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Some stimulation for the hapless Sri Lankans’ sagging morale has come from an unexpected quarter—the much-maligned national cricket team. An occasional win means a lot for a nation in the depths of despair. The youth who supported Gotabaya Rajapaksa in the 2019 presidential race and painted outdoor murals following his victory to welcome what they thought was a new beginning––only to be disillusioned––are now painting themselves in support of the national cricketers. In ancient Rome, plebeians had bread and circuses. The present-day ordinary Sri Lankans have political circuses without bread. This is the price they have to pay for suffering failed politicians gladly, so to speak, and catapulting them to positions of power.Teachers who perform examination duties inform us that there are instances where some test-takers reproduce questions in spaces provided for answers because they come unprepared. The members of the present Cabinet are doing something similar. Having accepted ministerial positions, promising to sort out problems, they keep telling the public what the problems are, instead of providing solutions.
President summons numerous meetings and nothing seems to come of them. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe keeps making special statements on the current situation, which people are already au fait with. Minister of Agriculture Mahinda Amaraweera warns of a food crisis, and in the same breath claims there are enough rice stocks in the country. Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera has washed his hands of the fuel crisis to all intents and purposes; the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation only announces where small amounts of diesel, petrol and kerosene are available. At this rate, as cynics say, the day may not be far off when the CPC app mentions Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, etc., as the places where oil is available, and asks Sri Lankans to find dollars to import it. Wijesekera has the knack of getting Citizen Silva’s goat. He asks people not to queue up near filling stations in large numbers. He does not even care to introduce the odd-even rationing method, which will help shorten fuel queues considerably, and people will have a certain amount of fuel every other day. This method is easy to implement with random checks being conducted to ensure that racketeers do not use false number plates.
Meanwhile, SLFP leader and former President Maithripala Sirisena, MP, has bowled a political doosra of sorts. He has called for an all-party interim government. He says the current administration has failed and the President and the Prime Minister are not getting on well. The solution, according to him, is for all political parties to get together and form a government with a 15-member Cabinet pending a general election in six months, or so. That is the way, he says, Sri Lanka could win back the international community and enlist its support for its economic recovery. He may be accused of holding a grudge against the government, which has appointed some of its MPs to the Cabinet against his will, but what he says is not untrue. If all parties represented in Parliament speak with one voice and pull in one direction, other countries will be convinced that Sri Lanka is serious about helping itself, and may consider giving it a helping hand.
A prerequisite for forming a truly all-party interim administration is to persuade the SJB to be part of it. Sirisena is the best person to do so. He and SJB leader Sajith Premadasa are close friends. He offered the premiership to the latter when he was the President in 2018, and refused to back Rajapaksa at the last presidential election despite an electoral pact between the SLFP and the SLPP. If Sirisena could get around Premadasa, that will be half the battle in forming an all-party government. The other half of the battle will be making President Rajapaksa opt for an immediate course correction. The task of forming a unity government requires effecting a complete political reset and having Premadasa appointed the Prime Minister; does Sirisena consider himself equal to it? Mere words will not do.
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The fuel crisis has taken a turn for the worse, and government leaders have run out of excuses, promises and rhetoric. Instead of finding ways and means of making fuel available in sufficient amounts, they have got the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation to release a list of filling stations, to which fuel stocks are dispatched, on a daily basis. They seem to think their responsibility ends there! Queues for cooking gas are also getting longer.
Newly-appointed Litro Gas Chairman Muditha Peiris has dropped a bombshell. He has said no fresh orders have been placed for LP gas. Thus, it is clear that the hapless gas consumers will have to wait in queues indefinitely. They are bound to stage more protests, blocking roads and plunging the country into chaos. These agitations have not jolted the government into taking action to solve the gas problem; instead, they only inconvenience the ordinary road users who are in the same predicament as the protesters.
It really breaks one’s heart to see women, men and even children suffering in long queues, braving as they do rain and the scorching sun. Why people, especially city dwellers living in apartment complexes, are desperate for LP gas is understandable. Traditional firewood stoves cannot be used at most houses in urban areas for obvious reasons. People must therefore be provided with LP gas. Let that be the bottom line. But there are some modern, smoke-free, efficient alternatives to gas, as senior engineers such as Parakrama Jayasinhge have pointed out. The National Engineering Research and Development Centre (NERD) has already addressed this issue, and several veteran engineers have written extensively on these alternatives in this newspaper for years, but successive governments have not taken their views seriously; it is doubtful whether even the public took any notice of them until recently. If their advice had been heeded, and action taken, the country’s dependence on LP gas could have been reduced significantly.
Many LP gas consumers switched to kerosene stoves, but today kerosene is also in short supply. Some people are using electricity for cooking, and the CEB laments that electricity consumption has been increasing. But the day may not be far off when the ordinary people cannot afford electricity even for lighting purposes; a massive electricity tariff hike is said to be on the cards. If electricity prices are jacked up exponentially, as feared, it will be well-nigh impossible to use electricity for cooking.
The need for harnessing solar energy cannot be overemphasised. It is the way forward for not only this country but also the entire world. But rooftop solar systems cannot be installed in a hurry and are expensive mostly due to the prevailing forex crunch. Hence the need to look for viable alternatives to cooking gas.
Some LP gas consumers have already opted for coconut charcoal stoves, which are virtually smokeless and very efficient. They inform us that cooking is now much cheaper and they are not that desperate for gas. Others ought to try this alternative and see whether it works for them as well; the government cannot raise funds for LP gas imports.
The government cannot be forgiven for its failure to ensure a steady supply of cooking gas as well as other fuels, and the politicians responsible for bankrupting the country must be dealt with severely, come the next election, but people cannot stop cooking until such time. They should find alternatives to LP gas and kerosene, at least as a short-term measure, shouldn’t they?
Will the government, or community based organisations or local councils launch a pilot project to provide city dwellers with coconut charcoal stoves at affordable prices in a bid to ameliorate their suffering? The stoves available in the market could be further developed to increase their efficiency and reduce harmful emissions. The burning of charcoal and firewood has some ill-effects, which could however be mitigated scientifically, as an eminent scientist points out in an article published on the opposite page today. Given the situation we find ourselves in, we have to turn to alternative fuels for cooking. As Prof. O. A. Ileperuma has rightly pointed out what is needed is to use firewood, etc., safely to avoid adverse health effects.
It is high time the government and bureaucrats turned to the NERD engineers, scientists, and innovators for a solution to the cooking gas crisis. The coconut charcoal stove seems to be a viable alternative.
Gnana Akka, a self-proclaimed clairvoyant, who was very popular among powerful politicians, high-ranking swordsmen, and business tycoons because of her ‘prophesies’, became a target of anti-government protesters. But she is not alone in the business of making predictions. There are many others including politicians who prophesy almost on a daily basis.
Nothing is so freely given as gloomy prophesies and ominous warnings, in this country. Earlier, we had doomsayers only in the Opposition, but today they are found in the government ranks as well. Hardly a day passes without either Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe or Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera or Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera warning the public that the worst is yet to come. They, however, do not seem to do anything to avert the worst-case scenario. They have apparently adopted a fatalistic attitude.
Who needs Gnana Akka or any of her cousins in the garb of politicians, as it were, to predict much worse times ahead? A country burdened with a bunch of failed political leaders, both in the government and the Opposition, is doomed, and there is no way it could achieve progress. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has failed, on his own admission; he has said he does not want to leave office in midterm as a failed President. There is no guarantee that he will succeed during the remainder of his current term. Incumbent Prime Minister Wickremesinghe manifestly failed during the yahapalana government so much so that he even lost his parliamentary seat at the last general election. Now, the unfortunate people are left with no alternative but to hope and pray that the President and the PM will succeed! They are obviously hoping against hope if the pathetic performance of the government is any indication. Most ministers are confirmed failures, and the only thing they have put their hearts and souls into seems to be enjoying life because they are aware that as for their re-election, they have the same chance as a cat in hell.
Opposition politicians also predict doom and gloom, full-time, having spurned an opportunity to form a multi-party interim government and help the country lift itself out of the current crisis. Dr. Harsha de Silva is leading the pack of doomsters. He makes quite a few predictions almost daily, as an economist, the latest being that the IMF bailout package will not be ready until the end of this year. Everybody knows that. The tedious process of finalising loans is not the only reason why IMF assistance is not forthcoming. The IMF is not in a hurry; it supports the interests of the US and its allies, and allows the countries that the West is hostile towards to stew in their own juice for a while and fire-sale their strategic assets before receiving whatever assistance. Sri Lanka is not in the good books of the Western bloc.
Dr. de Silva has also made quite a stir by revealing what is said to have transpired in a private conversation between him and former President of the Maldives and current Speaker, Mohamed Nasheed. He said at a recent political event that Nasheed had confided to him that no country was willing to help Sri Lanka, and MBS (Mohammed bin Salman) of Saudi Arabia had rejected a request made by Nasheed, on behalf of the Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government, to provide Colombo with oil; MBS had said something to the effect that the Sri Lankan leaders even did not have a plan. Dr. de Silva lamented that Sri Lanka had been left without anyone to speak to leaders like MBS directly. (Nasheed has very diplomatically denied Dr de Silva’s claim, which, we believe, was not made up.)
Sri Lanka, however, is not without leaders capable of enlisting the support of other countries if one goes by the claims of some of its political leaders. On 04 March, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa declared that he had held discussions with three countries in the Middle East and they had agreed to provide Sri Lanka with oil at concessionary prices for two years under an SJB government. If so, one can argue that the SJB would have been able to deliver Sri Lankans from suffering if Premadasa had accepted the premiership when it was offered by President Rajapaksa a few weeks ago, and formed a government. He softened his stand subsequently and agreed to accept the President’s offer, but it was too late.
What the hapless Sri Lankans in the depths of despair need at this hour are not ominous warnings or gloomy prognostications but a course of action to hoist the country out of the crisis and grant them some relief. The least that politicians, especially Gnana Akka’s cousins, could do is to stop bellowing rhetoric and fighting, and instil some hope in the public while taking action to break the back of the crisis, and provide relief.
Many conspiracy theories have been concocted to have us believe that some external forces have gone into overdrive to destroy this country. But is there any need for foreign powers to exert themselves when they can leave the task to Sri Lankan leaders? The incumbent patriotic government has ruined the economy and inflicted untold suffering on the people. The only thing these so-called leaders do efficiently is to sound ominous warnings as if to tell the public that they should stop grumbling about their suffering at present because the worst is yet to come. They are now making the most of the current economic crisis to carry out various crooked deals and line their pockets, the latest being an attempt to cut a deal with a foreign company, which is notorious for plundering minerals in developing countries.
Sri Lanka Mineral Sands Ltd., and Sri Lanka Cement Corporation planned to embark on a joint venture to extract ilmenite found in overburden red soil removed for limestone quarrying on a 5,352-acre land belonging to Sri Lanka Cement Corporation, at Aruwakkalu. The project was expected to yield a great deal of foreign exchange, but the aforesaid foreign company, backed by some venal government politicians and officials, derailed it in a bid to secure the contract for ilmenite extraction; the country will get nothing from this firm other than royalty.
The foreign company will only bring in machinery, which will be of no use to anyone after the conclusion of the project. The initial investment could be recovered in a few months, according to documents The Island has seen. No wonder some officials and politicians are all out to have the contract awarded to this firm.
Representatives of the foreign company and their influential lobbyists approached Wimal Weerawansa, when he was the Minister of Industries, but without success. Then, they tried to get around S. B. Dissanayake, who succeeded Weerawansa. Thankfully, he lost the ministerial post following the resignation of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. Now, the same elements are trying to mislead Minister of Industries Dr. Ramesh Pathirana, we are told.
It behoves Minister Pathirana to act wisely if he does not want his reputation sullied. He should not allow the corrupt elements among his officials, and crafty lobbyists to mislead him into believing that the foreign company concerned will bring in much-needed dollars. It has not made any such commitment. Minister Pathirana ought to refrain from brushing aside views of the officials who have refused to take bribes, and are defending the interests of the country. He must ensure that besides royalty paid to the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau, the Cement Corporation will get from the proposed ilmenite extraction project at Aruwakkalu a substantial amount of foreign currency, which should be determined at a meeting of all stakeholders including the Land Commissioner General.
We have called Minister Pathirana a decent politician in a previous editorial comment, and we hope he will not prove us wrong by siding with the corrupt. A witch-hunt has already been launched against the intrepid state officials who have taken on the racketeers disguised as investors. We urge him to secure a copy of the Supreme Court judgment (2000) in Bulankulama and Others v. Secretary, Ministry of Industrial Development and Others—or the Eppawala case as it is better known—and peruse it so that he will know how to manage the country’s mineral resources.
It is incumbent upon President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to rein in racketeers in the garb of politicians and state officials and ensure that the state coffers will receive enough dollars from the mineral resources found on the Cement Corporation land. Or, there will be little he can do to prevent himself from being held accountable for another mega racket like the sugar tax scam. Let the COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) be urged to conduct an investigation into sinister moves being made to plunder the country’s minerals.
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