The Island Editorial

JO and May Day

21 April 2017

 

Political parties are making grand preparations to hijack the International Workers’ Day again. The Joint Opposition (JO) says it will hold the biggest May Day rally. (Other parties are equally confident.) All signs are that workers’ interests will be subjugated to those of politicians this year, too. What the working class desperately needs is certainly not political muscle flexing in their name but having emerging challenges and threats to their interests addressed on the day dedicated to their cause.

There cannot be a bigger threat to workers than the frightening prospect of losing their EPF benefits or part thereof. Speculation is also rife that the government is mulling over a new tax on the EPF at the expense of workers. The Central Bank (CB) Monetary Board inquiry has revealed that the EPF has lost as much as Rs. 10 bn due to the much-investigated bond scams; highly respected CB professionals have also confirmed this fact which was also highlighted in the COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) investigation into the bond controversy. So, what is needed now is action against the culprits and it is the bounden duty of the Opposition to take up the issue and crank up pressure on the government to bring the culprits, who are members of the ruling cabal, to book. A former minister was arrested and remanded for weeks for allegedly misusing state vehicles, but the bond racketeers who have caused a staggering loss running into billions of rupees to both the state coffers and the EPF are enjoying legal immunity as it were. Had there been such incriminating evidence against any member of the previous regime, he or she would have been arrested by the Sri Lankan version of Gestapo, the FCID (Financial Crimes Investigations Division) and remanded without bail.

The unfolding yahapalana drama reminds us of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, The Animal Farm, where farm animals revolt and get rid of their owner only to have pigs arrogating to themselves all the power and becoming ‘more equal than others’. It hurts the people who expected a clean break from the political culture that prevailed under the previous dispensation to see the self-proclaimed champions of good governance and their privileged chums remain above the law and line their pockets with impunity just like their predecessors. Ironically, they have had to bank on the bad guys who were ousted in 2015 for bribery and corruption, abuse of power and the suppression of dissent to act as a countervailing force against the yahapalana administration. They are left with no alternative but to set former thieves to catch new thieves!

The TNA, which leads the official Opposition, has reduced itself to a regional party. Its raison d’etre is apparently to rid the North and East of the army. Regrettably, it has not made use of its position to reach out to the people in all parts of the country by way of bridge building. The JVP has been running with the hare and hunting with the hounds so much that it now does not know whether it is running or hunting. While making a lot of noise about the bond scams it has craftily ensured that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s name does not get mentioned in the report issued by the COPE, headed by one of its MPs, on the issue. It acts out of expediency rather than principle and, therefore, cannot be expected to go the whole hog to make the bond racketeers pay for their sins and return the money the EPF has lost, preferably with interest.

Most of the trade unions are affiliated to political parties and the leaders of the so-called independent ones have also sold their souls to politicians. They, too, cannot be expected to address the issues troubling the working class.

So, people, especially workers, are dependent on the JO, for want of a better alternative, to have their burning problems addressed effectively. The JO has to take up cudgels for them without leaving them in the lurch. That is the way it can prove that it has not struck any deals with the UNP to go slow on issues such as the bond scams and the resultant EPF losses. If the JO wants to expand its support base and evolve into a formidable political force instead of remaining an influential pressure group it has to fight for the rights of people without limiting its campaign to efforts to protect the interests of the Rajapaksas and bring them to power by engineering the downfall of President Maithripala Sirisena. The upcoming May Day will provide the JO worthies with an opportunity to prove, if they can, that theirs is a broad pro-people agenda by taking up the EPF issue. Let them make the EPF losses the main plank of their May Day platform.