{"id":85624,"date":"2013-05-05T01:18:40","date_gmt":"2013-05-04T19:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=85624"},"modified":"2013-05-07T03:18:14","modified_gmt":"2013-05-06T21:48:14","slug":"daya-master-for-npc-chief-lake-house-vituperation-of-sjv-chelvanayagam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/daya-master-for-npc-chief-lake-house-vituperation-of-sjv-chelvanayagam\/","title":{"rendered":"Daya Master For NPC Chief, Lake House Vituperation Of SJV Chelvanayakam"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/a>

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

As expected the President threw manna at the \u2018official\u2019 May Day rally in the form of electricity tariff relief.\u00a0 The President disposed in public what he and his government had earlier put in place without even having a proper cabinet discussion on the matter.\u00a0 It is not just that the electricity tariffs have been poorly handled politically, they are also a botched-up product professionally.\u00a0 The President\u2019s May Day manna may mitigate the political damage somewhat but will do nothing to correct the fundamentally flawed premise and methodology of the tariffs, let alone the crisis in the power sector.\u00a0 Rupees\u00a0 Eight billion is the price tag on the President\u2019s relief promise.\u00a0 What\u2019s a billion for the brotherhood government with a superrich mindset?<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t call this subsidy, which is the opposite of tax.\u00a0 Government collects taxes and pays out subsidy.\u00a0 It would be subsidy if the government pays the CEB<\/a><\/span> the shortfall due to reduced rates from its other revenues.\u00a0 But the government has no revenue to pay from, when its debt payments are more than its revenues.\u00a0 The result would be a continual increase of the CEB\u2019s debt.\u00a0 And between them the CEB and CPC will make sure that there is little money left in the banks for any other business to borrow.\u00a0 The tariff fiasco is another example of misfiring government and 2013 is becoming a remarkable year for it.<\/p>\n

The year began judgmentally with rulings by the apex Courts on the unconstitutionality of the impeachment of CJ Shirani Bandaranayake<\/a><\/span>.\u00a0 The government is now constrained to end the year by hosting the Commonwealth Conference in November.\u00a0 The summit is seven months away but speculations about RSVPs have already started.\u00a0 And before the summit, by its own miscalculated commitment the government has to showcase to Sri Lankans, the Commonwealth and others the holding of a free and fair election to the Northern Provincial Council in September.<\/p>\n

In other achievements this year, a new airport was opened in deep south but it requires bowsers shipping aviation fuel by road from Colombo to pump a plane fly back from Hambantota.\u00a0 There is more marketing than managing the economy.\u00a0 The chief salesman happens to be the Central Bank Governor under whose stewardship the Bank is investing in advertising GOSL in the US and has turned its Annual Report into a glossy show-and-tell political affair from what used to be a credible and independent assessment of the economy.\u00a0 The parliament is sidelined without formally receiving or questioning the Bank\u2019s Annual Report. \u00a0MPs need not bother for it is no longer the Bank\u2019s Annual Report but \u201cCabraal Report\u201d according to UNP MP Eran Wickremeratne.\u00a0 In any event, MPs can keep themselves busy by staging candle light fights and not doing anything worthwhile.<\/p>\n

Mistakes in governing do not go away or diminish but keep multiplying and returning. \u00a0Nothing illustrates this more than the continuing harassment of Shirani Bandaranayake.\u00a0 The government cannot and will not let go of her, nor could it leave alone the January rulings of the apex courts.\u00a0 A repacked bench is now set to revisit the verdict of a bench of its own brothers.\u00a0 The judicial pyramid is being stripped away from top to bottom.\u00a0 Thanks to the rot at the bottom level, an accused like Duminda Silva<\/a><\/span> is allowed to rise and walk like Lazarus and be saluted by a state policeman.\u00a0 The government apologists will say to independent lawyers in Colombo that they should not protest too much and in fact they should be happy that they are not in Islamabad where gunmen just this Friday killed Pakistan\u2019s main prosecutor.<\/p>\n

Commonwealth Summit and the NPC election<\/strong><\/p>\n

From now till November political preoccupation will be with the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) election<\/a><\/span> in September and the Commonwealth Summit in November.\u00a0 The government fought hard to get the Commonwealth to meet in Sri Lanka as it was scheduled at the last summit in Australia.\u00a0 Now many in the government are fighting hard to have the NPC election canceled.\u00a0 The President is in a pickle because he knows that his government cannot successfully host the summit without holding the NPC election first.\u00a0 He must be regretting now for his grand promise to hold the NPC election in September 2013.\u00a0 Just as he would have been regretting for talking about 13A plus to the Indians.\u00a0 The government can dance around 13A, but canceling the NPC election set for September will have consequences for the attendance at and the success of the summit in November.<\/p>\n

Strategically, the government could have skipped hosting the Commonwealth summit for a few years instead of insisting on hosting it this year when it has too many global detractions going against it.\u00a0 Sri Lanka is by no means a pariah country but the Sri Lankan government has fences to mend in countries that the government can ill afford to ignore.\u00a0 And the broken overseas fences are on account of lingering problems at home \u2013 involving the political solution to the Tamil problem, the organized harassment of the Muslims, and continuing violations of human and democratic rights.\u00a0 The government\u2019s dilemma is that it wants to be liked abroad without doing even the minimum to address the concerns that others have about the government\u2019s record on postwar reconciliation, campaign against the Muslims, and crackdown on political opponents.<\/p>\n

Holding the NPC election in September is not going to address all the problems facing the people in the Northern Province.\u00a0 But canceling the election will only send the message that the government is not interested in solving any of them. \u00a0The government and the President are also the reason for the rising calls to cancel the election and to repeal 13A.\u00a0 If the President wants he can put an end to these calls in no time.\u00a0 On the other hand, if the President is as convinced as the doubters that 13A and the PC system have no place in Sri Lanka, he should say that openly and unambiguously.\u00a0 He should have the courage of his conviction to cancel the NPC election and deal with the fallout at the Commonwealth Summit. In fact, he should use the occasion of the Commonwealth Summit<\/a><\/span> to clearly indicate why he cancelled the election and where he stands on 13A, the Provincial Council system and the LLRC recommendations.<\/p>\n

By all appearances, the President is not a convinced supporter of 13A and the PC system, but he is a shrewd politician who would keep them in place and cynically muddle through to serve his own ends.\u00a0 Rather than canceling the NPC, the President is reportedly planning to field a relic from the LTTE<\/a><\/span> past as the UPFA candidate for the Chief Minister post.\u00a0 The coopted candidate is Daya Master<\/a><\/span> (Velayutham Dayanidhi), who was LTTE\u2019s media spokesman in Kilinochchi before his surrender and rehabilitation.\u00a0 If the news reports are true, the President and his advisers have learnt nothing from what happened electorally in Tamil politics before the LTTE and have forgotten everything about the LTTE experience.\u00a0 More to the point, elections were anathema to the LTTE and now a former LTTE operative is going contest an election for the UPFA.\u00a0 And by some governmental alchemy, every LTTE operative who surrendered to the government is now a good Sri Lankan citizen and any Tamil who does not support the government is a Tiger, unarmed but dangerous!\u00a0 This is hardly the way for the government to win the hearts and minds of the Tamils.<\/p>\n

Daya Master will not even win many Tamil votes if he were to translate and use the strident Daily News editorials in his election campaign. \u00a0One such editorial last week called SJV Chelvanayakam<\/a><\/span> \u201cthat original unadulterated Tamil racist\u201d and \u201cthat arch original racist bigot.\u201d\u00a0 The quoted words say a great deal about the person who wrote them and nothing at all about Mr. Chelvanayakam.\u00a0 But the question is whether a state-owned paper should carry such vituperation if the state is sincere about winning the hearts and minds of the Tamils, not to mention their votes in the NPC election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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