After plenty of politico-media fire works, the hedging drama is now over. Despite all the hustle and bustle, has this ultimately benefited the common people of Sri Lanka?
Simple answer is ‘No’.
Then, who has won it for the day?
Firstly, those international banks that are supposed to get undue profits in the hedging deal have guaranteed their share of money and common tax payer’s money is at risk. According to some estimates, the state-owned corporation could be liable for up to $1 billion by next May.
Media fire work of corrupt politicos
One of the dominant characters involved in bringing hedging deal to the Supreme Court is the most corrupt politician of UNP regime under Ranil Wickramasingha. At that time, he promised the common people of the country that state owned ‘Sathosa’ super markets and shops will be open 24 hours of the day. He opened up large number of new ‘Sathosa’ outlets generously spending government money. The Sri Lankan nation later witnessed how he implemented the second phase of the plan by selling ‘Sathosa’ to his business mafia at dog cheap.
With the hedging drama, this corrupted politician has managed to clean up some amount of his dirty political character using this media fire work.
The ruling of the SC
The initial interim order of the SC seem to be in good intention. SC suspended payments to the international banks and mentioned that those conditions are unjustifiable. SC did not directly mention that the deal was corrupt. However the Minister of petroleum resources and chairman of petroleum cooperation were suspended until hearing is completed. Even if the deal is not corrupt, still these people have made big loss to country by being incompetent in their posts. Therefore, SC’s ruling was one big step towards better governance.
Government act irresponsible manner
The government is now very popular among the people due to correct and efficient planning and execution of fight against terrorism. However the government miserably failed in the hedging deal and it’s behavior in post SC rule is pathetic. This clearly shows that corrupt elements are influencial in current government as well. Those corrupt politicos managed to read the SC ruling as a part of conspiracy against the government.
In fact the SC ruling could have been utilized as a relief to the burden of paying excessive amount of money to these foreign banks. Since it was a court ruling, those banks have little option to challenge it. Therefore, government could have easily come out of the trouble and amend their mistake. However, agents of those corrupt elements in the government have won and now tax payer’s money will be unduly pumped out of the country.
On the other hand this clearly shows that Mahinda Rajapaksa government, despite victories in defense arena, is not mature enough to accept their mistakes and amend those in humble manner. It was a missed opportunity to shred an inefficient (if not corrupt) minister and bunch of bureaucracy. Once the fight against terrorism is over (in few months time), the government’s next task should be the ‘fight against corruption’ as part of development of our mother land. Mahinda Rajapaksa has lost the golden opportunity fire first gun shot of his next BIG war. The whole nation is closely looking at Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government to see if they are as genuine and competent in ‘fight against corruption’ as ‘fight against terrorism’ and the government has little time to amend the mistakes.
Is SC revenge from government?
The petition against hedging agreement had quite a bit of political motives and it was not solely in the intention of preventing the loss to the government and punishing the culprits.
On the other hand government is too aragent to accept their mistake and humbly rectify and punish the culprits or incompetent parties.
The SC took the revenge by fully cancelling the ruling saying government has not fully abided by the ruling.
It is common people’s hard earn money that will drain out of the country as a result.
So who has yet again won it for the day?
Related Post:
- The new partners of Politics: Business, Media and Marketing
- The judgment on the Waters Edge deal and beyond
- P.B. Jayasundara Saga and Triangle of Corruption: politicians, bureaucrat and businessmen
- The Law: Roman-Dutch mismatch in Sinhala Buddhist society
- Chick and egg story of corruption in Sri Lanka
2 comments:
There are reasons why British Rules favored Tamils to their administrative work!
Let the Tamils occupy the critical position to clean up the corruption in this country.
@sathees
British favored Tamils over Sinhalese because if there was ever going to be a freedom struggle it would come from the Sinhalese side, specifically Sinhala Buddhists.If the country had been a tamil majority one i guess they would have favored Sinhalese.
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