The Govt. makes disproportionate investments on infrastructure

Megapolis and Western Development Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka, in an interview with Daily Mirror, spoke about the current status of the economy and politics in the country. Following are excerpts of the interview: 

• Q Recently, you made critical remarks about the housing requirements of Colombo slum dwellers and added that the issue remained unaddressed compared to the provision of houses in the north and the east and the estate sector. Do you feel there is discrimination?

It isn’t racial discrimination. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa created disparity in addressing developmental needs. During his ten-year rule, Rs.2400 billion was spent as capital investment. Out of it, Rs.900 billion was invested on Hambantota. It’s disproportionate. Likewise, for Gampaha, represented by Basil Rajapaksa, a colossal sum of money was spent. Even small access roads were carpeted with asphalt. Market places were built among other things. But, there was no proportionate investment made in Colombo and the suburbs.

The present Government has embarked on the extension of the Southern Expressway and railway line and the construction of the Central Expressway as its biggest capital investments. It’s an investment worth Rs.600 billion. It’s a contribution on the construction economy. Such projects don’t generate fresh wealth. Had such investments been made for infrastructure development in Colombo, it would have yielded better economic results. Since 2015 we have proposed to upgrade and redesign the road network in Colombo- the extension of Marine Drive to Moratuwa, and the development of the road from Pamankada Bridge to Wellawatte etc.   

There is a proposal to construct an underground subway to ease traffic congestion in Kandy. It costs Rs.60 billion. Yet, at least, Rs.1 billion hadn’t been allocated for the reduction of congestion in Colombo by the Government.

There are as many as 60,000 slum dwellers. Most of them are Tamils and Muslims. They have mostly migrated to the city during the war. For them, housing units, schools and playgrounds should be constructed. The Urban Development Authority (UDA) has been assigned with the task. But, the Government doesn’t invest on any of them. In the north, India undertook to build 50,000 houses while the Sri Lanka Government undertook to build 38,000.

• Colombo City development under Megapolis plan not given due prominence
• It’s impossible to legally institute Megapolis Authority under current hostile political environment
• Hambantota Port and Mattala Aiport are appropriate projects in theoretical terms 
• China Merchant is a relevant partner
• Yet, there are issues regarding selection procedure
• Sri Lanka shouldn’t play geopolitical games
• Bond scam a lethal blow to the 6. 2 million voters who wanted a change
• Those responsible should be held accountable by these voters
• Entrust Securities committed a fraud of Rs.12 billon during MR’s regime

Besides, another Rs. 150 billion is needed to construct 50,000 more houses. What is the amount set aside for Colombo? It’s disproportionate. The last Government made unproductive investments on projects like expressways. We also continue doing the same. Yet, this Government is faced with a new predicament. The last Government had no ceiling or limit regarding its capital investments. We have a limit due to the huge debt burden and the ensuing agreement with the IMF to sort out the primary balance.

We have to decide on what is more important- the construction of Central and the Southern Expressways, or the implementation of the Western Megapolis plan.  

Sri Lanka is becoming a middle income country. Such people believe in meritocracy. They scorn nepotism. That is what good governance means to the people. It isn’t a mandate for the abolition of the Executive Presidency 

Q You mean to say that the expressways are no longer economically viable?
We have to choose between the expressways and public roads. I opt for public roads. Expressways aren’t meant for all to travel on. However, everyone has to pay taxes regarding the constructions of individuals. Bicycles and motorbikes aren’t allowed on the expressways. An expressway is justifiable in case of linking economic centres only. The expressway between Colombo and the airport is acceptable. What is the usefulness of having an expressway linking Kurunegala with Kandy? How justifiable is an expressway between Matara and Sooriyawewa?   

Q The Government launched the Megapolis Project with much fanfare. Now, do you mean to say that no investment is made regarding it? 
With this concept, we have evolved a proper planning structure for urban development instead of an ad hoc process followed during the Rajapaksa regime. Alongside, we need to legalize this formal urban development plan. A Megapolis authority has to be established. We worked out a piece of legislation. Yet, we didn’t proceed with it due to the current political enviroment in the country.   

Q Why is it impossible?
The Prime Minister submitted draft legislations on other matters providing for the development in the Southern and Wayamba regions. The Provincial Councils voted all of them out. Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) didn’t offer cooperation. The draft bill, providing for the setting up of Megapolis authority, is destined for the same fate as things stand at the moment. It’s difficult to get it done in the backdrop of a hostile political environment prevailing in the country. The two main parties are together. But, it hasn’t translated into real benefits for the country when enacting legislations.

Alongside, there is no power given to us to investment.   

Port City is a major investment attached to it. When we assumed office, five percent of work had been completed. It’s a good project. It entailed legal, social and environmental issues, however.   

One committee, appointed by the Prime Minister, proposed to scrap the project. The same was requested by the Catholic Church and environmentalists. We rectified all the anomalies after consultations with all those concerned. We have accelerated the project.   

We were assigned with the management of garbage. It was done after all options failed, during the past two and half months, in this regard. We were handed with the responsibility after all the others failed to deliver.    Besides, we ourselves innovated some projects such as Tech City. We need a road which links it to Kottawa. That hasn’t been done.   

I am thankful to Transport Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva for entrusting us with the responsibility to build the light rail project. Anyone, other than he, wouldn’t have given it to us. We can’t execute the project overnight. It involves a lot of work such as feasibility studies and design work. What happened during the time of Mahinda Rajapaksa was only city beautification. We have a better plan in place. That is even aimed at the prevention of floods in the city limits utilizing the modernization of drainage lines and tunnels.   

We sought public assistance to drive stray cattle out of the city. Some people took charge of their cattle again. We rounded up stray cattle ambling on city roads. We surveyed street beggars with the participation of the police, police intelligence officers and sociologists. There were 600 street beggars last year. A hinge fear was whipped up in the media that we would send them away. It has dropped to 100 now. Some beggars are actually street dwellers. Others do begging in the city as a means of living only. Most of them are mentally retarded or disabled. They have no option. We need to carefully rehabilitate them.   

Q Is the kind of assistance you receive sufficient?
To be honest, we got a small amount of money from the Finance Ministry. For a project requiring more than Rs.200 billion, we got only Rs.8.5 billion. This is a huge project. We have requested the Government to allocate more funds in the next budget. We hope the Government would address not only the concerns of the poor in the north, but also those in Colombo.   

Q What will happen to the Government from a political perspective following the removal of MP Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe?
Both the UNP and the SLFP should bear in mind the fact that people unseated Mahinda Rajapaksa not because of his poor performance. He waged a war against terrorism and won. He brought about stability in the country. He invested one trillion rupees on road construction. He built ports and power plants, airports and laid the foundation for new city building.   

Basil Rajapaksa spent as much as Rs.250 billion on development work targeting the elections.   

People believe he was defeated due to the Tamils and Muslims voting against him. It isn’t true. During the 2010 elections too, the Tamils and Muslims voted against him, overwhelmingly. In 2010, he lost the elections in the north and the east by 400,000 votes. In 2015, he lost in these provinces by 600,000 votes. In 2010, he won the provinces outside the North and the East by a majority of 2.2 million votes. He won these areas this time by 200,000 votes only. Actually, Rajapaksa got a beating from those in the Sinhala majority areas. He got defeated mainly in the electorates with an urban middle class. He lost in Kotte and Panadura.   

People realized that there was a massive financial fraud behind this development drive. People loathed it. Rajapaksa promoted family rule. His family members controlled 97 percent of the annual Budget. Other ministers weren’t assigned with responsibilities.   

Sri Lanka is becoming a middle income country. Such people believe in meritocracy.

They scorn nepotism. That is what good governance means to the people. It isn’t a mandate for the abolition of the Executive Presidency.   

At the provincial councils’ elections in 2014, the UNP received only 2.4 million votes. It doubled by 2015. Why is this? People pinned new hopes on the UNP. People thought the UNP, with the infusion of new blood, would propel the economy to the next level.   

However, the UNP didn’t penalize those involved in corruption and frauds in the past. Also, it didn’t take action to halt corruption in the present context. No action was taken to prevent the same in the future by working out effective legislations. That is the reason for people’s disillusionment with the Government. The UNP is still unable to establish meritocracy. The UNP has 52 newcomers to Parliament. The UNP should take steps to rebrand the party with them.  President J.R. Jayewardene didn’t forge ahead with the old guard. President Jayewardene restructured, rebranded and relaunched the party in 1975. This is the challenge before the Prime Minister today.   

Q Actually, you advocated meritocracy. Today, you are giving the same piece of advice to the UNP. Does it mean that you are also planning to team up with the UNP to be rebranded in such fashion?
We are with the UNP-led front. We think broadly, anyhow. Meritocracy is absolutely essential for the forward march of the country. A country can’t be developed based on family rule and nepotism.   

Q In your view, is it the UNP led by the Prime Minister or the SLFP led by the President that’s suitable to take this country forward?
The President, in a way, cut off the family based hegemony of SLFP. We see a new breed of leaders in the party including Mahinda Amaraweera, Duminda Dissanayake and Lasantha Alagiyawanna. Unfortunately, SLFPers, in their mindsets, are naturally opposed to the UNP. That is the line of the rank and file of the SLFP. As a result, there is a gap between the present SLFP leadership and voters. SLFP voters see the present leaders as traitors. So, the President’s reform agenda isn’t productive.    By 2020, the future of politics will depend on the line of thinking that’s adopted by the middle class. The very same middle class ensured victory for President Rajapaksa in 2010. President Sirisena received it in 2015 for a different purpose.   

Q It means a new political force is slated to emerge?
We can’t say such a thing right now. We can’t predict it. Nobody thought in 2014 that Maithripala Sirisena would become President. Also nobody assumed that Rajapaksa would become President in 2005.   

Q Are you planning to play a role in shifting the middle class vote base by appealing to their conscience in 2020 too?
 Those slinging mud at us label us as racists. There is another set of people who project us as those who berated the nation. Those ‘internet patriots’, weren’t seen when Prabhakaran had military might even with artillery firepower. Two or three people in that camp have the right to talk about patriotism. When we fought against Prabakaran, the other internet patriots weren’t anywhere. Mahinda Rajapaksa is a Federalist. He brought P-TOMS. Gotabaya was in America. Wimal Weerawansa was Marxist. We stood with determination to defeat terrorism. We are against terrorism even today. If another form of terrorism emerges today, we will fight it.   

Though we are branded as racists, we only provided electricity to the North. I provided the electricity supply to the North. We haven’t done any discrimination. Some minority politicians discriminate when appointing people to their ministries. We only made the paradigm change in relation to the war effort. We converted the population centred war effort to an enemy centred war effort. We did the paradigm shift. Because of that only, the people, including the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), received freedom.   

Q The Government leased out the Hambantota Port. Now talks are underway to lease out the Mattala Airport. How will it affect Sri Lanka geopolitically?
First, we have to understand that Sri Lanka has the advantage of location in terms of energy resources, aviation routes, maritime routes and tourism. This is a major opportunity for us. However, this can also be our death knell. 

This is an area where even the late President Jayewardene made a mistake. We were sandwiched between the United States and Russia as a result of their struggle. We shouldn’t play geopolitical games. We have to stick to the non-aligned policy. Ours isn’t a superpower to strike such matters.

Theoretically speaking, the Hambantota Port is absolutely viable. The Mattala airport is also appropriate in theoretical terms. Yet, I believe those projects should have been implemented in stages rather than making a massive investment at once. The Sri Lanka Ports Authority can’t run it. It needs a strategic partner to operate the port. China Merchants is a suitable partner. Yet, there are problematic areas we find in the process of choosing this partner . It is questionable whether we have properly assessed the value of the port? Next, did we follow the proper open procedure to select the development partner? Did we do it with proper legal consultations applicable to Sri Lanka? We have these questions. We should have done this anyhow. 

Q MP Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe once said that there is a threat to the Sinhala nation and Buddha Sasana. Do you accept what he has said after you being a minister who represented the nationalist camp once?
We represent a social process. We created a national movement. Otherwise, we didn’t hijack that off anyone.   

There are those doing narrow, wicked politics among the Sinhala people. It’s detrimental to the Sinhalese and Buddhists. It’s disgraceful. It isn’t something applicable and acceptable in the modern society. It’s a course of action ridiculing Tamils and Muslims and creating rifts among the Maha Sangha. There is no proper philosophical vision on Buddhism in this exercise. They think the installation of Buddhist statues at every junction is the practice of religion.   

The same disgraceful approach is taken by Muslim and Tamil extremists. If we want to foster the Sinhala nation, the country should be made economically prosperous and powerful rather than making remarks like pundits on the internet media. We don’t shout patriotic slogans on the streets.   

Respecting others is espoused in the Buddhist culture. That is a salient feature of our culture.   

Q You made some critical remarks regarding the Central Bank bond scam. Do you consider it as the biggest financial fraud committed ever in this country? 
There might have been numerous frauds. However, I must say that this is a lethal blow to the ideology espoused by 6.2 million voters who supported the change. Those, responsible for it, wouldn’t be tolerated by the voters of the UNP led United National Front. They should be held accountable before these people.   

The ill-gotten wealth of Perpetual Treasuries should be recovered. The interest rate of the country shot up as a result of this scam. The Government loses Rs.90 billion as a result of this scam on an annual basis. It affects the growth rate.   

For the first time since 2001, the per capita income recorded a negative growth last year. Our economic growth slowed to 4 percent. I am thankful to the current Central Bank Governor for taking efforts to minimize the impact caused.   

Entrust Securities of Chanuka Ratwatte, like Perpetual Treasuries, committed a fraud of Rs. 12 billion starting from the time of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Ratwattes are still at large. They are the Rajapaksa loyalists. It isn’t Perpetual Treasuries alone that committed such crimes. It started when Mahinda Rajapaksa was the Finance Minister. The Presidential Commission should look into that as well.