Sri Lanka gets a jumbo cabinet

Sri Lanka President has announced a 48-member cabinet for the national unity government. And Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe indicated that yet another set of 45 state and deputy ministers would be appointed in the coming days. Well, this is no more than a jumbo cabinet but then it is all because of coalition politics.

A redeeming feature is that Sirisena-Ranil exercise in government formation falls short of the Rajapaksa bench mark. The former President presided over a government of 52 cabinet ministers and an equal number of junior ministers holding deputy and state minister ranks.

In the new government 37 cabinet posts went to the UNP of Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe who has won the mandate on the promise of good governance. The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) of President Sirisena has taken 18 cabinet berths. Smaller parties like Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) fill in the remaining slots.

There was no minister for North or East regions development.

President Sirisena will be defence minister, directly in charge of the military. Wickremesinghe kept for himself the key national policy and economic development posts. The UNP also controls the finance and foreign ministries.

The significant ministries allocated to the SLFP include transport and petroleum and gas. The national dialogue ministry went to Democratic People’s Front leader Mano Ganesan.

On 24th August Mangala Samaraweera took oath as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wijedasa Rajapaksa as Minister of Justice and DM Swaminathan as Minister of Rehabilitation. Yesterday, Wijedasa Rajapaksa again took oath as Minister of Buddha Sasana and DM Swaminathan, as Minister of Resettlement & Hindu Affairs,

There are in all three Tamil Ministers – DM Swaminathan, P. Digambaram – Minister of Upcountry, New Villages, Estate Infrastructure& Community Development and Mano Ganesan – Minister of National Dialogue. But none of them represent either Northern or Eastern regions.

The 19th amendment to the constitution, passed by Parliament after Sirisena took office in January, restricted the number of cabinet ministers to 30. So Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe presented a resolution to Parliament on Thursday to increase the number of ministerial posts, and it was passed by 143 votes. In what is no more than an indication of the government’s fragility, 62 MPs abstained from voting while 16 opposed the motion.

Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake opposed the resolution, but only on the ground that not all parties agreed to enter the government, so it was not a national government.

Wickremesinghe responded that he headed the UNP and Sirisena led the SLFP’s United People’s Freedom Alliance. “If this is not a national government, what is this government?” he asked.

UNP deputy leader Karu Jayasuriya has taken over as the Speaker. And he appointed Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader R. Sambandan as leader of the Opposition (LoP). It is 32 years since a Tamil party held the LoP. The first LoP was A. Amirthalingam of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF). He held the post between 1977 and 1983.

Sampanthan, who had political baptism in 1956 by joining the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (also known as Federal Party), entered Parliament for the first time in 1977 from Trincomalee on TULF ticket. He has spent more than two decades as a law maker.

Since 2001, he has been heading the TNA, which now comprises the ITAK, the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO), the Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) and the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE).

Flip-side of government formation is that about 40 SLFP MPs are sitting in the opposition, even though the party is officially part of the unity government. They are supporters of Rajapaksa, who contested last month’s election leading the UPFA campaign and won a parliamentary seat. Rajapaksa criticized Sambandan’s appointment as LoP.

–by malladi rama rao

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