Editorial

Although Sri Lanka ostensibly rejected the resolution tabled by the UK-led Core Group at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) this week in Geneva, the JVP/NPP Government opted not to challenge the latest resolution in a vote. Explaining the Government’s rejection of the resolution, Sri Lanka stated that the fundamental issue was the reference to the UN external evidence-gathering mechanism, which Sri Lanka rejected.

Minister Vijitha Herath in Parliament further clarified the Government position stating with some justification that Sri Lanka’s trajectory in Geneva over 16 years was due to the failure of successive governments to handle human rights issues through domestic mechanisms – “Our objective is to bring the human rights process back to the national level.”

His subsequent observation that Sri Lanka had domestically resorted to ‘divisive ethnic, sectarian and religious politics’ on human rights must have been music to the pro-LTTE Tamil diaspora ears – the main lobby behind the Core Group (read UK and Canada), which has been relentlessly working on all external fronts for decades on international accountability for Sri Lanka.

The Government’s dual position—tacit acquiescence with the resolution despite superficial opposition—was evident on several points and led to its unfortunate adoption by consensus with Sri Lanka as a hapless bystander by choice. That could only have been because Sri Lanka itself didn’t want the Council decision challenged in a vote. There is no dishonour in losing a vote provided a resolution is challenged.  In the same vein, Minister Herath in Parliament criticised previous governments for spending money on council votes and resolutions. The intervention by the representative of China in the Council made it amply clear that had Sri Lanka wished a vote, China would have obliged, at no cost.

The new-look resolution this year endorsed a revisionist narrative of the three-decade-long separatist terrorism that ended with the defeat of the LTTE in 2009—which led to the LTTE being proscribed as a terrorist group, including by the main sponsor, the UK. Terrorism as a framework for the conflict is substituted by “divisive racist politics” as the cause for the “ethnic conflicts” and has found its way into the resolution, which welcomes “the recognition of the Government of Sri Lanka” to that new-found narrative. The Government on its part thanked the authors of this resolution for “language amendments proposed by Sri Lanka”. So, Sri Lanka had three decades of Sinhalese-Tamil ‘ethnic conflict’, and no longer was it a separatist terrorist armed conflict. This pro-LTTE diaspora-inspired version of rewriting the history of the conflict from raw terrorism to racist politics was promoted and endorsed by this Government.

Significantly, it was the Chinese delegation in its intervention which rightly reminded the Council and Sri Lanka of Sri Lanka’s success in defeating terrorism. The end is not near, it seems, for
Sri Lanka’s engagement with the UN Council. (Our political commentary on this page details it further). In the meantime, the President of the Council sessions warned everyone of the liquidity crisis in the UN and that there were no guarantees that monies voted for its projects, which have already busted up USD 12 million, would be available. That money was better spent uplifting the victims of war conflict in Sri Lanka than the UN’s bureaucrats in Geneva.

Govt.-CEB showdown; Who will blink first

Who will ‘chicken out’, or who will blink first in the ongoing stand-off between the JVP/NPP Government and the Electricity Board (CEB) unions is in the balance as plans for the restructuring of the critical power sector remain on the drawing boards.

The details of the restructuring are being hotly debated. The monolith CEB is to be split up into four autonomous entities. The nomenclature is also at issue, with some calling it ‘privatisation’ and the Government sticking to the ‘restructuring’ title. Either way, the people—from the millions of householders to small enterprises and big industry, all—are at odds with the reality of the situation and in a state of great uncertainty.

Fundamentally, they would be concerned if the CEB, as a state monopoly, is bleeding the country of its limited finances. The CEB has been in the ‘red’ for decades in the region of Rs. 500 billion.  Its finances are opaque, and it seeks regular upward revisions of tariffs, which has to mean something is not right. The blame game is a convenient ruse.  The Petroleum Corporation (CPC), another state venture, and the CEB exchange IOUs as unpaid bills mount.

These state ventures keep running to state banks when monies run out, and the Treasury has to infuse funds to keep the banks afloat without collapsing. The knock-on losses cannot be mere book entries at the Treasury any longer. Somebody has to pay the bills sometime, and it is the citizen who always ends up doing so.

As far back as in 1996, the then government formed what was known as the Public Enterprises Reform Commission (PERC) to advise on measures to reform loss-making public enterprises. What happened, however, was that the state enterprises that were privatised were those making good money, like the Distilleries Corporation or the Insurance Corporation (later rectified). There were no takers for others, and in 2007 the government closed down PERC, saying they were against privatisation. This country has now come to a state where it cannot foot the bill any longer for these financial ‘lame ducks’.

The Government realises the stark reality. It might, therefore, take a look at what happened during the German reunification and how West Germany took control of 8,500 stagnating state-owned companies in East Germany that ran a welfare state but could not sustain it with no growth in the economy. Like the PERC, a Treuhand Anstalt (TA) was established to oversee restructuring the state-run economy of East Germany to a market economy. There were drawbacks initially with mass unemployment. Workers accustomed to moderate living standards were on the streets. The head of the TA was assassinated. The unified German Government learnt lessons from this massive exercise. The TA later became the Federal Agency for Special Tasks Related to Unification and turned around the unified German economy to being the third most powerful in the world. There are lessons to be learnt for Sri Lanka from this experience.

The CEB unions have escalated their work-to-rule agitation campaign of September 4 to workers taking sick leave en masse from a fortnight ago. Their full-blown strike action threat seems to be on hold as they lock horns with the once pro-labour Government that stands firm and declares the power sector an essential service. Who will back off is yet to be seen.