Sri Lanka's hand picked democracy; what an amendment to what a constitution!

(September 23, 2010, Colombo - Lanka Polity, Ajith Perakum Jayasinghe)Today, the 23rd of September is a crucial day for Sri Lanka.

The time frame given to the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader to appoint members for the five-member parliament committee will end today and the Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa will appoint the two Tamil and Muslim representatives for the committee in accordance with the powers vested in him by the 18th amendment to the constitution.

The Opposition Leader Ranil Wickramasinghe earlier appointed Tamil National Alliance MP M.A. Sumanthiran as his representative but the TNA rejected it on the basis it opposed the 18th amendment. The Opposition Leader said his strategy was to appoint representatives that reject the position so as to disrupt the smooth functioning of the parliamentary committee. It is understandable that his party has no MPs that he is sure of rejecting the position as he expects. He wants TNA to be his scapegoat but TNA does not.

The Prime Minister is in a struggle to save his position in the second term of the President Mahinda Rajapaksa that is to start in November. He will readily appoint any Tom, Dick or Harry asked by the President. But here it seems worse than that and the President appears advised the Prime Minister to keep mum. Therefore the Premier leaves his nomination vacant and the Speaker will have the chance to appoint the two nominees to represent Tamil and Muslim communities.

Who is the Speakaer? He is non other than the President's elder brother Chamal Rajapaksa.

The President handpicked the Prime Minister. The President hand picked the Speaker. The President hand picked the two Tamil and Muslim representatives. The Opposition Leader will not participate in the parliamentary committee.

The parliamentary committee has powers only to make observations to the appointments made by the President to the 'independent' committees. The President will hand pick the members for these committees and he may regard or disregard the observations of the parliamentary committee members he hand picked. Perhaps the observations may also be hand picked by the President.

What an amendment to what a constitution!


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Sri Lanka's cultural custodians blast historical sites for treasure hunting

(September 22, 2010, Colombo - Lanka Polity) Nine persons including the Assistant Superintendent of Police of Vakarai were arrested by police when they were fleeing after attempting treasure hunting in Polonnaruwa.

The group had been treasure hunting in a place close to Siripura temple of Polonnaruwa in the night of 20th. The villagers that came to know about the crime, sounded the bell of the temple and summoned people. They kept the group surrounded and informed police.

The suspects that were armed with a revolver threatened the villagers and fled in a van. Police apprehended the van with the group later. Equipment used in the treasure hunting were also arrested.

The arrested suspects included seven police officers including the ASP and two civilians.

A week ago, police produced a Buddhist monk before Mathale magistrate for attempted treasure hunting in a historical site.

The Buddhist monk and his accomplice, a businessman, had blasted a rock using dynamite, police said.

The land in which treasure hunting took place is a fortress belonged to colonial period. It is called Fort Macdoval and belongs to Mathale Sambuddha Jayanthi Sangamaya.

The Buddhist monk was released on personal bail of Rs. 100,000.

Treasure hunting is often reported around the country and people who want to become instantly rich believe that the ancient kings have hidden unbelievable amounts of wealth in unbelievable places like inside the rocks.

A spokesman of the Archeological Department said that this belief was wrong and it had led to vandalism and destruction for valuable historical and cultural property.

It seems that the majority of these treasure hunting cultural vandalists are in some way the should be custodians of the historical and cultural values.

There is a Sinhala saying meaning what if a farmer can do when the field fence and borders. (Wetath niyarath goyam ka nam kata kiyamida e amaruwa?)



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Sri Lanka is no more a destination of cheap labor for investors

(September 19, 2010, Colombo - Lanka Polity - Ajith Perakum Jayasinghe) Sri Lanka appears no more an oasis of cheap labor for foreign investors in manual labor is prime. That is not because the majority of Sri Lankans have better living standards now. The reason is that life conditions are so difficult that a few rupees thrown by factory owners as salary cannot save them from misery.

Reports say that the garment and other similar factories country wide have around 30,000 regular and increasing number of unfilled vacancies.

Sri Lanka’s Board of Investment (BOI) says that 7000 positions are vacant in the BOI investment zones alone island wide.

Vacancies are unfilled of the skilled and unskilled workers in the garment, furniture, diamond, rubber, plastic and electronic trades, BOI says.

More than 1000 vacancies are available in Katunayaka, Seethawaka, Biyagama and Mawathagama export zones, according to BOI. Over 600 vacancies are unfilled in Wathupitiwala export zone. Around 300 vacancies are available in Koggala. Hundreds of unfilled positions are in other investment zones as well.

Trade unions say that the reason for less attraction of workers in investment zones is the lower salary.

A recent report of the Medical Research Institute of the Ministry of Health stated that 20%of Sri Lankans are in extreme poverty and they depend on less than 2 $ income per day. Basic salary of most of these factories is around or just above 2 $ per day. Sri Lanka is a country with high cost of living.

Especially, the price of food is extremely high due to government taxes on imports. The category of people mentioned above spend 60% of their daily income for food.

Anyone can understand why the workers from far away areas are not attracted in work in export zones as it happened earlier. One time, young girls of poor families of remote villages worked in these factories to earn their living and to save for their dowry. Nowadays, the salary of these factories is not sufficient even to pay for food and lodging. Why to come and waste time?

Many village women still opt to migrate to Arab countries since they are paid in foreign currency and they can have free food and lodging although salary is meager.

Of the 1.8 million Sri Lankan expatriate workers, the vast majority is the women from poor families. They are the major source of foreign income of Sri Lanka that is ruled by a bunch of fat male asses.

Sri Lanka expects Rs. five billion as remittance this year.


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Burning polythene; a burning health issue in dengue prevention campaign of Sri Lanka

(September 14, 2010, Colombo - Lanka Polity) Sri Lanka's health officials, mainly the persons deployed in dengue prevention campaigns, advocate burning of waste plastic and polythene.

Despite rhetoric of the Ministry of Environment, proper methods of disposal of polythene and plastic waste are unavailable in most parts of the country. Therefore people are prompted to burn polythene and plastic waste causing severe harm to environment and to the health of the man, animals and plants.

Dioxin, released when burning polythene is extremely hazardous to human health and the worst factor is that the dioxin can cause harm to people living even hundreds of kilometers far away from actual burning places.

Following are some key facts regarding dioxin we researched in WHO sources.

Dioxins are a group of chemically-related compounds that are persistent environmental pollutants.

Dioxins are found throughout the world in the environment and they accumulate in the food chain, mainly in the fatty tissue of animals.

More than 90% of human exposure is through food, mainly meat and dairy products, fish and shellfish. Many national authorities have programmes in place to monitor the food supply.
Dioxins are highly toxic and can cause reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system, interfere with hormones and also cause cancer.

Due to the omnipresence of dioxins, all people have background exposure, which is not expected to affect human health. However, due to the highly toxic potential of this class of compounds, efforts need to be undertaken to reduce current background exposure.

Prevention or reduction of human exposure is best done via source-directed measures, i.e. strict control of industrial processes to reduce formation of dioxins as much as possible.

For more details visit here, the WHO website


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The development bubble of Sri Lanka is on top of a debt bubble

(September 07, 2010, Colombo - Lanka Polity) "The country has been liberated for more than 15 months but has not recoded any significant large scale private investment, which is puzzling. The government and the private sector have to come on to a common ground in order to achieve a high economic growth, the mind sets of both has to be one in order to gain an economic victory," John Keells Holdings Chairman Susantha Rathnayake told the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission of Sri Lanka yesterday afternoon.

"The private sector has to play a vital role in the development process and should be encouraged to invest. FDIs are necessary for the country’s development and should be encouraged. The private sector in the country alone cannot go ahead with the development activities without adequate capital to invest. We should focus on attracting large players who will help develop the country in the long run, rather than the small investors who come in for a quick buck," he said.

Jayampathy Bandaranayeka, the chairman and director general of the country's state-run Board of Investment (BOI) also expressed the same views in an interview with Reuters "We are unlikely to move beyond $1 billion (in regard of Foreign Direct Investment) and investments would be more in line with what was achieved last year." Last year Sri Lanka achieved US $ 602 million.

These two statements are indications of the crisis behind the development bubble of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka has accelerated infrastructure development. Harbors, airports, expressways, coal power hoses and many more constructions are underway funded by massive loans obtained from international financial markets.

Latest reports of Central Bank of Sri Lanka shows that the local and external debts of the state has sharply escalated.

The report says that the unpaid debt has increased by 4.5% now compared to the end of 2009.

According to economic indices of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka the accumulated local debts of the state in May 2010 rose from Rs. 2521.5 to Rs. 2544.2 within a month by Rs. 22 billion.

Overall foreign debts of the government by end of May was Rs. 1777.9 billion and it rose to Rs. 1803 billion by Rs. 26 billion within a month.

By the end of June, the total unpaid debt of the government was Rs. 4347 billion and it is an increase of Rs. 54 billion from May. At the end of May the state debt remained in Rs. 4293 billion, Central Bank reports show.

The development bubble of Sri Lanka is on top of another bubble, i.e, debt. How are we going to continue paying back these massive loans? In 2009, Sri Lanka state spent 86% of the Gross Domestic Product to for loan repayments. The repayments of external loans cost 36.5% of GDP.

The government has made each Sri Lankan indebted Rs. 217,350 and of this massive indebtedness, Rs. 90,150 is to foreign countries, as per end of June.

In line with this trend, the government will not be able to maintain the ability to continue to obtain loans continuously.

When the debt bubble bursts, what will happen to the development bubble?



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Replacing one flawed amendment by another flawed amendment (constitutional reforms of Sri Lanka)

By Sunmanasiri Liyanage

(September 04, 2010, Colombo - Lanka Polity) May be due to the fact that they have to cater to the exigencies of the power hungry and powerful politicians, legal draftsmen/women have oftentimes been careless in drafting legislations, particularly the constitutional amendment bills. This is evident when one has a cursory glance at the drafts of the 13th Amendment and the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. The 17th Amendment was hurriedly passed by the Parliament in 2000 to introduce limited checks and balances on the powers of the executive presidency, especially with regard to making high level appointments like the chief justice, the inspector general of police, and the election commissioner and the appointments to the important commissions. It proposed to set up a constitutional council comprising 10 members, seven of them non-parliamentarians. When the president makes the above mentioned appointments, she/he has to act on the recommendations of the constitutional council.

However, the legislation has left many questions unanswered and the Supreme Court informed Parliament of some of those issues at that time. Partly due to these drawbacks, the 17th Amendment was not properly put into practice, except for a very brief period. However, we have to keep in mind that the main reason why the Constitutional Council was not set up following the enactment of the 17th Amendment was that it intended to restrict the powers of the executive President.

A generation of hypothetical situations would help us understand the practical problems involving the implementation of the 17th Amendment. If the President refuses to appoint the persons who are nominated by the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition or by the minority parties in parliament or if the President refuses to appoint his/her nominee, setting up of the constitutional council would not take place. Similarly, if the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition fail to reach a consensual decision once again setting up of the Constitutional Council would be problematic. It appeared that these hypothetical situations were not anticipated by the law makers or legal draftsmen.

One of the objectives of the proposed 18th Amendment to the Constitution is to replace the Constitutional Council by a Parliamentary Council consisting of 5 members, 3 are ex-officio—the Speaker, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. The other two members will be separately nominated by the Prime Minister and the Leader of Opposition to include ethnic groups not represented by the three ex-officio members. Of course, unlike the Constitutional Council this body cannot recommend the names of the people for above mentioned positions or to the commissions. The President can seek the observations of the Parliamentary Council in making those appointments. In a way, with the proposed 18th Amendment, the process that was unleashed by the 17th Amendment with regard to the powers of the President is intended to be reversed. In other words, the unrestrained powers of the executive President will be re-established if the 18th Amendment is passed.

Once again we can pose hypothetical or counterfactual questions to see the constitutional coherence of the proposed amendment. Suppose if the leader of the opposition refuses to nominate a member to the Parliamentary Council, can the Parliamentary Council be duly set up? Suppose, the President and the Prime Minister belong to two different parties and the Prime Minister refuses to nominate his candidate, can the Parliamentary Council be set up? Hence what happened to the Constitutional Council would happen to the Parliamentary Council as well making that component of the 18th Amendment inoperative.

Let me now turn to more substantive points. One of the key issues that were raised against the present Constitution has been that it had created a monster in the institution of the executive presidency. Hence, the left in Sri Lanka including the JVP has been campaigning for the abolition of the executive presidential system or at least for introducing checks and balances to reduce the powers of the executive president. At the moment besides almost impossible impeachment procedure specified in Article 38(2), there is no any other constitutional mechanism to question the acts of the executive president. The cases cannot be filed against the President while she/he is in office. The two members of the present Parliament, Vasudeva Nanayakkara and M Sumanthiran know this very well. As the term of the President is not restricted as the 18th Amendment proposes and if the president using his/her official powers gets elected once again, then there is no room for citizens to question his acts.

When the appointment of the election commissioner and the election commission is solely the responsibility of the president under the proposed 18th Amendment, one may justifiably raise the question if the elections can be free and fair. Hence, if the ruling party wants the incumbent president to run for another term, what should be done is to extend the term for three terms by amending the Article 31 (2), not to remove it.

A criticism that was leveled against the 17th Amendment that seems to be quite justifiable is that it takes away the powers of the Parliament and facilitates handing them to so-called independent people. Without spending time on this argument, just accept it as it is. President Rajapaksa always argued that he would like to be a president more accountable to parliament. In this situation, what could have been done was to repeal the 17th Amendment totally and replace it by a separate Amendment making important appointment to above mentioned positions by the President accountable to parliament. This may be done in many ways. I will suggest a simple mechanism without disturbing unnecessarily the existing constitutional framework. The president can make appointments but the appointments are subject to the approval by not less that 60 per cent members of parliament including those not present. By introducing such a mechanism, the important appointment can be made subject to non-partisan parliamentary ratification.

If one conducts a simple survey to ascertain people’s views on constitutional reforms, he or she will for sure find that people would place electoral reforms as the priority number 1. I believe people gave the UPFA closer to a two-thirds majority in parliament primarily because the people in this country are fed up with the electoral system that has been in operation and want it changed. Instead of taking this into consideration, the attempt of the UPFA to present a constitutional amendment that does not reflect either this desire of the people or the promises made by the UPFA at both parliamentary and general elections this year is unacceptable and would produce adverse results not only for the country but also for the UPFA as a coalition. It is not seldom that politicians unwittingly dig their own graves.



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Protest mounting against 18th amendment to the constitution of Sri Lanka

New UNP parliamentarian Manusha Nanayakkara is the latest in the line up to strengthen the hands of the Rajapaksas

(September 04, 2010, Colombo - Lanka Polity) No valid argument is available to prove that the 18th amendment to the constitution of Sri Lanka will not further the draconian powers of the executive President at which the incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa as well frowned before he tasted the sweet fruit of power accumulation.

The naked truth behind the Rajapaksa regime's ability in mustering parliamentary two third majority is sheer selfishness and disregard of democratic principles by the so-called representatives of people. If there is any politically valid argument in what they state, that is the long lasting love of Sri Lankan polity to have the toughest dictator to rule or overrule themselves. No wonder many corrupt people also say Sri Lanka needs the kind of laws in Islamic countries to discipline the society. We will have wait and see till they wake up to the reality of their dream.

The supporters of the amendments to strengthen the hold of Rajapaksa's immediate family must leave out the words such as democracy and they can talk openly what they gain and what the people will be given through this move. There are too many greedy elements in the highest echelon of Sri Lankan politics and the people who yearn for absolute power will no sooner suffer. Losing power will be extremely painful in this context. No one can hold on permanently and no one have done so, so far in the history.

However, while the major opposition United National Party (UNP) leadership fails to maintain the collective unity and discipline of even the freshest parliamentarians, the People's Liberation (JVP), the leftists and activists are getting together to muster isolated protest to the draconian amendments to the constitution.

"People's Delegate Conference will be organized to protest against the dictatorial 18th Amendment to the Constitution on Monday, 6th September 3.30 pm onwards at Jayewardene Centre, Colombo-7" said the convener of the delegate conference Attorney Sudarshana Gunawardana.

Leaders of the political parties including UNP, JVP, Democratic National Alliance (DNA), Left Front, United Socialist Party, Democratic People's Party will address the conference.

Trade Unionists and the leaders of the civil society including the Platform for Freedom will also address the conference.

JVP is organizing a massive protest against the constitutional amendments on September 07. Leftists, activists and civil society protest is scheduled on September 08, the day the government has planned to pass the bill.



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