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A pill for Thonda

Mr. S. Thondaman who made some noises about defeating Public Administration and Plantation Industries Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake’s votes during the committee stage of the budget debate has suffered poetic justice. His own votes were defeated on Friday with the UNP comfortably outnumbering government MPs when a surprise amendment was moved as Minister Thondaman was winding up.

The Deputy Chairman of Committees disallowed the amendment on the ground that no notice of its moving had been given. The UNP argued that they had every right to move the amendment requiring the non-alienation of any land or property on which public funds had been spent or will be spent by Mr. Thondaman’s ministry without clearance by a cabinet appointed tender board. Mr. Rauf Hakeem stood his ground disallowing the amendment and the UNP retaliated by defeating the Livestock Development and Estate Infrastructure Ministry votes.

Mr. Thondaman would have drawn cold comfort from the fact that Mr. Wickramanayake was by his side and was one of the 17 MPs on the government benches who voted in his favour because there were twice as many on the other side voting the other way. All this parliamentary drama, knowledgeable observers of the political scene know very well, eventually comes to naught. UNP Chief Whip W.J.M. Lokubandara has already said that Mr. Thondaman should resign after this "unprecedented defeat" on the floor of the House. That will certainly not happen. Nor will Mr. Thondaman’s ministry be starved of money. There are other ways in which he can be supplied.

The UNP, of course, will preen itself over a tactical victory, however Pyrrhic it might be. But some foolish statements of the sort that are not uncommon in our legislature have already been made. Mr. Richard Pathirana had told SLBC on Friday night that it was "UNP chauvinism" that had made the greens decide to defeat a Tamil minister. The Daily News seems to have seen this as a pearl of great wisdom judging by the prominence of the front page box it accorded that particular inanity. Mr. Thondaman, after all, is in parliament on the UNP national list whatever his present allegiance might be. On that same argument, could it not be said that the government, whose business it is to see that it is not caught flatfooted on a surprise vote, did not fulfill its obligations by Mr. Thondaman on the same chauvinist grounds? Why were only the Sinhalese ministers covered by a majority?

What about Mr. Thondaman himself - was he also being chauvinist when he threatened to marshal his CWC forces to defeat Mr. Ratnasiri Wickramanayake’s votes? Mr. Wickramanayake made it very clear that he would resign if his votes are defeated, something we are sure that Mr. Thondaman will not do unless he sees some coming developments in the political horizon which he plans to cannily exploit as he has often done in the past. He, after all, is a very senior politician who has felt strong enough to publicly proclaim recently that it is he who decides whether the PA or the UNP rules. Nobody likes to step on his toes as a general rule, but the UNP has decided to do so at least as far as his votes went on Friday.

Mr. Susil Moonesinghe who moved the amendment which sparked it all off, would not only have been conscious of the fact that the government was in a minority at the time the greens indulged in a spot of nifty parliamentary footwork. He would have also been acutely aware that the problem between Messrs. Thondaman and Wickramanayake was full of explosive potential. Mr. Thondaman had been angered by his colleague’s plans to alienate some estate land for village expansion instead of reserving it for the plantation workers whose interests have been represented by the CWC leader for half a century and more. So why not set the cat among the pigeons?

But all this means nothing in real terms. President Chandrika Kumaratunga who recently confronted her parliamentarians with their attendance details during the budget debate and demanded that they show up in the House will be able to say "I told you so." There aren’t very many days of the budget debate left and it is unlikely that the government will allow its flank to be left uncovered a second time. The UNP, that will not scorn Mr. Thondaman’s electoral support if it can be had another time, is not likely to want to twist the knife and cause him major embarrassment. He, after all, enjoys a special relationship with both the blues and greens having sat on their government benches during different periods extracting maximum advantage for himself and the interests he represents.

Parliamentary life will go on in much the same way it always has with a few diversionary antics of the kind we saw on Friday and nothing will really change. The little bit of theatre has added some spice to a largely humdrum debate which was as dull as the blunder budget was in the first place.

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