NPP Leader and debate on energy crisis

Last month, the NPP Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake in Parliament raised concerns over various power projects in Sri Lanka, including the recently approved solar power scheme in Kilinochchi. Dissanayake also cited major financial corruption with regard to the newly approved 700-MW solar power plant at Poonakary Lake in Kilinochchi. Subsequent to the allegations of the NPP Leader, Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera challenged the former for a public debate while denying the accusations.

In response to Kanchana’s challenge, Dissanayake had said his party would send trade unionist Wasantha Samarasinghe for a debate against Kanchana. Kanchana is one of the best performing and articulate Ministers of the Wickremesinghe Government, and the ability of an individual in the calibre of Samarasinghe, who does not even represent the legislature, to pose a threat to an accomplished personality like Kanchana is questionable.

Straight-talking, firm, and a forthright politician from Matara has won the admiration of many since he assumed the highly critical portfolio at the height of the economic crisis in 2022. He has not been afraid to take unpopular decisions at enormous costs to his political future. He also took on the politically motivated trade union leaders attached to the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation early last year when certain sections of its workers initiated a strike and brought the country to a standstill in order to sabotage the Government’s efforts to allow several multinational companies to import and sell petroleum in the domestic market; the arrival of foreign firms has already benefited local consumers. Kanchana has admirably provided political leadership to introduce the much needed legislative reforms to the electricity sector to restructure the CEB and allow private sector participation across generation, transmission and distribution. 

Why is Dissanayake hesitant to debate Kanchana directly? Is he scared of being exposed? The Presidential aspirant has a track record of making claims that are not factually correct. Recently, his declaration that the country’s debt increased by Rs. 6.5 trillion during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s Yahapalana administration was classified as false by Factcheck.lk platform run by Verite Research, based on three counts.

The NPP politicians’ anti-corruption rhetoric has a huge fan base, but careful observation confirms that their stance against financial impropriety has not always been consistent. Despite widespread allegations of financial misconduct over the Helping Hambantota fiasco against Mahinda Rajapaksa, the JVP (the NPP’s former version) was at the forefront to ensure the victory of Rajapaksa during the 2005 Presidential Election. Although Dissanayake and his NPP colleagues went to town on the Pandora Papers’ exposures on the hidden wealth of Thirukumar Nadesan and his wife Nirupama Rajapaksa two years ago, he and the NPP remain conspicuously silent about the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ exposure of Public Security Minister Tiran Alles owning properties in London via two British Virgin Islands companies.

The importance of increasing the generation of electricity through renewable energy sources to transform Sri Lanka into a competitive economy has been universally acknowledged. In that backdrop, the NPP Leader’s proclamation last year at the National Economic Summit organised by their party (held in Galadari) that a future NPP Government would not allow foreign investors to participate in the generation of electricity based on wind raised many eyebrows in the context of the absolute vitality of attracting foreign investments given the economic woes of the Island. Further, the Presidential hopeful at that particular gathering remarked, if foreign investors are involved, their profits would flow out of the country in dollars and that would be no different from paying dollars to import fossil fuel to generate electricity as we do now.

It seems the NPP Leader’s ideology is completely out of sync with the modern-day economic realities and his outdated beliefs would definitely not enable the country to liberate itself from economic stagnation and become a modern, developed nation.