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Editorial

20A and dual citizen

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The 20th Amendment to the J.R. Jayewardene 1978 Constitution was done and dusted on Thursday night with the Gotabaya-Mahinda Rajapaksa government comfortably clearing the two thirds majority barrier. Since President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s election as the country’s seventh executive president in November 2019, nothing kicked up as much controversy as the 20th Amendment which the government was clearly intent on enacting despite, in our view, the far more important challenge of Covid-19 confronting our country and its people today. “First things first,” we said in this space last week, least expecting the powers- that-be to elevate the Covid nightmare above 20A on the national priority list. And so it sadly was, although the virus was spreading far too fast for comfort necessitating more and more stringent restriction in many parts of this island, particularly in the Western Province.

Government propagandists worked overtime to sock home the message that the president and the government elected some months after Gotabaya’s decisive victory had received a massive mandate and were fully entitled to press on with 20A. Although the present rulers came very close to getting what Junius Rex, the old fox who drafted the 1978 constitution, had calculated to be a never-attainable two thirds majority, they ignored the fact that neither President Rajapaksa nor his government said anything about a 20th Amendment in the manifestos they presented the country. There is not an iota of doubt that the people were very well aware that those who are now in office were ironclad in their ex post facto opposition to the 19th Amendment – despite all but one of them voting for its enactment. While it was clearly stated that the incumbents will bring a new constitution, the voters were never told that a 20th Amendment would be presented and passed in an almighty hurry. Claiming a massive mandate for doing what was accomplished last week was clearly not in order.

The 1978 constitution that established the proportional representation system of elections in place of the previous first-past-the-post Westminster model the country had followed since Independence, sought in vain to impose an anti-defection deterrent. It attempted to to ensure that MPs elected on party lists would lose their seats if they chose to defect. But this endeavor has proved to be a dismal failure. We’ve had a great many defections since then, with the numbers growing last week, but no single lawmaker who changed sides has lost his or her parliamentary seat. The less said the better about inducements and/or considerations that influenced switching allegiance. The people well know that there are no free lunches and many of the defectors have fed well, nay very well, at the trough. One of the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) members who voted for 20A was quoted in a newspaper saying she didn’t take even a cent for what she did. It sounded better in the original Sinhala – “sathayakwath gaththey ne, puluwan nam oppu karanna.” (I didn’t take even a cent, prove it if you can). Explaining her vote on the floor of the House on Friday, this National List lady said that she, like Antonio in Julius Caesar, “loved her country more” (than she loved her party)

This newcomer to politics was the so-called ‘owner’ of the SJB which was among the recognized political parties in the books of the Election Commission. When Sajith Premadasa and his supporters broke away from the green party, they acquired the SJB label to enable them to field their candidate list as a party at the last election. We do not know what the arrangement was, but Ms. Diana Gamage was included in the SJB National List after the election. Digressing from the thrust of this commentary, let us say here that the dozens of unknown or barely known political parties cluttering the Election Commission’s ‘recognized party’ register should be cleaned out as they have been and will be continue to be used for political expedience. The new system of elections promised in the next constitution, which the president says will be in place for his second election anniversary (November 2021), could ensure this.

To return to the subject under discussion, the dual citizen provision in 20A merits special mention. Nobody would dispute that particular provision in 19A clearly targeted the Rajapaksas – specifically Gotabaya and Basil, who were citizen of both Sri Lanka and the USA. It was clearly venal in intent. While Gotabaya renounced his US citizenship to run for president, braving a welter of legal challenges against his candidature and suffering many campaign disadvantages over the risk factor (would his candidature be annulled?), Basil Rajapaksa did not do so. Among the stalwarts of the SLPP-led alliance publicly denouncing doing away with the 19A provisions on dual citizen are three party leader-ministers, Vasudeva Nananayakkara,Wimal Weerawansa and Udaya Gammanpila. They are now on record saying that they were voting for 20A, including the dual citizen provision, on the basis of an assurance by the president that the new constitution to be enacted by November 2021 will retain the 19A prohibitions on dual citizen.

The unanswered question that remains hanging in the air is why a year-long window favoring dual citizen is being kept open if the prohibitions will be reimposed in the new constitution next year. Has any assurance been given that this opening will not be used? No answer was forthcoming during the 20A parliamentary debate. We believe that dual citizen should not only be prevented from running at presidential and national election but also not be permitted, with foreign allegiance, to assume any high public office in this country. Disgracefully, the authors of 19A during their previous tenure in government, started the rot by appointing dual citizen as ambassadors. The icing on the cake was appointing a Singapore citizen as Central Bank governor. He is now a fugitive of the bond scam investigation.

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Editorial

Gesture of solidarity

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Thursday 25th February, 2021

Nothing could be more reassuring and uplifting in times of trouble than a true friend’s presence. Sri Lanka has only a few generous, altruistic friends, and Pakistan certainly is prominent among them. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit, albeit brief, could not have come at a better time for Sri Lanka, a badger facing a pack of growling mastiffs in Geneva; what it needs most at this juncture is moral support.

Many are the nations that have proffered loads and loads of unsolicited advice to Sri Lanka on how to protect democracy and human rights. But none of them helped remove the scourge of terror, the gravest threat to democracy and humankind. Pakistan stood unwaveringly behind Sri Lanka during the latter’s war on terror and helped the latter in numerous ways. It was the multi-barrel rocket launchers Pakistan rushed here in the aftermath of the fall of Elephant Pass garrison, in 2000, that enabled the Army put the brakes on the ‘unceasing wave’ of the LTTE. Otherwise, the Tigers would have laid siege to Jaffna with ease, forcing the Army to withdraw its troops. (Some countries even offered ships for ferrying soldiers to Colombo!) Today, Sri Lanka is free from political assassinations, massacres, child conscription, etc., as LTTE terrorism has been neutralised. If it had given in to pressure from the Western bloc and spared the LTTE’s military muscle, thousands of lives would have been destroyed during the last 12 years or so.

There were calls, in some quarters, for PM Khan to take up the issue of ‘forced burials’ with Colombo. They were obviously aimed at creating a media feeding frenzy and thereby giving the anti-Sri Lankan campaign in Geneva a boost. Pakistan and Sri Lanka have their own way of sorting out problems; never do they resort to megaphone diplomacy. But, the fact remains that mandatory burials have hurt the Muslim community beyond measure mostly because those who die of COVID-19 are allowed to be buried in other countries including those notorious for their antipathy towards Muslims. Some prominent Sri Lankan medical experts are of the view that the burial of pandemic victims should be permitted, provided the health regulations in place to prevent the spread of the pandemic are strictly followed. Prime Minster Mahinda Rajapaksa, as a sensible leader, must have gone by expert opinion including that of the Sri Lanka Medical Association, when he said in Parliament recently that the burial of COVID-19 victims would become an option. Sadly, he was overruled.

It is significant that the Head of State of a prominent Islamic nation has been to Sri Lanka while the pro-LTTE groups are exerting a considerable pull on a section of the Muslims community who courageously stood up to LTTE terror and thwarted Prabhakaran’s efforts to extend his control over the Eastern Province. Some of the Muslims who became the target of a hate campaign following the Easter Sunday carnage have joined forces with the pro-LTTE political groups masquerading as crusaders for democracy, in the Eastern Province, which is of pivotal importance to the countries that seek to counter increasing Chinese presence here. This is something Sri Lanka and its Islamic allies such as Pakistan should take cognizance of.

Meanwhile, there are many areas where Sri Lanka and Pakistan can partner to realise their full potentials as developing nations. Besides trade, commerce and investment, they can concentrate more on agriculture, construction, science and technology, education, medicine, tourism, etc. PM Khan’s ‘Global Initiative on Debt Relief’ is something that Sri Lanka, as well as other nations in the Global South, should fully support.

There are some issues that Sri Lanka and Pakistan should address jointly. One of them is the narcotic trade, which has affected both countries badly. Drug cartels have established a supply route via Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which has become a narcotic transit point of sorts.

It is a pity that the Sri Lankan Parliament did not have the honour of being addressed by PM Khan, a brilliant orator and trusted friend.

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Editorial

Should SL follow UK?

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Wednesday 24th February, 2021

The Gash reports are in the news again. They are the diplomatic dispatches filed by Lt. Col. Anthony Gash, who was the Defence Attache of the British High Commission, Colombo, on the final stages of Sri Lanka’s war on terror. The UK, which leads the Sri Lanka Core Group in Geneva, has suppressed the Gash reports, whose revelations run counter to the claims, on which the war crimes resolution against Sri Lanka is based.

Surprisingly, Sri Lanka has not done enough to bring the Gash reports to the notice of the UNHRC. One should not be so naïve as to believe that facts will make either the so-called Core Group or UNHRC chief Michelle Bachelet change their minds. Their agenda is determined by the US, which uses human rights as a bludgeon to beat the nations that refuse to do its bidding. But placing the Gash reports before the UNHRC will help unmask the Core Group members and the US.

The UK is not alone in suppressing facts. The US, too, has chosen to ignore the facts that Lt. Col. Lawrence Smith, who was its Defence Attache in Colombo, during the final phases of the Vanni war, placed before an audience at an international defence seminar in Colombo in 2011; he disputed the claim that the Sri Lankan military had committed war crimes. He would not have said so without evidence to support his claim.

Old habits die hard. The UK and the US have a history of falsifying reports to suit their geo-strategic interests. They produced fake intelligence dossiers to justify the invasion of Iraq although the British intelligence had found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in that country. They have adopted the same method in their war crimes campaign against Sri Lanka. Gash has said not more than 7,000 persons, including LTTE combatants, died in the war zone between 01 January and 18 May 2009. This number is in sharp contrast to the claim by the then UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s Panel of Experts that more than 40,000 people perished during the final phase of the war. None of the UN experts were here during the war, unlike Gash and Lawrence, but the UK and the US have chosen to ignore facts their military experts have furnished. Why should the UK and the US have defence attaches at all in their foreign missions if they do not take their military experts’ views seriously?

What Lord Naseby managed to secure in the UK was a redacted version of the Gash reports. The UK has got redacting reports related to wars down to a fine art. In 2016, it released the Chilcot report on the Iraqi war. What observers have found interesting about that inquiry is it took longer to conclude than the war. What was released after a protracted delay was a heavily redacted version of the report, but it contains enough evidence to prove that the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair, together with US President at that time George W. Bush waged an illegal war and, therefore, were responsible for war crimes.

Having taken upon itself the burden of protecting human rights and ensuring that crimes do not go unpunished in the developing world, the UK should set an example. Before levelling war crimes allegations against others and calling for action thereon, shouldn’t it bring Blair to justice for invading Iraq and causing deaths of millions of civilians, including more than 500,000 children, in an illegal war for oil?

Anything Westminster goes here. It is the considered opinion of the defenders of democracy that Sri Lanka should emulate the UK in protecting human rights. What if Sri Lanka takes a leaf out of the UK’s book in handling alleged war crimes? In November 2020, the British Parliament passed a bill to prevent ‘vexatious’ prosecutions of military personnel and veterans over war crimes allegations. This law seeks to grant the British military personnel, who have committed war crimes, an amnesty to all intents and purposes. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has ascertained evidence of a pattern of war crimes perpetrated by British soldiers against Iraqi detainees, some of whom were even raped and beaten to death. Curiously, the ICC said in December 2020, it would not take action against the perpetrators! Too big to be caught?

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Editorial

The rape of forests: Govt. in the dock

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Tuesday 23rd February, 2021

The government has apparently achieved what it set out to when it issued a gazette removing the peripheral forests from the purview of the Forest Department and placed them under the Divisional and District Secretariats, purportedly to promote traditional agriculture. Its supporters are encroaching on thousands of acres of forest land with absolute impunity. Nobody takes gazettes seriously, and the government is also not keen to deal with noncompliance; the declarations of maximum retail prices, and minimum purchasing prices are a case in point. They are flouted blatantly. But the gazette pertaining to the peripheral forests took effect immediately! Such is the high-octane performance on the part of the government when it wants to help its supporters.

We have argued, in this column, previously that the government entrusted the District and Divisional secretariats with the task of looking after parts of forests because administrators are scared of ruling party politicians and do the latter’s bidding. We reported, the other day, that a Divisional Secretary had accompanied a group of government supporters who grabbed land in the Somawathiya National Park. The public service is full of such servile officers, and what is in store for the country’s forests is not difficult to imagine.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, speaking at a Gama Samaga Pilisandarak event, last Saturday, faulted the Forest Department, the Wildlife Department, the environmental authorities and others for being involved in a tug of war, which, he said, had rendered the public confused and helpless. True, these institutions work in silos, and not all their personnel are honest and conscientious, but the real problem is not their rivalries; it is that public administrators are helping the ruling party backers grab forest land, and the government is doing nothing about it. If the government is really desirous of ensuring coordination among the state outfits responsible for protecting the environment, it should bring all of them under one umbrella, vest them with more powers and give teeth to the existing laws.

There are some sand deposits inside the Somawathiya sanctuary, according to environmentalists, and what prevents government politicians and their associates from exploiting them is the absence of a road. This is why some ruling party worthies are trying to pressure the Wildlife Department to permit cattle grazing inside the national park. When cattle and cowherds enter the forest, footpaths appear with the passage of time, and these tracks can be used by the politically-backed racketeers to access the sand deposits.

What is reported from the Somawathiya National Park is a textbook case of irony; perhaps, it also represents, in microcosm, the fate that befell the country after the successful conclusion of its war on terror. When the LTTE was around, nobody dared enter the national park for fear of terrorist attacks, and the place was safe, thanks to the absence of human activity. The present-day rulers liberated the area from the clutches of the LTTE more than a decade ago, but, unfortunately, the liberators are now supporting those who destroy the sanctuary.

The President has called for action against those who encroach on forests on the pretext of engaging in traditional agriculture. Defence Secretary General (retd) Kamal Gunaratne has said that he had found that some Divisional Secretaries were issuing licences to clear forest lands and the practice had to be stopped. We have published pictures of some land grabbers responsible for the rape of the Somawathiya sanctuary. They can be identified and hauled up before courts.

Now that both the President and the Defence Secretary are convinced that some errant state officials and encroachers responsible for destroying forests have to be stopped, the question is what prevents them from going the whole hog to have the racketeers brought to justice forthwith. For those who pride themselves on having killed Prabhakaran, stopping the destroyers of forests should be child’s play.

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