Political Commentary

It was three years ago that the Aragalaya people’s movement in Sri Lanka hit the international headlines. The world watched a celebration of democracy on the streets of Colombo as tens of thousands of people of all ages and communities gathered to demand a change of government. The Aragalaya showed that people have the power, and agency, to make governments at the time of elections and also break governments on the streets through non-violent mass protest. This is a very powerful message that other countries in the region, particularly Bangladesh and Pakistan in the South Asian region, have taken to heart from the example of Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya. It calls for adopting ‘systems thinking’ in which there is understanding of the interconnectedness of complex issues and working across different sectors and levels that address root causes rather than just the symptoms.

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) sessions in Geneva have regularly been a focal point of controversy for Sri Lanka. Since 2009, the year the thirty-year internal war ended, the country has been the subject of multiple resolutions aimed at addressing human rights violations and war crimes committed during and after the war. These resolutions have been met with strong resistance from successive Sri Lankan governments, which have accused the UNHRC of double standards and external interference in the country’s internal affairs. Nationalist political factions have often used the UNHRC’s actions as a rallying point to stir anger against the international community and ethnic minorities within Sri Lanka, further deepening divisions within the country.

President Donald Trump in the United States is showing how, in a democratic polity, the winner of the people’s mandate can become an unstoppable extreme force. Critics of the NPP government frequently jibe at the government’s economic policy as being a mere continuation of the essential features of the economic policy of former president, Ranil Wickremesinghe. The criticism is that despite the resounding electoral mandates it received, the government is following the IMF prescriptions negotiated by the former president instead of making radical departures from it as promised prior to the elections. The critics themselves do not have alternatives to offer except to assert that during the election campaign the NPP speakers pledged to renegotiate the IMF agreement which they have done only on a very limited basis since coming to power.

The virtually overnight suspension of the U.S. government’s multibillion dollar foreign aid programme channeled through USAID has been headline news in the U.S. and in other parts of the world where this aid has been very important. In the U.S. itself the suspension of USAID programmes has been accompanied by large scale loss of jobs in the aid sector without due notice. In areas of the world where U.S. aid was playing an important role, such as in mitigating conditions of famine or war, the impact is life threatening to large numbers of hapless people. In Sri Lanka, however, the suspension of U.S. aid has made the headlines for an entirely different reason.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is showing the change for the better that a single individual can bring by challenging old ways of doing things by those who have traditionally governed the country. According to the news media and first person accounts by commentators contacted in Jaffna, the president’s visit to the Jaffna peninsula last week was a success. It seems that the president timed his visit to the north in the context of forthcoming local government elections that are anticipated to be held in April. The focus on Jaffna during his visit would have been the central place that Jaffna has as the civilizational seat of the Tamil people.

The government is reported to be preparing legal amendments to ensure the conduct of long postponed provincial elections. Elections to the nine provincial councils have been postponed since 2017 when the government at that time decided to amend the law pertaining to the conduct of provincial elections. But they never completed the process, which gave them the excuse not to hold the elections. Thereafter no government had sufficient interest in holding elections to the provincial councils by completing the process of changing the provincial council election law. The result is that today the devolved provincial council system is run by appointees of the central government. Little do they recognize or accept that they are violating the constitution by technical excuses.

Four months after coming to power, the NPP government is facing growing criticism from those in the opposition and also scepticism regarding its ability to make policies necessary to revive the country and its economy. The catchy stories in the media are invariably in relation to some mishap or shortcoming in the past of government leaders. Some of these relate to the inexperience of the new decisionmakers, many of them having spent their lives in academia rather than in politics or public administration. The criticisms that ring true to the masses of people relate to the economic difficulties they continue to experience in full force. Those who contributed to the economic catastrophe of 2022 by their own actions over the past decades have little credibility to criticize.

The government has two sets of problems coming from the past, one external to it and the other internal, but both interconnected. The external problems include the vulnerable state of the economy which is on the mend by any objective standard. But the government is liable to face growing public disenchantment unless the benefits of development are more widely distributed. However, the last government’s negotiations with international creditors and the agreement with the IMF leave little room for the new government to manoeuvre. The reduction in the debt that was negotiated was around 20 percent overall, which is significantly less than obtained historically from similarly positioned countries. In 2020, Argentina restructured $65 billion in foreign bonds, securing a 50 percent reduction in debt payments over the next decade.

Among the important promises of the NPP government to the people has been to address the problem of corruption and waste. This was the centrepiece of the Aragalaya protests that brought down the government in 2022. The government made many other promises too when it was in the opposition. But unlike in the case of these other promises, such as to reduce the cost of living, the promise to reduce corruption and waste is within the power of the government to a greater extent than to bring down the cost of living which is determined by external factors more than by internal ones. The government has cut down on its costs considerably. Its celebrations of its electoral victory and swearing in of the new president and parliament was on a low key. The president took only a small delegation with him on his first official trip abroad to India.

Downtown Colombo and especially its upmarket commercial areas sparkled, and will continue to do so, in the night this Christmas season until the grand finale on New Year’s Eve. There is little indication that this city of night lights had experienced dire economic collapse just three years ago. The long lines of vehicles that once queued up for fuel outside petrol stations are overshadowed the much longer lines of traffic crawling on the way to the centre of celebrations at Galle Face Green, once the epicentre of the Aragalaya protests that brought down the government and had the president fleeing the country.

The participation of Deputy Minister of National Integration, Muneer Mulaffar, in a conference on “Building a peaceful pluralistic Sri Lanka through Social Cohesion and Coexistence” organized by the Association of War Affected Women (AWAW), together with other peacebuilding organisations, was the highlight of the event. The Minister spoke eloquently on the government’s commitment to national integration. The event was attended by more than 150 participants, drawn from clergy of all religions, civil society, the academic community and several embassies. The Minister’s participation and speech on the occasion gave two important signals to the participants and the country at large. One message was that the government considered the national reconciliation process to be one that merited its time and effort. The other message was that the task of civil society and citizens was important for the wellbeing of the country.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s statement that the government will not permit the erosion of its mandate for accountable government in the context of the resignation of the Speaker of Parliament is on track with the promises made during the course of the elections that brought the NPP to power. The President reaffirmed his commitment to maintaining public trust, stating his government will take decisive action against any wrongdoing, regardless of rank, and emphasised the government’s mission to uphold the people’s mandate and ensure accountability at all levels. This is an indication that the government will be pursuing its anti-corruption agenda which will help it to retain its support base amongst the people. It will also offer the opportunity to legally and legitimately neutralize or incapacitate political rivals who will stoop to any level to come back to power, if they can be proven to have engaged in corruption.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is scheduled to make his first international visit to India this week.  This is expected to be followed by a visit to China in close order.  The president, and the country itself, is walking a tightrope between these two Asian giants, one which is the world’s second largest economy and other its fifth largest.  Both of them see the island of Sri Lanka as a strategic location for their geopolitical aims.  In the case of India, the stakes are particularly high as it does not wish China to pose a military challenge to it in the south when it is a belligerent power in the north where the two countries have gone to war over territory each claims for itself.

Delivering his inaugural policy statement to Parliament, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake dealt mostly with the economy and, in particular, the IMF agreement. The problem he faces is that the former government agreed to terms with the IMF that did not consider the impact on the people, but gave priority to meeting fiscal targets. The President acknowledged that the government had no alternative but to continue with it as the country had gone too far down the road to change direction. He said, “The negotiations had already been ongoing for more than two years. If we were to restart discussions on the restructuring programme for an extended period it will be impossible for us to move the economy forward…”

The political avalanche that swept the electoral landscape due to the demand for change was unprecedented. In some electorates the majority achieved by the NPP exceeded 70 percent. The overall majority in the country was 61 percent. The avalanche swept aside many who had earned names for themselves on account of their long years of commitment to influence policies in the national interest. In their place will be a host of much younger persons who will come in with their ideals and hopes for positive change but with little experience of governance and even administration. The government is aware of this issue and has arranged for a three-day workshop on parliamentary procedures, session activities and the functioning of committees.

The government is aware as much as anyone else that the country continues to be in an extremely vulnerable situation with the possibility of reversal to a state of economic decline a possible scenario. Both national and international experts have pointed this out with the IMF saying that the country is poised at knife’s edge. The government’s care taken in navigating the sitiuation has included accepting the IMF package, which the main opposition party is making so bold as to reject, but which the former government negotiated and considered to be its signal triumph. The government has also not been engaging in any high cost and self-interested activities unlike its predecessors who sooner rather than later made major wasteful expenditures.