The promise of democracy is that the people shall rule. Not the executive, not the legislature, not the judiciary. But democracy is an ideal, not a practical reality, and it depends on institutions to make it function. When those institutions are compromised or nullified, the democratic promise is at risk of being broken.

We are witnessing such a moment now. It is exposing just how rickety the institutions of that democracy may be. At the very least, it is showing the world the flexible limits of Parliamentary democracy.

But the actual problem is no satire. It’s pretty sure if cared, what one does; the “chaotic” management style that defenders still praise on the punditry pageants. There may be things in favour of chaos, but as a manner of governing, it is proving to be a dumpster fire.

Everyone is acting as if none of this matters. But then the question; what is this doing to the structural bulwarks of liberal democracy? Revered democratic institutions?

A huge part of the problem is routine ignorance. The Constitution is “the one thing that we’re all experts about, which is amazing because none of us have read it.” Now all of us want the Judges to read it for us.

History teaches us stark lessons about the fragility of liberal-democratic politics. There is no fool-proof guarantee against the stepwise anti-democratic subversion of political life.

This is no ordinary situation. There’s not much mental profit in arguing about the definition or applicability of terms such as “fascist” or “dictator.” This has been true over and over again, in fact, and likely more often than citizens have been right to trust the institutions of the state.

Angry discourse is the rule of the day, the self-justifying ritual of insulting dismissal that everywhere passes for moral righteousness. Here’s a note from everyone’s psychiatrist: Being pissed off doesn’t make you more right. The anger in discourse is the resort of last resort. Have an argument; make an argument – of course. Raising your voice adds no validity to your points and might even act to undercut them.

But let me make the point that many of us have been urging for decades. Civility, not unruliness, is the radical option in democratic politics. People say, “No change without rage.” I say, “No lasting change without respect and a willingness not to say all the things you could say.”

That engaging with the people here are like “an abusive relationship.” Of course it is. That kind of shadow discourse isn’t democracy or useful free speech. It’s just making everything easier for the people who have power. In this discourse the obvious casualty is the “Truth.”

The Truth, the essential unit of social cohesion whose merits were debated from ancient Athens to modern Twitter and Facebook, has been found dead. The quality of agreeing on a set of known facts was at least as old as human language, and had been assumed at one time to be immortal.

Truth achieved its first celebrity as a subject of debate among Greek philosophers. Perhaps, as a fundamental element of political debate, “Truth” in this land, in fact, died long ago. It flew out of the supreme forum of collective debating and disappeared once the terror of uneducated and undisciplined invaded the Parliament; the august assemble, spreading lawlessness and unruliness, disrupting its peace, cordiality and logical debate. It may be even suggested to keep a framed copy of the past debates on its wall, with the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident” surrounded by exclamation marks for the future generations to read.

Truth began to suffer, as reality was twisted in its name. Truth really became incensed when it learned that politicians and political propagandists had borrowed its name for their media circuses. If that’s “Truth,” what the golden ideal of democratic societies is?

Truth suffers when its essential nature called into doubt by academics and philosophers, professors, professionals and the so called learned. “Truth” was reported to have put its foot through a television when it heard somebody say, “It is what the masses want. Still, Truth can hold out in hope; that “you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time” said Abraham Lincoln.

When Reason and Tolerance dropped by, Truth would begin to read from Origins of Totalitarianism: “Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.”

The great blossoming of technology at the beginning of this seemed, at first, to be Truth’s salvation. Academics spread knowledge; oppressed peoples found each other and joined forces. Truth risked taking a break for five minutes to watch a video about an otter eating clams. When it looked up its optimism was crushed, for there on Twitter was an astrophysicist trying to convince a user that climate change was real. The artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that drive those social-media giants are designed not to provide people with informed debate or thoughtful answers, but rather to maximize engagement time – and that has dark results.

Truth’s malaise grew worse in the past few years, as the country’s politicians and leaders, who spewed lies around the country as a way of proving their power. As accustomed, the politicians paying lip service. By the time that scholars, and concerned citizens noticed that Truth was ready for hospice care, it was already too late.

Ailing Truth is only occasionally seen at public events, pulling an oxygen tank. Truth had become especially discouraged, though, and wandered away distracted by the arguments about constitutional issues. There is speculation that Truth unhooked its own oxygen tank, rather than listening any more to the politicians arguing over its relevance in the present discourse.

Alas, “Truth,” has been found dead. Truth is believed to have died of neglect. Many of Truth’s friends knew that it had struggled in recent years, but few of them had gone round to check on its health. “I’ve been super busy putting out fires of my own,” “Reason” said. “I just didn’t realize how bad things were.”

Knowing its end is near; Truth had asked friends if they might erect some small memorial in its memory, perhaps on the banks of Diyawnna Oya, overlooking the Parliament building which it cherished so much.

RAJA WICKRAMASINGHE

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

Musical chairs is a party game but what we see today is a cacophony of voices between supporters of competing political parties egging on two leaders trying to sit in one seat to the derision of the world.

This is no fun time in Sri Lanka. The country has been turned topsy-turvy by President Maithripala Sirisena’s impulsive decision on October 26 through sheer political expediency to sack the Prime Minister and appoint a new one without recourse to Parliament.

Many feel he could have done better than to throw the country into a state of limbo and confusion worse confounded. It has split the country and its people whose sovereignty, which includes their franchise, he undertook to protect.

This brings to focus the question of the office of the Executive Presidency, an issue that was in the forefront among other issues that brought President Sirisena to where he is with the solemn pledge to abolish the system that breeds autocracy. Now lost in the fog of the ongoing political turmoil, the issue in fact ought to emerge once the perplexity and confusion of the day clears.

Very clearly, Sri Lankan politicians have grappled with handling the wide powers vested in an Executive President. In countries that have a Presidential system, most notably the United States, or a hybrid system of government like in France, the separation of powers and the institutions as well as the democratic political culture act as a safety net from a President acting as an autocrat.

There is no gainsaying that a parliamentary dictatorship is no different to a presidential dictatorship. A new word in the political lexicon has emerged; “Democratorship”.

When J.R. Jayewardene introduced the Executive Presidential system, he cited the instability that existed in the country in 1960 when two Parliamentary elections had to be held within three months, and in 1964 when a government fell by one vote in Parliament. He argued that a strong Executive President would hold the country together when the vagaries of political winds destabilise Parliament and the country. Such a President was to be not only the Head of State, but also the Head of Government.

The October 26 decision of President Sirisena, however, did just the opposite. The Executive President himself destabilised Parliament by sacking the incumbent Prime Minister without notice. Whether Sri Lanka should revert to having a non-political Head of State purely to ensure the country remains stable in the midst of political headwinds and tailwinds has been the subject of public agitation for some time.

The then Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs and now the de facto leader of the party headed by the newly elected Prime Minister wrote to this newspaper in its issue of November 20, 1994; “Today, sixteen years after its introduction, a consensus is emerging across the political spectrum that the parliamentary executive model must be re-introduced”. Since 1994, all parties have ridden to office with the solemn pledge to the voters that they would do away with the Executive Presidency because, while in Opposition they have had a taste of its repressive nature – only to give that pledge short shrift when ensconced in that same seat. President Sirisena has been no exception.

Learned and not-so-learned pundits can argue till the cows come home on the provisions of the Constitution. But there is no better way to interpret the Constitution other than to honour it in spirit rather than in letter.

This is the first time in the country’s 70 years since Independence that a new Government has been installed overnight without an election. In 1952 and 1959, when Prime Ministers died in office, the same Government continued under new leaders, but they soon went for elections to get fresh mandates. Governments have been brought down by Parliamentary votes (1964 and 2001) and by premature dissolutions (2004), but never has a Government been replaced overnight invoking questionable provisions of the Constitution and had Opposition party supporters march into state institutions like Adolf Hitler’s brown shirts (the Sturmabteilung – the Storm Detachment) did in Nazi Germany during the power grab of that era. A dangerous precedent has been set in motion and Sri Lanka is fortunate that the military top brass maintained in this situation that they will follow legal orders and not entertain ideas of exploiting the political situation in the country.

Palace coups and the change of guard in a country’s leadership happen in Saudi Arabia, but never before in Sri Lanka. We have said it before (beginning in our issue of November 23, 2014) that given the fickleness of politics and the impatience of Opposition parties to bring down Governments – always scheming, bribing and promising — that elections should be on fixed dates. This does not leave out the excitement of Democracy and Elections, but it leaves out the uncertainty and the volatility that a country and its economy can ill afford.

The United States is a good example to follow. They have given their electoral process some stability. Take this coming Tuesday when they will be having mid-term elections for their Parliament (Congress). All elections are fixed for the first Tuesday of November. Every US citizen knows the exact date of even the next US Presidential election, four years to the date of the previous election. There is no Constitutional punditry involved in trying to interpret the US Constitution on the matter. No throwing the people into a frenzied pastime of guessing when the next election is or what the stars of political leaders portend.

The question here is not whether the country is in an economic mess. The country has always been in an economic mess. Or whether the President’s alleged assassination inquiry was not moving fast enough. Those are shallow arguments to justify the steps that were taken on October 26. The only question is whether the President respected the Sovereignty of the People (Article 3 of the Constitution) – which includes the Franchise of the People and which he undertook to protect when he took his oath of office as President on January 9, 2015.

As of this day, some may well say that Sri Lanka has a de facto Prime Minister and de jure Prime Minister, yet another world record. Those who say that the new Government is legal can be asked if it is legal but illegitimate until it has proved it commands the majority of Parliament. If the new Prime Minister fails to get the majority support of Parliament, the country goes into bigger turmoil. The President has said he will resign in that case, but taking his word at face value has not been easy. If the new Prime Minister cannot legitimise his appointment through a Parliamentary confidence vote, by hook or by crook, this is only the beginning of a bigger Constitutional crisis to come.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

The world’s leading brands of bottled water are contaminated with tiny plastic particles that are likely seeping in during the packaging process, according to a major study across nine countries published Wednesday.

“Widespread contamination” with plastic was found in the study, led by microplastic researcher Sherri Mason of the State University of New York at Fredonia, according to a summary released by Orb Media, a US-based non-profit media collective.

Researchers tested 250 bottles of water in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Thailand, and the United States.

Plastic was identified in 93 percent of the samples, which included major name brands such as Aqua, Aquafina, Dasani, Evian, Nestle Pure Life and San Pellegrino.

The plastic debris included polypropylene, nylon, and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is used to make bottle caps.

“In this study, 65 percent of the particles we found were actually fragments and not fibers,” Mason told AFP.

“I think it is coming through the process of bottling the water. I think that most of the plastic that we are seeing is coming from the bottle itself, it is coming from the cap, it is coming from the industrial process of bottling the water.”

Particle concentration ranged from “zero to more than 10,000 likely plastic particles in a single bottle,” said the report.

On average, plastic particles in the 100 micron (0.10 millimeter) size range — considered “microplastics,” — were found at an average rate of 10.4 plastic particles per liter.

Even smaller particles were more common — averaging about 325 per liter.

Other brands that were found to contain plastic contaminated included Bisleri, Epura, Gerolsteiner, Minalba and Wahaha.

Experts cautioned that the extent of the risk to human health posed by such contamination remains unclear.

“There are connections to increases in certain kinds of cancer to lower sperm count to increases in conditions like ADHD and autism,” said Mason.

“We know that they are connected to these synthetic chemicals in the environment and we know that plastics are providing kind of a means to get those chemicals into our bodies.”

– Time to ditch plastic? –

Previous research by Orb Media has found plastic particles in tap water, too, but on a smaller scale.

“Tap water, by and large, is much safer than bottled water,” said Mason.

The three-month study used a technique developed by the University of East Anglia’s School of Chemistry to “see” microplastic particles by staining them using fluorescent Nile Red dye, which makes plastic fluorescent when irradiated with blue light.

“We have been involved with independently reviewing the findings and methodology to ensure the study is robust and credible,” said lead researcher Andrew Mayes, from UEA’s School of Chemistry.

“The results stack up.”

Jacqueline Savitz, chief policy officer for North America at Oceana, a marine advocacy group that was not involved in the research, said the study provides more evidence that society must abandon the ubiquitous use of plastic water bottles.

“We know plastics are building-up in marine animals, and this means we too are being exposed, some of us, every day,” she said.

“It’s more urgent now than ever before to make plastic water bottles a thing of the past.”

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

Last Sunday’s front page lead story in this newspaper on the risk to foreign employment due to the 2017 Budget by raising the minimum wage for skilled labour seems to have caught the eye of Parliament. The Minister in charge of Foreign Employment confirmed the fact that her ministry was rather perturbed that it had not been consulted, and wanted the proposal reversed.

Foreign remittances of workers and others overseas have become the single largest foreign exchange earner and are now the mainstay of successive Budgets of successive Governments which have been unable to generate sufficient finances on their own but go on a spending spree nevertheless.

US dollars 7.2 billion (Rs. 1.1 trillion) is what foreign remittances bought in to this country in 2016. The fact that Sri Lanka is facing a debt crisis of huge proportions is an open secret. Desperate for foreign investment that has otherwise dried up, and the rupee on a slippery slope against the US dollar, the Government’s predicament is somewhat understandable.

In this desperation, however, to try and tap even more from the reservoir of foreign remittances by upping the minimum wage of migratory workers — they seem to almost to count the chicks before they are hatched — is to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. What the Government must endeavour to do instead is to lobby more aggressively in the manner of ‘collective bargaining’ with other countries providing expat labour, especially in West Asia so that adventurist exercises like what the Government seeks to do don’t come a cropper in the long run by other countries snapping up the jobs Sri Lankans can have. The end aim should be getting a better deal for all concerned.

The Government must play the role of a trade union demanding better wages and working conditions from the employer, mindful also that West Asian and Gulf countries are facing their own economic slumps with oil prices dropping in recent times and wars in the region.
Only last month did the Abu Dhabi Dialogue – an initiative by the United Arab Emirates having stakeholders highlight the potential of contractual labour mobility to benefit workers in West Asia and the host country, meet in Sri Lanka. Known as the ‘Colombo Process’, the exercise is a tribute to employer-employee relations and an exemplary milestone in migratory contractual labour mobility.

New laws and regulations and transparent recruitment mechanisms were highlighted along with achieving the migration-related target of the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals as part of its work plans. Bangladesh has urged that the deliberations of the ‘Colombo Process’ be conveyed to the Global Compact on Safe and Orderly Migration Policy in New York.

It need not be all horror stories coming from West Asia and the Gulf. There may be commendable moves initiated to dissuade Sri Lankan women from going as housemaids to some of the countries, and promoting skilled workers to go for foreign employment rather than as mere labourers. But without providing the training facilities for those skilled labourers who are in short supply, the Government is putting the cart before the horse in fixing minimum wages. That will only prevent more Sri Lankans from finding jobs abroad triggering a drop, not an increase, in revenue to the state purse.

With Sri Lanka now in the chair of the Abu Dhabi Dialogue and the ‘Colombo Process’, one would hope for a more enlightened approach on a win-win basis for Sri Lanka’s golden goose — the long suffering migrant workers without whose remittances this country would be in even deeper economic troubles.

Talks behind closed doors

As if synchronised, visits this week by US Congressmen, a senior Indian diplomat and members of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, are no better a pointer to the geopolitical interest in Sri Lanka.

The Government has not thought it necessary to let the people know what these visits were all about. Keeping them below the radar, the Government seems to believe that what the people do not know, is not happening. Or that the plebs need not know what their leaders do. It was only the President’s Media Unit that at least issued a bare-bones release on some of the visits. The result; widespread speculation, intensifying suspicion, but the Government seems to care little.

What the discerning public receive are the official release from the Indian side and reports published in the Indian media (often reproduced locally) on the Indian Foreign Secretary’s visit. The Chinese would rather stay below the radar saying the visit was to discuss the entire gamut of China’s recent investments in Sri Lanka, but the corridors of power are buzzing with the talk that it was another reading of the ‘Riot Act’ to Sri Lankan leaders to hurry up and sign the controversial agreement for the Hambantota Port Development Project, now stalled by public protests and a pending court case.

Even if the Sri Lankan Government maintains a deafening silence, the unusually loquacious Chinese ambassador has recently spoken in public on the status of these negotiations, suggesting what is best for Sri Lanka, when a case is being adjudicated before the country’s Supreme Court. Acting in the manner of a Viceroy, the envoy who is invited to brief Cabinet sub-committees nowadays, is certainly not going to be summoned by the Foreign Ministry to be cautioned about diplomatic conduct. On the other hand, with the new US Administration changing course on two issues that country championed for decades – free trade and free speech, it may be China wanting the mantle – at least abroad.

Recent reports indicate that several countries have begun reviewing rapidly expanding Chinese investments around the world on the basis of “national interest”. Some projects have been cancelled in Australia and Germany on these grounds. Beijing is also imposing a certain amount of controls on the outflow of its capital.

The Hambantota port and Colombo’s ‘Financial District’, which is the port city, may fall into the category of strategic interests to China rather than of commercial value, but what Sri Lanka must guard against is that in its negotiations, secret as they are, don’t run counter to our own long-term national interests; and that they are not merely seen from the prism of overcoming an immediate debt problem that the previous Sri Lankan Government foisted on the people.

From all accounts, the Indian Foreign Secretary has given a telling message that the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord is outdated in some aspects and the demand for the North-East merger is now passé. Whether the contentious issue of poaching in Sri Lankan waters by Indian fishermen, causing irreparable harm to the Sri Lankan economy was ever discussed is anybody’s guess. With a pro-active disclosure policy under the new Right to Information Law in operation on the one hand, the acute deficiency in letting the citizens know the outcome of all these discussions with these key overseas players on the other, is not just unfortunate, it is not in the public interest.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

Is the essentially combative tone adopted by the Government to the Juan Mendez report finding that a “culture of torture” is still being practised in Sri Lanka quite wise, one might ask?
Of course, we live in an age where, confounding his own advisors and despite solid evidence to the contrary, the President of the United States is on record stating bombastically that ‘torture works’ as an interrogation method.

Key Mendez findings
But Sri Lanka’s state representatives have long adopted a far more devious method of denial. The immediate response has always been to rebut off hand, allegations that torture is commonly practised. That reaction does not appear to change, let it be the ‘yahapalanaya government’, or any other. So this blunt rejection as reported in this newspaper last week is unsurprising. Yet the larger question is whether a more sober appraisal will not actually help the country more than an obstinate ostrich-like denial.

Let us dispassionately consider what Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Mr Mendez had said. He issued the report to the UN Human Rights Council consequent to a visit made to the country early last year. It is due to be considered by the Council at its 34th session, scheduled to run from February 27 to March 2017.

A key finding is that ‘while the practice of torture is less prevalent today than during the conflict and the methods used are at times less severe…a culture of torture persists.’ Physical and mental coercion is employed as an interrogation method by both the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) in ‘regular cases’ and by the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).

Grave trends in the report
Where the TID is specifically concerned, ‘a causal link seems to exist between the level of real or perceived threat to national security and the severity of the physical suffering inflicted by agents of the Division during detention and interrogation’ Mr Mendez observed. Linked to this is the observation that he had received ‘credible reports’ of “white van abductions” by officers in plain clothes as recently as ‘up to April 2016.’ As he says, such abductions in the past, more often than not, led to enforced disappearances.

However these recent instances have led to ‘incommunicado detention of the suspect with the purpose of obtaining a confession before transfer to official Department or Division facilities.’ Meanwhile brutal abuse of detainees predominantly of Tamil ethnicity under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) in order to induce confessions is found akin to a recurring decimal in interrogation practices.

The other equally grave trend in the report is his finding that Magistrates are ‘overly passive’ and rubber-stamp detention orders made by the executive branch and do not inquire into conditions of detention or potential ill-treatment. This is a conclusion that is supported by Sri Lanka’s own Supreme Court where the dereliction of duty by judicial officers has been lamented. In effect, this constitutes a most eloquent justification as to why Sri Lanka’s proposed counter-terror Act (CTA) meant to replace the PTA should not superficially put forward this excuse of ‘magisterial supervision’ in preventing torture, when practically that protection is almost nil. The initial draft of the CTA proceeded exactly on this basis, justifying the whittling down of protections accordingly.

Suspicious secrecy surrounding the revised CTA
And we still remain in a state of suspended animation in regard to what revisions have been made to the CTA. As has been remarked in these column spaces previously, the proposed CTA appears to be more draconian than the PTA. The fact that the CTA had been ‘revised’ was announced by the Government with impeccable and splendid timing just before the European Commission stated that it would recommend to the EU, the restoration of the GSP Plus trade benefit to Sri Lanka.

But the revised draft appears to be guarded with a passion that can only arouse suspicion as to the bona fides of its defenders. And this seems to have conveniently slipped off the radar of the merry travelers on the ‘transitional justice bandwagon’ who have also (and predictably so) received a series of short and sharp shocks recently by de-prioritization of transitional justice on the Government agenda.

Other aspects of the Mendez report mirror concerns stressed domestically. These include the right of a suspect to legal representation at a police station immediately after arrest and during detention. Extreme concern is expressed in regard to the ‘willingness of judges to admit confessions in criminal proceedings without corroboration by other evidence, creating conditions that further encourage torture and ill-treatment.’

Reflecting domestic concerns
Thus too, a common practice of conducting the investigation while the suspect is in custody, rather than determining the need for detention based on preliminary investigations. Certainly these particular conclusions reflect a recurrent pattern confirmed by innumerable academic and activist reports buttressed also by fundamental rights decisions of the Supreme Court from almost two decades ago.

Indeed, continuing weaknesses in Sri Lanka’s institutional processes receive special attention in the report with the confirmation by the Chief Justice to the Special Rapportuer that there is a backlog of some 3,000 fundamental rights cases before the Supreme Court. Mr Mendez acknowledges strides taken by the National Human Rights Commission but makes the pertinent point that this has left untouched the task of remedying impunity for past and present abuses through effective prosecution. He passes down graver strictures on reliance of the National Police Commission on police investigations and the ‘worrying lack of will’ on the part of the Attorney-General to investigate and prosecute torture allegations.

These are serious findings no doubt. Yet in many respects, they only echo what has been said before, by Sri Lanka’s own monitoring and advocacy bodies. They come as no surprise even though state representatives may throw up their hands in horror at the very idea.

A considered response needed
Thus, the Mendez findings and recommendations merit a considered response by the Government. Much of the recommendations also echo long standing institutional reforms that have been pending for decades. A rejection of this report out of hand will help no one, least of all Sri Lanka’s own albeit increasingly strained case that it is painfully plodding to regain a measure of normalcy after decades of terrorized abnormal state behaviour.

It is hoped that sanity rather than unhelpful hysteria will prevail in future official responses.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

There is a reason why the peace deal of the Colombian Government with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) became a reality despite formidable obstacles. Credited with brokering the deal and bringing to a close, one of the deadliest and longest-running civil wars in Latin America, Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos,Nobel Peace Prize Laureate for 2016 attributes his success to putting the victims at the heart of the process.

‘This succeeded because we made sure that the victims were prioritised in every way possible and were not made to feel irrelevant’ he said, soon after accepting the award.

Colombia’s difference in national dialogue
The Colombian example was singular. Its national dialogue was not limited to exclusively elitist pockets of opinion but reached out even to those who had earlier responded negatively in a national plebiscite, including religious and trade union leaders. Comprehensive revisions were made in the draft as a result. Santos now has the heavy responsibility of implementing the accord but the start has been promising.

There are valuable lessons that Sri Lanka’s Unity Government can learn from the Colombian President’s trenchant advice. One strong focus there has been the importance given to reform of national laws, policies and practices in an inclusive and open manner rather than secretively.

And if last week’s Concluding Observations by the United Nations Committee against Torture (UNCAT) is any indication, the Government needs to pull up its game and respond properly to the multitude of challenges looming before it in the coming months Change in Government, no panacea.

Last week’s column examined the UNCAT’s Observations issued in response to Sri Lanka’s periodic report submitted in terms of the Convention against Torture. The same focus will be continued for this week due to its overriding importance. These are precisely the key points which reform should address.

The UNCAT’s recommendations concerned systemic patterns of impunity in the South as well as in the North. Flamboyant promises and artificial assurances will not serve as a miracle cure for these ills. Instead, carefully structured reforms are needed that put the victims at the core of the process. These reforms must address the investigative, the prosecutorial and the judicial pillars of the system, all of which have been seriously compromised.

The Committee stated quite rightly that torture was most evidenced during the initial hours of interrogation. Police investigators often fail to register detainees during this period, providing them with opportunities to abuse at free will. Remarking that neither the Attorney General nor the judiciary exercises sufficient control over orders of detention, the Committee called for safeguards wherein even judges who fail in their judicial duties in this regard should be held to account.

Rejecting regressive measures
And so, it is precisely at this point that safeguards had to be provided to detainees including prompt access to counsel, the right to notify relatives and the need to install video surveillance in all places of custody except when the right to privacy or the right to confidential communications with a lawyer or a doctor may be at issue.

The UNCAT did not take kindly therefore to a recently proposed (and withdrawn) amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code seeking to bar prompt legal access to detainees. Neither did it respond well to another problematic effort to enact a counter-terror law which was more draconian than the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) which it sought to replace.

In fact, the abuse of detention laws forms a main thrust of this report. Pointedly it was observed that forthcoming legislation on national security should adopt a precise definition of terrorist acts and guarantee the requirement of strict necessity and proportionality with the ensuring of effective judicial review. Reflecting on the pattern of forced confessions under the PTA, the Committee expressed alarm that the proposed counter-terror law continues to allow this.

Judicial diligence and punishment in lack there of
Given the Committee’s finding that judges do not exercise their discretion in examining cases of alleged torture with due diligence, it was pointed out that judicial review to test the voluntariness of the confession was itself not a sufficient safeguard.

And to be plain, the point made by the UNCAT regarding the absence of judicial due diligence has often been reflected in comments made by Sri Lanka’s appellate courts that litter our constitutional jurisprudence. In that regard the Committee’s recommendation is difficult to disagree with.Judges must actively ask the detainees about their treatment during detention and request a forensic examination. If they fail to respond appropriately to allegations of torture raised during judicial proceedings, they must be appropriately disciplined.

Independent investigation of torture allegations
The jurists also called for the enforcement of Sri Lanka’s Evidence Ordinance in all cases including in terrorism related offences as well as ensuring the right of a detainee to have access to an interpreter.

It reminded the Sri Lankan State of its duty to ensure that detained persons are promptly brought before a judge and in any event, not exceeding 48 hours. Arresting officers must register the exact date, time, ground for the detention and place of arrest of detainees.Officers who fail to adhere to the law or ensure that their subordinates do so, must be penalized.

The State was also requested to establish effective prosecutorial oversight over the police. Statements obtained during police interrogation must not be relied on as the central element of proof in criminal prosecutions. And an independent body must head the investigation of torture.

Refraining from foolhardy provocation
Among this plethora of recommendations, one fact is certain. The UNCAT’s response last week was notably harsh. Perhaps the quite flagrant if not foolhardy provocation presented before its astonished members in the subversive form of an intelligence chief being part of the State delegation was one reason. We shall never know.

Whatever it is arrogance or ignorance driving Sri Lanka’s calamitous blunders that we constantly see, this needs to stop.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

If the thinking was that the risks of taking an intelligence chief as part of the Government delegation to brief the United Nations Committee against Torture (UNCAT) recently would be offset as a result of sunshine stories spun by the Government’s policy propagandists living in cloud cuckoo land, then a rude shock was administered this week.


The drama was completely unnecessary
This came in the form of a sharp reprimand issued by the UNCAT using less than the normal diplomatic language than is wont in responding to Sri Lanka’s failure to meet state party obligations under the Convention against Torture. The Committee professed itself ‘alarmed by the presence of the Chief of National Intelligence, Sisira Mendis, as part of the Sri Lankan delegation, since he was the Deputy Inspector General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) from March 2008 to June 2009.’

This was in the background of allegations of torture being leveled against officers of the CID during that period by detainees kept in the premises. The Committee proclaimed its ‘deep regret that neither Mr. Mendis nor any other member of the delegation provided information in response to the many specific questions raised.’

From any sensible standpoint, this drama was completely unnecessary. It beggars the imagination as to why this provocation occurred at all in the first instance. Was the Government so woefully ignorant and so bereft of representatives that it had to include an official whose very presence was bound to raise red flags? Or was it that it was so arrogant that it thought that no challenge would come in the first instance? In either respect, the conclusion was absurdly wrong. It put the country into an impossible position of having to defend itself against the indefensible.

Long list of concerns
The Committee’s concerns were made against a background of the State’s failure to perform. While acknowledging some advances on the ground after the change of political power last year, the Committee drew up a long list of pending issues. Heading this list was the finding that torture during law enforcement investigations remained routine in Sri Lanka. The focus was on practical issues rather than esoteric matters of law which were unsuccessfully attempted to be used by the Government representatives as proverbial red herrings.

Indeed, two emblematic cases illustrate persistent concerns pointed to by the Committee very well even though these were not specifically raised before the jurists as such. The first of these instances concerns a torture case of a teenager way back in 2003. This was a case of mistaken identity as much as in many other such instances painfully symbolized in the well known case of Gerald Perera an employee of the Colombo dockyard.

Perera was peacefully living his life until the police arrested him mistakenly when searching for a known criminal going by that same name and tortured him to the point of renal failure. He succeeded in the Supreme Court when an outraged Bench awarded him compensation but later, was killed by the very same torturers days before he was due to give evidence in the criminal trial under Sri Lanka’s Convention against Torture (CAT) Act.

Justice denied by laws’ delays
Here too, the tortured teenager living in a remote village had testified to officers of the Saliyawewa Police Station compelling him to sit on an ant hill for the alleged petty crime of stealing a necklace. He was thereafter hung from a beam with his hands tied behind his back. If that was not bad enough, the responsible police officers identified the real culprit the following day and tendered an apology to the teenager and his family. The Attorney General (AG) then filed an indictment under the CAT Act against the officer in charge (OIC) of the police station and a ‘grama arakshaka niladhari.’

This was a notable instance where the AG found it fit to indict the OIC in the wake of earlier refusals to do so in response to which judicial queries had been raised in Gerald Perera’s case. However, the case was concluded in the High Court recently with numerous delays and with six trial judges hearing segments of the testimony with no continuity. In all, the matter had taken virtually thirteen years to conclude with the judge on record finding that torture had been proved but that the identity of the accused as culpable in terms of the law had not been sufficiently established on the evidence.

Activists monitoring the case however contend that the identification of the accused was sufficiently established on the record by prosecution witnesses and have appealed to the Attorney General to go against the acquittal in the appeal court. The larger point here is that, when a torture trial takes so long to hear, what possibility could there be of a positive outcome in the case?

Use of detention to terrorise
The second instance which is relevant in this discussion is last month’s finding of another juristic body of the United Nations, this time the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) which considered the torture and brutal interrogation in Colombo of a visiting Canadian citizen of Tamil ethnicity, Roy Samanatham who had been arrested in 2007 under the emergency law on flimsy charges of acting in a manner prejudicial to national security upon being found to be in possession of 600 mobile phones.

His protests that these were items that he had imported from Singapore for a friend’s business and that he was visiting Sri Lanka to carry out his marriage were to no avail. Unsurprisingly the Committee found a violation of Covenant rights and asked the state party to provide redress by locating and prosecuting those responsible for Samathanam’s torture.

It was observed that the reasons for his arrest had not been given, he had not been detained on lawful grounds, he was not given the opportunity to challenge the lawfulness of his detention, that he was brought to a judge after one year of being detained, in or about September 2008 and that during this period he was held in detention without charges.

Common struggle for accountability
In sum, the UNCAT’s recent findings reflect these same striking patterns of impunity, regardless of whether it occurs in what part of the country or whether it targets individuals of a particular ethnicity. That fact may be remembered as driving what must be a common struggle to restore accountability in law enforcement.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

The Government received a reality check last week in Geneva when the Attorney General (AG) and the chief of National Intelligence (CNI) got a rude shock at a UN committee monitoring torture when they were cross-examined to the point that they had to beat a hasty retreat from the floor.

That some of the UN agencies are now agents of the West and its double-standards is a given. Russia has just pulled out of the International Criminal Court on these grounds; one hopes it is not like Hitler pulling Germany out of a Disarmament conference in Geneva in 1933 as a prelude to withdrawing from the League of Nations before unleashing World War II.

The torture at the US prison at Guantanamo is well documented, but there is nary a UN investigation into it. And yet, the US is in the forefront of UN agencies on torture. That is the world right now, and the Government of Sri Lanka made a serious error of judgement recently by abstaining in a Western triggered UN vote on the human rights situation in Iran, a longtime friend of this country.

India and Pakistan both have close relations with the West, yet voted against the resolution and in support of Iran. Only a month or so ago, Sri Lanka abstained in voting in UNESCO, hurting Palestine’s sentiments. On November 29, we celebrate Palestine Solidarity Day. Is our foreign policy drifting in a different direction?

We have dumped the Non Aligned Movement and are seemingly gravitating towards the Western orbit. There again, in Britain we miscalculated and supported the wrong side in the ‘Brexit’ vote. In the US, we seem to have put all our eggs in the Democratic Party basket and have some catching up to do now with the newly elected President. At least the UNP kept a line open to the victorious Republicans.

While we get bashed in Geneva ourselves we showed no solidarity with those at the receiving end of the same stick. Back in Colombo, the Government remains on the defensive over its human rights record with a draft law on counter-terror causing concern on the basis that its proposed contents are even more draconian than the Prevention of Terrorism Act which it seeks to replace. The draft, much of which has already been written on, denies the right of independent legal counsel to a detainee until the Police statement is recorded; a similar provision having crept into a proposed amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code, raising a storm of protests and forcing the Government to backtrack.

That draft is wide-ranging and even defines “an act of terror” as attempting to “illegally cause a change of the Government of Sri Lanka” through inter-alia, “endangering of the lives of the public”. This can cover a wide range of political activity.

There is little doubt that stringent laws are required at times when the nation-state is under siege. What Sri Lanka needs for its contemplated counter-terror legislation is to strive for a midway point between being idealistic and merely bowing to external pressure and being pragmatic because people exploit loosely drafted laws – on either side of the divide. Achieving that essential balance should be up for public discussion rather than left to be conceived behind closed doors. That would arouse fear and suspicion and is contrary to transparency which still remains the avowed policy of this Government.

Special commission to try former CB Governors
A month after the Parliamentary COPE report findings and recommendations on the Central Bank bond issues of 2015, the Government is still grappling with what to do next, i.e. if it really wants to do something at all.

After several efforts at sweeping the dirt under several carpets, the Prime Minister has sent the report for the Attorney General’s opinion, while the President is seeking independent legal counsel. The JVP, the JHU and a section of the SLFP are howling for urgent action to book the culprits – at least to freeze the bank accounts of those involved, pending the next step. That the usually vociferous former President is studiously silent on this matter has also raised suspicion about the nexus between the Central Bank Governors past and present and their connections with Dubai bank accounts held by one party and managed by the other.

In any event, the COPE report is only an extension of the Auditor General’s findings, but whether even this is sufficient to file criminal proceedings on those responsible for a mega deal, or further investigations are required is for the AG to say.

While the AG studies his brief, there is a prima facie swindle that has taken place at the expense of the people of this country and the funds accrued therefrom have already found their way into local private commercial banks through the purchase of shares; these being a text-book case of money laundering.

Ordinary folk justifiably ask why the COPE report was not given to the Financial Crimes Investigations Division (FCID), and if the basic laws of the country on issues such as Cheating, Money Laundering and Insider Dealing are insufficient to indict those involved or whether a specific legal mechanism like a Special Presidential Commission of Inquiry is needed simply because the sums involved are big. The other burning question is whether smalltime crooks are thrown to ravenous wolves while everything is done to protect those with political patronage.

One suggestion has been the creation of a Criminal Justice Commission-like special tribunal where the laws of evidence are reversed, but while the CJC was designed to try persons accused of conspiring to overthrow the Government in 1971, it was misused for the trial on exchange control offences.

Unless existing laws are to be used by the AG, the best option has to be a strong Commission of Inquiry with appropriate Terms of Reference assisted by a Special Independent Prosecutor and a team of investigators, lawyers – and accountants and bankers. The Act, however, has to be amended so that while it has powers to call for bank accounts and tax files, it also can empower the Commissioner or Commissioners to inter-alia, order the freezing of bank accounts pending the inquiry because that seems to be the immediate priority.

The ill-gotten monies are quickly seeping into the ‘white economy’ as the Government either procrastinates, or wilfully vacillates. The World Bank’s Stolen Assets Unit has the expertise to assist in the recovery of the loot wherever it exists. Either the former Central Bank Governors must be acquitted or found guilty — quickly. The Government cannot do nothing if it wants Sri Lanka to be a Financial Hub. There must be credibility that Sri Lanka is not a place where underhand business deals are covered up. There is always a way, if only there is a will.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

And so, the American voters have picked the unknown devil (instead of the known devil) to lead them for the next four years. In their somewhat skewed election process, the defeated candidate got more popular votes than the winner who to the much over-rated ‘most powerful job in the world’ – the President of the United States of America.

They were unable to break the ‘glass ceiling’ in electing their first woman leader, throwing her and her baggage of 30 years in public life out of the window. Not all the coconuts broken by Tamil National Alliance politicians for her victory were of any use. Maybe they should have broken more. The ‘silent majority’ in America ignored what the President-elect’s detractors said about him, and voted for change.

Misleadingly called ‘the policeman of the world’, given the United States’ pre-eminence in world affairs (and that is not necessarily a compliment), many are those who say, not always in jest, that the world’s citizens too must also have a vote in picking the man or woman for the job.

The Donald Trump victory only reinforces a growing global trend we have referred to recently (Oct. 9) that all over the world, the ruled are reacting against the rulers – even if they have been placed in power and place by these same voters. They are reluctant to trust the rulers implicitly. Britain’s ‘Brexit’ vote is a textbook case. The anti-incumbency trend that Sri Lankans experienced in January last year, terribly misread by those cocooned in office, is a worldwide phenomenon. In the US, this week, many people did not trust the Government of the day – even though the incumbent President remains popular.

The disturbing signs of the US election and what is happening in much of Europe today are that the world is becoming more and more insular. The refugee problem, started by the triggering of wars by the US and European nations in West Asia and Africa, and the unequal world economic order have given momentum to a refugee crisis last seen during World War II, 70 years ago. This has given rise to xenophobia and momentum to the Far Right in Europe, and now in the US with the influx of migrants, sending shivers through local inhabitants. Home-grown terrorism as a corollary to this migration has only compounded the fear psychosis within native populations in the US and the West.

It was the ‘white voters’ afraid of foreigners taking their jobs and indulging in terrorist acts who tipped the US election this week in Trump’s favour for that was his strident message that resonated with the voter.

There are some salient features that Sri Lankan leaders might take serious note of from the US elections. One is that these elections – and the subsequent oath-taking, are held on fixed dates and not subject to the whims and fancies of the incumbent President. Here regrettably, we have seen in recent years, all types of shenanigans from calling snap elections to secret oath ceremonies behind closed doors.

The US and the world now enter an era of uncertainty in January next year. It is a leap into the unknown, but that is not always a bad scenario because there was so much amiss not least in the management of US foreign policy.

However much President Barack Obama resisted going to war (he always maintained that war was not the only option to settle disputes), he could not take on the Generals in the Pentagon backed by the multibillion-dollar arms industry, the CIA and those who run Washington. That is why his job is not necessarily the most powerful in the world. He is restricted and constrained by ‘The Establishment’. If President-elect Trump thinks he can change Washington and ‘The Establishment’, good luck to him. Unless he fits into the mainstream of US ‘politricks’, he will face the consequences from within ‘The Establishment’.

Many Sri Lankans are not all that unhappy with the outcome of the US election considering the stories that the pro-Eelam Diaspora lobby had made heavy donations to the Clinton Foundation and exercised some influence over the one-time Secretary of State. The ruling UNP, has an alliance with the winning Republican Party through the IDU (International Democratic Union) of which it is a partner, and its representatives attended the Republican Convention (not the Democratic Convention) this year. On the other hand, Mr. Trump is a renegade Republican and his anti-Free Trade Agreement thinking as well as threatening big US companies investing abroad with huge penalties does not bode well for Sri Lanka looking for foreign investors and trade pacts with the US. The Foreign Minister made deep friendships with the Democratic Party-fuelled State Department and through them the Tamil Diaspora, but he will now have to start all over again with the new dispensation.

One redeeming factor would be that a Trump Administration would be least interested in the UNHRC Resolution against Sri Lanka, or one hopes so, particularly when the UNHRC chief undiplomatically weighed in against a Trump Presidency. It is now up to Sri Lanka to take advantage of this change of guard in Washington come 2017.

Sri Lanka has rarely been on the radar of the White House, and much of US policy towards Sri Lanka is dictated by the State Department and to some extent, Congress. A State Department under Mr. Trump may not be best placed to push its human rights agenda around the world calling for minority rights with its President being accused of being a white supremacist.

For many years, the US distinguished its citizens from foreigners as “Americans” and “Aliens” respectively. The latter definition was the old, outdated language now changed in many countries to “non-residents”. Though relatively sober in his victory speech, if one is to go by his election rhetoric, the newly elected President of the United States of America – and those who voted for him — might want to bring that old definition of “Aliens” back to their lexicon. God bless America.

Climate talks at crossroads
The US President-elect Donald Trump has gone on record calling the current debate on Climate Change a hoax. This week, in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh, ministers and environmentalist are gathered to follow up on the historic Paris summit of a year ago that decided to hold the increase in global average temperature.
But come January, and if the Trump Administration thinks all this global warming talk is a hoax, and the world’s biggest polluter and contributor to the warming of Planet Earth is not an active participant to a world strategy to tackle the biggest common problem faced by humankind, then all this discussions on Climate Change is just hot air, after all.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

Economists who addressed the 30th Annual Sessions of the Sri Lanka Economic Association on October 21st and 22nd on the theme “Fiscal Reforms: An Imperative for Sustained Economic Growth” agreed that the country could not go forward without fiscal reforms and fiscal consolidation. Fiscal reforms were imperative to enhance government revenue, reduce the fiscal deficit and provide the fiscal space for developmental expenditure for sustained high economic growth.

Strategy
Economists pointed out that bringing down the fiscal deficit progressively to 3.5 per cent of GDP by 2020 by increased government revenue rather than a reduction of expenditure was imperative. Increased revenue was essential to reduce the fiscal deficit and contain the increasing public debt as well as for investment in development, especially in education and health and care of the ageing population.

Fiscal consolidation would enable a gradual reduction of the public debt to sustainable levels and arrest a possible debt crisis to which the economy is heading. Fiscal reforms that achieve these objectives were vital for sustained high economic growth. It would not be possible to attract foreign direct investment or to make adequate public investment in developing the economy’s competitiveness without fiscal consolidation.

Presidential address
In his address, the President of the Sri Lanka Economic Association (SLEA), Prof. A.D.V. de S. Indraratna said that “a series of policy and structural reforms, on trade and other real sectors, would be necessary, in order to reduce the budget deficit, fill the serious resource gap and reverse the economy to a growth trajectory to have sustained inclusive development, which should be the ultimate aim.” Professor Indraratna was of the view that of these, “fiscal reforms are an imminent imperative.” However he cautioned that “one should not think that fiscal reforms are sufficient or overlook the fact that they must be accompanied by incentive and structural reforms especially with respect to trade and other real sectors, the regulatory environment and access to credit by small and medium entrepreneurs.”

Governor Coomaraswamy
The chief guest at the annual sessions, Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy, the Governor of the Central Bank said that the priorities for achieving high sustained growth included strengthening macroeconomic fundamentals, structural reforms that improve the competitiveness of the economy and improving the doing business environment. He analysed the extent and character of the fiscal problem and emphasised that the reduction of the fiscal deficit was imperative.

This “most urgent challenge”, he argued, was not possible by the reduction of total expenditure, though some wasteful expenditure such as losses in state owned enterprises were needed. On the other hand, development expenditure had to be increased to enhance growth and the competitive capacity of the country through investments in high quality education and improvements in health. He also emphasised the need to have the fiscal space to take care of the rapidly ageing population.

Revenue
The increased revenue he said must come from increased tax revenue. The taxation reforms that are beige undertaken he hoped would increase the current low government revenue of only 13 per cent of GDP to about 15 per cent next year and increase it to about 20 per cent in 2020. This would enable the reduction of the public debt and debt servicing costs that are a severe fiscal constraint.

Balance of Payments
Dr. Coomaraswamy was hopeful of an improvement in the balance of payments and the foreign debt situation as there were no maturity of foreign loans in 2017 and 2018 and a surplus in the current account is expected this year. He described the next two years as ‘bonus years’ that would enable an easing of the external debt burden.

Role of IMF
Governor Coomaraswamy said there was much misunderstanding on the role of the IMF. He pointed out that had the IMF not been there, we would still have had the problem and we would have had to undertake fiscal and other reforms. The involvement of the IMF, he said, reduced the pain of the measures that were taken. The assistance of the IMF had been useful in building international confidence, easing the external finances and providing a breathing space to revive the economy.

IMF view
The Resident Representative of the IMF, Dr. (Mrs) Eteri Kvintradze who was the guest of honour at the annual sessions gave a succinct analysis of the fundamentals of the fiscal problem and stressed that “fiscal consolidation efforts need to be focussed on revenue generation instead of expenditure compression”. She made a most powerful point that it was not whether fiscal targets can be met that matters but whether they are achieved “in a growth friendly manner where social and infrastructure spending is fully implemented”.

Dr. Kvintradze advocated increased revenue collection though tax reforms and effective taxation, reduction of losses in public enterprises through state enterprise reforms and privatisation and increased expenditure on developmental needs. She said there were far too many tax exemptions that eroded tax revenues.

She observed that at this critical juncture in the country’s development when the private sector has to play an important role, it was essential to have “a predictable, fair and automated tax system” that reduces uncertainties for investment.

Summing up
The collection of much higher tax revenues and prudent public expenditure were needed to achieve the fiscal deficit target. It was stressed however that fiscal consolidation must be achieved through higher government revenue and reduction of unproductive expenditure to enable enough fiscal space for much higher public investment that would generate sustained high economic growth. The ideas, suggestions and proposals at the Annual Sessions should be valuable for formulating the Budget for 2017.

The keynote address by former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank W.A. Wijewardena and the speakers at the several technical sessions were of the view that fiscal consolidation was vital for sustained high growth. The technical sessions that followed had important in-depth analysis of the fiscal problem, the closely related issue of debt sustainability and reforms in trade policy that will be discussed in next sunday’s column.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

The elimination of poverty has been a popular promise among political leaders in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Despite their repeated promises of eliminating poverty, poverty persists. The rhetoric on poverty elimination has far surpassed efforts to reduce it and not been adequately backed up by policies that mitigate poverty and reduce income inequality. The people left behind by economic growth have not been adequately taken care of by social security safety nets. The global experience provides useful insights on how poverty and inequality could be reduced.

Promises
President Maithripala Sirisena has vowed to eliminate poverty in two years. President Premadasa moved a resolution at the SAARC Summit in Colombo in 1990 to banish poverty in South Asia. Yet South Asia remains the region that has the highest number of the poor. Although poverty has been reduced quite significantly in South Asia, a high proportion and number of people remain in poverty and income inequality has increased significantly in India and Sri Lanka. Reducing the incidence of poverty and reducing income inequality remain demanding challenges in both countries.

SDGs
Ending poverty and reducing inequality are two of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. These may be the most difficult of the SDGs to achieve unless the rhetoric is supported by significant changes in economic strategies and social policies. The rhetoric of poverty elimination must be translated into effective economic and social policies. Economic policies that encompass growth with equity and social policies that improve the capabilities of the poor and redistributive income policies are vital to reduce poverty and income inequality.

Achievements
Even though poverty is still a significant feature of many economies the world over, income poverty has been reduced in many countries and several regions of the world in recent decades. Economic growth and economic and social policies have been responsible for this achievement. In contrast, the widespread experience of most developed and developing countries is that inequality has grown. Latin America that has one of the severest inequalities of incomes has been able to reduce income inequality recently.

Experiences of China and India
China’s poverty level of 84 per cent in 1981 was reduced drastically in 2010 to 18 per cent. India’s poverty of 60 per cent in 1981 was reduced to 33 per cent in 2010. Although a third of India’s population is in poverty, the decline has been impressive. Poverty continues to decline and is perhaps around one fourth of her population now.

In both countries rapid economic growth has been the most significant reason for this achievement. The more impressive decline in poverty in China has been due to less initial inequality in land, reforms in land use, better health and the higher literacy. India lags behind in all these features. Disadvantaged communities, caste and gender discrimination too are impediments in mitigating poverty in India.

Increasing income disparity
In contrast to the achievement in the reduction in poverty, income inequality has grown in both countries. China’s inequality, as measured by the Gini Coefficient, has increased from 37 per cent in 1990 to 47.4 per cent in 2012, while India’s inequality has increased from 33 per cent in 1993 to 37 per cent in 2010. Although China’s poverty is much reduced, her income inequality is higher than in India.

India’s vast strides in economic growth have not led to a more equitable distribution of incomes. In fact inequality has grown as the rich grew in an exponential manner, while the improvement of incomes of the poor was much less. Low literacy levels, especially inadequate primary school enrolment are reasons for the widening income disparities. Literacy and primary education, though rising is still inadequate.

East and South East Asia
East and South East Asia was able to reduce poverty in tandem with economic growth. Among the reasons for this were land tenure reforms and conscious interventionist economic policies that benefitted the poor that were implemented at the same time as the economy grew. The fast track economic growth provided increasing urban and industrial employment and the government’s fiscal capacity enabled expenditures that benefitted the poor.

Latin American experience
In contrast to other regions in the world, Latin America, though the region with the most unequal income in the world has decreased inequality with rapid economic growth. The reasons behind Latin America’s decline in income inequality are, well-designed interventionist policies increased expenditure especially on higher education, stronger FDI and increase in tax revenues. Improving access of low-income families to education has been an efficient means for boosting equality of opportunity and lowering income inequality. Strengthening access to quality education is pivotal in Latin America that already has relatively high educational spending but poor outcomes. Raising low tax revenues has contributed to declining inequality as higher revenues provide more space to finance well-targeted redistributive policies.

Policy implications
These experiences provide useful lessons and policy implications for poverty reduction and for mitigating income inequality. Most important is the need to achieve rapid economic growth that has been the driver for reducing poverty in all countries.

The Chinese and Indian experience, as well as the development of East and South East Asia and of Latin America, provides ample evidence of this. While East Asia was able to achieve more equity of incomes, the Chinese and Indian experiences were ones of increasing income inequality with rapid growth. In contrast, Latin America was able to reduce huge income disparities.

What these experiences imply this that economic growth while reducing poverty does not ensure equitable income distribution. The initial conditions of land ownership, education and health and social stratification have an important bearing on the impact of growth on the equitable distribution of incomes. Interventionist policies that redistribute resources or entitlements have an important impact on the extent of equity in incomes that is achieved. Improvements in literacy and education reduce inequality of incomes. Public expenditure on these is very important and therefore government revenues must be adequate to enable the fiscal space for such expenditure.

The manner of raising tax revenue could also be important in reducing inequality. Progressive income tax systems, including recurrent property taxes, high taxes on luxury expenditure of the affluent, who are notorious for evading taxes, capital gains taxes and death duties would enable better income distribution by reducing incomes of the rich and enabling policy interventions that enhance the entitlements of the poor. Such policy imperatives rather than rich rhetoric on poverty are crucial.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

A draft policy and legal framework aimed at a new law on counter-terrorism to replace Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) may well be a classic case of the cure being far worse than the disease.

A bare reading of the draft immediately gives rise to several questions that gravely impact on the protection of life and liberty. As reported, the Cabinet has forwarded the draft to a parliamentary Sectoral Oversight Committee on National Security. It is hoped that this Committee will give its most anxious consideration to the contents and breadth of what is proposed.

Whole range of new offences
The draft framework proposes a whole range of new offences, apart from the primary offence of terrorism. The additional offences include ‘terrorism related’ offences, ‘associated’ offences as well as an offence of Espionage. These encompass a variety of problematically broad acts.
Thus, for example, the definition of terrorism categorizes eleven acts including causing serious damage to the environment and the economy of (not only) this country (but also) any other sovereign nation. The one exception provided is when a person acts in good-faith in the lawful exercise of a fundamental right or following a lawful order or a judicial order. As (thankfully) declared, this is not tantamount to an act of terrorism. This safeguard however is qualified as will be discussed later.

The acts prohibited must be with the intent to, or with the object of or knowing or reasonably believing that they would bring about four listed objectives. These objectives include first, threatening, attacking, changing or adversely affecting the unity, territorial integrity, security or sovereignty of Sri Lanka or that of any other sovereign nation.

Prohibiting ‘ideological domination’?
Far more worryingly, the second ground relates to ‘illegally or unlawfully’ compelling the Government to ‘reverse, vary or change a policy decision’ or to do or abstain from doing any act relating to the defence, national security, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Sri Lanka and the protection of the people. The same prohibition applies in relation to the government of any other sovereign nation.

It is a matter for most profound puzzlement as to why ‘reverse, vary or change a policy decision’ has been brought into the ambit of this proposed prohibition. The impact thereof in regard to advocacy on reforming government policies, which may be categorized as ‘illegal’ or ‘unlawful’, is troubling.

The third ground specifies ‘illegally’ causing a change of the Government of Sri Lanka or of any other sovereign nation. And arousing justifiable consternation is the fourth ground listing ‘committing any act of violent extremism towards achieving ideological domination.’ Using terms such as ‘ideological domination’ brings us to new and terrifyingly unfamiliar territory of the ‘thought police’ as it were.

Using the old terminology of offences
Punishments include the death penalty upon conviction by a High Court if a death has occurred as a reasonable consequence. In other respects, imprisonment up to a maximum extent of 20 years, imposition of a fine and the confiscation of property can follow. The proposed ambit of the four listed objectives are so wide that even the exercise of a fundamental right intending or knowing or reasonably believing that it would bring about these results will not be excused.

Meanwhile, the definition of ‘terrorism related’ offences proceeds on almost the same terminology reflected in emergency regulations under the Public Security Ordinance. Similarly stringent punishments are proposed in this regard. Restraining elements of necessity and proportionality laid down in numerous judicial decisions in the eighties to mid nineties appear to be absent.

Further, the inclusion of an offence of ‘espionage’ in regard to the gathering and providing of ‘confidential information’ relating to the listed offences is exceptionally chilling. There is an unacceptably broad definition of what constitutes ‘confidential information.’ This awakens echoes of the much unloved colonial-era Official Secrets Act. This does not bode well for the new information culture supposed to be a clarion call of the Unity Government.

Abandoning first principles
The draft framework merits meticulous and critical scrutiny which is not possible in these column spaces. Other overriding concerns are many. It permits confessions to be given to a police officer above the rank of a Superintendant of Police continuing a heavily critiqued tradition identified as the primary cause of torture by state agents. It is little comfort that a forensic examination of a suspect by a government forensic medical specialist supervised by a magistrate may be mandated.

As the Supreme Court itself has observed, the inability of judicial officers to properly perform their tasks is a regrettable reality. For example, in the Maximus Danny case (SC Application No. 488/98 SC Application No. 488/98), the Court noted that “unfortunately, the Magistrate has almost mechanically made an order of remand because the police wanted them to be remanded.” Such instances are the rule rather than the exception.

That the law must not enable the procuring of confessions by coercion has been reiterated in authoritative precedents by Sri Lankan judges before emergency law completely subverted our legal structure. Confessions given not only to police officers but also any individual standing in a position of authority were automatically shut out. That was how rigorous the legal standard once was, sternly enforced by judges of extraordinary ability at the time. Abandoning first principles such as these and providing crumbs from the state security table in the form of increased magisterial oversight is no solace.

Worrying replacement of the PTA
Neither is the draft’s stipulation that the prosecution has to prove the voluntary nature of the confession. Discharging that burden will not be difficult given the way that the criminal justice system works. And as in the case of the now deferred amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code, access to counsel is only allowed after the recording of the first statement by the police, or the expiry of 48 hours from the time of arrest, whichever occurs first. These are all excellent aids to the disregarding of the Rule of Law.

It is therefore a supreme irony that the motivation for Sri Lanka’s contemplating a new counter-terrorism law was the passionate argument that the PTA’s broad powers to search, detain and arrest is contrary to modern human rights protections. What the draft attempts to do is clothe the outmoded and somewhat clumsy substance of the archaic anti-terrorism law in modernistic and infinitely deadlier garb.

That surely must be a cause of considerable public concern in these unsettling times.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

Health-damaging atmospheric pollutants, which the World Health Organization warned Tuesday affected nine out of every 10 people, originate mainly from industry, heating and transport.

Chronic exposure has been linked not only to respiratory ailments, but also cancers, heart disease and stroke.

What are they? PARTICULAR MATTER (PM) ====================== These are microscopic particles generated by coal, oil and forest fires, but also by natural sources such as volcanoes and dust storms.

The building-blackening particles are so light they float on air. Some are so small they can penetrate deep in the lungs and even cross into the bloodstream.

The components include sulphate, nitrates, ammonia, sodium chloride, carbon and mineral dust. They may also carry traces of heavy or toxic metals such as arsenic, cadmium, nickel and mercury.

PM is divided into two categories: PM10, which comprises particles between 2.5 and 10 thousandths of a millimetre, or micrometres; and PM2.5, which is smaller than 2.5 micrometres — about a 30th the width of a human hair.

PM2.5 is estimated to reduce life expectancy in the European Union by more than eight months, according to the European Environmental Agency (EEA).

NITROGEN OXIDES (NOx) ===================== Nitrogen oxides, poisonous gases that contribute to acid rain and suffocating smog, are found in the fumes of cars, trucks, tractors, boats and industrial processes such as power generation and cement-making.

They are composed of nitric oxide (NO) and a smaller percentage of more poisonous nitrogen dioxide (NO2).

Fossil-fuel burning is by far the main man-made source: cars, trucks, tractors and boats or industrial processes like power generation and cement-making.

Natural sources include bacterial activity, volcanic eruptions and lightning.

NOx can cause breathing problems, headaches, chronically reduced lung function, eye irritation, loss of appetite and corroded teeth.

OZONE (O3) ========== In the stratosphere, this triple-atom molecule of oxygen is naturally occurring and protects us from the Sun’s ultra-violet radiation.

But at ground level, where it is formed in a chemical reaction between sunlight and exhaust gases, ozone is a component of photochemical smog.

High ozone levels can cause breathing problems, trigger asthmatic attacks and worsen respiratory disease.

OTHERS ====== Other concerning pollutants include sulphur dioxide (SO2) released by coal and petrol combustion, ammonia (NH3) gas released by farm fertilisers, and carbon monoxide (CO) from burning gas, wood or charcoal, as well as heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, nickel, arsenic and mercury emitted by industry.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

In the whirlwind of activity that attended the 33rd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva this week, Sri Lanka was put on inquiry regarding the non-consultative nature of its ongoing transitional justice and constitutional reform process.

As would be expected, the denials were strong. State representatives affirmed soothingly that a comprehensive and participatory public policy is in force, with truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence at its core. ‘Constructive engagement’ with the world body was said to be of utmost importance, so on and so forth.

Contrary to blindingly simple logic
But perhaps it is now time that this Government acknowledged that ‘constructive engagement’ with affected families within the country is equally and indeed, even far more important. Necessarily, this must go beyond the secluded parameters of what passes currently for a consultative process. Propelled by genuine fears or otherwise, the guarded and secretive approach followed up to now just will not do. Sidelining the victims as a deliberate choice pushes them into marginalized corners. It also insults the Sinhalese by lumping them into a condescending basket, easily excitable by Rajapaksa rhetoric.

This modus operandi also runs contrary to blindingly simple logic where the South is concerned. Indeed, (and stunningly so), this was precisely the opposite rationale on which the Presidential and Parliamentary elections of last year were won. If this paradoxically skewed logic held true at the time and the Sinhalese masses had been inflamed by Rajapaksa communalism as easily as is now advanced, it stands to reason that such electoral wins, one upon the other, would have been quite inconceivable.

But for this approach to work now, the Government must keep a clean governance and Rule of Law record. It cannot follow on the same road as its predecessor with the solitary if not forlorn boast that things are better now because there are no enforced disappearances and critics are not killed. It cannot also condone political corruption and waste, hauling up only those of the previous regime before courts and other mechanisms.

Prevalence of stark contradictions
Most importantly it cannot allow structural impunity to continue. As rightly observed by international human rights monitors before the UN a few days ago, the lack of progress on the January 2006 extrajudicial executions of five students in Trincomalee, the shootings of 17 aid workers with Action Contre La Faim and the enforced disappearance of human rights defender Stephen Sunthararaj in 2009 are just few of many long pending cases. Uncomfortable questions in regard to lack of state arise in this regard.

And where the North is concerned, the contradictions are starker. A classic example was the approach followed by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in regard to the draft legislation on the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) at the time. Deflating rising public anger regarding the non-consultative process followed in finalizing this law, the TNA quickly intervened saying that they had examined the OMP Bill as it was at the time and that their ‘concerns’ had been incorporated.

But is this the way that a main political party purports to support the people of the North and East which it represents? The aim should have been exactly the opposite. The TNA should have insisted on an accountable public process. Its own documents in this regard should have been publicly available. This is indeed a duty of all political parties. Covertly filtering ideas through proxy research ‘institutions’ churning out ‘papers’ supported by generous donor funds simply does not provide solutions thereto.

Refraining from mindless parroting
Moreover, the careful interpretation fostered through a sympathetic media was that the OMP Bill (at the time) did not need public scrutiny as it was the ‘best that one could get’ in the present context.
In a missive sent out earlier this year to protesting groups by the Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms (SCRM) this same point was reiterated. In fact, the term ‘consultation fatigue’ was referred to. The sheer arrogance in this incendiary message was unbelievable, quite apart from being factually contestable on its merits..

And where the lack of consultations on the OMP process was concerned, all that was evidenced was a statement or two, some muttering in corridors and tut-tutting on phones, explaining in whispers that ‘yes, yes, we are urging greater process compliance.’

Indeed, when by chance, certain matters, including the sweeping Right to Information exclusion regarding confidential information received by the OMP, (without definition of the exact legal parameters applicable thereto), were critically examined in these column spaces, the outcome was surprising.

Entertaining a cynical quid pro quo
Clearly infuriated reactions completely disproportionate to the questions in issue surfaced almost immediately. Amused if not piqued by curiosity as to what warranted this defensiveness, further probing laid bare some unpalatable truths.

First it was clear that only lip service is paid to upholding liberal values of discussion and disagreement by some civil society actors. Rather, mindless parroting as to what ‘should be said’ to the exclusion of each and every other point of view has become the norm.

Thus, participants representing victims spoke angrily to a shutting down of their opinions at meetings on the transitional justice package. ‘We are not even heard; we are treated as if we are unimportant’ one activist said. This insularity and insecurity on the part of those who would wish one view to predominate is telling.

And the questions that arise in consequence are far graver. In this disquieting climate of political bargaining that prevails now, has the very idea of justice for victims lost its singularity? Is it that in this most triumphal phase of retreating from a darkness which once threatened to overall each and every one of us, there is a cynical quid pro quo at play which prefers to focus on political priorities rather than seeking answers for some of the most heinous human rights violations that this country has ever seen?

These are matters that should be at the forefront of stubborn public debate, from the North to the South.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

This newspaper’s News Desk has been following up on Public Health issues for some time, and their ongoing reports should raise concerns among Colombo residents, both the affluent, and the not-so, because of the declining standards in the monitoring of food establishments, from the humble ‘buth kades’ to the restaurants of five-star hotels.

There is a lot of debate about the delay in holding Local Government elections and whether the representatives of the country’s Municipalities, Urban Councils and Praadeshiya Sabhas should be elected under the proportional representation system, the old ward system or a combination of the two. There is, however, little debate on how many of these local councils actually work, and do their work.

The News Desk has been concentrating much of its efforts on how the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC), the country’s showpiece local council, operates, and especially in an area that directly affects its rate-payers and residents – ensuring food safety.

Only last week, it was discovered that a CMC Public Health Department worker had been admitted to the National Hospital with not only dengue but also with typhoid fever.

In Colombo, the underground water is polluted. Even five-star hotels use underground water to prepare food although under the Municipal Ordinance by-laws, water supply should be from the city mains. Many hotels use underground water to save on their water bill.

The sewer lines in Colombo are overloaded and prone to leaks that pollute the underground water supply. According to those in the know, residents in areas from Colombo Fort to Wellawatte, including those working in and patronising star class hotels in these areas are at risk of water-borne diseases.

Sicknesses such as hepatitis, typhoid, para typhoid, diarrhea and viral stomach ailments knock-on the belly of those affected for days, some getting treatment from General Medical Practitioners (GPs) and others even needing hospitalisation. Only Government hospitals provide statistics to the Epidemiology Unit so the real figures of those affected are not known.

At the bottom of this malaise seems to be major happenings at the Municipality’s Public Health Department with in-fighting, court cases and a privatisation programme in lab reports. These give a foul stench.

There is a need for constant checks on workers in all eating houses, including the bigger hotels, restaurants and even clubs, big and small. Only investigations can find the source of a disease so that preventive action can be taken. Medical examinations of eating houses is compulsory under Municipal by-laws such as the Food Hygiene Regulations, and what use are elections of councillors if they, once elected, do not supervise the implementation of these by-laws when they are practised in the breach.

The Tourism Authority also has regulations governing food safety. Its capacity to check on food relied almost entirely on the investigations carried out by the Municipalities and other local bodies around the country. It has been given this responsibility to protect tourists (tourism being one of the country’s major foreign exchange earners) but what’s the status when these local councils fall on their own responsibilities? Today, private laboratories, with questionable ability are tasked with providing these reports, something the CMC did on its own for more than 40 years, but now side-lined due to petty in-fighting and jealousies.

Most Sri Lankans have an in-built immune mechanism to cope with most germs they have grown up with. What of the unsuspecting tourist for whom an upset stomach can ruin his entire holiday?

The CMC, like many other councils, is no doubt, hard-pressed for human resources, with its Public Health Inspectors battling the dengue menace on the one hand. However, when the CMC’s Microbiological Laboratory, the regulatory arm gazetted by the Ministry of Health, has the professionalism and wherewithal to do the job, it is mind-boggling why its services are not used. As of today, the CMC hardly tests for Salmonella, Staphylococcus Aureus etc., any more – all food poisons and these are now handled by private labs which have mushroomed only in recent times. The fall-out on the entire food safety monitoring is to be expected.

When the whole country is talking about kidney disease, Creatinine tests for kidney patients, Hemoglobin tests for pregnant mothers, HbA1C for diabetes sufferers – and HIV tests have come to a standstill for the past 4-5 months and Pathological services for the poor heart patients are wanting. These constitute a serious situation. It is well and good to keep asking when the next Local Government elections are. These are mere political exercises. City Fathers (and now Mothers) are a dime a dozen. With the rapid construction boom and hundreds upon hundreds of high rise buildings and apartment blocks coming up, the strain on the water requirements and the corresponding drainage and sewerage capacities has to increase multi-fold.

With problems already existing, is the city ready for this explosion? The system needs fixing at the officials’ level – not the political level so much, before the public health systems completely break down in the capital city and the malaise spreads to the rest of the country, where it is not much different.

Rio: Run the good race

The world’s biggest sporting event, the Olympics, began over the weekend in Brazil, dogged by a host of internal problems and an eagle-eyed press fond of looking for negatives in an economically developing country.

Not that the last Olympics in London was without warts – till it happened. Delays there were aplenty in the preparations, and the British Army had to be called in at the 11th hour to expedite matters. Yet, the hype around Brazil ranging from political unrest to the construction delays to the crime and drugs scene to the Zika virus – and then, the doping scandal surrounding the Russian athletes has been one wet blanket after another thrown over the mega event which most Brazilians and the rest of Latin America were waiting to host.

Not surprisingly, the small Sri Lankan contingent received a ‘fond farewell’ from the Sports Minister and the National Olympic Committee head who have given them all the encouragement by saying; “Sri Lanka has no chance of winning any medals”.

The French news agency AFP ran a story this week on Sri Lanka’s only Olympic medallist in recent times saying how she has been discarded and her talents ignored by the athletics panjandrums over the years. That is how Sri Lanka’s sports administrators are across the board. For now, however; “Let the Games begin”. And the very best wishes to our contingent of nine competitors to keep the flag flying.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

The world is in serious trouble for superpower America has just fallen down a manhole and is in deep sewage.

For today this nation that boasts freedom of choice as her testament of faith and offers her people a thousand different branded potato chips to choose from plus another two thousand different tomato sauces to dip it in as evidence of the miracles her creed has wrought, has nothing to offer her electorate as her next president but a woeful choice between something akin to what the cat brought home and something which it had left half eaten on the sidewalk.

When the American two-party system finally decided on their respective candidates to do battle for the country’s and thus the world’s top most job, it was clear to all that America, once so brave and great, had fallen embarrassingly short of being able to make good on quality when it came to delivering presidential material.

This Tuesday when the Republican Party decided on its candidate with the Democrats having decided theirs a month ago, there was nothing to write home about but bad news and predict the descent of gloom to cast the world in darkness.

The pathetic choice the people have before them in this great democracy is between a flamboyant egoist Trump who seems to be on probation from a mental sanatorium trying to brand the country as Trump America and return her to apartheid; and a dowdy drab prim proper nanny Hillary – labeled by Brexit Britain’s Boris Johnston as ‘a woman with the sadistic nose of a hospital matron’ — who has emerged from a cuckolded nest and is trying to put the world right according to the pedestrian beliefs she carries in her handbag.

Come November 4th when the American people are called upon to elect their new president, they will find themselves caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. The fact that for the first time in the short history of the United States of America a woman is contesting the presidency has hardly caused a ripple of interest. It has been deluged by the terror waves that have struck the land from coast to coast over the now distinct possibility – even near certainty – that the next President of America may be the devil in disguise with his tail in the Oval Office and his trigger happy finger on the nuke button.

If the founding fathers of this once great land of the free and brave had thought it fit to appeal to the heavens in their national song by the invocation to God to save America, now is the time not only for its own inhabitants but for all mankind to start saying their prayers.

Thirteen months ago when multimillionaire Donald Trump, cheque book in hand and wads of dollars stuffed in his pockets, first broke loose from his executive TV office where he had been hosting The Apprentice’ and wooing his viewers with his catch phrase ‘You’re fired’, to announce his bizarre intention to contest the American Presidential election, he was greeted with jeers and laughter; and his impertinence to aspire to the zenith of the American political pole and play God to all humanity, was brushed aside with derision as the action of a rich crank, out to massage his already full blown ego with the balm of public attention.

But if its money that drives Americans, it’s also money that drives a presidential campaign. And Trump had loads of it to splash. Announcing he will finance his own campaign from his own kitty of 500 million dollars so that he is beholden to none, he turned the tables on Republican Party leaders by courting the rank and file Republican membership direct to vote for him in the primaries.

Though he sought the Republican ticket, the Republican leadership never embraced him, never encouraged him, never wanted him. Some even went to the extent of public disowning him. He was considered the rank outsider who had gate crashed the Republican garden party. But when he began clinching the states one after another and clinching them big, for instance, in New York, Pennsylvania and California to mention a few, it was time even for the staid Speaker of the House, Republican heavy, Paul Ryan to take cognizance of Trump’s existence and face the growing possibility that Trump will scoop the lot to become the unchallengeable candidate at July’s deciding Republican convention.

Even as the British public had disregarded their political leaders’ appeals to vote to remain in the European Union and had instead overwhelmingly opted to exist the EU, so did many republican party members choose to ignore the advice of their own party leaders to vote for the party ordained nominees.

Instead they voted for the party outcast who had gained entry to the race by throwing his dollars to purchase a ticket to run. Many who were expected to scoff the outsider surprisingly stayed to pray at the Trump built tower to Mammon.

He had stormed the Republican gates and it had fallen before his onslaught like a pack of cards. The unthinkable had happened and it still is. His slam dunks were becoming more regular and were becoming crowd pullers. As the embattled Republican knights watched aghast at the unfolding spectacle of their chosen white knights fall before the lusty charge of the dark horseman; and closed ranks to prevent the errant imposter to the Republican crown from gaining higher ground; it seemed there was no immovable obstacle they could erect to stop his unstoppable march to the Republican Convention and from there to the White House.

It seemed some inexplicable sinister power was inexorably drawing him to keep his rendezvous with destiny. And this Tuesday, Donald Trump trumped the Republican stakes to be named, against all odds, as the party’s official candidate for the United States presidency; and showed that the race was not to the swift Republican blessed steed nor the battle to the Republican ordained strong but time and chance happens to them all – especially if fed with the nourishing milk of the goat Amalthea through her broken though effective Horn of Plenty.

If God moves in mysterious ways, it can be now safely assumed, so does the devil.
Even as the ‘end of the world is nigh’ prophets of doom, who lined the streets in December 1999 to warn the world that Doomsday would dawn at midnight January 1st 2000 AD, are today busy rummaging through their garage boxes to find and resurrect their old placards and paint anew their slogan ‘we only got it wrong by 17 years’, so has the guardians of America’s Holy Grail of Christian purity ever under assault by the dark forces, risen en masse to equate the meteoric rise of Donald Trump with the prophesied advent of the Anti Christ and drawn the conclusion that both are one and the same.

The fact that Donald Trump has come so far is itself a miracle: if not wrought by God then by the fallen Archangel. Take a peep at his meteoric rise to be but a step away from the Presidency and to rule the world.

He has been married thrice: and if he becomes president he would be the first to hold the dubious honour. Only three other presidents in US history had been married twice. Ronald Reagan, Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. He has also been declared a bankrupt thrice. The last three US Presidents have all been relatively young when they were first elected presidents. Bill Clinton was 47 when he became America’s 42nd president. He is now 70. George W. Bush was 55 when he became America’s 43rd president in 2001. He is now 70. Barrack Obama was 46 when he became America’s 44th President. He is now 54.

As the potential 45th President of America Donald Trump will be 70 years old and may even find it difficult to stride up the steps of the White House without a puff and a pant with the same ease his predecessors jogged the stairs. He is also the only one who will not have had any experience in holding elected office. Inherited wealth has been his impeccable credentials and his tower of strength has been the foundation his father laid for him to build his dreams upon.

But not his marriages, not his bankruptcies, not his age and not his lack of experience in holding public office have been a bar to his phenomenal rise. Not the animosity of his own party leadership, not even the hostile press he has so far received has been able to put a damper on his upward climb? The more he puts his foot in the sinking sand of public opprobrium, the more he seems to rise.

So what makes him tick? Has he, even unbeknown to himself, the secret backing of Ole Nick?
Have the planets aligned in a malefic formation to set the Doomsday scene? Is he the chosen one, the Devil’s own, to push the troubled world, tottering on the brink of destruction, over the precipice?

What we are witnessing is a dramatic seismic shift in the world order.
The old order is changing and Trump, should he win the presidency, will be the catalyst of change. America has thrown off its ‘Mr. Nice Guy, Policeman of the World’ mask and is set to reveal its ugly face which it had for long concealed. It has ripped its white tuxedo and is intent on baring its tattooed chest. It has shuffled off its coil of decency, fairness, justice and equality and shown the core to be a satanic grotto filled to the brim with hate, bigotry, arrogance and intolerance.

It has dropped the pretence of polite speech but not lowered but raised its voice to blare out loud from Trump’s megaphonic mouth the megalomania of a neurotic nation stricken with the jitters. And it doesn’t care who’s listening. Should Trump make it to the White House, America is to go for the kill. And doesn’t care who – or how many – gets hurt.

The first speaker at the Republican Convention on Monday began his speech saying “Americans love their own country like no other people on earth”. In American eyes that may well be so and if it gives the American ego a kick to think their country is best and all agree it should be loved most, let them have that satisfaction.

The problem for the rest of the world, however, is that Americans not only love their own country most and confine their adoration to the limits of its own vast frontiers but also extend their ambits of unnatural ardour to love other countries in the world too: love them enough, however far flung they may be, to invade them, to place their jackboots on them, to install their puppet regimes to rule their beloved lands by proxy, to promise them protection from their natural enemies and millions of dollars in American aid to build their infrastructure destroyed by American brewed regional enmity, even shed precious American blood in return for the black gold and other untold resources America desperately needs to make herself so great and beautiful that her own citizens cannot but help love her the most.

But jealousy and possessiveness are part and parcel of love and often leads to war; and when the rich American suitor covets the sheik’s entire harem, it’s enough to make even the lowly Arab on his camel draw his dagger in despair and vow vengeance.

With the fall of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union on Boxing Day in 1991, the United States of America has been the dominant sole superpower. For forty five year since the end of World War Two the equilibrium of power had been maintained with the existence of these two superpowers, each armed with the nuclear deterrent. Both had power to destroy the world. But both had, as responsible civilized nations, the concomitant responsibility to safeguard it. But a power vacuum is always filled.

America’s embroilment in the Middle East may not have been possible had the Soviet Union been in existence. Thus though American troops marched into many Middle Eastern states and toppled obnoxious regimes with relative ease, continued occupation of those territories have become an American nightmare. The rise of al Qaeda which brought the terror home to American soil and its fall which has led to the mysterious emergence of ISIS are instances which demonstrate that the iron clad natural law always dictates a power vacuum – rightly or wrongly, for better or for worse – has always to be filled. And today it’s ISIS against the rest of the world. The only hitch is that ISIS, having no state to defend or borders to protect wields, like the nomad of the desert and the harlot in the whorehouse, power without responsibility.

With the western world gripped in fear and America struck with horror at the impotency of its matchless military arsenal to combat ISIS attacks and protect its citizens on home ground, Donald Trump has emerged to give amplified echo to the inaudible trembling voice of shivering America.

The gloves are off. With Trump on the rise and on the war path, ‘political incorrect’ speeches though still viewed with distaste, maybe in vogue the day after he is elected.

Trump’s answer is to meet terror with terror, hate with hate. He also plans to practise discrimination against the Muslims of the world indiscriminately. Anyone who is a Muslim will be banned from coming to America; and the Muslims already there will face ‘mass deportation’ if they do not have the necessary documents. What those necessary documents are, is yet to be defined.

And what of the Muslims who are citizens and have been so for years. Will they not become the victims of taunt and hate in a nation under Trump rule, condemned to the ghettos of prejudice on the basis of ethnicity and religion even as the blacks have been for centuries on the basis of their colour? And that is in spite of having America’s last black president currently in the White House?

Funnily enough, Trump, the man who may be the next president of America, is saying what successive Lankan presidents who faced Tiger terrorism had been saying all along. That Tigers were terrorists and had to be quashed. But then to the bleeding western hearts the LTTE cadres were freedom fighters, rebels with a cause, pussy cats to be pampered in cotton wool till they purred. But, for the purposes of record, it must be stated that no Lankan president, to his or her credit, has ever decreed that ‘All Tamils are terrorists’ in the manner that Trump has branded all Muslims as terrorists and announced his intention to ban their entry into the United States should he be elected President.

In less than four months, on November 5th the day after America goes to the polls, the world will know America’s decision? Trump, in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention yesterday said “Who would have believed that when we started this journey on June 16, last year, we would have received almost 14 million votes, the most in the history of the Republican Party?

But there are 146 million Americans eligible and registered to cast their votes on 4th November. And up their sleeve, they have the last trump card to play. Given the poor choice of burnt offerings on the table, it will be the hope and prayer of the world they will use it wisely.

Even if it is only to save America from Trumps’ fire to Hillary’s frying pan.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

China has been dealt a major setback this week at the United Nations-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, a tribunal established as way back as 1899 and to which 121 member states are signatories. The tribunal this week ruled in favour of the Philippines over the sovereignty of small but strategically significant and resource rich islands in the South China Sea. The tribunal held that China had “no legal basis” to its claim for “indisputable sovereignty” over these islands and dismissed its “historic rights” argument – something that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister (who is making similar claims over the Palk Strait) might take note of.

That the Philippines could have had the moral support of the United States to take this matter up at the world arbitration court is an inference one can easily make. China now rejecting the order as a farce and “only a piece of paper” displays the archetypical big-power attitude in ignoring the global rule of law that hitherto has been the exclusive preserve of the West.

Since the initial knee-jerk reaction, however, China has climbed down from defiance to wanting to discuss matters further with countries in the South China Sea region.

Sri Lanka got it right last week when the Chinese Foreign Minister made a surprise overnight visit to Colombo to lobby support for its South China Sea policy ahead of the tribunal order. The Prime Minister was to tell the visiting Minister that as an Indian Ocean country, Sri Lanka respects the UN Law of the Sea Convention and the freedom of navigation in international waters reflecting the country’s national interest without taking sides. It was the same during talks the Sri Lankan counterpart who asked that the issue be resolved by negotiations, so much so that, our Political Editor wrote last week how when the Chinese interpreter translating her Minister’s remarks at a press conference referred to Sri Lanka’s “supports” for China’s position, the Minister corrected her to say, “understands”, not supports.

On the one hand, China is genuinely concerned that the US has extended its maritime presence to the South China Sea joining hands with countries sharing coastlines in these seas fearing China’s rise as a global power. On the other, China itself has been extending its maritime footprint not only in the South China Sea which its opponents refer to as the ‘nine-dash line’, but to a ‘Maritime Silk Route’ concept that includes Sri Lanka and goes as far as East Africa.

In this context, China’s Colombo Port City Project clearly had designs other than economic. It was an unsolicited project — i.e. a project proposed by China. It is understandable why emotions ran high in India, especially when the Mahinda Rajapaksa Administration agreed to give the Chinese free-hold property within the Port City and when nuclear submarines of the Chinese Navy started showing up at the Colombo harbour, India had had just enough with the former Government. With the Sri Lankan Premier, the Chinese Foreign Minister not just wanted to realign the relationship between the two countries that had strained over several controversial unsolicited Chinese projects begun by the former Administration like airports and harbours, but the two also discussed Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflow from China to Sri Lanka before the visits of the Chinese President and Premier in 2017 to Sri Lanka.

China has clearly not given up on Sri Lanka and financing unsolicited projects in Polonnaruwa under the Maithripala Sirisena Administration is not for nothing.

Foreign observers as compromise

Two US State Department officials arrived in Colombo this week, hot on the heels of the Chinese Foreign Minister’s visit. The duo’s visit was described in diplomatic circles as “routine”, to show that the new-fangled relationship with the US under the present dispensation in Colombo was on track; one, to update the February Partnership Dialogue that was held in the US capital and the other to update themselves on the UNHRC Geneva Resolution and to see how well Sri Lanka was coping with implementing it.

That the US-SL Partnership Dialogue has yet to ‘take off’ at least in the area of substantial trade or FDIs favouring Sri Lanka seems to have begun to sink in to Sri Lankan leaders. Privately, at least, they ask themselves the question, why the Americans don’t walk the talk. One of the more contentious areas that the US visitors walked into, however, is that of foreign judges being part of the ‘domestic mechanism’ that the Government has committed itself to in the Geneva Resolution, to probe allegations of violations of International Human Rights Law.

There still remains a certain amount of confusion within the Government of National Unity in that the President is unequivocally opposed to foreign judges, while the Foreign Minister is equally adamant that the President’s opinion is only a view. Though sticking to the ‘domestic mechanism’ nomenclature, he says what it means is open for discussion. Into this debate has come the latest recruit to the Foreign Minister’s party. He was the Army Commander who saw the battle with the LTTE through in the last phase of the war. He says ‘foreign observers’ will be permitted. This might seem the ultimate acceptable compromise between the two positions.

The US visitors were coy about saying too much specifically on the subject and thus being accused of rocking the boat in the midst of this debate. Back home in the US, reconciliation between the minorities, particularly the ‘Blacks’ and the Establishment ‘whites’ has now reached a nadir. Old wounds have reopened. The human rights of the minorities are now, and again, the subject of killings, street protests, public debate and election campaigns. One might think that it was one reason for the two senior US diplomats to keep a low-profile role this time and not preach too much on Human Rights and Reconciliation given the goings-on in their own country.

Added to that is the worldwide demand, re-ignited after the Chilcot Report in Britain, calling for the then leaders of the US and Britain to be tried for crimes against humanity by unleashing the mayhem we witness in West Asia and parts of Africa today – 13 years after the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Hillary Clinton, the likely next president of the US, recently said she would be giving tax concessions to US companies that invest their businesses in the US and heavily tax those who start businesses in other countries. She criticised the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) Agreement grouping several Pacific Rim countries and said she would review other FTAs (Free Trade Agreements) which were not in favour of the US. What then of the US-Sri Lanka Partnership and FDIs from the US?

One could not envy the Government, cash-strapped as it is, pressured to implement tough fiscal decisions on the orders of the International Monetary Fund and having to face mass protests all over the country. It seems to be caught between a rock and hard place dealing with China and the US.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

AFP – It started with “Grexit” — the long trumpeted but never realised axing of Greece from the European Union. It was then reborn as “Brexit” as Britain started down the — this time voluntary — path of leaving the bloc.

The “-exit” formulation was coined by two economists from US financial giant Citigroup in February 2012 to describe the possible of departure of Greece from the EU.

It has now taken on a life of its own on social media, with eurosceptics across the continent all clamouring for their own vote on EU membership: – “Frexit “: French far-right leader Marine Le Pen called for a “Frexit” shortly after the results of Britain’s membership referendum were announced. “Victory for Freedom! As I have been asking for years, we must now have the same referendum in France and EU countries,” she declared on Twitter.

– “Nexit “: “Now it is our turn,” trumpeted Geert Wilders, the leader of the anti-Islam far-right Freedom Party (PVV) in the Netherlands, after Britain opted out of the EU. Wilders has promised to make a referendum on a “Nexit” a central plank of his party’s election campaign.

– “Oexit “: Austria’s version comes from Oesterreich, the country’s name in Austrian. And the idea is gaining ground in a country where far right party leader Norbert Hofer came within a hair’s width of being elected to the largely ceremonial but coveted post of president last month. “Outstria” has been suggested as an alternative.

– “Swexit “: The far right Sweden Democrats have floated the idea of a “Swexit”, with opinion polls suggesting support for leaving the EU stands at 31 percent.

– “Fixit “: Although the English version doesn’t quite hold the right connotations, a petition calling for a Finnish exit has garnered thousands of signatures.

– “Dexit “: The phrase has emerged in the Danish press, where the populist Danish People’s Party (DPP) has been calling for a renegotiation of its EU accords.

– “Gerxit “: It has appeared in French- and English-language media, but the idea of a “Gerxit” has little traction back at home in Germany. Though right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party Frauke Petry did describe “Brexit” as a warning to the EU. “If the EU does not abandon its quasi-socialist experiment of ever-greater integration then the European people will follow the Brits and take back their sovereignty,” he said.

– “Italexit “: A bid to leave the EU has also not gained much ground at home in Italy, a founding member of the union — apart from with the country’s most prominent far-right politician, Matteo Salvini. “Cheers to the bravery of free citizens,” the leader of the anti-immigration, anti-EU Northern League wrote on Twitter. “Heart, head and pride beat lies, threats and blackmail. THANKS UK, now it is our turn #Brexit”.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

Writing in the British newspaper “Guardian”, columnist Owen Jones gave a succinct reason why politicians in this country are trusted even less than estate agents, a breed that hardly evokes public confidence and respect.

Minister of Home Affairs Vajira Abeywardena claimed that it was the Public Service Commission that made Anusha Palpita’s appointment with the involvement of the Ministry of Public Administration and Management.

But this paucity has not changed the public perception of and trust in Sri Lankan politicians which is even lower than in Britain where, as the Guardian writer points out, it is at the bottom of the public popularity ladder.

I ended my column last Sunday asking readers to await the next thrilling episode of the appointment that never was, meaning the elevation in the official status of Anusha Palpita indicted several months ago for the misappropriation of some Rs. 600 million for the noble task of freely distributing sil redhi to Buddhists observing sil ahead of the presidential election.

I readily admit I was wrong. What happened in these intervening days was not thrilling. It was genuinely farcical. Never in recent times has one minister provided so many explanations in such a few days on a single incident.

I refer of course to the Hon. Minister of Home Affairs Vajira Abeywardena. Had Mr. Abeywardena been in the British cabinet he would have earned the prefix “Right Honourable”. Unfortunately (or very fortunately) in Sri Lanka such appellations are not available otherwise they would have been grabbed with alacrity.

Those who have followed the palpitating drama of the sudden resurrection of Anusha Palpita from his paid holiday in the ‘pool’ (or is it pool side?) to a high seat in the Home Affairs Ministry, might recall the minister’s early remarks about the appointment.

When the story of the appointment was first reported and protests from civil society organizations that had worked to bring the yahapalanayas into power followed, Home Affairs Minister Abeywardena put up a stout defence of Palpita like Rangana Herath did in the last test match though obviously not with the same success.

Abeywardena’s batting in support of Palpita was “Bombay looking, Calcutta hitting” as they used to say in days gone-by, that it not only confused the ‘fielding side’ but the spectators as well.

Such was Minister Abeywardena’s reactions to queries by the media and his own interventions at press briefings that the public naturally began to wonder which of the stories told was correct, whether they had characteristics of the tales of the fictional Baron Munchausen or whether they were that of a confused person trying to sell an explanation.

On May 23 he was quoted as saying that he studied Anusha Palpita’s “case” and there are no charges against him. He is not interdicted, the minister said.

“This case will be dismissed,” he said with magisterial portentousness and prophetic prescience. The very next day a news site quoted him saying that indeed there were charges against Palpita but they have not been proven. Then he added “At this rate all ministry secretaries must be guilty then”.

That last remark seemed a strange piece of logic unless Minister Abeywardena was saying that all secretaries were facing indictments for misappropriation of state funds.

Now the minister who boasted that he had studied Palpita’s case and said definitely that there were no charges against this man who has been indicated in the High Court for misappropriation of a massive sum of state money, was suddenly found changing not only his tune but the entire score.

A short while later he said there was no such appointment and it was all a media fabrication. If that was the end of this fast changing narrative one might even forgive him despite his blaming the media.

Oh no. Minister Abeywardena then claimed that it was the Public Service Commission that made the appointment with the involvement of the Ministry of Public Administration and Management, thereby hitting the ball far afield.

So then PSC steps forward and its secretary Gamini Seneviratne quotes a section from the Establishment Code which says that a public official who is facing charges of corruption etc in an on-going case cannot hold a position in the public service.

If he intended to educate the public he was far too late for this relevant section had been quoted by civil society groups and the media days before the PSC woke up to the fact.

Surely the PSC could not have been unaware of the fact that on September 15 last year Anusha Palpita and Lalith Weeratunga were indicated in the High Court. The story was all over the print and electronic media because it was a high profile case.

This pot of vicious broth was stirred some more by the PSC which claimed on Tuesday May 31 that the Ministry of Public Administration had informed the PSC “last Friday regarding the matter” and the Commission met on Tuesday to reach a decision.

It could not have been such a hard decision to reach. But what is of major concern here is why the Public Administration Ministry took over eight months to waken from its supine slumber and inform the PSC of the case when the whole of Colombo had been talking about it for weeks on end. Was it deliberate or a complete oversight?

Moreover does the PSC have to wait until it is informed or does it not have the power to be proactive and nudge an arm of the administration into taking relevant action? In these circumstances Palpita could have enjoyed his enforced holiday for months and even years while state institutions sat on their posteriors doing nothing.

While the PSC’s brain’s trust was preparing to meet in conclave on Monday May 30 our sister paper quoted the Minister as saying that Palpita was appointed by the PSC and transferred to his ministry by the Public Administration Ministry during the floods.

So it would seem that Anusha Palpita was washed with the flood waters along with flotsam and jetsam and deposited on the concrete floor of the Home Affairs Ministry as its additional secretary.

What was it that Shakespeare said in Julius Caesar? “There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Unlike the thousands of victims of the recent flood, Palpita will probably say a silent thanks for the floods that deposited him in the Home Ministry even if it was for a mere week.

That is not the end of this bizarre story. As though it was a carefully choreographed happening a team of 36 officers recently-inducted to the Indian Administrative Service were in Sri Lanka around this time to acquire a first-hand knowledge of administrative practices in the neighbouring country.

No doubt they did and if they are still laughing after returning home, would it surprise anybody. If Sri Lankan politicians play pandu so do some sports bodies whose reputations have fast sunk to the status of the politicos. That in a way is not strange as politicians have infiltrated sports organizations because there is power, influence and money in them.

Not all politicians at the helm of sports bodies were unworthy of their place. A former Finance Minister and leader of the LSSP Dr. N.M.Perera was chairman of the Board of Control for Cricket and served with great distinction. So did Gamini Dissanayake who worked assiduously to get test status for Sri Lanka cricket.

But there are many who are there for the glory and how much they could rake off from sports funds not for the improvement of Sri Lanka cricket but for self gratification.

A Sunday newspaper said last week that 13 officials are heading for London, apparently to witness Sri Lanka at cricket. No wonder there is so much public outrage at the cavalier manner in which persons holding temporary office shower themselves with the largesse that belongs to those who are genuinely committed to improving standards of cricket and in the proper administration of the game.

While the public would consider 13 officials going to London highly excessive what is even worse is that some of them are accompanied by their wives and even daughters. Why should Sri Lanka Cricket pay for wives and daughters? How do responsible officials justify this?

The news story did not say whether this rag-tag group includes their ayahs and house boys also probably travelling business class, but here again it would not surprise the public to know that Sri Lanka Cricket now carries excess and excessive baggage.

The story which as far as I am aware has not been denied, corrected or explained by cricket authorities gives a breakdown of monies allocated to each. Those who have said they will find their own accommodation (generally meaning staying with relatives or friends if not lodging in some dump) are being provided with huge daily allowances. For instance it is said that Mohan de Silva, secretary, will receive $400 a day for 10 days.

If all this is true then Sir John Kotelawala’s advice to ministers and others is being practised today with much enthusiasm and profit. Said the inimitable Sir John “Hande athey thiyanakan beda ganilla”(As long as the spoon is in your hand serve yourself).

If the previous lot could do it why not us, seems to be the rationale.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

The most recent population projections expect the Island’s population to reach 25 million by 2042 and 25.8 million by 2062. It is expected to stabilise around the mid 2060s at 25-26 million. This is a significant departure from earlier projections that expected population stability much earlier at around 23-24 million in the 2030s and to decline thereafter.

This higher population growth that is mainly due to the recent increase in fertility from below replacement level to above replacement level, poses serious social and economic challenges in education, health, care of the elderly, public finances and retirement benefits.

Twenty Five million
Prof. Indralal de Silva’s and Dr. Ranjith de Silva’s recent book, Sri Lanka: 25 Million People and Implications, Population and Housing Projections 2012-2062, presents comprehensive population projections for 2012-2062 incorporating the latest information revealed in the Census of Population and Housing 2012. These expect population growth to be higher than experienced in recent years.

Projected population increase
This standard population projection of the authors projects that the population would reach 21.3 million in 2017, 22.2 million by 2022, 25 million by 2042 and 25.8 million by 2062. The population reaches stability around the mid 2060s at 25-26 million.

This population projection is a significant departure from earlier projections that expected population stability much earlier at around 23-24 million in the 2030s and then begin to decline. This revision is mainly due to the increase in fertility from below replacement level to above replacement level in the past ten years.

Fertility
The revised population projections are different to those made several years ago since fertility trends have changed recently. The previous projections expected the country’s population to stabilize at around 23 to 24 million in 2025. This was based on the total fertility rate declining to below replacement level of 2.1 and reaching 2.0 in 2010. With the total fertility rate increasing to 2.4 in 2012-13, the population is increasing faster.

Growth of population
Since a large number of women will enter reproductive age in the next few years and the expected total fertility rate would be above the replacement level for some time, there is an in-built momentum for the growth of population in the next three to four decades. However, the rate of population growth will be on a declining trend and a near zero population growth rate would be attained after 2062.

Gender balance
According to the projection the sex ratio would favour females for the next two decades. However due to an expected improvement in male health in the next decade, and the elimination of some factors, such as the war that reduced male life expectancy in the past, male survival rates could improve.

The Sri Lankan population is becoming increasingly feminised. In the aged category, a high proportion is female due to their increased life expectancy compared to males. According to the authors of this book, female life expectancy today exceeds male life-expectancy by a wide margin as a majority of this female elderly category are economically inactive in contrast to males in the same category. This implies increased attention to coping with the increasing female aged dependents.

Migration
The out-migration of females, especially to the Middle East, and the transition from extended to nuclear families has led to inadequate familial care for elderly at home. The government needs to provide social security mechanisms for the increasing female elderly population. As the number of the elderly grows, the higher mortality among them would result in an increase in the crude death rate.

Population pyramid
The shape of Sri Lanka’s population pyramid has been changing rapidly over the years. This pyramid, which had a classical shape in 1981, changed into a pagoda like structure by 2012. During the interim period, the working age population grew significantly. The proportion of children (below 15 years) declined from 35 per cent in 1981 to 25 per cent in 2012. The declining fertility over the years led to the progressive decline in the base of the pyramid.

The number of children is significant when making projections on expenditure on education. This number that was 5.1 million in 2012 will increase to 5.3 million in 2017, remain fairly static for the next ten years, and fall once again to 5.1 million by 2032. Thereafter, it would be on a declining trend and drop to 4.4 million by 2062. This contrasts with earlier predictions of a continuous decline in the child population.

Unenviable predicament
Although this age structure transition was an expected phenomenon with society undergoing the demographic transition, what was unexpected was the increase in fertility that arrested the deckling child dependency. Sri Lanka is now in an unenviable predicament of both child dependency and old age dependency being high in the next few decades.

While the ageing of the population poses serious economic and social challenges, child dependency will not decrease as expected earlier owing to the increasing fertility. The proportion of females would be higher than of males and the labour force would not decline.

Problems and challenges
The new population projections that are different to what was expected earlier have to be taken into account in the planning of health facilities, education and social welfare, particularly the care of the elderly. The ageing population requires the enhancement of medical care for illnesses associated with ageing and the expansion of institutional homes for the elderly. The retirement schemes now in operation are limited in coverage, inadequate to the beneficiaries and a strain on the resources of the pension funds or the government. A total revamping of these schemes to make them more supportive of the elderly, while at the same time financially viable is a serious challenge facing the country. The continuing increase in the child populations means that maternal and child care and primary education will require adequate resources. These critical issues that must be addressed without delay if the country is to avoid severe social strains will be discussed in next Sunday’s column.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

Sri Lankan parliamentarians appear to have been moved to unseemly mirth regarding the floodwaters which devastated the country this week, causing more than sixty three officially reported deaths and thousands more missing, with even greater numbers rendered homeless and destitute.

Warranting a serious response
As sorrowful scenes were recorded across the island, the gravity of the deluge had yet to be taken seriously on the floor of the House. Indeed, as much as Atlas shrugged in the disturbing portrayal by Ayn Rand of capitalist and greedy businessmen projected as the real heroes of society, here too we may aptly say that parliamentarians laughed on the banks of the Diyawanna Oya even as the muddy waters came right up to the door of the Parliament.

These rude bursts of laughter were in response to Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe’s wisecrack on Friday that if the self styled Joint Opposition members had not engaged in coconut smashing rituals, this calamity would not have occurred. But the issue here surely warrants a far more serious response than such hilarity?

The sheer ineptitude of the Government in bringing relief and redress to the affected people is one facet of the problem. This was the recurring theme throughout the country as the displaced wailed before television cameras that they had not been helped by government agencies. No doubt, there were determined and selfless government servants who devoted themselves to the arduous task of flood relief but the stern commitment shown by the Government itself as an entity was certainly lacking.

Result of disastrous development
At an even more distressing level, there appears to be no acknowledgement of government policies and practices which have directly contributed to this flood devastation. Public officials are fond of advising people not to occupy lands that are susceptible to landslides and floods. Yet they conveniently forget the fact that much of this damage is done by politicians themselves. We are familiar with the ruthless acquisition of land by politicians for commercial purposes such as building hotels and the like. These are lands which should have been preserved for water retention purposes, both in major cities and elsewhere.

All these ‘projects’ were without environmental approval as obliging public officers rubber stamped acquisitions of land even (unbelievingly) in the mangrove marshes of Negombo. So as former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brothers profess sympathy with affected victims, it must be clearly understood that disastrous ‘Rajapaksa’ development was a major contributory factor to the present crisis.

Neither is the Government in power free from responsibility. Despite all the sanctimonious outrage regarding the Port City project when its politicians were campaigning for the popular vote last year, they have tamely acquiesced to continuing with the project minus some minor changes. This makes nonsense of the Prime Minister’s claim during electioneering that this project would devastate the coastal line from Colombo to Beruwala and that he would forthwith cancel the project if his party assumed power. We are not assured by the Government’s claim that environmental conditions have now been complied with. Quite apart from this, this Government appears unable to clean even a culvert properly. This is a breakdown of the provincial and local government machinery in a most essential sense.

Past warnings of such calamities
The dangers attendant on proper environmental safeguards not being followed prior to ambitious development projects being undertaken are now alarmingly evident. This week’s treacherous flooding of parts of the Southern Expressway, once praised as Sri Lanka’s flagship expressway project is a good illustration. More than a decade ago, this columnist was part of the legal team which challenged the shifting of the trace of the Southern Expressway from one route to a completely new direction. This shift was despite the fact that the relevant environmental assessment had not been properly carried out in respect of this new direction of the expressway named as the ‘final trace.’ This was in contradiction to the Central Environmental Authority (CEA)’s injunction that any changed route should avoid traversing through wetlands of the area.

The legal challenge was based on a number of factors including the risk of environmental damage if the changed route was adopted. At the time, though the Supreme Court before which the matter finally went on appeal, responded by awarding compensation to the petitioners whose lands had been acquired without following proper procedures, (SCM 20.01.2004), the judges balked at ordering a complete change in the routing of the expressway, probably due to the massive expense that this would involve.

However both in the Court of Appeal and in the Supreme Court, the crucial importance of conducting a proper environmental assessment was stressed. As found by a committee of judges appointed to undertake an empirical study of the affected area, the changes adversely affected property rights of poor villagers. Decision makers were put under a duty to consider all relevant environmental consequences and afford affected persons an opportunity to voice their opinion. As the Court of Appeal affirmed, ‘this fosters dialogue between decision-makers and involved parties, which is an essential pre-requisite of any development project for such project to have sustainability over a long period.”

Discrimination between the poor and the affluent
But in the years following this decision, even that bare judicial and environmental review of development projects went by the board. The impact of the Mundy decision on Sri Lanka’s political leadership, in so far as preventing ill planned development projects, has been negligible. This has ramifications for proposed expressways as well, including the Kandy-Colombo Expressway. A continuing failure to satisfy environmental safeguards presents a nightmare scenario of environmental devastation far worse than what was experienced in May.

This accentuates the profound discrimination that we saw a few days ago between the poor left stranded on the top of their houses, clutching pitifully meager belongings and the affluent. While the more privileged enjoy expressways should the less privileged be left to suffer such fates due to corporate and political greed ?

These are questions that should reflectively occupy our minds, quite apart from reaching out to the affected through relief provisions. And parliamentarians may perhaps refrain from hilarity when addressing this calamity which afflicted the country in these generally serene Vesak weeks. Surely this is the minimum that Sri Lankans should forcefully demand.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

The massive increase in the country’s foreign debt and its huge debt servicing costs are a severe burden on the economy. They are a severe strain on the public finances and external reserves of the country.

The current balance of payments crisis is very much due to this. Therefore bringing down the foreign debt is vital for reinforcing the external finances of the country and ensuring economic stability.

Increasing foreign debt
The nation’s foreign debt increased sharply since 2000. The increase was particularly high after the end of the war. The foreign debt that was US$ 9.0 billion in 2000, doubled to US$ 18.6 billion in 2009 and increased to US$ 21.2 billion in 2010. It more than doubled again in the next five years to US$ 44.8 billion in 2015. The increase in foreign debt from US$ 18.6 billion in 2009 to US$ 44.8 billion at the end of 2015 was an increase of 140 per cent.

Current debt burden
The foreign debt grew by a significant amount last year, from US$ 42.9 billion to US$ 44.8 billion. As a proportion of GDP, it increased from 53.6 per cent of GDP in 2014 to 54.4 per cent of GDP in 2015. Consequently, foreign debt servicing costs increased significantly in 2015, absorbing 44.5 percent of the country’s export earnings and 27 percent of the year’s earnings from exports and services. The foreign debt was more than four times the 2015 export earnings of US$ 10.5 billion.

According to the Central Bank Annual Report of 2015, both capital and interest payments increased in 2015. Capital repayments were US$ 3.46 billion in 2015 compared to US$ 2.32 billion in 2014. Interest payments increased to US$ 1.22 billion in 2015 compared to US$ 1.16 billion in 2014. The total debt servicing costs (capital repayments and interest costs) of US$ 4.68 billion was 45 per cent of the country’s export earnings in 2015.

Gravity of debt
Most worrying is the increasing trend in capital and interest payments that is expected in the coming years owing to the increasing foreign debt and higher interest costs. The Central Bank Annual Report for 2015 has warned of the increasing debt servicing costs:

“With the expected gradual increase in global interest rates and financing requirements” the debt service ratio is “expected to increase further” unless the inflow of non-debt creating financial flows, such as FDI and services exports are increased to compensate additional future borrowing requirements”.

Exports inadequate
Inadequate export growth has been an underlying reason for the increasing debt service burden. Whereas repayment of external debt and interest has more than doubled over the last five years, earnings from exports have not grown commensurately. As a result, the ratio of debt servicing to exports of goods and services more than doubled from 13.2 per cent in 2011 to 27.7 per cent in 2015. While debt service payments increased 160 per cent from US$ 1.8 billion in 2011 to US$ 4.7 billion in 2015, exports grew only 24 per cent from US$ 13.6 billion in 2011 to US$ 16.9 billion in 2015.

Fortunately workers’ remittances and earnings from tourism of nearly US$ 10 billion more than offset the entire trade deficit of US$ 8.4 billion in 2015. Remittances and tourist earnings were only slightly less than the total earnings from the export of goods (merchandise) of US$ 10.5 billion.

Economics of foreign borrowing
Foreign borrowing is not intrinsically bad. It can assist in resolving constraints in foreign resources for development. It could be an important means of spurring an economy to a higher trajectory of economic growth than its resources permit. However, it is important that foreign debt be incurred for developmental purposes.

Although it has been argued that 75 per cent of recent foreign borrowing has been for infrastructure development such as for power and energy, ports, roads, bridges, water supply, agriculture, fisheries and irrigation, most of these would have a long gestation period. The massive amounts of borrowing at high interest costs and long gestation periods heaped a huge burden on the country’s finances, especially external finances.

All infrastructure development is not necessarily justified from an economic perspective. Many infrastructure projects are not only hugely expensive, they also have a long gestation period. The benefits of some infrastructure investments in relation to their costs are doubtful. Some have been dubbed White Elephants. Infrastructure projects that either save foreign exchange or earn foreign exchange are the least burdensome on the foreign finances of the country. Prioritisation of infrastructure development on the criterion of their contribution to the country’s balance of payments is a prudent strategy for investment from foreign borrowing.

Resolving the problem
The large foreign debt and its servicing cost is a serious constraint to long term economic development and have serious implications for macroeconomic policy, economic growth and development. Ways and means must be found to reduce the foreign debt to manageable proportions.

The foreign debt can be brought down by generating a balance of payments surplus and prudence in further borrowing. Bringing down the trade deficit to below US$ 7 billion is needed to generate such a surplus through earnings from tourism and other services and workers’ remittances. Curtailing unnecessary imports is important to narrow the annual trade deficit, while export growth is vital. Monetary and fiscal policies should be mindful of their balance of payments implications.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been sluggish and inadequate. FDI was only US$ 0.7 billion last year. Increased FDI, especially in export industries, is important to expand exports. A political and business environment that is conducive to FDI would be most helpful in increasing exports.

With the IMF loan facility of US$ 1.5 billion, other expected foreign funds and better prospects for exports this year with the lifting of the EU ban on fish exports and restoration of the GSP Plus concession and increased tourism, it should be possible to achieve a balance of payments surplus of over US$ 2 billion that would improve the country’s external finances. This improvement must be used to reduce the foreign debt burden.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

Workers of the world – or at least in Sri Lanka – ‘Divide’. The rallying call of the International Workers, from the barricades as they romantically say, for workers of the world to ‘Unite’ is now a thing of the past. The interests of the working class have been submerged by the interests of the political class.

May Day celebrations in Sri Lanka are dominated by the politicians who have hijacked the occasion. They want to creep into every sphere of activity — be the centre of the universe. The world must revolve around them. They want to divide the working class and every professional class. Divide-and-Rule is their motto inherited from the colonial rulers of yore just so they can survive – and so they will as long as there are lackeys in these classes willing to sell their soul for a mess of pottage.

Today’s May Day is a test of political strength, especially between the Maithripala Sirisena faction and the Mahinda Rajapaksa faction of the same party – the SLFP. The former is desperate to win over the party faithful. While every effort is being made, every sinew exerted, to cajole by way of ministerial portfolios, government jobs and even enlisting the support of those rascals who were at the bottom of crooked deals during the previous administration, the Rajapaksa faction has seemingly the support of the grassroot membership of the SLFP. The Rajapaksa faction feels that their party was deprived of total control of the incumbent Government by the defection of those who formed a National Government with the UNP.

What has all this to do with today’s May Day? Nothing. Trade unions are already up in arms with this Government. The GMOA was the first off the block with its work-to-rule which was met with a ferocious response from the Prime Minister, no less. Now the Prime Minister talks of Sri Lanka being the ‘hub of South Asia’ and as he does, so workers who are at the port, the gateway to this hub are threatening strikes in protest against the minister and the chairman, two brothers in charge of the port. During a pre-Avurudu work-to-rule there were 42 ships anchored out-harbour as shipping lines looked to India and Singapore as alternate routes. Telecom trade unions are threatening action and the JVP says May Day is only a prelude to a General Strike.

Around the world, this day is marked differently. Some countries show off their military muscle on this day. In Britain, junior doctors are already on strike so too the airports in Germany this week. Violent street protests against Labour reforms are taking place in France. In Europe there is a major issue brewing over the pay gap between men and women for the same work; as wide as 31 per cent on average in favour of men.

In Sri Lanka politics overshadows worker issues.
Three categories of persons are largely ignored on this Workers’ Day. Firstly, the unemployed. There’s no day dedicated for the ‘Jobless’, whose numbers, according to official statistics stand at half a million. The under-employed – those with part-time jobs swell the ranks of this group. Secondly, the farmer community that is usually left out of the proceedings on May Day. And last, but certainly not least, the overseas Sri Lankan workers without whose remittances this country would be on the brink of economic collapse by now.

These three categories will be of least concern to the country’s political leadership today. Their argument will naturally be that to do anything for them one must first win political power. But when they do get that power, often riding on the shoulders of these very persons to whom promises are solemnly made, promising them the sun, moon and the stars, they still do very little, pre-occupied as they are with staying in office. This Government is no different to its predecessors from the looks of it.

There is also the need to provide employment for skilled and unskilled labour in this country in view of a huge shortage. The construction industry is facing an acute shortage in the midst of development plans that are on-going and in blue print form. Young men prefer to be tuk-tuk drivers these days, lament industry sources. The latest Central Bank report released just this week says that there are 635 public institutions providing technical and vocational education and training and some 718 registered private institutions and NGOs also offer courses but add that the availability of both skilled and unskilled labour in the market “had worsened”. There is a skills “mismatch” in the labour market, the report adds.

The Youth Affairs Ministry statistics for student enrolment for Vocational Training is as gloomy. Of those following courses in Technical Education and Training under the Department of Technical Education, there’s a drop-out rate of 30 per cent. In the National Apprentice and Industrial Training Authority the drop-out figure is between 20-30 percent. Has there been a study as to the reasons for this?

Asked what it had to offer the workers today, the Labour Minister had little to say except to hark back to the Rs. 10,000 wage increase for public servants and the minimum wage of last year. On the other hand, there is a different kind of present on offer; an increase in VAT (Value Added Tax) on several items that will hit the workers and un-employed alike in the solar plexus. The people are being asked to underwrite and pay for a bloated, obese, top-heavy Government.

Many are the arguments for and against the imposition of a higher VAT. The Finance Minister originally had ideas of to replace VAT with some other, unknown to many, tax. He wanted to change the tax regime, but only he and a select few knew what on earth it was going to be. Fortunately for all, the rest of the Government shot the idea down and stuck to VAT as the ‘known devil’.

The crux of the issue is that the Government Treasury is broke. But whether the Government should have moderated the proposed VAT hike, say by only a 1 % increase and brought it to the 2014 level of 12% is something the Government could have easily defended.

A reasonable VAT rate of 12% (not 15% as will be the case post-May Day) coupled with further cuts in uneconomical domestic capital expenditures (which is large in the 2016 budget) plus pruning of profligate recurrent expenditure on government ministers etc., could have achieved the same goal of keeping the budget deficit below 5.4% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Last year, the same Government reduced VAT as a populist measure because of a looming election, knowing the General Treasury was broke. Yet, it had nothing to show for it in the form of lowered prices; much like the drop in petrol prices last year did not see tuk-tuk fares become any cheaper.

The people have learnt from the Government how not to lower prices merely because the taxes are lowered. That benefit accruing to them by a lowering of taxes is not passed down to the consumer or end-user. After all, everyone knows world oil prices have fallen but the Government is not pegging its prices to the lower world market price.

On the other hand, a Government increase like VAT will see a quantum leap in retail prices. Unscrupulous retailers take undue advantage of such tax increases to increase their profit margins and blame it on the new tax. It is not a case of one for all and all for one as is the workers slogan on International Workers Solidarity Day. In Sri Lanka, it is each for each and God for all.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

The world was shaken up this week with the leaks of the ‘Panama Papers’ exposing the financial shenanigans of world leaders, past and present. They showed how such leaders of men, women and nations and their business side-kicks hid their embezzled wealth in tax havens around the world and thereby avoided paying taxes in their respective countries. They enjoyed the good life with their monies stacked in offshore banks, some using shell companies with front-men as the account holders, while their fellow countrymen and women were asked to pay their taxes.

This was an instance of cross-border journalism taken to a new level. A ‘whistleblower’ first providing a German newspaper with the original leak; the newspaper then contacting the New York-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) for assistance, and after two years of research by a team of as many as 400 journalists worldwide poring over an incredible 11.5 million internal documents and 2.6 terabytes of data spanning 40 years, more data than the Wikileaks that exposed US diplomatic messages, the Snowden Intelligence files, the Luxembourg tax files and the HSBC files combined — came up with these astounding revelations.

It was a stupendous achievement in journalism – a new version of Watergate – and a great embarrassment to political leaders worldwide. It has blown the lid off hidden wealth and corruption in countries across the globe even though some of these companies and accounts are legitimate ones.

Heads have already begun to roll, while others are fighting with their backs to the wall. The Prime Minister of Iceland has already thrown in the towel as the leaks showed his wife to have hidden undeclared wealth in an offshore company avoiding taxes in her country. Iceland faced a major economic slump a few years ago and Icelanders were sent reeling into economic recession –and this is what their political leaders were up to. The British Prime Minister is in an embarrassing situation with evidence that his rich father operated an offshore company for 30 years without paying taxes in the UK and the PM was a direct beneficiary as a share-holder. The Russian President is accused of having such overseas accounts through a business oligarch and the Pakistan PM is answering questions about his children’s offshore accounts. The President of Ukraine has been named. In China, the official word is “no comment” to questions about its own leadership, the emirs of several Gulf states are on the list, and the list continues to unfold.

The question in this country is; are any Sri Lankans on the list? Whether that is the case is yet to surface. This week websites erroneously ran a list of Sri Lankans named by the ICIJ. This list was not from the ‘Panama Papers’. Panama is a notorious tax haven very much under the influence of the US. Those in the shipping industry are familiar with the fact that the Panama flag is used on vessels that have no nationality. Sri Lankans are likely to have invested their monies in the tax havens of Europe (Gibraltar, Virgin Islands, Luxembourg), West Asia (Dubai) and Hong Kong, not so much in the Caribbean or Latin American countries.

The latest revelations have shown a dis-connect between the rulers of many countries and the people – even in western democracies, and a growing resentment and frustration against the political and business elites by the ordinary citizen; the gulf between the political set and the ordinary members of society has indeed widened.

The news of politicians and businessmen spiriting out money and parking them in shell companies or offshore banks is not an entirely new phenomena. Sri Lanka’s police have investigated cases that have ended up as far as a ‘B’ Report, but it has not proceeded further. Sri Lankan courts were not long ago briefed of a case involving a businessman who ran a web of companies and was found guilty by the Supreme Court of Gibraltar of holding US$ 200 million (Rs. 3,000 million) in an account illegally. Even though Presidents past and present have been informed of such transactions nothing has been done to bring to book the persons involved, nor to see that the country got the monies back. Why? Because these businessmen are too entrenched with the political leaders of Sri Lanka – and vice versa – from all sides of the political divide – paragons of virtue otherwise, who just cannot buck the ‘system’; political leaders who are the recipients of the largesse of a part of this undeclared wealth, by way of what is euphemistically called ‘party donations’ or ‘political contributions’.

These businessmen are fond of boasting how the country’s political leadership is in their pockets and already the new Government is beginning to face accusations that it is old hooch in new bottles; it is ‘business as usual’.

It has something to do with the country’s political system; in fact, it is the ugly side of democracy and elections and electioneering. Politicians need money for politicking and the country has no in-built mechanisms to control the purchase of politicians. It is a well-known fact that the biggest bribe-takers in this country are the mainstream political parties.

Years ago, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike speaking in the State Council supporting a resolution brought to impeach six councillors for bribe-taking said that only the small man is sent to “ravenous wolves” for bribes while everything is done to protect the influential. More recently, President J.R. Jayewardene sacked a fairly innocent MP from Hewaheta for getting involved with a gold smuggler. A more powerful minister was also sacked for interfering in a tender, only to be brought back as the Speaker. Nowadays, politicians protect themselves from investigations by jumping to the governing party that is looking for a majority in Parliament and corrupt businessmen are insulated from prosecution by insuring themselves by hiring powerful politicians and making ‘party donations’.

Even if the ‘Panama Papers’ disclose the names of Sri Lankan political and business hot-shots, it will only be of titillating news value to the public. The mud will not stick for long and a public anaesthetised to such happenings will not be in for too great a shock.

In the wake of the ‘Panama Papers’, the US President referred to tax evasion (illegal) – and tax avoidance (legal but unethical) as being a major issue for his country’s economy. How much more then in economically developing countries like Sri Lanka.

In the face of all that is going on, when well-known business leaders are holding advisory positions in Government ministries – and only past administrations rogues who do not have entre’e to the current political leadership are being hounded, it is justifiable for people to ask why there are sacred cows still roaming free. That is why Bribery Commissions and FCIDs all put together are fast losing their credibility as effective anti-graft vehicles.

When this newspaper revealed a previous ICIJ investigation into Sri Lankans with Swiss bank accounts in violation of the Banking Act, the Money Laundering Act and all the Central Bank and Inland Revenue laws, Government leaders conferred on what to do – how to at least bring the money back – and decided – to do nothing.

But the ‘Panama Papers’ was a moral victory for investigative journalism the world over. In our increasingly digital world, a pen-drive is enough to obtain gigabytes of hidden information about hidden wealth. And at least that ought to be an element of a deterrent to the world’s political and business leaders creaming the fat off the land of their birth.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka