019s turn came after 1994 and there is no turning back as far as the Rajapaksa regime is concerned, but for the new irritant of a Provincial Council in the North, on the other side of the Palmyra curtain.<\/p>\n

The President has his hands full in dealing with the situation in the North.\u00a0 There is a continuing humanitarian situation that requires a different kind of treatment than building roads or creating tourist attractions.\u00a0 The army is still on the prowl, checking and scaring the local people in the name of some abstract national security.\u00a0 International spotlight is incessantly on the North.\u00a0 The government\u2019s political representatives there are a lowlife disgrace.\u00a0 The Governor of the Province is behaving worse than the worst British governor in colonial Ceylon.\u00a0 Yet, there is an easy way out for the President.\u00a0 And it is no different from what the good Catholic Bishops<\/span><\/a> in their collective wisdom have already indicated: Just talk and work with the TNA, sincerely and honestly.\u00a0 The President gets loads of good advice from far and near, but only he can decide as to what to do with good advice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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