Budget and security

Wednesday 26th February, 2025

The NPP government’s maiden budget was passed with a two-thirds majority at the second reading vote yesterday. It will now go into committee stage for further review. That the ayes would have it was a foregone conclusion. However, the events that unfolded in the run-up to yesterday’s budget vote were oddly interesting.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake presented Budget 2025 in Parliament on 17 Feb. Thereafter, a debate thereon got underway. Two days later, an underworld kingpin, called Ganemulle Sanjeewa was killed inside a courtroom. That incident was followed by the custodial deaths of two suspected murders, and the focus of Parliament shifted from the budget to public/national security for all intents and purposes. The same holds true for the media and the public; they too have remained preoccupied with the narratives about those killings and the security implications thereof. An analysis of media content during the past few days will bear this out.

The economic crisis is far from over, and the country is still under a pall of uncertainty, which shows no signs of going away anytime soon. This is a time when the government, the public and the media must remain maniacally focused on the economic front. But threats to public/national security, real or otherwise, have taken centre stage, eclipsing the country’s fiscal plan for the current year. One may call it a case of misplaced priorities, but it is something the government should take cognisance of.

Given the high level of public outrage that the killing of a crime czar inside a courtroom and two extrajudicial killings have sparked, how serious the situation would be if harm were to befall a prominent figure, say a popular political leader, is not difficult to guess. Hence the need for the government to ensure that VIP security, especially for its rivals, is not compromised while doing everything possible to protect the public and neutralise threats to national security. Mere rhetoric won’t do.

Last week’s daring underworld attack inside a courthouse has made a mockery of threat assessment under the current dispensation. The acting IGP Priyantha Weerasooriya told the media the other day that Ganemulle Sanjeewa had not been taken to a court in Gampaha recently in view of an intelligence warning that he would be targeted there. But the police took him to the Colombo Magistrate’s Court, the following week! We are reminded of the circumstances that led to the Easter Sunday carnage in 2019. Some of those who were blamed for failing to prevent those terror attacks, despite the availability of actionable intelligence, are back in key positions in the public security sector!

The leaders of the JVP, which was responsible for quite a few political killings in the late 1980s, cannot be unaware that terrorists and other killers have to be lucky only once, as the IRA told Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. A solo gunman/ bomber can plunge a country into chaos and unsettle a government, or even cause its collapse, however powerful it may think it is.

One may recall that a 17-year UNP regime’s fate was sealed the day former minister and leading Opposition figure, Lalith Athulathmudali, was assassinated. That tragedy which shook the country sparked political upheavals, in 1993, setting in motion a process that led to the collapse of the UNP’s rule the following year. The political backlash from Lalith’s assassination prompted President Ranasinghe Premadasa to throw caution to the wind, despite terrorist threats, and go among the people during a May Day rally, a few days later, presumably in a bid to boost the sagging morale of the UNP’s rank and file. The rest is history.

Sri Lankan politicians do not learn from history. The Mahinda Rajapaksa government curtailed former Army Commander Gen. Sarath Fonseka’s security as he had entered the presidential fray in 2010. Thankfully, the LTTE had been defeated by that time. But the Easter Sunday terror attacks happened a decade later. Today, the underworld is unusually active, and the possibility of attempts from other quarters to destabilise the country cannot be ruled out. One can only hope that the government will act prudently.