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Crude foil to bar MPs from oil strike
View(s):If the Ceylon Petroleum Corporations’ top officials successfully managed to foil all attempts by the visiting UNP fact finding parliamentary team to enter its oil refinery at Sapugaskanda on July 17 and make any important discovery embedded therein, they succeeded even more in displaying to the entire nation the complete absence of transparency in the running of government institutions.
From the very top, from the office of the chairman of the corporation itself came the blunt negative response to the official request made by the MPs to inspect the giant oil refinery complex which has become a massive white elephant, draining millions from the nation’s coffers each year. The acting chairman directly told the delegation that it would not be advisable for them to visit the refinery since he could not guarantee the safety of the MPs as the workers were up in arms against the visit and would not allow the MPs in.
Thus in one brash sentence, delivered without thought given to its grave import, he ostensibly but effectively abdicated his
Prevented from carrying out their constitutional duty, UNP MPs talk to the media outside the gates of the Sapugaskanda refinery.
responsibility as the head of the corporation to extend the necessary protection; and by his calm acceptance of the disturbing crisis and his own acknowledgement he was unable to cope with it in an effective manner in keeping with his position and the duties that accompany it, he revealed his gross impotence to maintain security, discipline and order in the premises.
He was not the chairman of all he surveyed but the liveried lackey of his staff, toadying to their wishes and treating it as their commands. He would rather upset a team of MPs carrying out their parliamentary duties rather than ruffle the feathers of his power drunk workers.
In other words, he laid his abject shame on the chairman’s table with a shovel, trowelled his helplessness without a blush when he implicitly confessed that his writ did not run far, that his fiat ended at his door and the workers were in control and in command of the all important refinery and gave the orders as to who should enter and who should be kept out.
Since the chairman did not offer to accompany the fact finding parliamentary team to clear this obstacle but instead told them that they can go ahead alone if they wished at their own peril, the question has to be raised whether the chairman, by this brazen washing of hands ceremony, dreaded his own safety and job, whether he knew his presence with his guests will not succeed in opening the barred 
iron grilled gates; and whether he, as captain of his ship, feared mutiny by the deckhands. That he too would not only be booed but denied entry to his own dockyard, even if it was only to perpetrate the pretense.
Taking it at face value, what a sorry state of affairs must exist at the Sapugaskanda Oil Refinery if the chairman of the corporation, acting though he may be, cannot give his visitors a guided tour inside the premises without the workers’ permission. If that is indeed the case, the problem at the refinery is far worse than one had thought it to be. It starkly reveals there is something clearly rotten at the core. Either the authorities planned to conceal the truth from the MPs by stage-managing trade union protests and using the workers as their foil or they were genuinely unable to ensure safety of their visitors. Either way it stinks.
For who were these guests of the chairman — self invited, no doubt, but guests nevertheless — who were treated to this crude welcome and brusque brush off? Shown the door, palmed off with an excuse even before they had time to wipe their feet on the welcome mat?
These were not a group of tourists on a packaged tour, coming sardine packed in one cramped chartered tourist bus, with cameras dangling round their necks, sightseeing urban Colombo’s ancient ruins. They, if it must be reminded to the authorities, were honourable members of parliament who had, after giving due notice to the chairman in writing, come to investigate one of Lanka’s biggest lossmaking corporations and give a situation report to the nation on the oil refinery complex, the crucial heart which cleanses and pumps the industrial blood upon which the entire industrial life of Lanka depends.
They were not children come on a school trip to marvel at the gigantic oil tanks or learn of the process of refining crude oil. They had not come there to satisfy their curiosity out of a sudden whim or fancy. According to UNP MP Eran Wickramaratne, Members of Parliament have a right and obligation to visit and inspect projects, which come under the purview of and are financed by funds provided by Parliament in terms of Chapter XVII of the Constitution of the Republic. “The Constitution requires Parliament to exercise full control over public finance. This can only happen if MPs are able to engage in meaningful and informed debate.” Thus, according to the UNP, they were present to discharge a constitutional duty imposed upon them by Parliament.
Any attempt to obstruct their right to do so is tantamount to a serious breach of the rights and privileges of Parliamentary members under the Parliamentary (Powers and Privileges) Act. Furthermore Latimer House Principles of the Commonwealth which apply to member countries of the Commonwealth declare that parliamentarians must be allowed to perform their legislative and constitutional functions in accordance with the Constitution, free from unlawful interference.
It is on this still unrefuted legal basis that the UNP fact-finding MPs visited the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation on July 17 even as they made avurudhu probe calls on Mattala airport and the Hambantota harbour in April, three months ago. There they were treated to a barrage of abuse and a gratuitous breakfast volley of eggs and tomato, accompanied by a threatening show of arms by the Hambantota Mayor who ran amok on the streets with a pistol packed in his hands.
The call raised by the UNP Chief Whip John Amaratunga in Parliament on April 24 to hold a parliamentary select committee probe into the incident was rejected by Prime Minister D. M. Jayaratne who stated: “Suspects are being identified using the video and still photos obtained by media personnel. A special Police team led by the Inspector General is heading the investigations, so it is not essential to have a Parliamentary Select Committee,”
Three months later the investigations are still presumably being conducted and the UPFA Hambantota Mayor has not been taken to task for brandishing a pistol. Just imagine what would have happened if Colombo’s UNP Mayor Muzammill was caught on video running around the landscaped bushes at Vihara Maha Devi Park packing a pistol trying to shoo UPFA crows from his patch? Would his explanation that it was merely a water pistol, be glossed over and then ignored? Maybe, given His Worship’s worshipful talent of worshipping the worshipful.
What is important to note is that the purpose of these parliamentarians ‘probe’ visits which even government members can make if they are so inclined is not in the main to find fault with the government but investigate whether the officials responsible for the day-to-day activities of the institutions are executing their duties in an efficient manner and managing the people’s monies scrupulously: to ensure that funds provided by parliament to state institutions are being utilised properly.
The role that is being performed is more that of an ombudsman rather than an inquisitor. And it is to be regretted that this has been misunderstood by the authorities; and, as a result, the parliamentary team has to meet opposition when they should be greeted with cooperation. There will be times when those probing will be welcomed with garlands as the UNP team found to their pleasant surprise when they visited Norochcholai power plant two months ago. At other times, as in the case of the Petroleum Corporation, they will find barricaded entry to their dismay. That is to be expected. Those with skeletons to hide will not be jumping with eagerness to lay bare their cupboards and reveal the incriminating evidence for the world to see. Transparency is for the spotless conscious. Stained guilt needs concealment. It is at such a time when the probing team carrying out their duties to inspect and investigate meets vehement opposition from the manipulated minions that the institutional heads must exercise their authority, provide their cooperation and ensure access. Or else they too will be tainted with collusion.
The danger with the Sapugaskanda incident is that the episode and the modus operandi used to prevent the investigative team from having access will be usednonchalantly and repeatedly by other institutional heads to achieve the same result. The bluff must be called.
Consider this. On Thursday DNA MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake claimed in Parliament that the National Gem and Jewellery Authority had spent Rs. 2.2 million on food and tea during the three days in which a land auction was held in Thammannawa, Kataragama.
Environment and Renewable Energy Minister Susil Premajayantha, in his is reply said: “There was a tense situation in the area as a result of the auction, and we had to deploy officers of the National Gem and Jewellery Authority and police officers of the Special Task Force on duty at the auction site even after the auction. This amount was spent to supply food and tea for these officers.”
To overcome a tense situation in the area and to ensure that the gem lands can be auctioned without a spot of local bother, the National Gem Authority has no qualms in dishing out 2 million bucks for snacks and tea for STF officers called in to keep the peace. But, apart from this highly questionable extravagance which would not only have filled police stomachs but stuffed to the hilt caterers pockets, the state authority ensured the lands were duly auctioned, showing where there is a will, there is always a way.
Where was that will at the petroleum chairman’s office that July 17 morning when the UNP team met him to inspect his oil refinery? Why did he not call for police aid, ask the STF to clear a path through the mob and provide access to the MPs? Why did he not comply with an official request coming from the elective representatives of the sovereign people — which even the police would have been duty bound to obey?
Next time the UNP scouts set off on their mission, they should do well to go with a police guard, backed if possible with a magisterial order, to clear the barricade of excuses that will be placed before their path by chairmen in their sinecure towers.
| Move over Dalai Lama, make way for BBS boss
Step aside Dalai Lama. Remove yourself from the pedestal the West has placed you upon. And, while you do so, take your gospel of love with you. Make way for the world’s new Buddhist prophet, its new guardian angel, ready to take world’s centre stage by fire and brimstone with his Bodu Bala drum of hate. This is the message summarily delivered this week to the Tibetan Buddhist leader in exile, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, His Holiness the Dalai Lama by the chief of the Bodu Bala Sena for daring to tell those who peddled religious hatred on Aluthgama streets last month to ‘meditate before an image of the Buddha and practise love to all Muslims.” This was blatant blasphemy and, like swine food offerings are to Muslim palates, totally ‘unstomachable’ for the BBS boss Galagoda-atte Gnanasara to bear with placid composure of the monk he is. Enraged at the Dalai Lama’s exhortation to practise ‘metta’, loving kindness, he declared: “We don’t accept the Dalai Lama as a world leader of Buddhists. He is a creation of the West. For them, he is to Buddhists what the Pope is to Catholics, but not for us. He is also a victim of extremist Islamic propaganda. He does not understand the situation in Lanka.” Apparently the four sublime states of bliss as expounded by the Buddha as worthy of cultivation to attain enlightenment namely universal love to all, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity are lost on the Bodu Bala Chief even as the persecution still endured by Tibetan Buddhist at Chinese hands is possibly, still unknown to him. From his Sinhala Buddhist only well he may not be aware of the situation in Tibet and the happenings in the rest of the world. Tenzin Gyatso, enthroned as the 14th Dali Lama for the last 64 years, is no stranger to being persecuted, to being the victim of extremism. As the head of the Tibetan Buddhist Order of Monks, he has seen the suppression of his people and the Buddhist beliefs they held and followed. He was forced to escape into exile after the Tibetan national uprising in Lhasa 1950 was brutally crushed by the Chinese Army.  The Dalai Lama He is a monk on the run, on a ‘lonely road with a leaky umbrella’. But yet he has not let the anguish of his people nor the violation of his religious freedoms be replaced with anger and hatred but has turned the pain, the hurt and the denial of fundamental rights into an opportunity to practise loving kindness to his enemy who is the cause of his and his people’s affliction. He has met hate not with hate but with love and compassion. And has shown the world the sublimity of the Buddha’s tenet of ahimsa in actual practice. As the Dali Lama puts it: “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive. In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher.” The Dalai Lama is neither the creation of the western world nor a victim of Islamic extremist propaganda, as claimed by the Bodu Bala boss. He is a true son of Buddhism, a monk beyond compare. The radiance he emanates is living proof of a heart not possessed and burning with the fires of hate but one where lotuses bloom. And that is why the enlightened world — east and west, north and south — has instinctively taken him to their hearts and enshrined him; for, practising as he does the Buddha’s message of compassion, he touches mankind’s collective soul with love, while the Bodu Bala chief and his acolytes remain loathed in the sewers of public opprobrium. This month both the United States and Britain rejected Gnanasara’s visa applications, declaring him to be a persona non grata. For his hate speeches and hate symbols, Facebook has closed his account. Now he is reduced to seeking entry to Australia. But why is the man who has appointed himself as the guardian of Buddhism in Lanka, who has publicly vowed not to let a single Muslim exist on Lankan soil if one Muslim even places a hand on a single Sinhala Buddhist, in such haste to flee abroad and leave his brethren undefended without his boorish brawn? Is it to trumpet his ‘Talibanised’ distorted version of Buddhism in those capitals as well, to daub himself as the new Buddhist Ayatollah, furthering hate in a world desperately needing love? Tragic, isn’t it that those blessed at birth with the opportunity to suckle the Buddhist philosophy should soon be cursed in mid life to vilify it and act totally contrary to its tenets, thus piling misery on others and nourishing their own samsaric sorrow with such determined demonstrations of their violent animalistic natures? Maybe the time has come for the rest of us to follow the Dai Lama’s advice and ‘meditate before an image of the Buddha and practise love and compassion to these pathetic, ignorant beasts in human skins to whom the priceless beads of Buddhism are like pearls to swine. |