{"id":75021,"date":"2018-02-21T15:59:47","date_gmt":"2018-02-21T22:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=75021"},"modified":"2018-02-21T15:59:47","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T22:59:47","slug":"who-is-telling-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/02\/21\/who-is-telling-the-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is telling the truth?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editorial\u00a0Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

February 21, 2018, 10:15 pm<\/span>
\nIt is being argued in legal and political circles that the incumbent administration and its Cabinet are illegal because the MoU between the UNP and the UPFA to form a national government was valid only for two years from 2015. The validity or otherwise of this vital document is of crucial import. The number of Cabinet ministers cannot exceed 30 unless there is a national government, according to the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, in answer to a query from the Opposition, the Prime Minister declared, in Parliament, that the MoU at issue was still valid and consistent with the Constitution. It had not been rescinded, he insisted. General Secretary of the UPFA and minister Mahinda Amaraweera endorsed the PM\u2019s statement. He said the two parties were still bound by the MoU at issue. Deputy Minister Ajith P. Perera said the MoU had not mentioned that the national government would end after two years.<\/p>\n

Are we to conclude that the national government is legitimate simply because the PM and the General Secretary of the UPFA say so. Is this particular MoU open-ended as claimed by Deputy Minister Perera? Didn\u2019t the government say in 2015 that the national government agreement was valid only for two years? Did its leaders lie to the public?<\/p>\n

Can we take the PM\u2019s word for it? When the Treasury bond scams first came to light with the government being pressured to answer questions from the Opposition, the PM insisted, in Parliament, that there had been no wrongdoing, didn\u2019t he? Deputy Minister Perera is one of the UNP MPs who got now infamous footnotes incorporated into the COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) report on the bond scams, diluting its conclusion.<\/p>\n

Amaraweera once defended the Rajapaksa government to the hilt while being a part of it, but now he tells us it was corrupt and President Sirisena is the best leader. The less said about the UPFA ministers the better. It was only the other day that many of them declared they would not be in a government which had Wickremesinghe as the PM. But, today, they are humming a different tune.<\/p>\n

All politicians have a severe trust deficit. So, the question is whether anyone\u2019s ex cathedra statements anent the national government can be taken as the gospel truth.<\/p>\n

Will the JVP and the Joint Opposition (JO) buy into the PM\u2019s claim backed by Amaraweera and abandon their protests? On Tuesday, no less a person than JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayaka together with JO big guns declared in Parliament that the government and the Cabinet were illegal. What a song and dance they made! They said the national government MoU had expired as it had not been extended with parliamentary approval. They have to either challenge the PM\u2019s claim or admit that they got it all wrong and misled the public.<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t expect politicians, especially the ones in power, to tell us the truth when their interests are threatened. Nothing is scarier to them than the prospect of losing power and opportunities to amass ill-gotten wealth and live off the fat of the land at the expense of the taxpaying public. No one in his or her proper senses will expect them to tell the truth and run the risk of losing power in the process. No minister will ever admit that the UPFA-UNP MoU has expired, for fear of losing his or her portfolio, in the event of the Cabinet having to be downsized in keeping with the 19th Amendment. So, asking the current ministers whether the national government agreement is still valid or not is as stupid as inquiring from a Panchikawatta trader if the spare parts he deals in are genuine.<\/p>\n

Let the JO and JVP worthies be urged to dare the government to produce the UPFA-UNP MoU and peruse it to see if it is open-ended or not. President Maithripala Sirisena should seriously consider seeking a Supreme Court opinion on the MoU at issue because its constitutionality stands questioned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editorial\u00a0Courtesy The Island February 21, 2018, 10:15 pm It is being argued in legal and political circles that the incumbent administration and its Cabinet are illegal because the MoU between the UNP and the UPFA to form a national government was valid only for two years from 2015. The validity or otherwise of this vital […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}