All eyes will be on the final reading of the Budget on which the vote will be taken up in Parliament tomorrow (Friday). This will signal the direction of discussions between the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), which will be of great political significance to the country in a year where presidential elections are due.
At present preliminary talks are underway between the two parties which are led by President Maithripala Sirisena and his predecessor and Leader of the Opposition, Mahinda Rajapaksa. While these talks have identified twenty issues on which the two parties are seeking broad agreements on policy, the negotiations are far from reaching an agreement on election related matters.
For President Sirisena, the fruition of these discussions is of great importance. That is what will decide whether his ambitions for being endorsed by the SLPP as a ‘common’ candidate for the forthcoming presidential election will succeed, even as the SLPP appears to be going full steam ahead with plans to nominate former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa as their candidate.
The second reading of the Budget, held on March 12, was passed with 119 votes in favour and 76 votes cast against it. Meanwhile, 29 parliamentarians abstained from voting. The government, which does not have a simple majority in the 225-seat Parliament relied on the support of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to have the second reading pushed through Parliament.
What irked the SLPP was the fact that many SLFP Parliamentarians abstained from voting. Other SLFP stalwarts such as its General Secretary Dayasiri Jayasekara, Mahinda Amaraweera, Duminda Dissanayake and Dr. Sarath Amunugama absented themselves from the Chamber at the time of the vote, handing the government a relatively easy passage for the second reading of the Budget.
SLFP and SLPP
There appears to have been an ‘unofficial’ agreement, arrived at in talks between the SLFP and the SLPP, that SLFP parliamentarians loyal to President Sirisena would vote against the second reading. The Budget may have still been passed because, in tandem with the TNA, the government would have been able to put together a majority, but the SLPP wanted the SLFP to show solidarity with its cause.
That did not occur. The most likely reason was a clever move by the United National Party (UNP) led government. Prior to the vote, several backbench UNP parliamentarians spoke in Parliament hinting that they would vote against the financial allocations made in the Budget for President Sirisena. Had that eventuated, that would have become a serious obstacle for the President.
With the UNP back bench adopting such a stance - and its leadership assuming a stoic silence on the matter- it is understood that President Sirisena may have varied his previous instructions to his own parliamentarians. Therefore, instead of voting against the second reading of the Budget, they either abstained or were absent, much to the displeasure of the SLPP, which made their annoyance known.
However, the government got a taste of its own medicine last week when the votes of two ministries were defeated by the opposition. That was only because of the lackadaisical attitude of UNP MPs who were not present in Parliament when the votes of the two ministries were taken up, resulting in the ‘Joint Opposition’, with only a few dozen parliamentarians, succeeding in defeating these votes.
The affected ministries were the Ministry of Internal and Home Affairs and Provincial Councils and Local Government and the Ministry of Megapolis and Western Development. The expenditure head of the former ministry received 23 votes in favour and 38 votes against, being defeated by a majority 15 votes. The ministry is held by Vajira Abeywardena.
The vote on the Ministry of Megapolis and Western Development was only slightly different. It was defeated by a margin of 14 votes, with 24 votes in favour and 38 votes against it. This Ministry is under the purview of Patali Champika Ranawaka. The defeat of the two votes prompted the resignation of the Assistant Chief Government Whip Ashu Marasinghe.
The defeats do not lead to significant consequences for the government other than suffering the embarrassment of having the votes of two ministries rejected. They will now be funded through two supplementary estimates which will be submitted later. Minister Lakshman Kiriella accused the opposition of breaching an understanding that no ministry expenditures would be put to the vote.
In such a context, the vote on the third reading of the budget assumes great significance tomorrow. If all its parliamentarians are present in Parliament and if it continues to receive the support of the TNA, the government should have no difficulty in surviving the vote. However, what will be watched more closely is how SLFP MPs will vote- and whether all of them will vote against the Budget.
The SLPP’s chairman and former minister G. L. Peiris put this in perspective. “There is dissatisfaction about the SLFP refraining from voting at the second reading of the budget. They criticised the budget. When it came to the crucial point, they protected the UNP,” Peiris said in a newspaper interview. Peiris notes that the ongoing SLFP-SLPP deliberations are only an exercise in ‘confidence building’.
Public appreciation
If the SLFP does not vote against the budget tomorrow, the SLPP is likely to raise the issue of a ‘lack of trust’. The discussions between the two parties are unlikely to make much progress thereafter and a parting of ways is the most likely outcome. For President Sirisena, that would effectively mean that he would have to contest on his own as the nominee of the SLFP, if he wishes to run for President again.
The President has by no means discounted that possibility. One of his main strategies in attempting to win public appreciation is prosecuting a war against narcotics. The President was personally present at the destruction of over 700 kilograms of narcotics at a facility in Kelaniya on Monday and made no secret of his intentions to pursue action against drug traffickers.
As part of this strategy, President has not been shy of introducing the death penalty for repeat offenders in drug trafficking. He re-iterated his stance on Monday. This is despite attracting international disapproval for the move at a time when most countries consider capital punishment as inhumane and inappropriate and are moving away from implementing the death penalty.
Sri Lanka last enacted the death penalty in 1976. J.R, Jayewardene, when he assumed office a year later abolished it. It was re-introduced into the statute books under the Presidency of Chandrika Kumaratunga following the assassination of High Court Judge Sarath Ambepitiya. However, it has never been implemented, even for terrorism related offences at the height of the Eelam war.
At present the country’s jails hold over one thousand men and more than 80 women on death row, including 48 for drug related crimes. Since February, the government has been actively advertising for an executioner. President Sirisena makes no secret of the fact that he hopes to see the death penalty implemented and has said he is willing to sign the final warrants for execution.
Nevertheless, presidential elections are getting closer by the day and would have to be held by December. That would mean that nominations would need to be called by mid-October the latest. Therefore, the election campaign is just less than seven months away. No candidate has officially declared their intention to run for office, but the front runners are becoming increasingly evident.
It is now a certainty that Gotabaya Rajapaksa will be the SLPP nominee - unless he is debarred from contesting for a legal reason. President Sirisena will be the SLFP nominee - unless he opts not to contest. The only party where there is some uncertainty appears to be the ruling UNP where Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is still the front runner but others' names are being mentioned.
The names of Karu Jayasuriya and Sajith Premadasa are being bandied about as potential candidates, but both have categorically stated that they will run only if they have the full blessings of the Prime Minister and the party. If there have been any differences of opinion as to who the UNP candidate should be, the UNP is doing a good job of keeping it within the confines of closed doors.
If one is seeking clarity regarding the conundrum of candidates, at least one question is likely to be resolved by tomorrow. If the SLFP does not vote against the Budget en masse, its deal with the SLPP is as good as over - and Sri Lanka may well be heading to its first ever three-way contest in a presidential election when it is held later this year.
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