An AI-generated video of two rats engaged in a fierce fight, with a clowder of amused cats watching them, is doing the rounds in the digital space. It does not carry any caption interpreting the absurd scene, but, we believe, it can be used to describe the post-disaster situation in Sri Lanka. The government and the Opposition are at each other’s throat, oblivious to the danger they as well as the people are in. Cyclone Ditwah may be gone, but the possibility of another spate of extreme weather events cannot be ruled out. Heavy rains are lashing some parts of the country. Mountains are soaked and unstable; reservoirs are brimful, and rivers are swollen, with tens of thousands of displaced disaster victims languishing in temporary shelters. Another run of torrential rains is the last thing the country needs.

The NPP government failed to summon the Disaster Management Council and implement the National Disaster Management plan, the Opposition has alleged, insisting that there had been warnings of possible weather disasters two weeks prior to the landfall of Cyclone Ditwah, and the government had ample time to take action to mitigate the impact of weather disasters. Sri Lanka is no stranger to floods and landslides, and action should have been taken to warn the public and evacuate those living in disaster-prone areas to save lives. The Opposition says the government is now all out to cover up its lapses by silencing its critics with the help of Emergency regulations on the pretext of dealing with errant social media influencers responsible for personal attacks on President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and his ministers.

The UNP has lashed out at the JVP/NPP leaders for their failure to mitigate the impact of recent disasters. It has issued a hard-hitting statement, which could be considered a warning to the NPP that the current government leaders will have to face legal action when they lose power. Curiously, the UNP has ended its statement with a quote highlighting a section of the Supreme Court (SC) ruling in the fundamental right petitions, filed against former President Maithripala Sirisena and others for their failure to prevent the Easter Sunday terror attacks (2019). The SC held them responsible for negligence as they did not take action to prevent the carnage despite intelligence warnings. The last paragraph of the UNP statement reads: “We hold that when either executive action or inaction infringes the fundamental right to life resulting in harm or loss to a person or citizen, it is actionable as a constitutional tort ….” – Supreme Court in the Easter Attack cases. Effective as the UNP’s propaganda attack may be, it borders on an own goal in that the UNP was in power at the time of the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks, and Sirisena’s SLFP/UFPA had broken ranks with it. The JVP was supporting the Yahapalana rump led by Prime Minister and UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. Most of all, the Presidential Commission of Inquiry which probed the Easter Sunday carnage held the entire Yahapalana government accountable for the terror attacks. The commission report says: “The dysfunctional government was a major contributory factor for the events that took place on 21st April 2019. The Government including President Sirisena and Prime Minister [Ranil Wickremesinghe] is accountable for the tragedy.” Wickremesinghe, current Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa and several SJB heavyweights were in the Cabinet of the Yahapalana government, which the JVP and the TNA propped up.

The UNP’s propaganda assault on the JVP has reminded the public of the UNP-led Yahapalana government’s pathetic failure to prevent the Easter Sunday terror strikes despite repeated warnings of the impending attacks. So, the question is whether the UNP, its leaders and the SJB bigwigs who were in the failed Yahapalana government have any moral right to be critical of others for their failure to act on warnings of disasters. The JVP/NPP used to flay the previous governments during and after disasters, claiming that they had failed to mitigate the impact of catastrophic floods and landslides. Now, it is receiving heavy flak from its political opponents, especially former leaders.

The least the government and the Opposition can do at this juncture is to work out a rapprochement and concentrate on helping disaster victims, raise funds for reconstruction, and prepare the country to face future extreme weather events.

Saturday 6th December, 2025

The NPP government’s Budget 2026 was passed yesterday with a 157-vote majority. Its passage was a foregone conclusion, given the NPP’s supermajority in Parliament, but whether it can be implemented as previously planned is in doubt.

When Budget 2026 was presented on 07 November, it outlined revenue plans and expenditure allocations for 2026, based on the situation prevalent at the time, but Cyclone Ditwah has upended revenue and expenditure projections to the extent of making one doubt the viability of the budget. The Opposition called for Budget 2026 withdrawal and the presentation of a fresh one with the post-disaster economic realities factored in.

Commissioner General of Essential Services Prabath Chandrakeerthi has gone on record as saying the economic cost of the recent disasters could amount to about 6-7 billion US dollars or 3-5% of GDP. Thus, the workability of the budget hinges on the government’s ability to raise this huge amount of funds for reconstruction.

Restoring critical infrastructure is a prerequisite for maintaining economic growth momentum. The government is said to have curtailed capital expenditure to keep state expenditure low, but it will now have to change its strategy, and spend more on infrastructure. This is likely to shift the budget’s centre of gravity, so to speak.

Nothing is said to be more certain than the unexpected. The government was on cloud nine about a fortnight ago, boasting that the state coffers were overflowing under its watch. What it left unsaid was that taxes on vehicle imports had boosted state revenue exponentially. There was a sharp increase in vehicle imports, which had been suspended for several years in view of the country’s foreign currency woes; the current revenue bubble may burst when vehicle imports drop. When the government made the above-mentioned boastful claims, it may not have thought it would have to seek disaster assistance two weeks later. The uphill task the NPP has to accomplish is making its budget work vis-à-vis the post-disaster challenges.

The Opposition is right in having urged the government to take cognisance of the plight of disaster victims and make sufficient budgetary allocations for relief. However, one should not lose sight of the broader context. Disaster relief and reconstruction are essential, but the focus of a national budget has to be on growth. A contraction of the economy will adversely impact the disaster victims more than others. Hence the need for the Opposition to assess the current situation realistically and act rationally, taking the economic reality into account, without playing politics with the economy.

True, the government should have heeded the Opposition’s concerns about the post-disaster situation. However, Budget 2026 is now a fait accompli, and the task before Parliament is to make it work and find ways and means of raising funds for reconstruction and resettlement while maintaining growth momentum and enabling the state to resume debt repayment, according to schedule.

The Opposition has reportedly offered to support the government’s post-disaster expenditure plan. While this is a positive development, the sustainability of any expenditure plan depends on revenue generation, the be-all and end-all of a budget. Hence the need for cooperation among all parties to strengthen the economy and make it resilient to absorb shocks.

Friday 5th December, 2025

The JVP-led NPP government has laid bare its Jekyll-and-Hyde nature by deciding to use Emergency regulations to suppress the media. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, in his address to the nation on 30 November, stressed that the state of Emergency, declared in view of recent weather disasters, would not be misused for undemocratic purposes, but on 02 December Deputy Minister of Public Security Sunil Watagala directed the police to use the draconian Emergency regulations against social media. Watagala told the police top brass, at a meeting in Malabe, that they must invoke Emergency regulations to deal with the social media activists who were carrying out personal attacks on President Dissanayake and ministers. He warned the media that all those arrested under Emergency regulations would be treated as offenders and not as suspects. So much for the new political culture the JVP/NPP promised!

The police, who are accused of acting as the JVP’s Gestapo, are likely to follow the government’s order at issue to the letter and go all out to suppress the media critical of the JVP/NPP bigwigs. Now that the JVP’s legal advisor and Central Committee member Watagala has defied an assurance given by President Dissanayake and directed the police to use Emergency regulations against the media, one wonders whether there is an alternative centre of power within the NPP government.

There is no gainsaying that nobody must be allowed to abuse media freedom to vilify anyone or disseminate lies. Social media has become a metaphor for smear campaigns. The self-styled social media influencers who resort to hate/rage baiting are driven by five motives, namely attention and engagement, polarisation, influencing public opinion, political or ideological leverage and, in most cases, monetary gain from viral outrage that drives advertising revenue and subscriptions. Many of them are in the pay of political parties and politicians and do not scruple to do dirty propaganda work. Whatever the motives, defamatory social media posts are a scourge that must be eradicated in the name of civility. However, there are ways and means of dealing with the culprits under ordinary laws, and using Emergency regulations for that purpose cannot be countenanced on any grounds.

The JVP or a government led by it has no moral right to use Emergency regulations against the media or any other institution or individuals; it opposed Emergency vehemently during previous governments. The JVP leaders themselves became victims of Emergency regulations during their so-called revolutionary days and therefore know what it is like to be arrested and detained indefinitely on trumped-up charges.

The JVP/NPP and its propaganda hitmen have been doing exactly what the current government is going to have some social media activists arrested for—launching smear campaigns. They opened a new low in Sri Lanka’s social media culture, demonising rival political leaders during previous governments and propagating diabolical lies to turn public opinion against their political opponents. They succeeded in their endeavour and formed a government. Now, the boot is on the other foot. They are still carrying out savage propaganda onslaughts on their opponents if their defamatory attacks on a young female speaker who attracted a great deal of media attention at the SLPP’s recent rally at Nugegoda are any indication. Shouldn’t the JVP/NPP and its propagandists do unto others as they would have others do unto them?

The JVP has a history of stifling dissent; old habits are said to die hard. In the past, it relied on mindless violence for this purpose, but it now appears to be attempting to use of Emergency regulations to achieve the same end under the pretext of controlling errant social media activists. This makes it all the more necessary to call a halt to the NPP government’s plan to misuse Emergency regulations for a witch-hunt against the media.