Features

Constitutionalism, Governance, and the People

Published

5 years ago

2021/12/5

by Prof. Savitri Goonesekere

Coming to the University of Peradeniya is always a special experience. It brings back memories of carefree student days in a perfect environment for friendship and learning. Who can forget the glorious “yellow showers,” the winding Galaha Road, the lawn mowers on fresh grass, “sunset and evening star” and the flute music? The memory is also tinged with sadness, for the troubled times experienced on this beautiful campus, the changes in that familiar environment that have taken place, over threescore years and ten. The changes themselves reflect my own experience, and that of all of us as citizens, on the governance of this country and our universities. I thank the Law Department for inviting me, an alumnus of the first Department of Law in our public university system, to deliver the inaugural Sir Ivor Jennings memorial lecture. Sir Ivor Jennings, the founding Vice Chancellor of the first national University of Ceylon and its twin successor the University of Peradeniya can also be described as one of the founders of Constitutionalism and governance in both the country and the national university system of Sri Lanka.

The inauguration of a lecture series in Sir Ivor Jennings’ memory by the Law Department can also be an occasion to reflect on his life and times in this country, and the changes we have witnessed in these areas. The topic I have chosen for this evening’s lecture is a tribute to a scholar and administrator of a colonial era, whose ideas are an important resource, as we respond to contemporary realities of governance in our country and the university system.

Let me clarify at the outset especially to students, that I am not one of the oldest living students of Sir Ivor Jennings. I was not a student of Sir Ivor, when he lectured in the Law Department, and was Vice Chancellor of the University of Ceylon in Peradeniya. Indeed, I discovered I was a prize winner in my secondary school, Ladies’ College, when Sir Ivor gave the keynote speech at our annual prize giving. I am sure that I was much less impressed with him, than I was with senior student Kumari Jayawardene, speaking passionately on a school platform on worker’s rights. I read through his classic works “The Law and the Constitution,” and “Cabinet Government,” and Jennings and Tambiah on “The Legal System of Ceylon,” very much in the spirit of plodding through “recommended readings.” Constitutional law paled in comparison with other law courses that inspired my interest. However, there were anecdotes that we heard about Sir Ivor. We heard that he was a “student friendly” former Vice Chancellor, quite the contrast of fearsome Sir Nicholas Attygalle. I recall my first examiners’ meeting in his room (the Vice Chancellor chaired the Board Meeting for the award of degrees.) Sir Nicholas looked at me with a steely eye and said “who may I ask are you?” Quite a contrast to Sir Ivor, who sent out a staff circular, which said, “My address is now 18, Aloe Avenue, Colpetty. A drink is always available for members of the staff who feel thirsty or otherwise sociable.”

Besides, we were the beneficiaries, the “nidahas adhyapanaya labee,” the early students to enjoy the beautiful learning environment that we knew Sir Ivor had struggled to create for us all, despite his implacable objections to the Kannangara policies of free education.¹ We enjoyed a peaceful conflict-free learning environment that had been created according to Sir Ivor Jennings’ vision of what university life should be.

When we were undergraduate, some of us women students who refused to boycott classes were met with hoots and whistles when we went for lectures. Yet our “black leg” voices were heard at a huge meeting held under the glorious tree in front of the Senate building, and the strike was over. This meeting was presided by senior politician Dr Sarath Amunugama. Barely a decade later when I was on the staff of the Law Department which had by then moved to Colombo, a student in one of the halls of residence in Peradeniya leapt from an upper floor during ragging, and was crippled for life. My students in Colombo told me they would be assaulted if they followed my advice and expressed their objections to boycotting classes “in sympathy” with the students suspended over the incident. The beautiful and conflict free learning environment that Sir Ivor Jennings, the founding Vice Chancellor had strived to create was already beginning to crumble, a decade later.

Sir Ivor’s commitment to academic excellence meant that high academic standards were maintained in the years that followed his term in office. Products of the University of Peradeniya at the time, and not just the top tier, achieved success and eminence in diverse fields. The equality of access that Sir Ivor feared would result in a “levelling down” of academic quality with free education, in fact gave equal access to a good education for those who entered through the portals of the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya.

Institutional memory in this country is very short. It is only the University of Peradeniya that has sustained our memories of Sir Ivor Jennings’ contribution to our university system and the governance of this country. When I served as Vice Chancellor of the University of Colombo there was no photograph of Sir Ivor Jennings in College House, which he had occupied for many years, or any other building. I obtained a faded copy of a black and white photograph from Prof. Kapila Goonesekere, former Vice Chancellor of Peradeniya University; nothing like the imposing painting of Sir Ivor by David Paynter that adorns the walls of your Senate room.

Sir Ivor Jennings and the Road to Peradeniya

The life and times of Sir Ivor Jennings are documented in his own autobiography, published with an introduction of great professional skill, and with admiration, by the distinguished librarian, late Ian Goonetilleke. This is a rich resource. Professor Lakshman Marasinghe’s essay in a book on legal personalities supplements the autobiography with interesting insights on his work as a legal scholar and jurist. Sir Ivor was a controversial figure during the time he spent in the island, then Ceylon, where he had an important impact on public life and the education sector. His views and his engagement in the political life of the country, attracted criticism, but also admiration.

Sir Ivor began his tenure as Vice Chancellor of the University of Ceylon in the University of Colombo of today. He recalls in his autobiography how the law creating the University of Ceylon was passed on April 2, 1942, three days before the Japanese air raid on Colombo. He unfurled the university’s flag on June 12 on the grounds of College House. He remarks wryly, “being a little sentimental, [seeing] the flag sagging at one end [he] climbed the tower and adjusted it with a safety pin.” No Kandyan dancers, drummers and fanfare at this event.

An educationist of colonial times like Rev. W S Senior of Trinity College Kandy, when he left the island, could record in poetry, “my soul you will break with longing – it can never be goodbye.” Sir Ivor, the legal scholar, jurist, educationist, and administrator, could say with somewhat clinical objectivity, “I am in no way tied to Ceylon and can leave when the spirit moves.” Yet he had a vision and commitment to laying the foundation for a national university, which he believed could become “one of the finest small universities in the world.

Sir Ivor believed that a residential University in an attractive environment was one of the essential attributes of a great university. He was, as he describes himself, “a Cambridge [university] man.” His appreciation of the physical environs of that University created a desire to build a university campus on a site in Peradeniya, which he thought was one of “the most beautiful environments in the world for a university.”

The architecture and landscaping of this university continues to be a model for well-planned and attractive landscaped surroundings, creating a near perfect environment for scholarship and learning. His contribution in this regard has outlived Sir Ivor, even if the values on governance and university education that inspired him have been challenged in the realities of our nation’s post independence experience. However, if Sir Ivor’s surprising inclination to “pull down” College House and construct a women’s hostel had been realised, Colombo University would not have even that colonial heritage of great beauty on its campus surrounded by a wilderness of concrete box like structures.

Sir Ivor had a spectacular student career, receiving first class honours at every level. His approach to study is perhaps relevant to all law students who want to achieve academic honours in their law schools. He was a disciplined workaholic, even as a student. He saved his lunch money to buy books, and “study took precedence over everything.” He studied with “regularity and consistency,” developed a timetable for this, studied the “technique of examinations,” striving to obtain “not only a first, but a brilliant first.” Yet he did not believe only in examination success and paper qualifications. He believed that a residential University could create an environment for extra curricular activities providing an education that was interdisciplinary, stimulating interest in poetry, philosophy, and the arts. His own scholarship crossed the boundaries of law, politics, and political science. He gave up mathematics to study law. He thought “the boundaries between academic subjects very artificial, for knowledge … knows no boundaries.”

The Law Department of Peradeniya is the first to integrate an interdisciplinary perspective, an initiative very much in harmony with Sir Ivor’s concept of a good legal education. Law schools, have, in general adopted what legal theory in the Anglo American tradition describes as “Austinian positivism” that teaches students how to learn and analyse the content of laws. However, in the early years the focus on reference and reading meant that students read widely and understood the core norms and concepts that linked law and administration of justice. This approach produced lawyers of great professional skill and eminence at a time when legal education was exclusively in English. It has had serious drawbacks for teaching and research in a challenging environment where very little literature is available in local languages, and most lawyers obtain a monolingual legal education with lecture notes in Sinhala or Tamil. Sir Ivor was uncompromising in his commitment to excellence in teaching and research. When my husband, as one of the young lecturers in the Law Department, was to go to Oxford for post-graduate studies, Sir Ivor advised him to read for a taught post-graduate degree in Civil law, (the BCL). Undertaking research he said, was the post qualification obligation of all University teachers, and a law teacher could then apply for a higher doctorate! This advice was clearly based on his personal experience as a scholar and jurist.

Though Sir Ivor’s scholarship and vision span law, politics and an interdisciplinary perspective, he was cynical about all “isms” – Marxism, nationalism, communalism, considering them political rhetoric. He had a poor and mistaken impression of the country’s cultural heritage. He thought that transferring the University to Peradeniya could help “a cultural desert in Ceylon to blossom like a rose.” Yet he established a Faculty of Oriental Studies in the University of Ceylon, encouraged the development of these disciplines, and stressed the importance of scholarship and learning that was sensitive to local social and economic realities. He supported the creation of a university endowment fund, and a museum for sculpture, paintings and objects of art. He thought “pious benefactors” from the private sector would contribute to such a fund, and wanted the sales of his autobiography used for such an initiative. I believe that late Ian Goonetilleke who treasured his own stunning collection of artworks by George Keyt and many other reputed Sri Lankan artists, was inspired by Sir Ivor’s vision to donate this priceless collection to the University of Peradeniya. An Ivor Jennings memorial lecture is surely an occasion to also pay tribute to that joint vision. Universities are receiving substantial funds from Government to improve their infrastructure. Is it not possible to give a museum project maximum priority in university planning, supplementing this with support from “pious benefactor” alumni in business and the professions?

Values on university autonomy free from political interference were very much the foundation for Sir Ivor’s vision of university education. The 1942 University Ordinance, which he drafted, also incorporated the concept. This law established Councils, Senates and Faculty Boards, modelled on the institutional arrangements of British universities. For Sir Ivor, the institutions, (still embedded in our university system, in 1978/1985 legislation), could provide academics with the tools to resist abuse of political and official authority and interference in university administration. When the University of Ceylon Bill was being debated in the legislature, Sir Ivor who sat behind the Minister C.W.W. Kannangara, drafted quick amendments that prevented clauses being introduced that could erode university autonomy. Though he and the Minister opposed each other in the Committee on Education on the proposals for free education, they shared the same perspective on the importance of maintaining the autonomy of universities in the area of higher education.

Academics from the university community in Peradeniya gave leadership when university autonomy was under attack in the late 1960s and 1970s. The current Universities Act with strong provisions on this principle, was adopted once again in 1978 with the contribution of senior academics from Peradeniya University. It was intended to restore the autonomy of universities. It was unfortunately amended in 1985, creating new provisions on the appointment and dismissal of Vice Chancellors with an expanded regulatory role for the University Grants Commission. These changes undermined the authority of the highest university bodies (Councils and Senates) and has encouraged political interference.

Two university Vice Chancellors have been recently removed without, it is alleged, following even the required procedures. A few academics have publicly challenged these actions. But we have, in general, become accustomed to erosion of university autonomy by political authorities, even though the institutional arrangements introduced in 1942 by Sir Ivor continue to be part of our university system. State universities are being blamed for not sustaining excellence in education and contributing to human resource development. No link is made to the toxic impact of politicization of university education.

Constitutionalism and the Sri Lankan People

Constitutionalism, as law students know, refers to the theoretical underpinnings of Constitutional law. The theories in turn impact on the institutional arrangements for governance, and the concepts incorporated in Constitutions. Constitutions and their theoretical concepts are often dismissed as irrelevant for the People. Yet, governance impacts on peoples’ lives. Constitutions and the people are therefore all connected.

Nelson Mandela referring to Constitution making in South Africa in 1996, said that a Constitution is “a law that embodies the nation’s aspirations.” Sir Ivor Jennings wrote an Article published in the Ceylon Daily News three decades earlier in 1962 commenting that, “any lawyer can draft a Constitution for anywhere. The difficulty is to persuade a people to make it work.” The “aspirations” justification for Constitution making in Mandela’s words, places the concept of the “Sovereignty of the People” at the centre of Constitution making. Sir Ivor’s comment focuses on the responsibility of both rulers and the governed to make Constitutions work.

The weeks and months prior to the Presidential elections 2019 witnessed an outpouring of public anger against politicians and our legislators. A constant refrain is the failure and defects of democracy, and Constitutionalism as lawyers know it, and a desire to replace it with new institutions and “strong individual leadership.” Another discourse calls for rejection of any links to Constitutional norms and standards derived from what are described as implanted and alien “colonial” or “Western elitist” norms and standards of governance. The idea of governance based on “jathika chinthanaya” or national conscience advocated the need to link political ideology with a local, rural, traditional culture. This has now been reinvented in a new discourse on the need to reject for all time “Suddha law.” This is a phrase used by the monk Gnanasara when he disrupted Court proceedings and was convicted of contempt of court. The public display of abuse of power, arrogant, irresponsible and corrupt governance, selfish political leadership and waste of national resources despite regime changes, has created a demand by some for a complete rejection of Constitutional theories and the institutions of governance.

Such trends are visible in other countries too. The furore over Brexit in the United Kingdom and the conflict between Parliament and the Prime Minister is sometimes traced to the absence of a written Constitution with specific provisions on how to cope with challenging problems of governance. Sir Ivor Jennings, the British constitutional lawyer and jurist, drafted written Constitutions for many countries, and wrote his seminal work on “The Law and the Constitution.” He would have contested the suggestion that Constitutional law and Constitutionalism could only be embedded in a written Constitution. From his perspective, governance that limited State power, and based on written or unwritten Constitutions was the responsibility of the rulers and the governed.

(Excerpted from “Inaugural Sir Ivor Jennings lecture of the Department of Law University of Peradeniya,” included as part of the new book “Perspectives of Constitutional Reforms in Sri Lanka” edited by Dr. Hiran W. Jayewardene and Sharya Scharenguivel. Published by International and Contemporary Law Society).

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Features

Role of identity in the making and breaking of West Asian peace

Published

20 hours ago

2026/06/25

Sahan Weerasooriya

Negotiators at the Pakistani-negotiated preliminary peace talks. BBC

The West Asian peace effort continues waveringly amid uncertainties. The world could be considered as having ‘some breathing space’ currently in this tangled situation on account of a dip in oil prices but whether such relief would be of a long term nature is left to be seen.

Meanwhile, some vital ‘details’ in the peace process are continuing to hobble it. One such factor is the nuclear issue. While US President Donald Trump is on record that Iran’s purported nuclear programme from now on will be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), this assertion is being denied by the Iranian authorities who indicate that Iran will be coming under no such regime. That is, Iran will be answerable to no one with regard to its legitimate right to defend itself.

Accordingly, an early closure to the nuclear question could not be expected and the furthering of peace in the region hinges on the principal sides being of one mind on the issue. Moreover, toll-free shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is proving to be a bone of contention between the warring sides.

However, perhaps going largely unnoticed in the Middle East region are identity questions of considerable magnitude that have stood in the way of the region making some headway towards a peace settlement and which would continue to undermine such a process going forward. Identity, or a group’s self conception, is by far the most intractable of the factors in the conflict and the main sides would do well to manage it effectively before long.

US Vice President J.D. Vance, as pointed out in this column last week, fired one of the first salvos in this regard in the current peace effort. He reportedly said: ‘Regional peace and stability includes stopping the funding of “terrorist organizations” .’ He probably had in mind the Hezbollah organization which is funded and armed by Iran but, needless to say, the latter would reject this statement out of hand because it does not see the Hezbollah as terroristic in orientation.

Accordingly, the tangled issue of ‘who is a terrorist?’ would recur to hamper the West Asian peace bid. An important corollary to this matter is that Middle Eastern militants would be branding US administrations as terroristic considering the humanly costly military interventions undertaken by the latter over the decades in the world’s war zones.

It is difficult to see the main sides taking up the issue of terror and arriving at a common understanding on the problem over the next couple of months in their peace deliberations but the unresolved question could be expected to be the proverbial ‘elephant in the room’ that could even wear the sides down. Accordingly, ‘quick fixes’ to the Middle East imbroglio would need to be ruled out.

However, paring down terror to its essentials, it needs to be found that in contemporary times it is identity and issues growing out of it that keep the question alive and render it intractable. In fact the problem should be seen as igniting and sustaining a multiplicity of conflicts world wide.

So pervasive are identity questions that they are seen by some as having played a role in leading to the recent resignation of Keir Starmer as UK Prime Minister. Among other things, the latter is seen as having been incapable of managing migration related issues besides falling short in strengthening domestic social cohesion.

Identity issues came to a head in the UK in the form of the recent anti-immigrant riots in Northern Ireland. Clearly, some immigrants continue to be seen as aliens and parasitic in nature in some parts of the UK by jingoistic elements. Thus is ignited anti-foreigner violence.

That said, some of the most laudable measures for the promotion of peaceful race relations are found in the UK today. The latter’s race relations legislation could be seen as constituting a model for the rest of the world and needs to be studied and adopted by particularly the global South where identity conflicts are rampant.

Unfortunately, racial amity is not being considered a priority by the Trump administration. Under the latter immigrants are being seen by supremacist whites as the archetypal ‘Other’ who should be violently shunned. Accordingly, social cohesion in the US too is being steadily undermined and stepped-up race hate in the country shouldn’t come as a surprise.

In the West Asian region, archetypal ‘Othering’ could prove particularly pernicious and destructive. It could lead to the unraveling of the current peace talks between the adversaries and needs to be addressed by them if the negotiations are to prove productive.

For far too long the West and Israel have been viewed as archetypal enemies by Iran and its supporters. On the other hand, Palestinian militants have been habitually seen by the Far Right in the US and by hard line Israelis as sworn enemies who are best eliminated. These seemingly unresolvable divides in the Middle East could bring down the present negotiatory process.

Even if the present round of mediated negotiations between the US and Iran lead to a substantive cessation of hostilities in West Asia, the divisive mindsets of the prime antagonists, that is, the US and its ally Israel on the one side and Iran and its supportive militant groups on the other, would need to be changed for the better if enduring peace is to be given a chance. That is, mindsets would need to be transformed on both sides of the divide from mutual hostility to mutual amicability. No doubt, a long-gestation process.

It cannot be stressed enough that those mediating in this long-running conflict, themselves need to approach peace-making with unbiased minds. It needs to be realized, for example, that Israel too has been ‘hurting’ badly in this conflict over the decades to the degree to which the Palestinian side has been victimized cruelly, dispossessed and divested of dignity.

Any negotiated peaceful settlement should seek to address this persistent mindset malaise as well and turn enmity into amicability. An equitable solution that addresses the lingering grievances of both sides could lay the basis for this process of ‘Turning Spears into Ploughshares.’

‘Land and Bread’ have been at the heart of the Middle East conflict over the decades or even centuries. An equitable solution should provide these assets in equal measure for both sides. There is no getting away from the ‘Two State Solution’.

Features

Central bankers live on Short End Street; Economic planners live on Long End Street

Published

20 hours ago

2026/06/25

Sahan Weerasooriya

Long End Street is not a summation of Short End Streets. Eighteen short-term crises and no long-term growth in sight!

For quite some time, there has been no agency of government dealing with long-term economic and social policy questions. Nor have universities been of any help. There has been a National Planning Department in the Ministry of Finance but we have not seen any worthwhile reports from them. M. D. H. Jayawardena, in 1956, presented in Parliament the Six-Year Programme of Investment. Soloman Bandaranaike established a National Planning Council and a Planning Department, with Princy Siriwardena as its Director. They wrote the Ten-Year Plan, better known for its readability than its depth of analysis or policy content. Ten years or so later Dudley Senanayake established a Ministry of Planning and Employment with Gamani Corea (later of high international repute) as its Permanent Secretary. The Ministry was responsible for some useful analytical work and the development of a bureaucracy responsible for plan implementation. The latter was the work of a brilliant member of the Ceylon Civil Service, Godfrey Gunatilleke, who also worked in the Ministry. The major pre-occupation of the Ministry turned out to be the annual government budget and the management of direly scarce foreign exchange, all short term considerations. They set up a bureaucratic mechanism to evaluate capital expenditure in the government budget. The Ministry won plaudits for its Foreign Exchange Budget, some analytical wok on the economy, including population projections as well as education, in both schools and universities. As the 1970s wore on, planning earned a bad press and the new government of 1971 disbanded most of that and created a Department of National Planning in the Ministry of Finance, which survives to date.

A part of the purpose of this narrative has been to bring out that, all along, government has had no outfit of economists and sociologists whose job was to study long term changes in our society and the economy and in the rest of the world and propose solutions for consideration by governments. (A brilliant exception was the work on education, that was directed by Jinapala Alles, who had graduated in chemistry and was a fast learner and was at great ease with numbers. He was also an effortless leader of a small team of self-selected competent and enthusiastic public servants.) The government depended on the Central Bank for advice on long term development of the economy. Princy Siriwardena was seconded for service in the Planning Secretariat; similarly, Gamani Corea was from the Bank. Later, he was replaced with H.A.de S. Gunasekera, likely the most brilliant economics teacher in the University of Ceylon. He taught monetary economics, essentially short term. (His favourite economist Keynes famously wrote, “In the long run we are all dead”.)

When the Ministry of Planning and Employment was established in 1965, government plundered the Central Bank to staff it: Gamani Corea, R. M. Seneviratne, N. Ramachandran, Nihal Kappagoda and G. Usvatte-aratchi. Later, W. M. Tillekeratne and A. S. Jayawardena both long term employees of the Central Bank, were appointed as the chief economist of government. Jayawardena still later became the Governor of the Bank. Several other employees of the Bank, including J. B. Kelegama, P. B. Karandawela, P. B. Jayasundera worked at high levels in successive governments and that practice continued when Mahinda Siriwardena became the Secretary to the Ministry of Finance when Anura Dissanayake became the Minister of Finance. It is mysterious that the government saw no need for specialist advisers who would identify long term economic and social problems and solutions therefor, look out for markets and technology and warn of impending pitfalls, in contrast to our mighty neighbour which had a Planning Commission that handled long term problems and a Central Bank which had learnt to handle masterly, monetary problems.

Pitambar Pant, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Manmohan Singh, I. G. Patel and Raghu Ram Rajan were most distinguished economics policymakers and central bankers. Japan benefited greatly from the work of MITI. So did Korea from its counterpart. This is not to argue that had there been an outfit of that sort, Sri Lanka would now be rich but to warn that the Central Bank is neither equipped nor fit to fight those battles. If you scan the Central Bank Act of 2023, you will find stabilisation the most frequently recurring theme. Clause 6 reads ‘The primary object (objective?) of the Central Bank shall be to achieve and maintain domestic price stability.’ The most generous reading that the Bank may have anything to do with economic development is in Clause 6 (4) ‘In pursuing the primary object (objective?), the Central Bank shall take into account, inter alia, the stabilisation of output towards its potential level.’ Lawyers may have a field day with that and economists may beg for its meaning.

Amarananda Jayawardena was the last Governor of the Central Bank who had understood that the central bank was equipped to handle short term problems and that not always valiantly, and that it had neither the tools nor the resources to plan and engineer long term development. As Governor, he did not speak for the government on long term economic and social problems, although prior to assuming duties as Governor of the Bank, he had been the chief economist of the government. Jayawardena knew all too well the nature of the tools and the resources he had and how far he could confidently aim and shoot. It was simply silly to produce a Five-year Road Map (no matter how colourful the accompanying graphics), when a central bank mainly used transactions in the short-term financial assets market to move interest rates and the demand for money. The Bank of England, for most of the 20^th century, used Commercial Paper with two ‘good names’ at its Discount Window. Short-term and long-term rates of interest, normally, behave in a predictable relationship, although occasionally, and in volatile times, that relationship may become inverted. (I am not well read on recent Fed and the Riks Bank market operations.)

The economists at the Central Bank are experts in monetary policy and are rarely knowledgeable about economic growth. An exception was S. B. D. de Silva and he found writing a half page note to the Centra Bank Bulletin (monthly) stultifying. He left the Bank quite young and continued studying economics until the very end of his life. As undergraduates they may have read on economic growth and development but as professionals in the central bank, it is unlikely that they kept working on problems in that area. They may also have learned, some time, that there has been no central bank credited with spearheading economic development in any country. Therefore, to pretend that they can advise the government on economic planning, is a hobby which they would be wise to desist from.

We did a splendid job of saving our new born children and their mothers as indicated in low infant mortality and maternal mortality rates. We scored an even more resounding victory in educating all our children. If we have any claim to any civilizing missions in the 20^th century, these two stand out. Beside them, we have been mostly failures. The economy has advanced only laggardly. It has miserably failed to exploit excellent opportunities to sell in burgeoning markets, output employing a healthy and educated labour force. Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, south India, Ethiopia, Rwanda and several other countries, all (except Japan) late comers to the game compared to Sri Lanka, succeeded in doing just that. It is wrong to blame governments alone for poor economic growth, as many do. Most economic activity in this country is run by the private sector and leaders there have made poor use of opportunities.

When ministers of government and its employers collect bribes, private sector persons pay bribes. The markedly rapid economic growth in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Keralam and poor growth in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and many others in the north east are under the same central government dispensation, sharply pointing to differences in the quality of business leadership in the two groups. ‘Big business’ here run betting shops, supermarkets, hospitals, import and market household equipment, banks and insurance companies and, most ambitiously maintain construction companies. (In the widely watched IPL cricket matches 2026, Sri Lanka advertised regularly a Betting Centre!) Tourism in this country is the business of small-scale enterprises with low productivity. The ubiquitous kade with a stock-in-trade of less than one hundred thousand rupees, borrowed from a relative or a friend, is a sign of rampant unemployment and not of budding entrepreneurship. When you go to consult a doctor in a private hospital in Colombo and wait endless hours, count the number of men and women employees idling, supervised by a proportionately large number of idling supervisors. Where are the large-scale manufacturing and service companies, selling the world over, where economies of scale abound in the 21^st century? So far as I recall, there has been no Initial Public Offering (IPO) of shares in the Colombo Stock Market during the last 7 years. Nor have multinational companies established here any large factories or offices.

Is the air we breathe deathly to enterprise?

by Usvatte-aratchi

Features

A Requiem for Keir Starmer rule

Published

21 hours ago

2026/06/25

Sahan Weerasooriya

Starmer

By the time Sir Keir Rodney Starmer resigned, polls showed that he had become the least popular Labour Prime Minister in living memory. His fall was all the more striking because his political beginnings had once suggested a very different trajectory. As a teenager in the Labour Party Young Socialists, and later as editor of the Marxist journal Socialist Alternatives, he had stood firmly on the radical left. As a human rights lawyer he opposed the illegal invasion of Iraq, earning a reputation for principle and moral clarity.

It was this early radicalism that his supporters later weaponised, presenting him as a unifying leftwing figure in the aftermath of the coup against the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. The right-wing of Labour, having spent years undermining Corbyn (including through a coordinated campaign that framed him, falsely, as anti-Semitic) found in Starmer a vessel through which they could reclaim the party while reassuring the membership that continuity with the Corbyn surge remained intact.

In his resignation speech, Starmer claimed to have inherited a politically, morally and financially bankrupt Labour Party. Yet the record shows that Corbyn had revived the party’s grassroots, drawing tens of thousands of new members back to a party embodying the tradition of Keir Hardie. The oligarchy closed ranks against this leftist heavyweight, using Starmer and the Labour right wing as their weapon. Starmer’s “Changed Labour” was not a renewal but a repudiation, embracing the very Thatcherite revisionism that had hollowed Labour out in the first place.

A Britain battered by decades of neoliberal restructuring formed the backdrop to Starmer’s rise. The cumulative effects of Maggie “milk-snatcher” Thatcher’s programme, deepened by Blair, Cameron, May, and Johnson, combined with the convulsions of Brexit to produce a profound economic, social, and political crisis. The Conservative Party imploded under the weight of its own contradictions. Starmer, offering managerial calm, an a Corbyn-lite manifesto, rode the wave of Tory collapse to a landslide victory.

But once in office, he revealed himself as a Blairite in sombre tones: a Thatcherite in Labour clothing. Within weeks he slashed winter fuel payments for pensioners, inaugurating a harsh antiworkingclass agenda. He embraced the Israeli government even as it carried out genocide in Gaza. The former human rights lawyer now used antiterror legislation to suppress dissent, particularly protests against the genocide. His immigration rhetoric, invoking an “island of strangers,” echoed the poisonous cadences of Enoch Powell.

Throughout his premiership he remained pofaced, showing little emotion even when forced into humiliating Uturns by public outrage. He displayed no visible sorrow at the mass killing of children in Gaza. Only at the prospect of losing office did he appear moved. He was, in the words of Saki, a man with “the soul of a meringue,” a mediocrity whose obedience to the oligarchic class and to Zionist backers embodied what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil. His legacy – and that of the Tories who preceded him – is a nation distrustful of politicians of whatever hue, open to the pseudo-anti-elite, deception of the billionaire-backed racist far-right

His resignation leaves Britain at a crossroads – will it follow the fascistic path of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, or will it go down the green-red road of Zach Polanski and Corbyn? Even replacing Starmer with the newly-elected Andy Burnham will only provide more-of-the-same Tory policies – Burnham went on record saying his first foreign visit as Prime Minister would be to Israel. These are the same policies that created a visceral hatred of Starmer and opened the gates for Reform’s surge.

When news of his resignation broke, a friend told this writer that the one who had engineered the exit of Jeremy Corbyn had been unable to complete two years in office. He added, ‘Rajakam kalath kalakam palade”-– even if you reign, your deeds will bear consequences.

And, so ends the Starmer era, not with the dignity of a statesman, but with the hollow thud of a project built on betrayal, opportunism, and the abandonment of the very principles he once claimed to uphold.

by Vinod Moonesinghe