Supreme Court Plays Santa

Even as the Christmas tree goes up in President's House and the greeting cards pour in wishing its occupants a merry Christmas, the season's theme carol is being rehearsed on the front steps:

You better not shout,

You'd better not cry,

Better not pout,

I'm telling you why:

The Supreme Court is coming to town.

For goodness knows there's been more than the usual quota of shouting, crying, pouting and temper tantrums since the court handed down an order last week requiring the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation to slash the price of petrol by twenty two rupees by limiting the tax to a mere - wait for it - one hundred percent. In other words, the court told the government to desist from black marketing fuel, something the Rajapakses have grown accustomed to doing.

In response, the government has let out a howl of anguish, with stories of files being dashed on the ground hysterically in the cabinet room, and Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake rushing about the country wailing that no one who loved Sri Lanka had a right to block taxes because the government needs money to develop the country and to protect it from terrorism.

Touching. But even as you dry your watering eyes, consider this. The loss of government revenue as a result of the Supreme Court decision to reduce the price of petrol by Rs 22 per litre is not a king's ransom. Sri Lanka consumes about 700 million litres of petrol per year, and so the cost to the exchequer of the price cut amounts to about Rs 15 billion. That is petty cash compared with the $675.72 million (Rs. 75 billion) the government stood to lose from the harebrained hedging deal in which it had become entangled, from which soup it was extricated by the very same court. What the court is now saying is that the government can make no more than a one-hundred percent profit before selling petrol to us the people. That, according to the Rajapakse regime, ain't nearly enough to meet their growing thirst for loolah.

Well, Mr President, we beg to differ. The presidency, for Rajapakse, has become one gigantic ego trip. Like a spoilt child let loose in a toy shop, he and his regime have dug their paws into the Treasury's largesse and helped themselves to gobfulls of loot. Thus it is that the President and his ministers trot the world's fleshpots, staying in super-luxury hotels with entourages of hundreds of relatives and attendant clowns and cronies, all at massive expense to us the people. It is how the government justifies maintaining more than 100 ministers, when India, with a population 50 times our own, gets by with just 30, and even the mighty United States has just 15.

Just last week we related in these pages how the President's brother, Chamal, is seeking to purchase the 250-room luxury five-star Continental Hotel, the asking price for which is Rs 4.5 billion. Last year, in a massive extravagant waste of public funds, Rajapakse lavished Rs. 4 billion on yet another ego trip, by hosting the SAARC Summit, an event that predictably proved to be a massive washout and included the purchase of dozens of super-luxury cars (by the way, what became of them?). Then, the nation lost Rs. 3 billion on the Rajapakse's pet ego trip, Mihin Lanka, which patronym will come to haunt him as the notorious Water's Edge deal came to haunt Chandrika Kumaratunga. This year, Rajapakse plans to wash down a further Rs 6 billion on Mihin, which is as good as flushing cash down the loo, or at any rate into the pockets of numerous hangers on and cronies who operate - we use the word loosely -that already bankrupt airline.

Mathematical genii, who number prominently among our readers, will already have totted up the excesses summarised in the preceding paragraph and found that they amount to a grand total of Rs 17.5 billion, well in excess of the cost to the national balance sheet of last week's Supreme Court ruling. Add to that, for example, Rajapakse's decision to hold premature provincial elections so as to cash in on the war euphoria that has engulfed the majority of his Sinhala Buddhist constituency, and there's another billion that could have been saved. Then there's the Rs 100,000 monthly housing allowance paid to scores of ministers, and numerous other examples of governmental excess, which add billions more to the tax bill.

Ratnasiri Wickremanayake's bitching about people (read 'courts') not loving the country and blocking taxes is, therefore, a load of unadulterated bull. He is Prime Minister of the most wasteful and corrupt government in the history of Sri Lanka. Indeed, it often seems that the government exists only to provide employment to the President's relatives, in-laws and hangers on, those of which have not been given state employment having transformed themselves into commission agents on a grand scale, some of whom have taken permanent suites in Colombo's five-star hotels, from which they conduct brisk business in government projects. The Rajapakse Administration is not just an Uncle and Nephew Party, as the UNP was once famously alleged to be. It is a grand coalition of dozens of incompetents whose only claim to office is that they are related by ties of blood or marriage to the patriarch, Mahinda Rajapakse, or at some time in the past had the honour, as it were, to carry his bags.

To a man as spoilt by the low-hanging fruits of office as Rajapakse has become, the Supreme Court has become an unwelcome nuisance. No wonder the temper tantrums and veiled threats by way of allusions to recalcitrant judges being stoned during the infamous J. R. Jayewardene years. The President has even taken to talking of attempts to impeach the Chief Justice. The Supreme Court has become the single biggest thorn in Rajapakse's side. By Friday, with the Supreme Court standing firm the government for all the fire breathing rhetoric went into panic mode and was moving towards complying with the court order.

There is not a little irony in this, for it was this very same Rajapakse who enthusiastically applauded when the court handed down verdicts inimical to Rajapakse's pet hates, for example, Chandrika Kumaratunga. He needs to remember that if not for the Supreme Court's intervention, the poll in which he was elected to the presidency might well have taken place a year later, for Kumaratunga had every intention of serving a seven-year second term. What is more, he might have well spent the election campaign in remand custody, having been at the time at the centre of an investigation into the criminal misappropriation of some Rs 75 million in charitable donations in what came to be known notoriously as the Helping Hambantota Scam. For Rajapakse, those judgements of the Supreme Court were just fine: indeed, he owes his presidency to them. When the court has dispensed justice not so much to his liking, however, he has taken to wailing like a spoilt brat.

The similarity between Rajapakse and Shylock, the evil Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare's Merchant Of Venice, is striking. Before the fateful judgement, Shylock lavished praise on the judiciary. "Oh wise judge!" he flattered, "How much wiser you are than your young face suggests," adding for good measure, "Most rightful judge!" Now that the court has stepped into to curb Rajapakse's excesses, he is like a ballerino with his knickers in a twist: irate, angry, frustrated and looking foolish. Indeed, his childish and vengeful act of refusing to reduce the price of petrol even after the court's ruling was conveyed to the government last Thursday night speaks volumes for his contempt for the rule of law, and for the people of this country.

To a public at its wits' end to find a means to halt Rajapakse's fanciful ego trip in its tracks, the Supreme Court must now seem like a luxuriant oasis in the desert. Indeed, it is likely that other cases will follow thick and fast. The Rajapakses' questionable device of setting up private, government-owned companies to conduct multi-billion rupee transactions beyond the scrutiny of the Auditor General is likely to be the first. Apart from Mihin Air, the doings of Lanka Logistics, the procurement arm of the defence establishment, is also likely to come under judicial scrutiny. Under the guise of national security and cutting out the middle men, this company has been doing multi-billion rupee purchases using public funds without a shred of transparency or accountability. Its directors are almost all Rajapakse relatives or cronies. Indeed, the LMSL and Water's Edge scams pale into insignificance beside the doings of these companies, and it is a question of time before some well-meaning citizen takes this shameful affair to court.

The regime has also helped themselves to gobfuls of public money from cash cows such as the Employees' Provident Fund, placing the savings of millions of hard-working Sri Lankans in jeopardy. Having exhausted the government coffers, they have taken to accepting outrageous so-called "unsolicited offers" passed off falsely as government-to-government loans (which they are anything but), that are likely to end up in court. The Rajapakses have mortgaged Sri Lanka's sovereignty to dozens of foreign lenders who have in turn been fleecing the government (i.e., us) mercilessly, committing future generations to paying for Presidential flights of fancy. And through it all, the middle men have grown fatter: their children and grandchildren will never need to do a day's work: enough money has been made to keep generations in luxury.

The work of the courts is only beginning, and this is to be applauded. Though the Supreme Court itself is empowered to deal with only a small minority of cases, its fierce independence must surely strengthen the independence and courage of lower judges. Indeed, the almost unprecedented case in which the Puttalam High Court Judge Gamini Sarath Edirisinghe sentenced three senior police officers and a grama niladhari to prison for perjury last week are a signal that the party is over for perpetrators of political excess.

The regime then, has finally had its comeuppance this Christmas, and it is to be hoped that this is only the beginning of the judicial review there must be of their maladministration. With the rupee now in freefall thanks to the dim witted handling of the money supply by Nivard Cabraal, jobs are being lost by the thousand as Sri Lanka slides into recession, with the cost of living spiralling helplessly. Add to these woes the global economic downturn, and this is not going to be a merry Christmas for those of us not helping ourselves to Presidential patronage.

So it is cause for celebration that the Supreme Court has gone where angels fear to tread and sought to curb government excess in at least one small sphere. Way to go, good sirs, way to go!

It was not long ago that Pakistan's Supreme Court, led by the fiercely independent Chief Justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, stepped in and cut the autocracy of Pervez Musharraf down to size. This led eventually to his ouster. Recognising that Sri Lanka's Supreme Court acts only on behalf of the people, it is important that all citizens stand firm in their resolution to prevent the government from seeking to influence or intimidate the judiciary, for those are the only alternatives now left to the regime as was evident from last week's cabinet meeting.