Ceylon Today Editorial

LG Elections and Beyond

18 September 2016

With information being leaked about the possibility of Local Government elections in early 2017 at least one report emerged from former President Mahinda Rajapaksa's visits to South Korea and Malaysia hinting at meetings with Chinese connections, which Rajapaksa has to date not denied.

President Sirisena and Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe have apparently decided to go for it rather than wait for the Rajapaksa-led Joint Opposition to muster more support to contest that election.

But this time around, unlike when he had Chinese President Jinping flying to Colombo on the eve of the 2015 Presidential election, the ball is in the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe court to woo the electorate to back them at the next LG polls.

While Sirisena has been overtly populist, the Premier has been economically pragmatic, preferring to deal with hard facts, impose taxes to boost government revenue to liquidate Rajapaksa-bequeathed debt burdens, and give the populace some relief only where it has been economically feasible to do so. That's his brand of pragmatic economic management...calling a thing by its name and telling the people the truth but simultaneously giving them some small relief by way of wage hikes and price controls on a range of common, everyday 'kitchen' essentials in every ordinary man's household. To the contrary, Rajapaksa's economic theory and practice was limited to insanely high infrastructure funding at enormous interest rates from China, and illogically ill-advised cuts in costs of electricity, kerosene, diesel and petrol which he failed to see would not percolate down to real costs at retail consumer levels.

Ranil sticks to economic pragmatism and that means that in the long run it will be the all-important IMF and WB, plus the US and EU markets who will hack Ranil, and not Sirisena, when the nation has to vote at a general election next.

Sirisena has said a few times in the very recent weeks that he aims working towards ensuring that 'An SLFP-led Government will be elected next'. What we have today is an UNP-led Government. In other words Sirisena wants that order reversed and hence the UNP will be contesting the LG elections and a general election on its own while the SLFP will also contest sans members of the UPFA.

The US and EU, IMF, WB and ADB are fully behind the government. But chop that down to size....they're all with Ranil Wickremesinghe and not with the SLFP faction in the government.
It would seem that Wickremesinghe and his UNP have more global financial muscle than MR's solitary Chinese, Russian and a negligible Pakistani backing.

When Jinping visited Colombo just before Mahinda called his ill-timed Presidential election, it was clear even then that China had misgivings that Mahinda could clinch victory two years hence because of fast-declining popularity and Beijing wanted him to go for it immediately rather than lose later.

Beijing was proved right. The Chinese Embassy in Colombo had its ears to the ground 24 x 7 and led Jinping to push Mahinda into hasty elections, so hasty, that even his then acting Defence Minister Maithripala Sirisena himself advised him strongly against it.
Western interests still did not have confidence that Ranil could clinch the overall majority vote at a presidential poll and it would have been a hectic couple of months before the 'west' was sure of CBK's backing to get a fair slice of UPFA votes for Sirisena in addition to the UNP, Tamil and Muslim votes to ensure Rajapaksa was sent home in the groundswell of UNP, TNA and Muslim support.

This time around all those votes could go to Ranil and the UNP with a splintered SLFP floundering and barely having its nose above water.

That Jinping did come to Colombo to lead Rajapaksa much more deeper into an irrevocable Port City and maritime cooperation commitment with suggestions of mammoth aid, led Rajapaksa to take the plunge and announce unsustainable revenue losses by throwing out reductions in electricity and fuel prices. Ranil is today struggling to rectify those so-called pro-populist economic measures. They were not pro-populist in fact, they were defeatist, and Sirisena is making the same mistake because they are clearly retrograde and deprive the State of vital revenue to import social needs such as pharmaceuticals and consumer commodities not produced in this country.

If Jinping's uncalled-for visit was not an overt show of Chinese interference and deep involvement in determining the socio-political fate of Sri Lanka, then we do not know what Jinping's visit was all about.

Weekend Nation Editorial

Sustainable garbage disposal method needed

18 September 2016

The residents of Ja-Ela and Ekala have launched a massive protest campaign against the government’s move to relocate the Meethotamulla garbage dump to Ja-Ela in terms of an undertaking given by the Colombo Municipal Council to the Supreme Court.
This was the result of a fundamental rights petition filed by the residents of Meethotamulla seeking a declaration from Court that the proposed expansion of the dumping site was an imminent infringement of their fundamental rights.

The petitioners had cited the CMC, Urban Development Authority, Western Province Waste Management Authority, Central Environmental Authority, Kolonnawa Municipal Council and the Attorney General as respondents.

The campaign is supported by Archbishop of Colombo Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith and the Catholic Church on the ground that it will contaminate the water bodies and pollute the entire Ja-Ela area.

The unfortunate thing is that the government’s move is far from a solution to the issue as relocating the garbage dump is only an attempt to shift the problem to a new area instead of resolving it.

The gravity of the issue is evident as Meethotamulla garbage dump which has been there for quite some time has already caused immense health problems to the people in the surrounding area. As reported, around 30 people of the area have already died due to dengue, rat fever, skin diseases and kidney problems.

As petitioners in the fundamental rights case had pointed out there are more sustainable solutions other than dumping of garbage in open areas which could bring an end to this problem, but such measures are not being taken by the respondents.

It is true that from time to time the idea of converting garbage into usable forms of alternative energy and fertilizer has been discussed. Many times we have heard that some foreign companies together with local partners also had submitted proposals for such garbage disposal projects.

However, due to some reasons, none of these projects have taken off the ground and in fact many of them have been shot down by various parties as non-feasible but without proposing any viable alternatives to the problem.

It is also no secret that garbage disposal, especially its transport is a huge business and there have been allegations that local government officials often work in collusion with transport business and they prefer to continue dumping garbage in their favourite sites.

Some developed countries like Japan have long been using sustainable methods of disposing garbage with advanced technology to convert them into energy and fertilizer. It’s time for the government to come up with a universally- accepted solution to the growing problem of garbage which is closely connected to urbanization. The problem which is currently acute in Colombo and suburbs could become a serious issue through out of the country with rapid urbanization.

Sunday Times Editorial

Non Alignment: Will Lanka abandon principles

18 September 2016

Not many seem to have noticed it; nor would any to have missed the news; but the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) began its 17th Heads of Government summit yesterday.

Sri Lanka, a one-time chairperson of the now 120-member nation Movement, the second largest grouping to the United Nations Organisation, was not represented by either the President or the Prime Minister, nor the Foreign Minister who instead was in the US capital speaking at a seminar on the Oceans. Sri Lanka was represented by only a wanna-be Foreign Minister clearly sending a strong signal that the Movement had served its purpose, outlived its usefulness and was of little significance to the country anymore.

Once a front-line member of the Movement, Sri Lanka opted for the non-aligned path in the country’s foreign policy since its inception in 1961 on the back of its predecessor, the Afro-Asian Solidarity Movement. In 1976, Sri Lanka became the Chairperson of the Movement, the zenith of its stature in world affairs and in the thick of the ‘Cold War’ between the then super-powers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Former President J.R. Jayewardene who privately said that there were only two non- aligned countries in the world and named the United States and the former Soviet Union, publicly said that non-alignment was “the silver thread than ran through Sri Lanka’s foreign policy”. Has Sri Lanka exited the Movement for all intents and purposes, and even more so, abandoned its long cherished non-aligned principles in its foreign policy?

This year’s summit was in Venezuela, with a Government that is rabidly anti-US on the one hand, and on the other, economically in ruin, with a population overflowing to neighbouring Colombia in search of food. The Venezuelan Government has had to shift the conference to the isolated Margarita island so that mass protests could be avoided around the venue. That bad is the situation in that country.

When Sri Lanka hosted the NAM summit, the domestic situation was not a picture of prosperity either. The economy was in shambles. Shortages were galore; textile queues, rice rations, exchange controls – and the Government of the day faced angry public criticism that while the people were starving, the Government was hosting a ‘Beggars Banquet’, an unkind reference to the leaders of several poor nations attending and being hosted to gala dinners.

The Non-Alignment principles however survived in Sri Lanka, as did the ‘Cold War’. In 1979, Sri Lanka passed the baton to Cuba, not the most non-aligned of nations given its long battles with the United States. The NAM’s last chairperson was Iran, another virulently anti-US country. Sri Lanka’s then President urged his soul-mate the Iranian President to establish a ‘New World Order’ without spelling what it was, but Iran was too embattled with US-imposed sanctions to care about giving leadership to NAM.
What then is Sri Lanka’s foreign policy? The post-January 2015 Government has realigned the anti-West stance adopted by its predecessor, and in the process also reset its one-time criticism of China, hugging that country at least with one arm when the previous Government did it with both.

The Prime Minister spelt out his approach to foreign policy in a recent speech in Singapore on the subject of the Indian Ocean (ST2 cover page of September 4) – which is the most strategically important aspect of Sri Lanka’s foreign policy, where he called for a ‘New Indian Ocean Order’ where no one nation-state in and around its waters plays a dominant role. That should indicate a Non-Aligned foreign policy.

And yet, does it all mean that Sri Lanka has ended its affiliation with the Non-Aligned Movement – 55 years after it was founded?

…and the world, the Movement

Does Sri Lanka’s distancing itself from the Non-Aligned Movement with its secondary presence at the summit in Venezuela this week, together with the absence of the Indian PM and many other Heads of Government – even the UN Secretary General giving it a skip this time — mean it is the end of the road for the Movement?

NAM was born in the height of the post-World War II ‘Cold War’ period when a host of nations in Asia and Africa regained their Independence. The common history of centuries of colonial rule and the oppression that came with it, brought the Nehrus, Nkrumahs, Titos, Sukarnos, Nassers and our own Kotelawelas and Bandaranaikes together.

If the Non-Aligned Movement was to tackle the post-colonial political issues, the momentum it gathered in the 1960s and the 1970s saw the collective bargaining on economic issues through what was known as the North-South dialogue; the pressing for a better deal for the poor South from the rich North. The vehicle for these changes was the United Nations which was then seen as the protector of the weak and the meek.

The Group of 77 (countries) sprouted, pressed the arguments on behalf of these newly independent countries. They became a formidable economic force to be reckoned with. This saw the emergence of UN agencies like the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the like. Sri Lanka played a major part in this period of contemporary world history. Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike moved for the creation of the World Fertilizer Fund (WFF) in Rome, which Sri Lanka co-sponsored later in a joint resolution with New Zealand at the UN General Assembly in New York in 1974. It was to create an international fertilizer supply scheme managed by the UN agency, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Alas, as Leelananda de Silva, an eminent public servant of yesteryear who served the Sri Lankan Government and the UN for 35 years later says in a book he has just released, these Third World initiatives did not last long as the economically developed world of the North kept opposing and obstructing these initiatives, and countries of the economically developing South kept abandoning the principles of joint action and solidarity to curry favour individually with the countries of the North.

This week, a British Parliamentary Committee report found the then British PM David Cameron and the then French President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of making a mess of the military intervention in Libya in 2011. Earlier, the Chilcot report found ex-British PM Tony Blair and the then US President George W. Bush Jnr., invading Iraq illegally; all of them jointly and severally have brought continued suffering to the world in general and West Asia in particular. The Non-Aligned Movement’s collective voice is mute in the face of all that is happening to many of its member-states except for the many resolutions that would be passed in Venezuela this week.

On the economic front too, UNCTAD and like-minded Third World-led initiatives have given way to the West-dominated World Trade Organisation (WTO) and more of its ilk. With the emasculation of the Non-Aligned Movement, just when most of its members see the UN being dominated by the West, and when its collective strength is most needed, the motto applicable to the Movement of “All for One, One for All’, now seems more like “Each for Itself, and God for All”.

Sunday Observer Editorial

Wanting the Moon

18 September 2016

The latest antics of government sector doctors, or at least those active in their association, namely the Government Medical Officers' Association (GMOA), need some public reflection. They ask for special privileges over and above those privileges already granted to them - in this case the automatic allocation of high standard schools for their children wherever they might be located in the country.

Two key components of our now world famous social welfare system were, and yet are, the free education system and public health system which have been major contributors to this country's social achievements that long preceded its subsequent economic rise to middle income status.

The medical profession perhaps more than any other profession is positioned at the conjunction of these two social benefit structures: doctors attain their career status through free education and then move on to be key actors in the free healthcare system that has enabled Sri Lankan citizens enjoy a standard of health far better than other underdeveloped countries.

For this to happen, more than most professions other than, perhaps teaching, the doctors have had to fit into strict requirements that first tied them to state sector careers and further, subjected them to deployment to wherever the state system wanted them to serve. This included postings to remote parts of the country often minus basic modern comforts, requiring long journeying from hometowns, and distancing from family and friends. Opting out of the State health system, before completing their mandatory service, meant the payment of a fee as a token reimbursement of the public investment in their medical training.

Nevertheless, this has not reduced the decades-long 'brain drain' of medical professionals fleeing their island home for more affluent lifestyles for themselves and their families. This exodus continues.

Their yeoman service to their country notwithstanding, this doctor migration cannot and should not be used as a lever to force even greater social privileges from the State. The threat of abandoning their motherland is nothing more than a holding to ransom the very society that the doctors swear to protect and nurture as disciples of Hippocrates.

The demand for allocation of high standard schools for their children is a demand for unfair privilege when other sections of society do not have such access. Well, not all other sections.

The country's elected politicians actually lead the way in grabbing and further grabbing such unfair privileges, from numerous special allowances for basic facilities over and above their tax-free official salaries, to the right to sell their duty free vehicle import permits, to the right to give jobs or recommend state sector jobs to their followers or kin. With our political leaders leading the way with such social privileging, doctors may well feel justified in demanding the moon.

Coal versus Development

The recent decision to abandon the Sampur coal power project is being hailed by some ecology protection groups as a 'victory'. However, without a viable model of energy production for economic and social development, this may be a hollow victory.

After all, the dangers of coal-fired thermal power generation have long been known: from immediate health risks and environmental pollution to long term increase of heat in the biosphere, namely, global warming. The perils of global warming are, actually, no longer a 'long term' hazard but are now a short term prospect, with Earth temperatures already acknowledged as higher and climate changes already occurring.

As that eminent think-tank, the Club of Rome, warned in the 1980s, if everyone wanted to emulate the lifestyle of an affluent city like Los Angeles, USA, then the Earth will not be able to sustain human civilisation. There are physical limits to growth imposed on us by the planet on which we have no choice but to live.

Today, even as we abandon the long awaited coal power project in Sampur, the country faces a shortage of hydro-electric power due to the lack of rainfall. Actually, as our energy experts will tell us, it is less the lack of rainfall rather than the huge rise in power consumption.

Two things have happened since this country saw the successful establishment of a strong hydel power system in the 1970s, thanks to our engineers' visionary planning and, the sagacious expediting of power development projects by the late President J. R. Jayewardene, whose 110th birth anniversary was marked yesterday. By the 1970s we were boasting of the possibility of excess power that could be exported to South India.

One of those two things that happened was the rapid expansion of industry and services - again, thanks to the late J. R. Jayewardene's market economy liberalisation. The burgeoning of the economy, especially of the manufacturing sector, resulted in a massive rise in energy consumption to serve this economy. The second thing was the growth of the population which rose from 14.7 million in 1981 to just over 20 million by 2000.

Thus, even if the economy's need for energy could have been met by the hydel power sector, the sheer expansion of the population meant that both the economic consumers as well as the domestic consumers of energy need to be now satisfied.

The quick answer to this was cheaper coal power, relying on coal imports. Even at the time Norochcholai was conceived and then pushed through, it was already being acknowledged that coal is not the long term answer. To date, the louder voices discussing energy alternatives have focussed on alternative sources of energy - sustainable energy. Wind, nuclear, and solar energy have all been extensively debated but a solution, in terms of an economically viable energy sources, is yet to be found, whether in this country or globally.

Far less discussed is the possibility of a brake on energy consumption and changes in the pattern of energy usage. As the Club of Rome pointed out long ago, we should not fantasize about affluent cities that grew by simply ignoring the issue of sustainable energy - as well as 'sustainable' everything else!

It is time that the national debate begins to include an exploration of fresh models of 'development' in which social goals of affluence and wholesome economic life can be envisaged differently with less emphasis on mere affluence and super-abundance of goods and services and, more emphasis on sustainable and, reasonably enabling, standards of living.

Our ecology protecting think-tanks should focus on models that balance both energy production as well as consumption. This means a radical shift away from simplistic, growth-based models of development. Let our anti-coal champions lead the way to a solution.

Sunday Island Editorial

Crops and fertilizer

18 September 2016

 

We hope many of our readers both read and digested the very thoughtful article published last Sunday on "Whither goes our Agriculture" written for the "kind attention of our President, the Government and the people of Sri Lanka." The authors including a clutch of retired Directors of Agriculture belong to an organization started last year called the Association of Retired Officers of the Sri Lanka Agriculture Service (AROS) with a membership of around 80 including 27 PhDs, as many or more holders of the MSc degree and graduates and specialists in various disciplines including soil science, plant breeding, entomology, chemistry and a host of other sciences. Many AROS members have experience in agricultural work. It is not necessary to labor the fact that these persons, though now retired, literally know their onions.

In the interest of pragmatism, AROS had kept the number contributing to the final document which we published to less than 10 and these included five former Directors General of Agriculture and two Additional Secretaries who handled the subject. Many former Provincial Directors, Regional Directors and other senior professionals, no doubt broadly subscribing to the viewpoint presented, were not included. What they wrote about was the proposed legislation to ban the import of chemical fertilizers, exclusive use of organic fertilizers, the banning of pesticides and increasing the extent under traditional rice varieties. They warned that such action could lead to a large reduction of crop production and farmers’ incomes and soaring food prices. As large a group as AROS cannot be waved off as a chemical fertilizer or pesticide lobby with vested interests in continued import these products which undoubtedly have an environmental impact. Nevertheless, there has to be a balancing of harmful effects with the positives and decisions that are in the best interest of the country must be taken.

This newspaper and others have in recent years widely published articles written by Ranjit Mulleriyawa whose premature death recently is a great loss for our country. At the time he passed away he was spending most of his time living among communities affected by chronic kidney disease of uncertain aetiology that has cost so many farmer lives in the dry zone over a period of many years. He worked indefatigable trying to find a solution to their problem primarily by harvesting rain water safe for drinking. Mulleriyawa who sometimes used the very appropriate pseudonym rangoviya for some of his articles and had an email address with that name was a truly remarkable man who lived the life he preached. He had worked for many years running a small dry zone farm after taking his BSc and Master’s degree from Los Banos in the Philippines where the International Rice Research Institute that developed the so-call ‘miracle rice’ in the sixties was located. He was for a short period an Agricultural Instructor (AI) in the Department of Agriculture. Gamini Seneviratne, Mulleriyawa’s schoolmate at Royal, wrote in a recent tribute that he was barred from not only a Research Officer’s position but even from one of Experimental Officer. "I was then in the Ministry of Agriculture but could do nothing to help him in the face of the departmental bureaucracy which did not want him even as an AI," Seneviratne wrote. Mulleriyawa has done some very useful recent work on kidney disease among dry zone farmers believed to have ingested toxic chemicals with their drinking water and his findings must be utilized in the decision making relating to the importing of banning of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

The AROS group has said that chemical fertilizers are not harmful to human health and other living organisms provided their quality conforms to specified standards and is used in correct amounts. (Emphasis ours). There is no doubt that these fertilizers have been used successfully to increase crop production and farmer incomes in all countries for over a century and the group says that it is unaware of a single country that has banned the use of chemical fertilizers to protect human health. There are undoubtedly questions on whether there is overuse of both fertilizers and pesticide in Sri Lanka with plenty of anecdotal evidence to back this claim. For example earthworms of play a major role in soil fertility have diminished greatly in this country probably due to toxic chemicals associated with fertilizers and pesticides. Time was when a single mammoty stroke even in an urban back garden yielded dozens of squirming earthworms and ants feeding on dead worms were a common sight. This is now no more the case. But whether there has been reliable empirical work on overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, we do not know. But we do have research institutions dealing with the major plantation crops and the Department or Agriculture with a long and proud history that can come up with some answers.

Undoubtedly the use of organic fertilizers must be maximized and AROS has pointed out that the Department of Agriculture is fully committed towards the promotion of Integrated Plant Nutrition Systems which include optimum use of locally available organic manures together with chemical fertilizers for all crops. However the group says that the available quantities of plant nutrients in organic manures alone are totally inadequate to meet the crop nutrient demand. It has warned that banning the import of chemical fertilizer will lead to sharp drops in crop production, shortage of food in the country and lower incomes for farmers. AROS has further contended that if chemical fertilizers are banned to protect our people from consuming toxins, we should also ban the import of wheat flour from Canada, milk powder from New Zealand and chilies, onions and Masoor dhal from India as those countries liberally use chemical fertilizers.

The deeply troubled tea industry already suffering from a labor shortage has been hurt by the recent controversial ban of the import of the weedicide Glyphosate. All weedicides and pesticides are no doubt toxic; we are all familiar with some of them being ingested to commit suicide. But the pluses and minuses of these actions must be carefully weighed and the authorities not be stampeded into hurried precipitate decision making on these matters. We are glad that a senior scientific group with long experience and service in the agricultural sector has public spiritedly chosen to speak out. The expertise of such people in all disciplines must be tapped for the benefit of the country and they should be encouraged to express their viewpoints in matters affecting national wellbeing.