Features
D. R Wijewardene 1886-1950, newspaper baron and all time great in the struggle for Independence
CHIEFS AND FRIENDS
(Excerpted from Selected Journalism by HAJ Hulugalle)
Don Richard Wijewardene was one of the formative influences of our times. Had he died in his early youth, the history of Ceylon during the past 30 years might well have been different. He was not merely a powerful newspaper proprietor, though to be one was a considerable achievement as never before had a Ceylonese succeeded in establishing a newspaper on a sound business foundation.
Lorenz tried with the “Examiner.” Hector Van Cuylenberg with the “Independent,” the de Soysa family with the “Standard” and the “Morning Leader” and Sir P. Ramanathan and the Jayewardene brothers with the “Ceylonese.” Each of them had some measure of success but none on the same scale and of the duration of Wijewardene’s great enterprise.
D. R. Wijewardene was first and last a patriot. It was the love of his country which led him to prepare, as a student in England, for his life’s work. It was his realization that the struggle for independence was the one most worthy of a wealthy young man’s energies that guided him to politics. Although he possessed a strong personality he had not sufficient confidence in his ability to excel in debate or sway crowds by power of speech. He chose the far more effective method of influencing men by establishing newspapers, among the best in Asia and published in the national languages as well as in English.
He was the third son in a family of nine and was born at Sedawatte, where his father, the late Muhandiram D.P. Wijewardene, a wealthy merchant and contractor, lived within easy reach of Colombo, where he had a very successful business. Richard Wijewardene was educated at St. Thomas’ College when Read was Warden and the Rev. G. A. H. Arndt was Sub-Warden. His teachers included Swinburne, Meynert, J. S. H. Edirisinghe, C V_ Pereira and E. Navaratnam. Among his contemporaries were D. S. Senanayake and Francis Molamure.
From St. Thomas’, Wejewardene went to Peterhouse, Cambridge. He has told us that it was in his undergraduate days at Cambridge that his interest in politics began. “There was a wave of unrest in India, as a result of Lord Curzon’s action in partitioning Bengal, and prominent Indian leaders came over to England and addressed meetings to enlighten the British public on the situation in their country.
Among them there was Lala Lajpat Rai, a great nationalist and scholar, who had been deported under an obsolete law. Bepin Chandra Pal and Surendranath Banerji, generally known as the silver-tongued orator of Bengal, drew large audiences.
There came to England also Mr. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a member of the Imperial Legislative Council, a statesman who made great sacrifices in the service of his country. He impressed on me that every educated young man, Indian or Ceylonese, had a part to play in the public life of his country and must be prepared to make sacrifices for his country’s welfare.
I met Gokhale often at the National Liberal Club and had many long and interesting talks with him on political questions of the day. He asked me to accompany him on his great mission to South Africa as one of his secretaries. To my great regret I was not able to accept the invitation.”
Wijewardene’s friend and mentor during his student life in England was F. H. M. Corbet, an influential barrister with Ceylon connections. Among those who worked in Corbet’s chambers at the time, and whom Wijewardene met frequently, were Patrick Hastings, later to become Attorney-General of England and Brooke Eliott, who practised in Ceylon and Madras. Corbet had many friends in the House of Commons and showed him the ropes “in the delicate task of interesting Members of Parliament in the domestic affairs of a Crown Colony.”
Wijewardene organized the first Reforms deputation to be received by Colonel Seely (afterwards Lord Mottistone) on behalf of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Marquis of Crewe. The deputation was led by Mr. H. J. C. Pereira K. C., and included Mr. E.W. Perera. Wijewardene organized a second deputation two years later, this time to meet Mr. Lewis Harcourt, the Secretary of State. He induced Sir Baron Jayatilaka and Sir Marcus Fernando to join it.
On his return to the Island from the exhilarating atmosphere of British politics, Wijewardene found local conflicts distinctly parochial. He was not interested in a career at the Bar, but to Hultsdorp he went because it was there that all political movements were set afoot. Ponnambalam Ramanathan and James Peiris had retired from the Bar but H. J. C. Pereira, Hector Jayewardene, E.J. Samarawickrame, Francis de Zoysa, R. L. Pereira, E. W. Perera, D. B. Jayatilaka, and younger men like E. T. de Silva and M. A. Arulanandam, were knocking at the door of the political arena. But there was only one seat in the legislature to which they could have aspired, the so called Educated Ceylonese Seat, to which Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan had been elected.
The riots in 1915 were suppressed in a brutal manner and political agitation was prohibited by a strict censorship. As soon as this was relaxed D. R. Wijewardene, who had resigned his commission in the Ceylon Light Infantry, re-organized the Ceylon National Association. He persuaded Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam who had retired from the Civil Service to deliver an address on “Our Political Needs.
” The outcome of this was the formation of the Ceylon Reform League, formed for the purpose of putting forward the case for a substantial measure of responsible government for Ceylon. D. R. Wijewardene was joint Secretary of the League with W. A. de Silva. The Ceylon National Congress was formed the next year under the presidentship of Sir P. Arunachalam.
Wijewardene also helped Arunachalam and James Peiris to organize the Ceylon Social Service League and was one of its joint secretaries. He had so impressed the older politicians by his remarkable grasp of current affairs and organizing capacity that he was always in the inner councils of the Reform movement. On one occasion Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam wound up his presidential address to the National Congress with a tribute to Mr. Wijewardene who, he said, always worked quietly “like a process of nature.”
D. R. Wijewardene’s major contribution was the moulding of public opinion through the highly successful newspapers he conducted. Their success was due not only to business ability and political knowledge but even in greater measure to a flair for journalism. Although he had never been a reporter or political correspondent he was always the best news-gatherer of his papers. Though he very rarely put pen to paper, the columnists and leader-writers were inspired and encouraged by his uncanny gift of reading the public mind. One of his staff would sometimes feel that the public would not stand for the line taken by him on some controversial issue but “The Chief’ was usually proved correct.
D. R. Wijewardene’s interest in journalism was stimulated by daily reading of the London “Daily News” then edited by A. G. Gardiner. Among the regular contributors to that paper were Arnold Bennet, G. K. Chesterton, Spencer Leigh Hughes and Charles Masterman. When he founded a newspaper himself, Wijewardene called it the “Ceylon Daily News.” In the meantime he owned a half share in a Sinhalese newspaper called the “Dinamina” published from Norris Road in which D. B. (later Sir Baron) Jayatilaka wrote most of the editorials.
The “Ceylon Daily News” was and remains the keystone of the edifice which Wijewardene built up. Writing on its twenty-fifth birthday, the late Orion de Zylva, one of its brilliant staff, wrote:
“When the ‘Daily News’ was published on January 3, 1918, certain ideals were aimed at. To turn these ideals into a deed required in the doer a spirit of determination and high adventure.
“The way of Ceylonese journalism up to that time was for the most part crazy-paved with broken fortunes and shattered hopes. To make the prospect even more discouraging the “Ceylonese,” launched a few years earlier by a group of able and patriotic men with a confidence sustained by hope, had only recently failed. But Mr. Wijewardene was not deterred by these unhappy omens. Purchasing the plant and machinery of the “Ceylonese” and engaging the services of some of its staff and other competent assistants he boldly started the enterprise he had planned and which his powers of organization were to develop into a mighty force for the country’s good.
“In achieving this, he proved that any person possessed of perseverance and drive and fired by an intense desire to attain an ideal could not only command success in business but that he could make a success of a business of the most intricate and complicated kind involved in the running of several newspapers.
“To Mr. Wijewardene’s everlasting credit let it be remembered that he dared and executed what was nothing less than a constructive revolution in journalism such as it had been up to the time he entered the field. The “Daily News” was to be a newspaper with a soul. Though with convictions and opinions of its own, it was to give a fair show always to other convictions and opinions. It was meant to appeal to all thoughtful men and women anxious for the country’s welfare and advancement irrespective of race or creed.”
D. R. Wijewardene bought the assets of the “Ceylonese” for Rs. 20,000. He bought the “Ceylon Observer” and Ferguson’s Directory for a lakh and twenty thousand rupees from a syndicate financed by the late W. H. Figg and representing the European Association.
He leaves a group of half a dozen newspapers, in a palatial home equipped as well as any newspaper organization in the East and giving to the readers daily in all the languages of the country “all the news that’s fit toprint,” independent views, a valuable medium of culture and an indispensable arena of public debate. For 30 years he gave himself up fiercely and wholeheartedly to the exacting business of conducting these journals.
At the start there were many financial and other problems. The “Daily News”first came to life under the shadow of a war censorship. Paper was difficult to get and shipments were uncertain owing to the German submarine campaign. There were already two other English morning newspapers in the field and the editor of one of them, the late Armand de Souza, a redoubtable journalist, was then in his prime. Wijewardene took the bold step of cutting the price of the “Daily News” to five cents when the rival papers were charging ten cents.
The older proprietors and editors did not encourage special articles from outside contributors. Wijewardene did so. Leading men in every walk of life took pride and pleasure in writing for the paper. Contracts were made with well-known English publicists fora regular flow of articles into its columns. Reuters were pressed and paid to improve their services and the London office of the paper was strengthened both from the business and editorial angles. Sir Baron Jayatilaka introduced Frederick Grubb who became London correspondent for 15 years.
Development of the newspaper enterprise meant investment of large sums of money. There was no Bank of Ceylon then and some of the European banks would not lend without the guarantee of a shroff. Wijewardene had often to mortgage his private property to finance the business. The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited, was incorporated after the “Observer” was purchased and the new building was put up at a cost of two lakhs – nowadays a trifling sum – raised by a debenture issue. There were anxious times as during the great depression when advertising revenue sank to small proportions.
Wijewardene was a good judge of men and did not, unfortunately, suffer fools gladly. This and his success sometimes gave him a reputation for arrogance. But it was his natural shyness and dislike of the limelight which made him something of a man of mystery, a “dens ex machine.” He always had loyal workers, men who were ready to be driven hard because they respected his integrity and devotion to duty.
S.J.K. Crowther, whom he had known in England, joined him in 1919 as editor of the “Daily News” and continued in that position until 1931. The partnership was a happy and fruitful one and helped to lay the solid foundations on which the paper stands. But no man worked harder than Wijewardene himself. Even after he bought his delightful house in Diyatalawa he found little time for relaxation and those who went up with him for the week-end were always aware that he had not left his worries behind.
His cares and anxieties were of various kinds and he seemed to enjoy them as some people enjoy a drug. He was always bothered about public affairs and kept in touch with them by telephoning his few political friends. He was a student all his life and was constantly digging into official publications to discover subjects for editorials. He had a habit of extracting information about various matters from persons he met at weddings, funerals or in the course of his walks round Victoria Park. Whatever the question under public controversy, he had a reliable informant who gave him the background.
He was sometimes misinformed, but was never afraid to form an independent opinion regardless of personal relationships. Part of the reasons for the life of a recluse he led was that he tried to be free from influences which might sway him from the path of duty as a newspaper man. As a politician he had been brought up as a liberal with strong radical leanings, and this he remained to the last. When Ceylon got her independence the Prime Minister paid a well-deserved tribute to him as one of the architects of the country’s freedom.
Wijewardene was incapable of disconnecting from the switchboard of a newspaper’s ramifications. He would sometimes get up from the dinner table and go to the telephone to make a suggestion to an editor or to inquire from a sub-editor whether an important speech in the legislature had been adequately reported. He was an exceptionally able businessman and gave the major part of his working hours to the dull details of the counting house but his chief interest in journalism was news and the moulding of opinion.
For a conscientious proprietor a newspaper is not an understanding spouse but a jealous mistress. Lord Beaverbrook, who did not work half as hard as Wijewardene has written: “The business of producing a newspaper requires a type of mind which is very rare indeed. You Must he ready to put your whole heart and soul, your stomach, your liver, your whole anatomy, into a task which will appear most of the time to be dangerously stimulating and occasionally positively revolting.” (Millionaires and their Newspapers – Humbug and Ignorance)
It is not Lake House that will be a monument to the life of D.R. Wijewardene. The enduring monument will be his contribution to the building of the nation. He was not a man without faults. He was not often prepared to see the other side of a question. He was not always tolerant. He was frequently too preoccupied with his own problems to give a thought to the problems of even his nearest colleagues.
He relaxed so rarely that he had almost driven laughter out of his life until his health broke down and he was compelled to abandon his work. But at heart he was a kindly man. It is possible that he regretted nothing more in his later years than the hours he stole from his home and his friends and sacrificed to his business. He loved books, pictures, trees and flowers, but he denied himself of the pleasures they give. There is no respite for mortal creatures. Even a noble achievement must be paid for. By the death of D. R. Wijewardene, six years short of the Psalmist’s span, Ceylon loses one of its few great men.
By Professor G. L. Peiris
D. Phil. (Oxford), Ph. D. (Sri Lanka);
Quondam Visiting Fellow of the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London;
Former Vice-Chancellor and Emeritus Professor of Law of the University of Colombo.
I. A Cornerstone of the Legal System
The institution of criminal proceedings is of vital concern to the public. Irrespective of the outcome of proceedings, subjection of a citizen to criminal litigation is fraught with grave consequences, including psychological trauma and impairment of social reputation, quite apart from the expenditure incurred in defending a criminal action.
The law, therefore, goes to considerable lengths to ensure that recourse to criminal proceedings is the sequel to an informed and well-structured process which includes careful consideration of available evidence in a spirit of independence and detachment, far removed from partisan considerations.
II. The Role of the Attorney-General
In our legal system this responsibility belongs to the Attorney-General: it is for him to bring his mind to bear on the entirety of material emanating from police investigations and to make a dispassionate judgment whether the evidence at his disposal, in the surrounding circumstances, warrants the commencement of criminal proceedings.
The solemnity of this burden is underlined by the traditional formulation, in decided cases in our country as well as in other jurisdictions, that the Attorney-General, in performing this function, acts in a quasi-judicial capacity.
This calls for a clear separation of his mindset from that appropriate to the discharge of his other responsibilities. The principal law officer of the Republic, he is the chief advisor to the Government of Sri Lanka, and it frequently falls to his lot to defend, before the courts, senior representatives of the government in Fundamental Rights, writs and other proceedings.
Nevertheless, it is a sacred and inviolable principle that, when it comes to deciding whether criminal proceedings should be launched or, when once begun, should be discontinued, against any defendant or group of defendants, this decision should be demonstrably bereft of any tinge of political or other extraneous element.
This is one of the core values of the system of criminal justice in our country and, indeed, an indispensable pillar of the Rule of Law.
III. Ample Scope of Prosecutorial Discretion
A pivot of our law is the principle of vires or jurisdiction, which requires that a statutory power must necessarily be exercised by the authority on which it is conferred by the legislature.
This is the rationale of the concept of prosecutorial discretion vested in the Office of Attorney-General. Discretion to determine the sufficiency of grounds to institute a prosecution or forward an indictment is that of the Attorney-General alone, and any usurpation of that discretion strikes at the very foundation of the system.
IV. Limiting Criteria
This does not mean, however, that the Attorney-General’s discretion is total or absolute, and altogether beyond the reach of the courts.
It is a salutary feature of our law that Sri Lankan courts, buttressed by judicial experience elsewhere, have formulated a series of criteria which operate as the limits of this discretion and enable intervention, with due restraint, in a limited category of situations.
A trilogy of judicial pronouncements by the Court of Appeal of Sri Lanka(Sandresh Ravi Karunanayake v. Attorney-General CA/Writ/441/2021; Duminda Lanka Liyanage v. Attorney-General CA/Writ/323/2022); Nadun Chinthaka Wickramaratne v. Attorney-General CA/Writ/523/2024) have rendered yeoman service to our law in this regard. The value of this approach lies in its essential sense of balance.
These judgments, by Sobhitha Rajakaruna J., now establish with clarity the frontiers of judicial review in respect of prosecutorial discretion of the Attorney-General.
The applicability of judicial review, in this context, has been accepted unequivocally by our courts: Victor Ivan v. Sarath Silva, Attorney-General (1998) 1SLR 340.
Its ramifications straddle a variety of settings. Where, for instance, the initiation of criminal proceedings is entirely unsupported by any evidentiary basis, the indictment may be impugned in judicial review, by the writ of certiorari. In the relevant academic literature, in particular the writings of Professor Sri William Wade, it is identified as a jurisdictional flaw, in that action in the absence of evidence is considered to have been taken without jurisdiction.
Similarly, prosecutorial discretion exercised by the Attorney-General may be vitiated by a range of factors including plainly discernible bias indicative of mala fides, patent error, consideration of irrelevant matters or failure to consider relevant material, grave procedural illegality or irregularity during the decision-making process – blemishes which, severally or in combination, may amount to abuse of process and, therefore, a potential miscarriage of justice.
Recent trends in Commonwealth law suggest scope for expansion of the ambit of judicial review on the broad ground of palpable unreasonableness (in terms of the well-known Wednesbury test), but this is an extension to be effected sparingly.
While these grounds admit of adequate flexibility in relation to judicial review, there is need for uncompromising insistence on the exclusion of any form of political intervention, or even a well-founded suspicion of it, in the interest of preserving public confidence in the integrity of the prosecutorial process.
V. Contemporary Developments
In recent weeks there has been widespread interest in policy perspectives, and timely changes in the law, in this field.
These developments provide the backdrop to the media statement by the Ministry of Justice on 10 February regarding the proposed establishment of an “Independent Prosecutor’s Office”. What is contemplated, as an initial step, is the appointment of an “Expert Committee” to prepare a Concept Paper on which the views of civil society and the public will be invited.
The composition of the proposed Committee has been announced. It will consist of “1. The Attorney-General or two nominees of the Attorney-General; 2. The Secretary to the Ministry of Justice; 3. A senior judge in the judicial service; 4. The President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka or his nominee”.
While a committee, so constituted, may be appropriate for the preliminary task of suggesting the outlines of the concept, its personnel, clearly, cannot be involved in operationalising the idea, as it moves forward. The Secretary to the Ministry of Justice is a political functionary, subject to control by the Executive; a member of the Judiciary can play no part in decisions as to the suitability of instituting prosecutions; defending counsel in criminal prosecutions will be drawn from the unofficial Bar.
Sri Lanka had, at one time, a Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). The experience of the Crown Prosecution Service in the United Kingdom offers valuable guidance. The Government’s proposal, however, seems to go beyond the appointment of a Director and to envisage a comprehensive prosecutorial mechanism coexisting with the Office of Attorney-General.
VI. Critical Policy Issues
A mere change of nomenclature offers no more than a superficial and unconvincing solution. The experience of the DPP in our country was not an altogether happy one and, in any case, lasted only a short time. If susceptibility of the Attorney-General’s Office to political pressure is the core issue, it is hardly circumvented by the proposed supplementary mechanism.
Many structural issues naturally arise: What are the lines of demarcation contemplated? The new Office, if it is to serve a useful purpose, must obviously enjoy substantial independence from the Attorney-General, but a complete severance of the nexus, in terms of coordination, is unrealistic.
What safeguards, not explicitly spelt out in relation to the Attorney-General’s Office, are intended to apply to the proposed new Office? Will the Office of the Independent Prosecutor be served by members of the Attorney-General’s Department? If so, how will clarity be achieved in the delineation of reporting obligations? How will overlapping and interlocking lines of authority be dealt with? Since it has been made clear that the Attorney-General’s Office per se, will survive the proposed innovation, will there be some measure of erosion of the Attorney-General’s constitutionally entrenched functions? If this is the case, a piecemeal approach will not be feasible.
These are complex issues which will no doubt engage the intense interest and vigilance of the public, as the proposed reforms move forward.
by Anushka Kahandagamage
Unlike Manorani, mothers in both the North and South, whose children disappeared, had no means of reaching out to a state minister in the dead of night, begging for help or even sharing the devastating news of their children’s abduction. They did not have the privilege of calling on influential figures to intervene in their grief. This contrast does not lessen my empathy for Manorani, but rather highlights that a mother’s pain is universal, despite societal divisions or hierarchies. A thought that has been occupying my mind since the making of Rani is why a film is being made about Manorani when so many mothers in this country have lost their children. As Malathi de Alwis highlights, many women involved in the Mothers’ Front never had the chance to take the stage, which was controlled by men. Malathi also argues that Manorani’s special opportunity on that stage was due to her professional background as a medical doctor and her elite status.
Powerful Cinematic Experience
Rani, undoubtedly a powerful cinematic experience, left me frozen, its impact lingering within me. It took me back to the 1987-89 period, a time of terror, when I was just a first grader. The trauma from that era has stayed with our generation ever since. The film brought back events that were slowly fading from my memory, yet still lingered in my nightmares.
Challenging the official memory
Handagama and others involved in the making of the film succeeded in bringing a dark period, which was absent from history books, into the public consciousness or I would say, to the popular discourse. The official memory crafted by the then government regarding this horrifying chapter of history is mostly one-sided, glorifying the rulers while carefully erasing stories that do not align with their narrative. The film uncovers the painful truths, complicating the official narrative constructed by the government. It reveals that history is far more intricate than the simplified version presented in state-crafted accounts.
Subtitles
Creating a film about a dark chapter of the past, one that isn’t recorded in history books, and making it resonate with the public is a formidable challenge. However, the increasing number of people attending the film is a testament to its success. A common challenge faced by artistic films or those addressing complex social issues is their lack of popularity, which often prevents them from entering collective memory. Yet, Rani has effectively overcome this obstacle, achieving both widespread attention and relevance. While the film has undoubtedly succeeded in establishing itself within popular discourse and bringing attention to a dark, often overlooked period in history, the absence of Sinhala and Tamil subtitles presents a significant drawback. These subtitles would have made the film more accessible to a broader audience, particularly those who are directly impacted by the events depicted. Without them, a large segment of the population, including Sinhala and Tamil speakers, may have found it difficult to fully engage with the content and its emotional depth. Subtitles could have enriched the film’s reach and impact, fostering a deeper understanding of the complex and painful history that the movie seeks to bring to light.
Female protagonist
Making a woman the protagonist is an essential reflection of contemporary demands in cinema. Across the globe, there has been a significant shift toward promoting gender equality in film, with an increasing emphasis on strong, multifaceted female characters. This demand is not only a response to the changing social dynamics but also an effort to give a voice to women whose stories have often been sidelined in mainstream narratives. The focus on female protagonists ensures that audiences see a more balanced and inclusive reflection of society on screen.
The Ending and Accountability
The film would have had a more impactful conclusion if it had ended with the peaceful scene of the two women and the child on the beach. This moment was emotionally powerful and seemed like the natural conclusion to the story. However, the final sequence where the police officers are in their casual clothes, drunk and plotting the abduction of Richard, drags on far too long and felt like forcefully imposed. Instead of taking the audience to a peaceful ending, it inadvertently starts to irritate the audience due to its excessive length, detracting from the overall emotional tone of the film. As previously mentioned, the prolonged nature of this scene feels unnecessary and could have been condensed or omitted to maintain the film’s pace and emotional resonance.
In this final scene, perhaps the filmmaker intended to highlight the multiplicity of narratives (as is common in the post-modern era), but it fails in many ways. I strongly object to this scene, as it makes the rulers unaccountable for the murders and reduces the event to a toxic masculine portrayal of the police officers involved.
by Rajan Philips
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has delivered an excellent first budget. It could easily be described as the best budget so far this century and presented in the most dire economic circumstances in Sri Lanka’s modern history. Following his consummate performance in parliament, the President waded into a post-budget forum and joined the country’s economic experts to “dissect new Govt’s maiden budget,” as headlined by the Daily FT, one of the sponsors of the event. Whether one agrees with him or not, there is no question that AKD has been listening to those who knows the subject, has diligently done his homework on the budget file, and knows what he is doing,.
The problem he faces is that he cannot be doing homework on every file for the entire government, and he must find a way to quickly address the collective inexperience of his cabinet. He should not let this inexperience become the enemy that kills the government from within. Hopefully, he will find a way to address this within the framework of the budget and in the delegation of ministerial responsibilities for its implementation.
Somewhere in the budget, the President refers to economic decentralization, to deconcentrate the top heavy Western Province. Unfortunately, the corollary of political decentralization could not find its place in the text. Equally important, the President should also pay attention to ‘cabinet federalisation’ (AJ Wilson’s description of one of DS Senanayake’s quite a few master traits), and more so as he moves ahead to implement the budget proposals.
Ultimately, the success of the budget will be measured in political terms. Read, electoral terms. AKD’s and NPP’s detractors will be winding themselves for political wrestling in the local and later the provincial council elections. The NPP could be expected to hold its ground, but not necessarily all two-thirds of it. It should not at all be strange if the NPP gains ground in the North and East even as it loses some of it in the South. To keep the inevitable losses to the minimum, the government must eschew any and all complacency, which, modifying Mao’s famous Redbook take on it, could be described as the enemy of elections.
Geopolitically, paraphrasing the French Marxist Regis Debray, the NPP government must have its overhead antennas fully alert, but its feet firmly planted on the ground in Sri Lanka. The government cannot avoid being distracted by the global tumults that Donald Trump is creating day in and day out. There will be ripples, even waves, around Sri Lanka depending on what the Modi government decides to do in India to harmonize with the Trump Administration in Washington. Even so, the government’s primary preoccupation in the context of the turmoil in America should be to protect for as long as possible Sri Lanka’s exports to the US which are significant for Sri Lanka’s forex earnings.
At the same time, and consistent with the budget objectives, even as it diversifies its exports the government must diversify its importers. For the next four years, as Trump unfolds his madness, there will be responsive realignments in the Global North even as there will be reconsolidations in the Global South. The NPP government will have to navigate Sri Lanka through these currents without being smothered by them.
There are of course the self-proclaimed Rajapaksa nationalists who want to hitch their broken political wagons in Sri Lanka to the passing hegemon in America. They are in fact ethno-narcissists just like – but writ-small – the racial narcissist that Trump is. Ridiculous as these forces and their politics might seem, indeed as they are, the government should not underestimate their potential to do harm even by accident. Look at Bangladesh to see how political fortunes can dissipate fast, even though the NPP government is in no way comparable to Sheikh Hasina’s rotten government. The eternal home truth is the quick rise and the quicker fall of Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Setting the Budget Context
The budget speech outlines as its backdrop the 2022 economic crisis that has now become the Rajapaksa era legacy, and as its context the overwhelming verdict of the people in the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections. In this context, the President calls the budget both “historic” and “challenging,” because the government has to not only lay the foundation for fulfilling the people’s aspirations, but also to dispel “the wrongful picture (of us) created by the myths and malicious political propaganda against our economic policy and vision.” “We have succeeded in that,” the President asserted.
The government has proved its expectant critics wrong and stabilized the economy. All the indicators confirm that – the relatively stable exchange rate at one USD for LKR 300, and not LKR 400 as recklessly scare mongered; the lowering of the Treasury bill rate (8.8%) and getting inflation under control; forex reserves rising past USD six billion; finalizing agreements over debt-restructuring; and most of all keeping essential goods available and avoiding queues. In fairness, the credit for starting the process of economic stabilization belongs to Ranil Wickremesinghe, but post-election expectations in political circles have been that things will start to unravel due to NPP’s inexperience and even incompetence. That did not happen, and President AKD and the NPP government are justified in claiming credit for it.
Mr. Wickremesinghe may have even fancied that another economic crisis this time under an NPP government would give him a second kick at the can of power. No such luck. RW is now part of a team of exes – former ministers and presidents including Maithripala Sirisena – trying to figure out a way to stay relevant in today’s politics. Looking at this aging crowd outside parliament and its slightly younger version in the opposition within parliament, the NPP might fancy its chances of retaining power for more than one cycle of elections. But what the NPP has to contend with ultimately will not be ill equipped politicians but a frustrated electorate.
Apart from President AKD’s versatile feats, the NPP government has little to show to keep the people contented. Recurring rice shortage, the shortfall in coconuts, and the power outage blamed on a monkey tripping off a transformer have certainly taken the shine off the government. Looked from the other end, rice, coconuts and the power outage seem to the only shortcomings that the government is being picked on by media pundits and the political class. But what should concern the NPP government is that any one of them (rice, coconut or power), all of them together, or any similar shortages or failures, are enough to rile the people and bring down a government. Not long ago, it was called aragalaya.
Budget as Political Reset
The budget speech lays down the principles underlying the government’s approach to the economy: sectoral growth sustained by participation and even distribution on the supply side; and balancing roles for the market and the government on the demand side. A GDP growth rate of 5% is targeted for the medium term, predicated on a strong export sector performance while maintaining price stability and ensuring social welfare. Promoting investments, leveraging logistics, revamping tourism, digital transformation of the economy, and unleashing SME potentials through new credit structures are highlighted as the main growth poles. Allocations for health, education, food security, and social benefits are intended to rebuild and strengthen country’s social welfare system.
There is emphasis on Regional Development, including the assurance of special programmes for the Eastern Province, the Malayaga Tamils, and the Northern Province, but there is no mention of Provincial Councils and Local Government bodies and their agency roles in regional development. Regional industrial zones are identified including the promotion of Chemical Manufacturing in Paranthan, KKS and Mankulam in the Northern Province, Galle in the South and Trincomalee in the East. If some of them were to materialize the North and East might be seeing state sponsored industrial activity after more than 70 years when GG Ponnamabalam was Minister of Industries and Fisheries.
Auto Parts and Rubber Products manufacturing is also identified for promotion through industrial zones. What is not clearly indicated is whether new regional industrial initiatives will be tied to the export sector without which they may not be viable, as past experience has shown. Also, on the export front there is no identification of specific products and target markets to match the significant export sector growth that is being championed. Generally, for industries, there should be guardrails for minimizing and mitigating adverse environmental effects.
The budget rightly focuses on the modernization of public transport. Specific projects are identified for bus transport in Colombo and for the rail sector, including the revamping and the extension of the KV Line, multi-modal transport terminal in Kandy, and the expansion of the Thambuththegama Railway Station to function as a hub for transporting agricultural products. Large scale transport projects and rail transport are invariably the responsibility of the central government, but bus transport operations including those in Colombo and Kandy are better assigned to provincial and even larger municipal governments.
The budget provides for settling the legacy debt of the Sri Lankan Airlines (SLA) in the hope that SLA would hereafter become a viable enterprise. For other SOEs, the budget is proposing the setting up of a Holding Company again with the hope of revitalizing the mostly under-performing State Owned Enterprises (SOEs). Whether this approach is motivated by patriotic sentiments or political calculations, there is little support for it from past experience, except for enterprises in the crucial servicing and energy sectors.
The budget gets quite specific in its proposals for the agricultural and food sectors, especially rice and coconuts. At long last, there is official admission at the highest level that there is no data and information system for the “entire value chain” from paddy production to rice consumption. There is no immediate solution to this except the assurance to find one through the ADB funded “Food Security Livelihood Emergency Assistance Project” and a related World Bank project.
Coconuts are easy to count and difficult to hide. Some 4,500 million nuts are the projected demand for 2030, with 2,700 for the coconut industry and 1,800 for household consumption – at one per household per day. The problem is with production and the budget is allocating money for high yielding seedlings to be used in a new Northern Coconut Triangle extending from the coconut rich Northwestern Province, recommended by the Coconut Research Institute and mirror imaging the long established Southern Coconut Triangle. Better later than never, even when it comes to nuts.
All in all, the budget provides a good framework for the NPP government to reset its political road map. To succeed, the resetting must involve delegations at the ministerial level and following through to local communities and political grassroots. Equally important will be the medium in between, and the challenge to the NPP government is in resurrecting and using the currently defunct provincial and local government agencies.
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