The Committee stage of Budget 2025 began in the House on Thursday with cartloads of mud – if mud it really was – thrown at past leaders of this country by the present incumbents. It can be credibly argued that what was on display was not plain mud slinging but an expose of the scandalous profligacy of past presidents of this country, chief among them President Mahinda (born Percy Mahendra) Rajapaksa, and Ranil Wickremesinghe upon whom the presidency of this country was fortuitously bestowed months after he himself had been defeated in his Colombo bastion and had led the UNP to an ignominious zero elected seat defeat at the 2020 parliamentary election. After much foot dragging, Wickremesinghe took the UNP’s single National List slot and ended up as President of the Republic! “Fortuitous circumstances,” as one time Prime Minister W. Dahanayake called his own ascendancy to the prime ministry.
All that, of course, is water under the bridges. An outspoken former prime minister of yesteryear, Sir. John Kotelawela, is remembered, among other things, for his homespun Sinhala remark, “henda athey thiyanakam bedagnilla (as long as the spoon is in your hand, serve yourselves); and serve themselves they did – and how! The public was not unaware of how their elected leaders, pledged to serve the voter, have lavished tax rupees on themselves. But they were not privy to exactly how much – and the amounts are stupendous – the national exchequer had to bear in rupees and cents terms. The new regime had the opportunity to get the show on the road when the president’s votes came up for discussion at the committee stage of the budget and it seized it with both hands.
Travel on the official account has long been a favorite pastime of Lankan from presidents and prime ministers downwards, and also the private sector, attributable partly to the foreign exchange restrictions enforced for long years. A policeman of a bygone era said of his boss, a famed investigator of yesteryear, that if any foreign travel was involved in any matter investigated, the file stopped at his desk. Foreign suppliers of equipment have long been aware that one of the best ways of winning contracts is tossing a couple of freebies in the direction of prospective decision takers..
How many engineers in the employment of the state have gone abroad on equipment factory visits and for test runs on the supplier’s account? Who can forget the greed for places on the board of board of directors of first Air Ceylon, then Air Lanka and finally SriLankan Airlines. Why? The free travel perk not only for the directors themselves but also for members of their families.
Thursdays revelatory numbers were eloquent. President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who served two terms and unsuccessfully sought a third after amending the constitution for the purpose, had spent over Rs. 3.57 billion on travel in four years (2010 to 2014) of his second term. What this was in his first term has not been stated by the incumbents who had obviously got a lot of midnight oil burnt to dig out the figures brandished on Thursday by Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya.
The voters (and the party that elected him as president locum tenens) did not give Wickremesinghe, despite his success in restoring a semblance of normalcy after the aragalaya, any more than the balance of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s term when GR fled the country. In the limited two years he had from 2023 to 2024, his foreign travel bill was Rs. 531 million. He attended Queen Elizabeth’s and the Japanese Emperor’s funerals and King Charles’ coronation apart from other overseas visits.
Maithripala Sirisena and Gotabaya Rajapaksa have not done badly either. The former spent Rs. 384 million between 2015 and 2019 while Gotabaya cost the taxpayer Rs. 128 million from 2020 to 2022. We do not know whether the cost of operating an SLN ship to ferry him and his wife from Colombo to Trincomalee and an SLAF aircraft to fly them to the Maldives from where GR went to Singapore and resigned have been included in the figures given to parliament.
But we are sure that the cost incurred by SriLankan Airlines to divert a flight to Zurich to pick up a puppy dog for his wife was not included in the figures on offer. All this number crunching led up to the flag waving climax of the story: President Aura Kumara Dissanayake’s trips for the months from September 2024 to February 2025, including two state visits to India and China and a Governance Summit in Dubai had cost Rs. 1.8 million. Whether the hosts bore the air fares was not stated. Perhaps the question may be raised as the debate proceeds.
Let us also not forget that apart from his official travel, MR wanted paid passengers bounced off a SriLankan flight to accommodate his entourage. That sorry story ended Emirates’ partnership with SriLankan being terminated after the national carrier had been turned round to profit by its managing partner. The billions SriLankan lost subsequently was money down the drain; the now abandoned attempt to privatize the airline attracted no takers.
Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara said RW had 39 presidential advisers with his adviser on parliamentary affairs in school when RW entered parliament! He asked whether the former president knew anything at all if he needed so many advisors. While these patronage appointees had lavish pay and perks, the president has three advisors all working for free!
The ongoing debate promises to be a “full serial” as offered to film-goers once upon a time. Whether an emasculated opposition can give as much as it gets remains to be seen as the new messiahs give themselves a sheen.
