Business as usual

President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s address to the nation last Wednesday was a clear indication that Sri Lanka’s political establishment is back to business as usual in these pre-election weeks. A deafening roar of firecrackers lighted by UNP supporters and RW aficionados plus the kiributh feasts served in many places by political aspirants looking ahead towards next year’s general election followed the president’s declaration that the economic repair job he had undertaken following the 2022 aragalaya is well on track.

This optimism was certainly not reflected in the Colombo stock market which was fairly sharply down on Thursday with the declining trend continuing on Friday too as this is being written. Apologists said the market had already factored forward movement on the resolution of the external debt problem these past many weeks to explain away the downturn despite the president’s favourable spin.

Firecrackers and kiributh are very much a part of Sri Lanka’s election scene and political culture. Some had expected the president, during last week’s address, to formally declare his candidacy for the election to be announced in July and probably held some time in October. Although Wickremesinghe stopped short of saying he would be running, he took advantage of the platform to tilt at Sajith Premadasa and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, both declared candidates and likely front runners at the forthcoming contest.

Predictably there was no finger pointing at the Rajapaksas who had enthroned him and keeps him in office. He obviously desists from upsetting any apple cart as the SLPP continues with the cat and mouse game of saying they’ll run at the election but refrains from naming a candidate. The Rajapaksas are also unhappy about many of their members throwing their weight behind the incumbent president.

Wickremesinghe himself would not have expected a broad national audience to closely follow a very long speech peppered with technical jargon. Whether orchestrated or not, the state media highlighted the positives, as it always does or must do, while publishing the full text of the speech most readers are unlikely to wade through. But the president correctly assesses that he has been credited in the public mind for hauling the nation out of the deep pit into which his predecessors had pushed it.

Who after all can forget the miles long petrol and diesel queues, the gas queues and power cuts that are no longer with us. While the rupee has appreciated against the dollar, consumers have little respite in terms of reduction of prices of imported goods. Periodic announcements of inflation numbers are not reflected in the market place.

The president has not tired of the vel paalama (bridge built with creepers) analogy he has borrowed from Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle. He used it again last Wednesday to claim that he had safely carried endangered Mother Lanka across a precipitous abyss. From all that he said, it is clear Sri Lanka is nowhere out of the woods though he naturally presented the existing picture in the most favourable light possible.

We’ve been granted considerable time to repay our bilateral debt installments for a period stretching from 2028 to 2043 “on concessional terms.” But there was no specific mention of ‘haircuts’ (reduction of capital payable) or reduced interest rates.

Also, the Official Creditors Committee (OCC) with whom the Paris deal was struck has called for details on the arrangement with China which too was signed last week. China was not a participant but was present as an observer during the OCC process. The information now sought by OCC, it has been said, is to ensure that all creditors are accorded comparable treatment.

The total picture will, no doubt, become clearer when the details of the arrangements that have been finalized are presented to parliament on July 2 when a special session has been summoned. The debate must necessarily present a more balanced picture that an ex parte statement.

There is no denying a forward movement on the economic front but that has come at a price. While the people are taxed to boost government revenue, there are no signs whatever of any serious effort of reducing numbers in the public service bloated by political patronage over a very long period of time. A large number of demands for substantial increases in public sector wages are on the table. But these are not demands that can be granted given the current state of the public exchequer.

Meanwhile protests, strikes, water cannons and teargas are frequent occurrences. Thankfully money printing that seriously eroded people’s savings is now no more so there can be no resort to the printing press which was a fact of life in the not so distant past.

Do those demanding higher wages which the government cannot afford to grant realize that they are among the fortunate salaried and pensionable public servants? Nobody can deny that living on a government salary is not easy in the climate of ever rising prices. But do teachers, for example, ever think of their own shortcomings that have driven a large proportion of the school going population to the clutches of the private tuition industry? How many of them are beneficiaries of that industry?