Sabry makes his defence well in advance of failure
Ali Sabry who handles Finance Ministry matters and ostensibly acts as Lanka’s Finance Minister despite having resigned from office on April 5 and never sworn in again, told Parliament on Wednesday that he accepts that his Government was wrong to have cut taxes, wrong not to have sought IMF help earlier and was mainly responsible for the present crisis, having only a foreign exchange reserve of USD 50 million.
Long time personal lawyer to the President, he also made his own defence well in advance in the event he is accused at a future date of further bungling at the Finance Ministry.
He told the House: ‘I am not an economist. I only took up the job since there was no one willing to bear the burden. I am only the nightwatchman’.
In cricketing parlance, the nightwatchman is an inferior batsman who is sent to bat higher up in the order near the end of the day’s play in order to prevent the team’s top batsman from getting out before lights are called. Howzat for excuses?
But can the nation afford to have one playing the role of the Finance Minister at a time of its gravest crisis who confesses in advance as to his own incompetence to do the job? And who says he is only doing it as a favour since no else wants it? As an incompetent stop gap, temporary fill in till someone suitable to the post is found? A nightwatchman solely existing to protect the top order wickets from falling?
And can the President afford to have such a Finance Minister at this critical juncture who has already made his excuses for any future shambles and told Parliament he is a total ignoramus when it comes to high finance? One who told a major American TV news channel in an interview while in Washington for IMF talks, that ‘ we let the dollar to float’, without realising the gaffe that Lanka has no control over the American dollar to either float or peg it?
Can the international lending agencies or donor countries like Japan afford to have any confidence in the Government when the man it has placed in charge of the nation’s finances and steer the country out of its bankruptcy, tells Parliament, he is not qualified for the job, that he is only doing the job since no else is there, that he is merely a nightwatchman sent to protect the top order, staying at the crease only until recalled to the dressing room?
And if these do not shock the lending agencies, there’s more. Even his legal right to act as Finance Minister is itself in question.
As the Sunday Punch commented on April 10 and again last Sunday, a minister ceases to hold office when, under
Ar t i c l e 47(2)(b) of t he Constitution, he ‘resigns his office by a writing under his hand addressed to the President.’ To assume that same office again, he has to be sworn in by the President as the Finance Minister, even as he was sworn in as the Justice Minister on 25 April, having resigned as Justice Minister on 4 April.
Ali Sabry talked in Parliament on Wednesday as if the nation owed him an eternal debt of gratitude for being the only man available on the burning ship to have come to Lanka’s aid at her frantic hour of need to bear the flaming torch. Before his arrogance gets the better of him, he should realise that, by his own estimation, he is nothing more than an expendable nightwatchman, the desperate pick of a desperate government that has lost the people’s mandate to rule.
Of course, the President can clear this anomaly with one stroke of his pen by simply swearing Sabry as the Finance Minister. Perhaps Justice Minister Sabry, being a lawyer to boot, should be the first to advice the President and get his anomalous position constitutionally rectified. Constitutional requirements must be studiously satisfied, there is no Presidential right to dispense with the formalities out of convenience or carelessness.
But it will entail having to awkwardly explain how Lanka had an imposter as a Finance Minister, one who didn’t have the constitutional right to hold the post, from April 8 until then; and had even sent him to Washington to plead for an IMF bailout as the nation’s duly accredited Finance Minister when he was not.