All the President’s men

When Woodward and Bernstein wrote about their investigative reporting into Nixon’s Watergate crisis, they picked a fantastic title. “All The President’s Men” was derived from the nursery rhyme, ‘Humpty Dumpty’ in which “all the kings horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put humpty together again” and was meant to allude to the oligarchic policies of the Nixon administration. Sri Lanka under the Rajapaksa regime is not very different and the resurrection of the title seems apt, with apologies to two of the greatest investigative journalists in modern history….

By Dharisha Bastians
The running of the Rajapaksa administration is pretty simple. President Mahinda Rajapaksa has a coterie of advisors/loyalists and favourite ministers, a tightly knit community who can, in the President’s eyes at least, do no wrong. The list is not too long and features names that are almost always in the news – and often for no good reason.

Meet the players
Sajin Vaas Gunewardane: Coordinating Secretary to the President, CEO of Mihin Lanka, the government owned budget airline that has been making ridiculous losses since its inception. Sajin travels everywhere with the President, on state and personal visits abroad and is His Excellency’s travel planner. He also makes decisions on who shall be on the presidential entourage and naturally, ensures that one of two decrepit aircraft can be chartered for the duration of the Presidential visit (abandoning all its paid passengers to codeshare flights). The government charter of the aircraft ensures that monies are transferred from one government fund to the other (in this case, from the Treasury to the Mihin Lanka account) while the budget airline meanwhile pays SriLankan Airlines to accommodate its paid passengers. Bad enough that Mihin Lanka is already in debt to SriLankan to the tune of millions of dollars and the national carrier has refused further credit to the budget carrier. It’s a twisted system any way you look at it and screams economic mismanagement especially given the cash-strapped status of the budget airline – not to mention the state coffers. CEO Sajin however, merrily allows Mihin Lanka aircraft to be used like an Air Force 1 .

Ajith Nivard Cabraal: The only man in the country who thinks the economy is doing stunningly well, despite inflation hitting the 20s since the latter part of 2007 and the continuous depreciation of the rupee. Investor confidence, tourism and the people’s purchasing power might all be at an all time low, but the Central Bank Governor lives in a dream world in which everything is just peachy. The tragedy is that the position of Governor, Central Bank of Sri Lanka has always been an apolitical office, with past governors picked solely on their credentials of integrity and expertise in economics. Cabraal might be an economical expert, but he is very much a political animal having once contested on the UNP ticket and during the 2005 presidential election, shifted his allegiance to the then UPFA presidential nominee, Mahinda Rajapaksa. Cabraal was justly rewarded with this key post less than an year after the new president took office.

Mervyn Silva: Deserving of a prison sentence simply for his notoriety, this politician is of the firm opinion that the fact that he hails from Beliatta, the homestead of the President, he is above reproach. Having been charged with fraud, linked to several underworld figures, abused journalists and recently, stormed state television with his pet thug to thrash the station’s news director and got his just desserts would in any sane country be cause enough to be thrown out of public service and deep into jail. But not in Sri Lanka. Silva serves very little purpose as far as the public eye can see, but he continues to be tolerated by the administration. Perhaps the home ties are more binding one could have imagined.

Rohitha Bogollagama: Since being appointed Foreign Minister in January 2007, ‘Boggles’ as scribes have nicknamed him has broken all records of foreign travel and expenditure on these official visits. In this short span of a year, Boggles has rarely been in the country for more than a week at a time, addicted to trotting the globe with his wife and son in tow on occasion. His visits have drained the Foreign Ministry coffers and thanks to his exorbitant travel, the Ministry used up its fund allocation for the year 2007 in a matter of six months. All this notwithstanding, the Foreign Minister continues to fly First Class on all airlines and stay in the best suites in the best hotels in the world, all at state expense. Blatant nepotism has also been a highlight of his stint in the Foreign Ministry. Bogollagama relatives have been appointed to key stations in New Delhi and more recently as exclusively reported first in The Bottom Line, the Minister ensured his son-in-law to be Aminda Rodrigo was given a diplomatic posting as Second Secretary of the Sri Lankan Embassy in Washington DC. His clashes with Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona are public knowledge and the two are collectively wreaking havoc at a Ministry which is crucial when a state is fighting a war.

Palitha Kohona: Despite holding the key administrative post at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kohona functions largely as a second minister, jetting off on first or business class several times a month. Like Bogollagama, Kohona is more often out of Sri Lanka than in and knows nothing of the day to day running of the ministry which are matters particularly pertaining to his office. Instead Kohona has shown far more interest in bringing Bogollagama down than he has in attending to crucial administrative duties at his ministry. The tragedy is that Kohona succeeds distinguished public servants like H.M.G.S. Palihakkara whose acumen and efficiency as a Foreign Secretary held the Ministry in good stead no matter which way the political winds blew.

P.B. Jayasundera: Treasury Secretary under two regimes, first Chandrika Kumaratunga and now Mahinda Rajapaksa, Jayasundera has significant allegations of corruption against him. Many of the allegations were highlighted by the now virtually defunct COPE, chaired by UPFA dissident Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe. Despite the allegations, Jayasundera continues to hold key public office and manage the state coffers in a time of severe economic peril.

To say the media has been consistently raising all issues pertaining to this inner circle and more would be a massive understatement. The individuals highlighted above and many more cannot be touched; will not be admonished. The media realises that the war against these questionable officials is an unwinnable one, but continues to take shots at them in what is at best, vain hope. The lacklustre, weak opposition only spurs the President on and ensures that no action is taken to arrest a situation that will surely lead both the presidency and the country to depths from which there will be no return.

Since his campaign for office, if there has been one thing startlingly obvious about President Rajapaksa, it has been his inability to say ‘no’ to anyone. How can we ever forget how he wooed both the JHU and the minority parties at the same time, promising each party two diametrically opposite things? He has carried this characteristic through to his presidency and more than two years down the line, nothing seems to have changed at all.

One might even thinks the President enjoys setting one officer against the other this way – whether Kohona and Bogollagama, Dhammika Perera and P.B. Jayasundera or Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka and Navy Chief Wasantha Karannagoda. In each of these cases, Rajapaksa has it well within his power to address these conflicts and bring about compromise and peace. But he plays both sides, endlessly, allowing each party to believe that the President is on his side of the argument, and so the wagon rolls merrily along. The President’s strength is to shower each one of these warring officials with praise, allowing them to develop an unwarranted sense of self-importance. When they speak to Rajapaksa of their problems, each of them are convinced that the President believes them to be in the right and that their ‘enemies’ would be ‘put in their place.’ If one were to study it objectively, it would be apparent that Rajapaksa is a master stroke, capable of using his formidable PR skills to his political advantage – after all, nobody falls out to him and all remain faithful. But it is also a fact that it is a matter of time before all of this comes undone.

In time, President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s greatest strength is bound to become his weakness. Already his inability to make decisions that are crucial to the development and growth of this nation has put Sri Lanka in an incredibly unenviable position, economically and socially speaking. The only thing that is going right appears to be the military push, and in that, it is no secret, that the President has no hand. The war is being managed entirely by his younger brother and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya, who, thanks to his own military background, possesses the wisdom to allow the service chiefs to do their job and keep politics out of it. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa might make a right royal mess of things every time he is called upon to make a public statement, ensuring that the UN and human rights organizations are breathing hellfire down our necks, but so far, no one can complain about his execution of the war effort.

Ironically, despite the pathetic state of things, the fact of the matter is that the cards are all stacked in the President’s favour. He has mastered the art of communicating the message, even though the message itself is hollow. With nothing to say for policy or decisions in the last two years and more, Rajapaksa continues to enjoy considerable popular support, something the opposition UNP is so sadly lacking.

Furthermore, thanks to the massive erosion in UNP ranks, Rajapaksa also has in his camp some of the brightest in the political firmament – Milinda Moragoda, G.L. Peiris, Hemakumara Nanayakkara, Sarath Amunugama and Karu Jayasuriya. Instead of being given crucial tasks to manage in terms of governance, many of these political stars have been relegated to the sidelines, unable to effect change or exercise any positive influence over this administration.

Rajapaksa needs to realise this. Power never lasts forever. His men, one by one will take the fall. Only by taking firm decisions and showing himself to be above the unscrupulous actions of his officials can the President hope to keep the people on his side. To side with his ‘men’ at the cost of the peoples’ support would be a mistake – and one which several seemingly all-powerful leaders have made at one point or the other to their own detriment.