Monday 27th November, 2023

The SJB has commenced collecting signatures for a public petition as part of a campaign to have those who are responsible for the current economic crisis stripped of their civic rights. Given public resentment, which is palpable, the SJB may be able to obtain hundreds of thousands of signatures for its petition, but the chances of its political venture yielding the desired results are remote; the Rajapaksas and their cronies are controlling Parliament. The SJB seems to be thinking that the ongoing campaign will help it gain some traction, but that move could turn out to be counterproductive because the Opposition politicians are not free from blame for the economic crisis.

The SLPP leaders are directly responsible for the country’s bankruptcy. The Mahinda Rajapaksa government indulged in wasteful expenditure, invested heavily in vanity projects, and did precious little to prevent the misappropriation of public funds. Corruption became the order of the day under that regime. The Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration totally mismanaged the economy, ruined the agricultural sector with its disastrous organic farming experiment and the ill-conceived blanket ban on agrochemicals, resorted to excessive money printing, did not make a serious effort to arrest the rapid depletion of foreign currency reserves and refused to seek international assistance to straighten up the economy until it was too late.

All SLPP MPs including those who have broken ranks with the government must be held accountable for the current economic crisis; even the dissidents among them supported the wrong policies of the Gotabaya administration until they fell from grace. Similarly, besides those who, the Supreme Court has said in a recent judgement, contributed to the current economic crisis, there are many others who made a tremendous contribution to the country’s bankruptcy, which was the culmination of a process that lasted for years under successive governments.

The SJB parliamentary group members who were in the Yahapalana government, which consisted of the UNP, the SLFP, the SLMC, etc., cannot absolve themselves of the blame for the current crisis. The UNP-led UNF administration did not care to reduce public debt. Instead, it slashed fuel prices and granted unusually high pay hikes to the public sector workers with the view to winning the 2015 general election. It neglected national security, and failed to prevent the Easter Sunday carnage, which entailed an enormous economic cost besides claiming more than 270 lives. The 2019 terror strikes, which crippled tourism, adversely impacted the country’s foreign exchange reserves.

The SLPP keeps saying that the Yahapalana government (2015-2019) worsened the national debt by borrowing USD 12.5 billion in sovereign bonds; nearly USD 7 billion were raised in just 15 months from early 2018 to mid-2019; out of that amount only USD 2 billion had been settled by the end of 2019. It will be interesting to see what the UNP, and its offshoot, the SJB, have got to say to this. Besides, the Yahapalana government allowed its cronies to enrich themselves at the expense of the economy. The Treasury bond scams are a case in point.

Above all, no less a person than Justice Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe has revealed that the abolition of the Exchange Control Act No 24 of 1953 owing to the introduction of the Foreign Exchange Act No 12 of 2017 has stood unscrupulous exporters and other such elements in good stead. Most export proceeds are not repatriated, Minister Rajapakshe has said, adding that according to his information some exporters have hoarded about USD 56.5 billion offshore.

SJB MP Dr. Harsha de Silva has, in a recent television interview, sought to dispute Minister Rajapakshe’s claim, arguing that the new exchange control laws were intended to enable Sri Lankan businesses to expand abroad. But they certainly benefited racketeers more than anyone else. The new Foreign Exchange Act, inter alia, converted some criminal offences under the previous law into civil ones for the benefit of some crooks.

Thus, criminal cases that had been filed previously lapsed, and legal action was not instituted against the offenders concerned anew for obvious reasons; about 30 persons including the kith and kin of UNP and SLPP leaders are believed to have benefited from the new Act, which the SJB politicians voted for when they were in the Yahapalana government. The abolition of tough foreign exchange control laws contributed to the depletion of the country’s forex reserves and the current economic crisis.

The political parties that resorted to terrorism and/or supported terrorists are also guilty of having contributed to the ruination of the country’s economy. The economic cost of the JVP’s reign of terror in the late 1980s is hard to estimate due to the multifaceted nature of the repercussions of the mindless violence, which crippled the country. The TNA, created by the LTTE, functioned as the latter’s mouthpiece. It must also be held responsible for the damage the LTTE inflicted on the economy to the tune of billions of rupees. When the members of the current parliament accuse one another of having ruined the economy and call for punitive action, it is a case of sinners stoning sinners.