{"id":224303,"date":"2021-12-15T10:59:56","date_gmt":"2021-12-15T05:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=224303"},"modified":"2021-12-21T15:17:26","modified_gmt":"2021-12-21T09:47:26","slug":"black-hand-behind-power-sabotage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/black-hand-behind-power-sabotage\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Hand Behind Power Sabotage"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kumar David<\/a> –<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Prof. Kumar David<\/p><\/div>\n

Everybody says that the all-island power-cut last week during the CEB<\/a><\/span> trade-union work-to-rule was sabotage. The unions say it, the General Manager issued a statement to this effect, the Minister said it was so and that if he catches the culprit his going to cut off his you-know-what. Since sabotage is the unanimous view it must have been the work of conspirators with unusual motives. The trade unions lost momentum due to public confusion and the government has been tethered because the details of the LNG deal<\/a><\/span> are coming into the public spotlight. Who gained \u2013 apparently neither of these sides?<\/p>\n

The union go-slow was a protest at Basil\u2019s crafty plan to sell 40% of the 310MW Yugadanavi<\/a><\/span> Power Station to US-based New Fortress Energy without proper cabinet approval and in violation of tender procedures. Is anyone collecting 10%; your guess is as good as mine. But that is not the worst of it. The worst is that Basil\u2019s plan is the thin end of a wedge to allow private capital to take ownership of the national power sector. If you are a believer in privatisation of key public infrastructure institutions you will like it; but if like me you reckon this will be disastrous (like all Thatcher\u2019s manic adventures) then you will oppose it tooth and nail. However, strictly speaking the LNG venture is not the heart of the sabotage allegation since one way or the other it does not advance interests of either the pro or anti privatisation sides.<\/p>\n

I have no knowledge of events and conspiracies, inside or outside, but I am willing to examine whose interests sabotage may serve and to place it in the larger context of national power-politics. The case against Basil\u2019s plan<\/a><\/span> is watertight, it has split the cabinet and the government parliamentary group and was rapidly gaining traction in the public mind. The public may now be a little confused, temporarily I hope. But on the other hand neither do I think pro-privatisation or business interests, or foreign or pro-Basil political groups, were responsible. Why? The plan to privatise electricity supply too lost ground because now there will be deeper probing of the pros and cons of selling off all or part of the CEB to international capital. Then, and assuming that the sabotage charge has substance to it, both sides lost. Who gained?<\/p>\n

If the sabotage charge has substance to it the gang that gains from the incident is a \u201cblack-hand\u201d which wants to create turmoil for motives other than the pros and cons of electricity privatisation. Some trade unionists have charged that this was an attempt to create a protracted blackout as an excuse to declare an emergency, move in the military and arrest union leaders. I have two reasons for accommodating this possibility. As said neither the anti nor the pro privatisation sides gained. The second reason is that the fortuitous likelihood of a chance transmission outage cascading into an all-island blackout on the just the day of a trade union go-slow is extremely small. That is the theoretical possibility that the transmission fault was accidental is minute and human agency may have been involved. This raises the question mark in my mind.<\/p>\n

The speed and efficiency with which CEB technical staff restored supply indicates that they realised a black-handed was in play, so they nipped it in the bud. They are not in the game of sabotaging nor privatising the CEB; their stated purpose is precisely the opposite, defending a national asset. They have certainly used the rapid restoration of supply to make that point. The government and the police are \u201cinvestigating\u201d should we expect the usual blank report? Authoritarian governments manipulate and hide the truth. For five years after Chernobyl, Moscow lied about the scale of the catastrophe and concealed from the people that hundreds had died of radiation sickness and thousands upon thousands were afflicted by irreversible diseases. Black hand!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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