AKD’s victory – A reality check eight weeks after

By Lasanda Kurukulasuriya

Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s victory at the presidential election of 21 Sept. was greeted with enthusiasm by a large segment of Sri Lanka’s people, owing to its promise of ‘change,’ that would see things done differently in a troubled state. People from all walks of life, including the poor, the middle class and the wealthy welcomed the new leader with an expectation that he would introduce a new political culture, and introduce parliamentary representatives with a more enlightened outlook.

Assessing the interim period between the elections, people are likely to go by AKD’s speeches on the campaign trail, to ascertain what kind of government may be expected under his leadership if the National People’s Power alliance led by him wins a majority of seats in the 225-member House, or leads a coalition government. The pattern of campaign rhetoric has not been altogether consistent. The anti-corruption platform still holds, with emphasis on ‘cleaning up’ Parliament, meaning, bringing an end to the corrupt political culture of past decades. But where policies are concerned, some doubts arise within the space created by appeals to ‘wait for a strong mandate’ from the parliamentary poll, before the government can deliver on its promises.

At the conclusion of a television talk show last week, AKD listed six of his priorities, which include some grey areas. As the sole panelist being interviewed on Sirasa TV’s Satana programme of 06.11.24, he summarized them as follows:

1/ Eliminating rural poverty

2/ Swiftly developing the tourism industry

3/ Digitising services, with emphasis on the Digital ID card (UDI)

4/ Minimise fraud and corruption

5/ Education to go hand in hand with poverty elimination

6/ Agricultural reforms

Questions arise regarding the goals envisaged under 3/ (Digitising services) and 6/ (Agricultural reforms). Unlike the other four which are general, and cannot be faulted, reforms in these two areas would lead to far reaching and possibly irreversible changes. They have not been spelt out in detail, and they therefore have not received public scrutiny. Going by AKD’s brief comments on the show, they will be problematic, not only because they could run counter to the popular perception of the NPP as a potentially ‘people friendly’ government, but also because they appear to head into neo-liberal territory, serving the interests of foreign capital and posing a possible threat to sovereignty. Fears have already been expressed that the government will go all the way with the IMF agreement entered into by the previous government, and there is no more talk of ‘re-negotiating’ it. The ‘relief’ measures are yet to materialize.

Digitisation

Where the Digitising project is concerned, the President on Satana emphasized the importance of the ‘digital ID,’ and mentioned ‘UDI,’ which refers to the Indian-funded ‘Unique Digital Identity’ project, for which India has already advanced some money. AKD himself cautioned the then government on this project, as a former Opposition MP in August last year. Expressing concerns over “personal data of millions of Sri Lankan citizens potentially falling into the hands of another country,” he noted that the company winning the contract would have access to all biographic and biometric data of citizens registered within the digital platform. There were local companies ready to do the job but they ‘can’t complete it in one and a half years,’ The Sunday Times reported him as saying. Following his allegation that the tender process had been manipulated, two companies were disqualified, and the project appeared to have gone into limbo.

There has been little public awareness or informed debate in Sri Lanka on the digitising project. AKD told Sirasa it would make the delivery of services quicker and more efficient. This is how it was marketed in India, too, where petitions from civil liberties groups led to several Supreme Court rulings. He mentioned ‘Aswesuma’ benefits and job applications, as examples of processes that could be caried out ‘from home,’ with a digitized system. He didn’t clarify whether the UDI would be mandatory in order to draw state benefits, or whether biometric and other sensitive personal data would be collected only with the subject’s consent. The European Parliament in October 2021 voted to back a total ban on biometric surveillance, in accordance with a report from a parliamentary committee on civil liberties. The Sri Lankan public would need to be concerned about ANY government having access to their biometric data in a centralized database controlled by the state. AKD’s naming of a prominent IT industry professional as his choice to head the project (ready to work for free), does not make these concerns disappear.

Agricultural reform

Agricultural reform is the other subject mentioned by AKD in his concluding remarks on Satana, where red flags pop up owing to the lack of information as to what is envisaged. He mentioned that the average extent of land under paddy cultivation is 1.3 million hectares. He asked, “Is this a good thing?” and said there is a need to rethink this, adding that “we are a small country.”

Attempts at reforming land ownership and usage patterns in Sri Lanka have a long history. There have been World Bank reports of 1996 and 2015 saying that laws must be changed to introduce commercial agriculture.

Analysts have long argued that releasing land to private investors for large scale commercial agriculture would harm the interests of Sri Lanka’s farmers, who are mainly smallholders. Eighty percent of Sri Lanka’s land is owned by the state. The goal of the US government grant-supported Millennium Challenge Compact, that the Yahapalana government was compelled to suspend owing to public protest some years ago, was said to be to ‘increase land market activity’ and the ‘tradability of land’ through ‘policy and legal reforms.’ Analysts have warned of the danger of mass dispossession of smallholders that could result from such policies.

Has AKD’s ‘project’ undergone subtle transformation since the time of the presidential election? Has there been encroachment by vested interests and capital, especially foreign capital, that was not there, or not noticed, earlier? Is it the case that ‘Everything has to change so that everything stays the same?”