By Our Defence Correspondent
On Tuesday, Sept. 22, a senior Cabinet minister, acting on behalf of Deputy Defence Minister Anuruddha Ratwatte, tabled in parliament a document giving the Supplementary Estimates for the Ministry of Defence.

The total that Minister Ratwatte is asking parliament, over and above the Rs. 44 billion, which was approved last December in the 1998 budget, is a staggering Rs. 12.2 billion!

This brings the Defence budget in 1998 to an all time high of Rs. 56.2 billion, a far cry from Deputy Finance Minister G.L. Peiris' promise that expenditure on the war would be lower than last year's Rs. 47 billion.

As a responsible national newspaper with a decade and half of service to the nation, we feel it is time that someone serious questioned the progress of the war this year, and asked what this huge amount of money has been spent on.

As far as we can see, judging from what the Defence Ministry tells us in its daily communiquŽs, troops of Operation Jaya Sikuru are in almost the exact place that they were in January. No towns have been captured since then, and no territory that we know of.

No other operations have been conducted in the country, which have actually gained significant amounts of land area from the Tigers, or captured towns from them.

So why is the defence budget at an all time high?

Up to this year, there had been significant gains in territory, towns and villages, since the LTTE went back to war in 1995.

In 1995, the Valikamam region of the Jaffna Peninsula, which included Jaffna town, was liberated by the armed forces.

In 1996, the rest of the Jaffna Peninsula was taken, with dozens of towns and villages, including Chavakachcheri, coming under government control. In addition, soldiers began moving south from Elephant Pass that same year, taking the key towns of Paranthan and Kilinochchi, which included a significant land area.

Last year, the gains were even more impressive. First there was the operation which cleared the Mannar road, effectively throwing the Tigers out of the vast jungle area of the Wilpattu National Park, gaining one of Sri Lanka's major roads, with all the small towns that are on the route. Then there was the launch of Jaya Sikuru, with troops making steady progress up the road and taking such towns as Puliyankulam.

Every year, we could measure the progress of the war, in towns and land area recaptured. But not this year.

Granted, the year is not yet over. But why do we get the feeling that 1998 will be the worst year since Eelam War III began? In January, the army was knocking on the door of Mankulam, confident that it had taken two thirds of the road to Jaffna, and that the Tigers were weakened enough for the troops to rapidly capture the rest. Promises were being made of lorries filled with essential goods and building materials flowing to Jaffna, while civilians streamed south. Plans were already being drawn up for who should be in the first lorry across, with Rupavahini cameras telecasting it all live like a cricket match.

But according to the Defence Ministry, troops are still knocking on the door at Mankulam. And knocking, and knocking, and knocking, · A look at the number of combatants killed, on both sides, also tells a strange story. Censorship forbids us from giving exact figures, but the number of soldiers killed is less this year is lower than in 1995, 1996, or 1997. The same goes for the number of wounded. In the same way, the number of LTTE cadres that the armed forces have claimed to have killed this year is the lowest in Eelam War II.

The LTTE's claims also back this up. Tiger claims of the number of soldiers killed and wounded, and the number of its own cadres killed and wounded, is the lowest since April 1995. So where has all the money gone? Salaries and other benefits of the armed forces have not increased significantly from last year to this year. Salaries form only a small part of the defence budget. This was always the case. In addition, the army didn't have any camps overrun and armories looted like in previous years. The navy didn't lose any ships, and the air force lost only a few aircraft when compared to the previous three years.

So there wasn't much equipment that the armed forces needed to replace. So where did all the money go? We could tell our readers the answer to this question. But this is likely to land the staff of Upali Newspapers in a remand jail or worse, since the censorship prohibits us from speaking on such matters.

Meanwhile, it is pertinent to ask the question of how well the economy can bare the weight of this huge cost. For starters, economic growth is down very significantly. Ask any economist about growth these days, and they all hang their heads in despair. This includes the pundits at the BOI and the Central Bank who measure these things in tangible numbers. Attempts to streamline other government spending haven't got very far this year.

Remember, the government needs to find money to offset the increase since last year. In other words, it needs to do better in this department than it did last year. This clearly is not happening.

Meanwhile, there appears to be a curious apathy on the part of the government regarding clear wastage's of money, with little or no action being taken against the offenders. Last Saturday's disaster in the port of Colombo is a clear example. The port is going to lose millions of rupees due to large parts of the state of the art Jaye Container Terminal, which is the most modern area of the harbor, being shut down due to the sinking of a container ship there, and the efforts to salvage it, which will take at least a month.

Yet, up to now, no one in the government has chastised anyone for this ghastly mistake. Frivolous excuses such as ``only 150 meters of the terminal have been rendered non-operational'' have been trotted out with gay abandon. The larger ramifications on the economy are not being shown to the public. No one in the Sri Lanka Ports Authority has even thought of resigning, and mark our words, no one will. The ships, they are a-sinking, but it's a clear case of ``Navver gilunath baan choon.''

Earlier this month, this column showed in clear detail how badly the economy is doing, and its struggle to sustain the war effort. That situation has now got worse, with the increase in defence spending, and the debacle in the port.

Yet, Ministers such as Ratwatte and Peiris continue to spout their rubbish about ending the war soon, and spending all that money on development. Do they really believe that the public, hit by increased taxes like the wonderful GST, will buy this?

Minister Peiris has repeatedly spoken of lowering the budget deficit, which has the direct effect of increasing development and lowering the hardships of the people. But at every budget speech, he turns around and very apologetically tells us that the increase in defence spending has wrecked his plans for the deficit, and that the country will have to bear with this for another year. I'm sure we'll hear the same thing again, when November comes. Meanwhile, how is Peiris going to make up the shortfall? Where is he going to raise 12 billion rupees? Whether it's by increasing taxes or borrowing from banks, the public has to pay.

Enough is enough. Spending money on winning the war is one thing. Spending more money than ever before and ending up at the same place, namely Mankulam, is not acceptable.

It is time for the government to explain what has gone wrong with the war, and change its course in order to win it. This is not a Test cricket match, where a draw against a mighty opponent is an honorable thing. We need to win, and win it now.