Ceylon Today Editorial

HAVE WE FORGOTTEN TO BE HUMAN?

09 October 2016

The plantations sector strike has ended after a 12-day turnout that ended in a whimper for the hapless workers who in the end got a measly Rs 110 daily wage increase from the plantation bosses. The increase brings their minimum daily wage, provided they work 25 days a month, to just Rs 730 a day.

The Plantations claim the strike had caused a Rs 1,000 million loss, most of it in foreign exchange that would have normally been export returns. That works out to less than Rs 100 million A DAY FOR THE 12 DAYS. That computation would give us an aggregate earning of just over Rs 2,500 million over a 30-day month.

The wage increase works out to an average of less than Rs 3,000 a worker a month. For 200,000 plantation workers that would come to an increase of roughly Rs 600 million a month.

Let's assume that the total export revenue for 2016 will be Rs 30 billion on this computation of
Rs 1 billion for 12 days.

Let's also assume that the wage hike of Rs 110 a day for 200,000 workers amounts to roughly Rs 7.2 billion for this year. That's roughly around 20 per cent of projected revenue of Rs 30 billion.

But let's also not forget that we have 1.2 million dependents of plantation workers who will depend on that mere Rs 110 a day for a better life style.


If we assume that each plantation worker has three dependents that works out to five people comprising one family expected to have a better quality of life on Rs 110 a day.

THAT WORKS OUT TO THE HANDSOME SUM OF Rs 22 A PERSON IN AN AVERAGE PLANTATION WORKER'S FAMILY.

So we've had a 12-day strike that puts a mere Rs 22 in the hands of a breadwinner to improve the quality of life of just one of his children.

A news feature carried in this paper today gives a passing glance at the lives of these hapless plantation workers. But as we have just pointed out, the State and private plantations sectors have just given a breadwinner on a plantation, Rs 22 more per child. God forbid that breadwinner also has a mother or an old father to support.

Unions are accused of having cut a deal with employers to match parochial political agendas. That does not concern us in this 'land like no other' as the former regime was fond of referring to Sri Lanka.

You can say that again! and again! and again! For in what other nation, does a worker has to awake at the ungodly hour of 4 a.m., hike a cold mountain and pluck 20 kilos of tea leaves and stage a 12-day demand demonstration to get just Rs 22 a day more to make a loved one's life better?

Our news feature quotes a trade union leader plaintively say that the plantations sector must also not forget that it's its moral duty to ensure the wage earner, whose sweat has enriched the soil of the plantations, has a progressively improving quality of life.

If Rs 22 is all that can be given to help improve the quality of life of a plantation worker's loved one a day, in terms of today's market prices, a plantation worker can just barely manage to buy an extra 500 grams of Salaya to feed 5 to 6 dependents. That would, as any feline lover would tell you, work out to just about two little fish per person a day, when culled, amounting to just a table spoonful of fish, per person.

That's pretty reminiscent of the saying that 'Without a rich heart – Wealth is an ugly beggar.'

The plantations industry walked away from the negotiating table with a victory over the striking workers, smugly satisfied at victory over a legitimate and just human need, a want, a crying desperate need for a better life.

We do not know what the exact maths about the measly wage hike works out to for the plantation owners, private and State.

But there's an indictment of human nature here, of a humane sensitivity to another's want, which has somehow got lost in the drive for maximizing profits. Not that there is anything wrong in that, or illegal or even justiciable.

But, we're talking of being human here, of being sensitive to the just cry of the downtrodden, the exploited. That, after all, is the holy grail of journalism, the humane defence of the defenceless.
We're talking of not allowing the world of business and finance, of economic affairs, to thwart what must essentially come from a human heart, a rich human heart.

Was the victory pyrrhic then? It would seem so when one visualizes a poor plantation wage-earner's kid look pathetically at two little fish on his dinner plate.

Wealth oft is an ugly beggar!

Weekend Nation Editorial

Racism and politics

09 October 2016

There is a general belief that when people are educated they tend to rise above race and religion. They link up in many ways and find common grounds for friendships that last long. All that is in their private lives and when it comes to politics they cannot afford to be so. This was well articulated by the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa when he met a group of journalists from the Tamil media organizations recently.

When a journalist raised the issue of alleged racist statements made by Northern Province chief minister CV Wigneswaran, Rajapaksa said that the chief minister he knew was not racist, but one must not forget that he is doing politics. Thus he admitted that racism is part of Sri Lankan politics.

All this shows that racism, communalism and even religion are important factors when one has to play politics. In politics, hardly anyone seems to be honest but they know how to play these emotive issues in a way to get the maximum support from the people. So much so that even Donald Trump has been accused of using racist talk in order to increase his vote base.

But is there any justification to use these racist sentiments in a country which has suffered enough due to racist and divisive politics? Thirty years of war, a blood bath and destruction of both assets and economic opportunity and the present plight of the country are all examples that are defined to prove the negative impact of racism and divisive politics on our country.

In every multi-racial country there is a racist political fringe, but major political parties cannot afford to be openly racist as they need everybody’s vote to succeed in politics.
However, a small party or a regional party can afford to take a communal line and that is why Wigneswaran despite his education and background as a former Supreme Court judge has suddenly thought of playing on racist and divisive sentiments of the people to upgrade his political standing among the northern folks.

But the real issue before the country at this critical juncture of rebuilding and reconciliation is how to stop the new wave of racism in politics especially when the key politicians behave in an irresponsible manner creating a fertile ground for communal politics.

Sunday Times Editorial

Lessons from Colombia

09 October 2016

In the faraway continent of Latin America, a peace treaty between the Government and a rebel group has been rejected by the majority of the people.

The Government of Colombia and the ‘Revolutionary’ (a euphemism sometimes for a terrorist group) Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) agreed to a ceasefire and signed a peace package that included land reform, jobs, subsidised agricultural support, light sentences for senior guerrilla commanders and seats in Congress in return for a cocktail of issues including the stoppage of murders, kidnappings and bombings, and disengagement in the country’s notorious narcotic trade.

But the ‘No’ vote pipped the “Si” vote at a referendum and now the Government is desperately trying to salvage the peace accord that was to end more than 50 years of civil strife in that idyllic South American nation – the oldest running civil war in the world. At one time in its recent history, Colombia was split into three parts – one part run by FARC, another by narco drug cartels led by the infamous Escoba, and the Government controlling only one part of the country. No one was spared – from senior Government figures to ordinary folk, people were getting killed like flies in their thousands. There was an exodus of Colombians to neighbouring countries that had imposed visas to restrict the inflow of refugees. It was a situation far worse than what prevailed in Sri Lanka. The Colombian Government almost lost control of the state apparatus; anarchy was rampant.

There were striking similarities too with Sri Lanka of yesteryear; mostly, the scourge of terrorism.

With the end of the cold war, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Marxist-Leninist FARC lost its sponsorship (somewhat like when India closed the tap on the LTTE after the assassination of its one-time PM Rajiv Gandhi). Then came a heavy-handed regrouped Government military campaign against the guerrillas in their jungle hide-outs and the killings of their senior leaders. Hit from both ends, FARC moved in desperation to the lucrative cocaine business seeking funding which raised the ire of the United States to which most of the drugs were exported.

FARC realised, however, the end was nigh, and went into peace talks with the Government brokered interestingly by one-time adversaries, the US and Cuba. Even the Pope hailed the peace accord and on Friday night the Colombian president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Why then have the people of Colombia rejected the peace accord? Do they not want peace? Or is this not peace with honour? Do they not want reconciliation and a united Colombia?

The answers are not straightforward: the peace deal was promoted by the elitist liberal-minded “good guys” at the centre of power, while the ordinary people saw things more cynically. The latter felt FARC was a spent-force anyway, gasping for breath. They felt the guerrillas would rot in the jungles and were getting off lightly for the atrocious crimes they had committed over decades. The reign of terror they had unleashed had got under the skin of the vast majority of the people. Reconciliation with these ‘murderers’, they felt, was a pipe-dream.

There is a point of departure here with the situation in Sri Lanka. The LTTE is completely vanquished. It does not come into the equation now as a terrorist group. Reconciliation is not necessarily objected to by the vast mass of the people of Sri Lanka, but devolution of power is viewed with extreme suspicion in the South. The recent ‘Eluha Thamil’ (Rise Tamil) uprising, if one can call it an uprising, has only raised or rekindled those suspicions.

These demonstrations in the North organised by those now having the freedom to engage in democratic politics with the defeat of the LTTE, and the vituperative and racial language used only helped stoke the dying embers from the ashes of the LTTE. In the circumstances, it would be naïve for the Government to pack up its Security Forces and Intelligence units from the North and leave just yet.

The scuttled Colombian peace accord and the West Asian peace accords of the past have shown that the International Community (usually the West), whether having its own agenda or however bona fide is divorced from the ground realities and wishes of the majority of the people. The Brexit vote earlier in the United Kingdom also showed very clearly that these days, the people are reluctant to trust their Governments – even if they voted them into power and place.

People paying for colossal blunders

It was announced this week by the Minister of Finance that the people of this country will have to fork out as much as Rs. 25 billion for aircraft that were ordered by the previous Government for the national carrier, but which are found to be of no use to the debt-strapped airline.

This payment had to be made in default of a contract signed for what the new dispensation at SriLankan Airlines say were long-haul aircraft not needed for the airline’s current routes. What the people could do with this money is mind-boggling. While the Minister maybe somewhat exaggerating when he says we could have built another Mahaveli project with that money, he makes the point. How many rural schools can have science labs, hospitals have the equipment they so desperately need, in fact the airline could have even run for months without further burdening the Treasury, giving discounted tickets in the process.

The Minister, however, did not say who was responsible for this loss – and if so, why nobody has even been questioned for this order, leave alone charge-sheeted and put behind bars if found to have made a buck out of the deal. On the other hand, the airline’s incumbent Board has swept things under the carpet and rejected any criminal liability for those responsible for this terrible miscalculation.

There has been a history of bungling by state ventures that has escaped the scrutiny it deserves. Soon after the Central Bank bombing in 1995, the UDA together with Ceylinco launched a joint project to re-design the Colombo Fort area as a Financial Centre with a Government-backed guarantee to a US company, Evans International. The Government reneged on the contract and ended up paying some US$ 450 million as compensation – for nothing. In the CPC oil hedging case, more than Rs. 8 billion was paid to foreign commercial banks and millions were lost in counsel fees and travel for arbitration proceedings. In the Greek Bonds case, again millions of US dollars amounting to billions of rupees were coughed up. Where are those responsible for these colossal blunders?

The Supreme Court went into some of these dubious deals, but those responsible got off scot-free without even going to Remand Prison for a week, while those going in now seem to have committed ‘petty theft’ in comparison. How have the corruption busters got their priorities in such a tangle?

Sunday Observer Editorial

Beyond the SAARC Summit

09 October 2016

Even as Sri Lanka smooth-talked her way out of the SAARC Summit to be hosted by Pakistan this year, our Prime Minister was reminding the region that cross-border insurgency was not limited to the Indo-Pak situation but was a phenomenon that affects or has affected most SAARC member states and is one that should be squarely on the regional agenda.

If certain other SAARC member countries directly attributed their withdrawal from the scheduled Islamabad summit to the recent 'terrorism' incidents on the Indo-Pak border, Sri Lanka did not. Rather, our Foreign Affairs Ministry, adroitly timing the pronouncement till after the withdrawal by certain other SAARC members, informed the current SAARC chair, Nepal, that the current controversies over participation and exchanges between member states made conditions unsuitable for the holding of the summit meeting at present.

In doing so, Colombo has done its best to indicate to the regional community that its move was prompted by larger regional concerns and was not a siding with either India or Pakistan over a single incident. The Prime Minister, who was addressing the New Zealand Parliament prior to his Delhi visit, was unequivocal about Sri Lanka's specific interests in the geo-politics of her location: "The security and stability of the Indian Ocean is a prerequisite to enable legitimate economic activity to preserve the maritime environment and seabed. These geopolitical realities require that Sri Lanka build strong bilateral relations with its fellow South Asian members and the Bay of Bengal members of ASEAN."

In no-nonsense terms, the Premier was telling the world and our South Asian neighbours that SAARC could only succeed if pragmatism allowed selected contentious issues to be brought on to the formal Association agenda rather than be swept under the carpet for easy manipulation by individual states as levers against neighbour. After all, Sri Lanka, too, has experienced such cross-border insurgency that almost divided the country but could not be addressed by the regional body.

The Prime Minister has boldly gone a step further to envision alternate intra-regional and inter-regional relationships should SAARC continue to fail or to remain hostage to manoeuvres and pressures arising from bilateral tensions. The whole purpose of a regional body is to transcend bilateral relations to build a regional identity that enables greater consensus and a higher-grade common discourse facilitating multiple channels of interaction among member states.

What Mr. Wickremesinghe has made clear is that Sri Lanka, pragmatically, cannot forget where she is located and, consequently, is determined to make things in our neighbourhood work. His speech is a wake-up call to SAARC members to go beyond inter-country power play. As our own, ancient, South Asian political science traditions tell us (to paraphrase Kautilya), even as our immediate neighbours could be seen as rivals and competitors, they also remain neighbours and need to be dealt with in as many ways as possible and cannot be ignored. It is we who will lose if we ignore our neighbours and merely attempt to look further afield for our supportive community.

Thus, even as free trade agreements with countries beyond our own region are useful and could even be key factors in our progress, it is our neighbours, being neighbours, who can play the bigger role as our intimate supportive community. Hence, ties with India remain crucial for Sri Lanka's long term prosperity and stability.

Inherent in Colombo's outlook, as expressed by the PM, is the underlying logic that in inter-state relations - whether bilateral or multilateral - it takes two to tango. ETCA can only succeed if it is wholly mutually beneficial. Likewise, trust-building between member states for the strengthening of the regional body can only come when collective participation can occur free of arm-twisting and bullying.

What Delhi has previously taught other South Asian states is the sophistication of a big power which is able to show restraint in the face of provocations by smaller powers on the one hand and, on the other, display a generosity through unilateral concessions for the purpose of cementing trust and friendship. The greatness of a regional power is affirmed by its civilisation - that superior capacity to transcend immediate self-interests for the common good and, purely in compliance with moral principle - what Sage Kautilya calls 'dharma'.

Likewise, Colombo must take its evolving geo-political strategy - after a decade of non-strategy - to its logical end in terms of its own security interests. Our little island can never be a 'big power' in the Indian Ocean. In terms of our regional role, our military capabilities, both air and naval, need to emphasise long range surveillance and economic security rather than military strike capabilities against other states. At the same time, drawing on our past national experience, strengthening of our internal security remains a major task. Thus, the glamorously expensive supersonic fighters, main battle tanks, long range artillery and other big power hardware is not for us - except for those seeking big commissions, as in our recent past. Our last internal war was successfully brought to a close not by such weaponry but by medium-scale and mobile hardware like MBRLs and ground attack helicopters.

Ideally, even these national security considerations should mesh with evolving regional security arrangements, because in this globalised world no single country can look after itself. Thus, cross-border insurgency is only one irritant that needs multilateral discussion while other issues such as cross-border pollution, natural resource-sharing and nuclear fall-out are all queued up for our South Asian community to take up. For some of these, there are already shining examples - like the Indus River treaty - that can be emulated for our common good.

Sunday Island Editorial

Some frightening numbers

09 October 2016

Last week’s newspapers were crowded with reports on the mind-boggling penalties loss-loaded SriLankan Airlines will pay for the cancellation of the leases of four Airbus A350 aircraft. An AFP report we run today quoted official sources placing the figure at around US dollars 115 million. This obviously is not small beer by any consideration. The present management of the airline wishes to concentrate on its regional short haul destinations and discontinue several long haul flights to Europe. The popular London flights offering the convenience of a non-stop connection against cheaper fares offered by Middle Eastern competitors involving a stopover at their hubs will continue, presumably because they are viable.

There is no doubt that particularly Airlanka, the predecessor of the present national carrier, was largely responsible for bringing modern aircraft and airline technology into this country. The fact that we had our own airline when the July 1983 riots blackened our image internationally, and many foreign airlines flying here discontinued services, enabled us to ensure the survival of our tourist industry on which substantial investment had been made over a long period of time. While the decision of airlines that had long flown here to stop coming to Colombo was a heavy blow to tourism, the fact that we had our own airline prevented us from being totally isolated. Although five-star hotel rooms here became available for as little as 20 and 30 dollars in those dark days, tourism survived and is today demonstrating a growth momentum identifying it as among the biggest economic drivers of the times.

The technology that Airlanka brought into the country and the experience gained by thousands of Lankans privileged to work for the airline enabled the acquisition of skills and abilities that have enabled a very large number of our people to find jobs not only in this country but overseas. These ranged from stewards and stewardesses, aircraft engineers and mechanics, ticketing and catering staff and many more. From a backward airline boasting it was accident free in a small but well located country, we were able to take a great leap forward towards modernization thanks to the decision to set up that airline, utilizing the goodwill that the J.R. Jayewardene government was able to mobilize in Singapore. This enabled the harnessing of the proven expertise of Singapore Airlines to develop Airlanka and we were able to make remarkable progress. Obviously there was no free lunch and Singapore Airlines also wanted to take advantage of the relationship. Eventually there was a parting of the ways with an arrangement with Emirates that came in as an equity partner and manager to follow.

The former president did not do himself any good by appointing his brother-in-law, a former planter, as Chairman of SriLankan Airlines; likewise the setting up of Mihin Lanka, bearing a diminutive of his name, without any kind of commercial or financial rationale. The public perception, for valid reasons, was that an airline spending billion on re-fleeting was a hotbed of corruption. Buying aircraft involving the expenditure of the kind of bucks that were being spent for the purpose obviously opened doors for kickbacks and commissions and most people had no doubt that big money was being made on procurements. Tight controls that are necessary in these circumstances were nowhere in evidence. There were strong doubts on whether the country was getting the best deal for its money. Having sold a stake in the airline to Emirates, the inflated egos of the powers that were, aided and abetted by sycophants who only muttered ehei hamaduruwane whatever the royal desire however stupid, an arrangement that was profitable to both partners was terminated. Emirates obviously saw prospects in the company as it increased its stake, albeit modestly, by buying employee shares granted free, gratis and for nothing to the airline’s staff, from whoever was willing to sell. The end came after the Emirates appointed CEO was kicked out for refusing to bounce paid passengers to accommodate a royal retinue on a flight.

The new regime, typically, appointed the one man Weliamuna Committee to find out what has been going on in the airline. There was a lot of whistle blowing in response to its invitation for information and the committee, whose work was necessarily not as in-depth as the situation warranted on account of a tight timeline among other reasons, came up with a report. But even such a preliminary investigation surfaced a lot of material, some of it salacious, for further inquiry. But nothing seems to have been done since with no bloodhounds unleashed to get at the culprits. The government has sensibly come round to the viewpoint that no more public funds can be poured into a bottomless pit and is looking for a partner to take a 49 percent stake in the airline with the buyer given management control. This is similar to the previous arrangement with Emirates for the termination of which President Mahinda Rajapaksa has not been brought to account.

Any new arrangement will obviously necessitate the government (read taxpayer) assuming responsibility for the airline’s existing debt or a big chunk thereof. There was a Reuter report last week that about half a dozen parties are interested suggesting that despite the depressing figures that emerged last week the airline still offers some value. After a previous management downsized its payroll to reasonable proportions through an expensive voluntary retirement scheme, a new government merrily added more recruits to the airline bloating the numbers above the previous level! SriLankan can be properly run as has been previously demonstrated by a board headed by a respected and capable civil servant that included such personalities like the late Lal Jayasundera of Hayleys. But travel perks attract freeloaders appointed by political patrons to the board and it is unlikely that the political powers that are have the backbone to do away with such pernicious practices.