Sri Lanka’s future hangs in the balance

On Tuesday, the Sri Lankan parliament nominated three people from among its members to serve out the remainder of the presidential term of Gotabaya Rajapaksa who was forced to resign and fled the country in the dead of night. One is the current interim president Ranil Wickremesinghe (who ascended to that position because he had been appointed prime minister by the former disgraced president, and the prime minister takes over when the president resigns), the second is someone named Dullas Alahapperuma, and the third is a leftist candidate named Anura Kumara Dissanayake. The vote will be on Wednesday.

This outcome is somewhat bizarre. This is because while the mass protests have removed some of the top people in government, people who had been thought to be invulnerable, the parliament has remained unchanged and the members of parliament are the ones who will select the new president. While the Rajapaksa clan is in disgrace with the president Gotabaya and his three brothers and nephew forced to resign the presidency, prime ministership, and other cabinet posts, the two main challengers Wickremesinghe and Alahapperuma are both affiliated with their party. The third candidate Dissanayake’s party has only three members in parliament and so his chances of winning are slim.
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Why the British monarchy should be abolished

I have frequently written about the British monarchy as consisting of a parasitic bunch of grifters that should abolished. I feel that way about all monarchies and indeed all forms of hereditary privilege since that goes against the egalitarian idea on which democracies should be based. The British monarchy is simply one of the most extreme examples of this kind of privilege. We may never be able to erase all forms of inherited advantages but doing away with monarchies is one of the easiest steps we can take.

Almost always I get a response from some, like this comment in response to recent my post where I pointed out how the monarchy shields itself from the laws that everyone else must follow, and that results in a feudal system for its employees. These responses state that since I am not British, I simply cannot understand the love that the British people have for the royal family and that besides, the institution brings in loads of tourism revenue that justifies its existence. It is an immoral argument that just because they bring in revenue to to country because of tourism, they should be exempt from laws that they do not like and be able to treat their employees like peasants. If that argument is accepted, why should not anyone who brings in money to the country, like exporters of goods, also be exempted?
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Critical week for Sri Lanka

There is a new phase of developments in Sri Lanka following the resignation of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as president after he fled to Singapore. The prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was then sworn in as interim president and now parliament must vote on who from among their members should be president to complete Rajapaksa’s remaining term of office until November 2024. Already there are about five candidates who have declared their intentions to vie for the post and the usual maneuvering has begun. All nominations must be received by 10:00 am on Tuesday 19th July 2022 (local time) and voting by secret ballot must be held within 48 hours of that time. Currently parliament is schedule to meet on the 20th for that purpose.

What I fear most is that the Rajapaksas are maneuvering to have Wickremesinghe be voted as president by parliament, even though he has absolutely no credibility or standing, so that he will continue to shield them from repercussions for their crimes and corruption. The Rajapaksa family’s party still have a big majority in parliament and the general secretary of the party has endorsed Wickremesinghe. Recall that Wickremesinghe is not even a member of that party. His own party suffered such a crushing defeat in the 2019 general election that it lost every single seat it contested including his own. He then shamelessly appointed himself as his party’s representative for the single seat that the party got, based on the complicated rules in Sri Lanka that gives some seats in parliament to parties based on their proportion of the national vote. So he has no credibility or mandate whatsoever.
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Why the British monarchy should be abolished: Reason #2468

The revelations about the extent to which the Queen of England has used the deference accorded to her and her family to enrich themselves keep emerging. Now new revelations show that police are not even allowed onto property owned by the royals without her permission even to investigate potential crimes when speed is of the essence to prevent the destruction of evidence.

Personalised exemptions for the Queen in her private capacity have been written into more than 160 laws since 1967, granting her sweeping immunity from swathes of British law – ranging from animal welfare to workers’ rights. Dozens extend further immunity to her private property portfolio, granting her unique protections as the owner of large landed estates.

More than 30 different laws stipulate that police are barred from entering the private Balmoral and Sandringham estates without the Queen’s permission to investigate suspected crimes, including wildlife offences and environmental pollution – a legal immunity accorded to no other private landowner in the country.

Police are also required to obtain her personal agreement before they can investigate suspected offences at her privately owned salmon and trout fishing business on the River Dee at Balmoral, where anglers are charged up to £630 a day to fish.

Under the longstanding but ill-defined doctrine of sovereign immunity, criminal and civil proceedings are not brought against the monarch as head of state. But an investigation by the Guardian, drawing on official documents and analysis of legislation, reveals the extent to which laws have been written or amended to specify immunity for her conduct as a private citizen, along with her privately owned assets and estates – and even a privately owned business.

One constitutional expert warned that the carve-outs undermine the notion that everyone is equal before the law, while another recommended the monarchy review and simplify the exemptions for the sake of public transparency.

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Sri Lankan situation gets even more tense

A bizarre standoff is in place in Sri Lanka where the president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who promised to resign on July 13th and fled the country, did not in fact resign but merely appointed the prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as acting president during his absence from the country, though it is unlikely that he will ever return, given how much anger there is against him and his family.

Wickremesinghe is also hated and his not resigning has angered them even more. The protestors refuse to recognize him in any capacity and his appointment as acting president created more anger and the protestors invaded and occupied his office building as well, once more overwhelming by sheer numbers the security forces who tried to hold them back. So there was a Grand Slam of occupations of four premises, the official residences and offices of both the prime minister and president.

Wickremesinghe, tone deaf as usual, has imposed a state of emergency and a curfew and ordered the security forces to “do whatever is necessary to restore order” and and “end this fascist threat to democracy” and return the occupied premises to “the proper custody”. Being called fascists by someone whom they have the deepest contempt for has infuriated the protestors against him even more. By playing games with their promised resignations, Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe are playing with fire. The security forces have so far used just tear gas and water cannons in their failed efforts to control the situation. The situation is tense and could explode if they start using live ammunition and people get killed.
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A last ditch effort to cling to power and escape consequences

When mass protests forced the Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to fire his brother as prime minister and two other brothers and a nephew as cabinet ministers, he appointed Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister. I wrote back then about possible reasons as to why he chose someone whose party had been roundly defeated in the 2019 elections and had only one seat in parliament. I suggested that it may be because Wickremesinghe is a Rajapaksa stooge who had shielded the family from consequences when he was prime minister earlier. Although he is a person of little or no talent or political skill who has got where he was because of nepotism, he was also desperate to become president, having failed in a previous election. He may have been calculating that if Rajapaksa resigned a president, then as prime minister, he was next in line to be president. After the mass protests last Saturday that demanded both their resignations, Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe said they would resign but did not actually do so. Rajapaksa said he would do so today (the 13th) while Wickremesinghe said he would do so after a new government was formed. Protestors saw in this scenario an attempt by this disgraced duo to somehow stay in power.

It looks like that fear was well founded.

In scenes bordering on farce, yesterday Rajapaksa and his wife fled the country in a military plane to nearby Maldives, sparking protests among Maldivians against the Maldivian government for allowing him into the country. He had apparently earlier been foiled in other attempts to leave.
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A seriously unserious man

The fall of Boris Johnson provides a good example of how fragile power is when it is based on celebrity status. His undoing, from winning a massive victory to getting kicked out of office in less than three years, was almost entirely of his own making.

Johnson has always been a decidedly unserious person. I do not mean that he is stupid. It is true that the wheels of his success were greased by him coming from a wealthy family that enabled him to attend prestigious schools and universities and have well-connected friends, the typical road to success of Conservative party leaders. But there is also evidence that he was also academically somewhat gifted, winning scholarships and honors.

He was also highly ambitious and wanted to be the center of attention and popular and he seems to have decided early on in life that the way to be so was to also act like a clown, to the extent of looking disheveled and deliberately messing up his hair before he went out in public. This lovable scamp act brought with it two benefits. It drew attention to himself. It also enabled him to avoid taking responsibility for his mistakes and deflect criticism by claiming ignorance and carelessness rather than deliberate dishonesty. And there was plenty of dishonesty to be hidden. Apart from his chronic lying, he was also utterly self-serving and treacherous in his dealings with others, perfectly willing to stab his erstwhile party colleagues in the back in his rise to power. It is also clear that he had almost no political principles, except for the standard issue conservative one of cutting taxes and regulations on businesses and undermining the social safety net.
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The aftermath of the dramatic events in Sri Lanka

I linked to videos of the protestors in Sri Lanka occupying the official residence of the president and, like many people in Sri Lanka, was stunned at the opulence of the place. The residence is in the heart of the business district in Colombo and I must have passed by it hundreds of times but had never given much thought to what it was like inside. It is a large building and was protected by a high fence with a security guard at the gate. Since only one side of it is visible from the street, I had no idea how extensive the property was.

What the videos reveal is that it is very luxurious with large, well appointed rooms, nice gardens and a swimming pool. Even though the climate is tropical, private swimming pools are a luxury and rare in Sri Lanka and I do not know of anyone who has one. The daughter of a friend of mine was one of the people who entered with the protestors and she had told her mother how they too were stunned by what they saw.
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