I have been intrigued by the recent political goings on in Britain – where that man with wildly dishevelled blond hair, Boris Johnson (who has been described as someone who “lies with such flagrant compulsion and cannot differentiate between his own lies and reality”) has become prime minister What was even more intriguing than Boris [...]

Sunday Times 2

How the Mighty become the Fallen!

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I have been intrigued by the recent political goings on in Britain – where that man with wildly dishevelled blond hair, Boris Johnson (who has been described as someone who “lies with such flagrant compulsion and cannot differentiate between his own lies and reality”) has become prime minister What was even more intriguing than Boris Johnson manoeuvring himself into the PM’s chair is his choice of members for his cabinet. Unlike in Sri Lanka, the British cabinet has been limited to 22 ministers plus the prime minister. In choosing his ministers, however, Johnson has behaved just like our own president and prime minister — rewarding those who helped him, promoting his own pandan-kaarayas and currying favour with those who could deliver him votes and seats at the next election.

His choice for Home Secretary Priti Patel, MP for Witham, is a classic case. She was forced to resign from her cabinet post of International Development Secretary in November 2017 when she was accused of breaching the ministerial code over her unauthorised meetings with Israeli politicians. In her letter of resignation, Patel herself admitted that her actions fell “below standards of transparency and openness required”.

However Patel was a leading figure in the “Vote Leave” campaign spearheaded by leaders like Johnson during the build-up to the 2016 Brexit referendum. So when the time came for Johnson to distribute the plums of ministerial office, he rewarded his co-Brexiteer Patel with the Home Ministry – glibly ignoring the fact that she had to resign in disgrace just two years ago for wrongdoing.

The case of Patel reminded me of our own finance minister Ravi Karunanayake (still well known to the Sri Lankan public as ‘Bond Ravi’) who in August 2017 resigned from the Cabinet amid an investigation into alleged irregularities in government bond sales. Karunanayake, the previous finance minister, resigned after the panel looking into the bond scam found that the minister’s apartment rental was paid by the very businessman being investigated!

Less than two years after Karunanayake resigned in disgrace, the Prime Minister reappointed him back to the cabinet – this time to the lucrative portfolio of Power, Energy and Business Development. His spectacular ability to raise funds for the UNP makes him indispensable to its leader – who (just as in the case of Boris Johnson with Priti Patel) is happy to turn a blind eye to Ravi’s reputation and appoint him minister once more. This time, of course, he has been given not Finance but Power itself with the opportunity to deal with all those seeking contracts to supply power and develop businesses.

Another interesting parallel between Britain’s parliament and our own is that on May 16th this year, over 60 members of parliament submitted to Speaker Karu Jayasuriya a motion of no confidence against a prominent member of the cabinet, Industries Minister Rishad Bathiudeen. Things looked bleak for Bathiudeen, because when such a motion is debated, members of parliament would have had the opportunity, cloaked in parliamentary privilege, to reveal information about the Minister and wash a lot of his dirty linen in public. The Industries portfolio is a much sought after portfolio in any cabinet because it gives the appointed minister the opportunity to make important decisions about granting permits and licences for which many an industrialist and businessman would pay dearly.

Luckily for the Minister, on June 3rd all Muslim ministers including himself decided to resign from their portfolios before the dreaded vote of No Confidence could be debated in the House.  Was the decision to resign because they wanted to “to facilitate investigations into the Easter Sunday bombing to be conducted in a free and fair manner” (as Minister Rauff Hakeem stated) – or was it safeguard Minister Bathiudeen and derail the vote of confidence against him?

Making a mockery of this high-principled decision to resign was the subsequent resumption after just a few weeks by all these former ministers of all their previous portfolios by these who resigned. Bathiudeen is now back in office — but there is not a word about the motion of No Confidence against him!

And one more appointment to Boris Johnson’s cabinet illustrates the principle that it does not matter if a politician does something immoral or unethical as long as he can provide support to a prime minister struggling for survival.

The former British PM Theresa May sacked her Defence Minister Gavin Williamson in May this year. In her letter dismissing him she wrote that she had ‘compelling evidence’ that he was behind the ‘unauthorised disclosure’ of sensitive information.

As soon as Boris Johnson became PM he appointed Williamson to his cabinet – not as Minister of Defence but to a different portfolio, Education – just as the disgraced Finance Minister Karunanayake was taken back into the cabinet as Minister of Power.

Disgraced Ministers, if they bide their time, simply get reinstated because they have made themselves valuable and indispensable to their leaders. The Sacked and Fallen stay fallen and lie low for a while and then become Mighty and Powerful once more.

Johnson has a majority of just one member in the House of Commons and cannot afford to lose the support of any MPs. As a columnist in the British Guardian newspaper recently wrote “The Boris Johnson team now in charge of running Britain do really not want to govern. They just want to win the next election.”

Just like some other people we know.

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