Opinion

Mangala’s Aragalaya that never was, and must be

Published

4 years ago

2022/09/20

By Krishantha Prasad Cooray

In many ways, the economic collapse of Sri Lanka became a near certainty in the weeks after Gotabaya Rajapaksa was elected President. In hindsight, it is clear to all that his government’s number one priority was consolidating their power and punishing those it saw as its enemies. Their next priority was enriching themselves. To the extent that they had anything resembling a policy focus, every major initiative taken by the Rajapaksas only served to further sabotage and doom our economy. But there was a darker, even more bitter and consequential turning point in our nation’s story than the election of November 2019. It was the loss our country suffered on 24 August 2021, with the demise of Mangala Samaraweera.

I say this not only because he was one of my closest friends – a man I deeply admired and trusted implicitly. He too had implicit faith in me and never doubted me. During the years in which we both served in the Yahapalanya government, Mangala and I would meet almost daily, whether at our homes or offices. It is safe to say that neither of us ever took a decision of any consequence without consulting the other. Despite the intimacy of our friendship, we did not blindly agree with or followed each other.

In fact, Mangala and I fought so frequently and bitterly that on my birthday last year, a highlight of the touching open letter he wrote to me was an acknowledgement that he has never fought with anyone as much as he has fought with me. We had plenty of areas of disagreement. He was an extremely loyal friend, and with this loyalty came the clearest proof that he was not infallible. Like many of us, Mangala sometimes trusted the wrong people, who would take advantage of his friendship.

While he could be misled, he was not easy to mislead. For example, Mangala was never one of those politicians who would blindly read out a script handed to him by third parties with vested interests. He welcomed input from his extremely talented and capable team. However, he was always the final arbiter of the words he would take to the nation. He excelled at communicating complex concepts in simple words, a far cry from leaders who drown us in a word salad of complex words to get across even the simplest message.

But whatever our disagreements, of one thing I am certain. If Mangala was alive, no matter how far our country fell, we would not feel so helpless, and devoid of alternatives to the status quo. While many of us could see early on that the government was doomed to fail, Mangala Samaraweera, as he had many times before in his career, saw something that others could not. As the finance minister mostly responsible for repairing the damage done to the Lankan economy in the previous decade of Rajapaksa rule, Mangala saw that the failure that was coming would be unlike any other before it. He realised that this time, failure could be so catastrophic that there may not even be an economy left to repair.

Spurred into action like he had never been before, Mangala was one of the single most important figures in the attempts in early 2020 to build a grand alliance among the opposition parties, to pose a united front against the Rajapaksas at the impending parliamentary elections. As a senior UNP MP, he worked tirelessly for months to bring as many parties as possible into the fold. The alliance that resulted under the blessing of the UNP was the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, or “United People’s Power”.

As one of the chief architects of the new alliance, it was Mangala’s vision that the party would encompass Sri Lankans of all races, religions and creeds, to pose a united front against the jingoistic, Sinhala Buddhist dominated, and backward policies that the Rajapaksas stood for. Even after his party, the UNP, dropped out of the alliance a few weeks before nominations were due in March 2020, Mangala stood fast, and was one of 52 UNP MPs to defy his party and forge ahead with the new alliance.

Being one of the most senior MPs from the Matara District, Mangala accepted the SJB’s nomination as District Leader in Matara. As one of the foremost political strategists of our time, he had to work around the clock with his colleagues to forge a fresh electoral message to take to the people at the parliamentary elections, to give them a credible alternate vision to the political views of the Rajapaksas.

Mangala was politically seasoned and rational enough to realise that the SJB could not win that election, but he wanted to directly appeal to as many of the 5.5 million Sri Lankans who had voted for Sajith Premadasa as possible. He wanted to give them a reason to come out to the polls, and to convert their support into a formidable political opposition that could stand together with other opposition parties. Mangala had a vision of a true ‘Joint Opposition’, one that could prevent the worst excesses of the Rajapaksas and present an alternate path to right the ship of state no sooner the country saw through the smoke and mirrors of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa propaganda machine.

His dream was not to be. He soon became convinced that the party he helped form was not going to provide a liberal alternative to the communal, traditional politics of the Rajapaksas that he had hoped for. Instead, several decisions he failed to prevent led Mangala to fear that voters would see the SJB pitch effectively as “Rajapaksa-lite”,

one where the influence of liberals such as himself, or minority party representatives would serve as an inclusive or progressive veneer on what would otherwise essentially be a Rajapaksa platform that catered to a single community above others and left progressive and egalitarian voters with nowhere to turn.

Mangala shared his fears with like-minded MPs, all of whom reminded him of a terrible truth: nominations had already been filed – their choices were to stay the course or to do the unthinkable and quit the race.

Mangala was deeply anguished by his predicament. He had won election from Matara for nearly 30 years, his entire adult life. He had contested from both the SLFP and the UNP, each time believing deeply and passionately in the party, the platform and the leaders he was asking the people of Matara to bring to power. But now, at the very last minute, he had to choose between trying to deceive his people, to convince them of something he no longer believed in his heart was true, or to give up his precious seat, leave parliamentary politics and find another way to help stave off disaster.

Mangala had no good choices. By June 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic had paralyzed the tourism industry. Meanwhile, the government remained hell bent on its pigheaded strategy to wreck the agriculture industry and accelerate the evaporation of our foreign reserves. As a former Finance Minister, and a leader who frequently saw what others could not, Mangala knew that time was running out.

Rightly or wrongly, he also felt that his party’s platform would not inspire voters to come to the polls as many would find its positions indistinguishable from those of the Rajapaksas or other parties. He concluded that the solution to save our country from the Rajapaksas would not come from Parliament, and so, he did the unthinkable.

On June 9, he appealed to the people of Matara not to vote for him, announcing that he did not wish to return to Parliament, and would instead do politics outside of Parliament. On that day, Mangala warned that Gotabaya Rajapaksa was meticulously dividing and isolating Sri Lankans and militarising the state, and that “the Opposition does not seem to have a clear understanding of what its role and duty should be at a time when the nation is faced with such grave challenges.”

Cynics have often dismissed Mangala as a coward who backed away from the election as he feared he would lose his seat. As someone who knew Mangala inside out, I can say with certainty that fear is a word Mangala simply did not understand. As a founder of the SJB, he could have easily sought and secured a spot on the national list and avoided contesting entirely. He never did. And in the two months between his handing in nominations and deciding to quit the race, nothing had changed that would have weakened his personal prospects. By this time, Mangala had matured beyond opportunistic politics towards principled politics. He was not a politician to whom capturing power came above all else.

With the country largely homebound and focused on the electioneering of the major parties, Mangala faded from the spotlight, and few understood the gravity of his decision until the election itself. As Mangala predicted, over a million voters who had voted for the UNP in 2019, disenchanted with that party and not seeing a viable alternative in the SJB, chose to stay at home. The boycott by these voters handed a two-thirds majority of Parliament to the Rajapaksas on a silver platter, leading in turn to the 20^th Amendment and the unchecked excess and abuse that soon emptied our treasury and brought the country to its knees.

The writing on the wall was clear to Mangala well before the polls opened. A few days before the election, on August 2, he penned an article explaining what he saw as missing from the political spectrum that voters were to be presented with at the 2020 parliamentary elections. He set out the case for a “radical centre” on the political spectrum, for a movement whose founding principles and guiding light resembled those of our Constitution, and indeed, of the Buddhist philosophy embodied by Mangala himself – equality, egalitarianism and compassion. He spoke of a “common humanity, going beyond the boundaries of race, creed and caste.” Rejecting communalism in all its forms, he imagined a political movement that could directly confront the “thinly veiled racism and overzealous chauvinism” that pass for patriotism in Sri Lanka, a definition that he saw as “the main cause of our downhill journey since independence.”

Mangala called for a movement that would reimagine patriotism, to redefine it “to reflect the goals and aspirations of a modern Sri Lanka, rejecting the feudal and tribal attitudes and ‘big frog in a small well’ mindset of the Post-’56 era”. He imagined a party that could inspire Sri Lankans to understand, appreciate, respect and protect the very concept of democracy, and understand that fundamental rights were theirs to defend.

He devoted the rest of his article to setting out a policy agenda that resembles those of every advanced and prosperous country on the planet, with clearly articulated views that were both inspiring, and violently opposed to the Rajapaksa perspective on every issue from human rights, judicial independence, state sector reform, fiscal policy, combating narcotics, a robust safety net, advanced health care, education and the rights of women, children, the LGBTQ and animals. This article felt more inspiring and sincere than any manifesto produced by any party at the election that was just days away.

Having read his vision, I could not help but wonder what would have happened had this intelligent, courageous and forward-looking vision been put to the voters in August 2020. Would at least some of the 1.1 million 2019 voters who boycotted the election have been inspired to show up at the polls? At least enough of them to deny the Rajapaksas a two-thirds majority?

Mangala intended to inspire these disenchanted voters, unite them across lines that traditionally Opposition outside of Parliament. Having lived through the horrors that accompanied the armed insurrections of the JVP in the late 1980s, Mangala knew that when people began to starve, as was seeming inevitable, it would be up to the youth of the country to come together across ethnic and gender lines and to peacefully oppose the government and chart a course for the future.

Mangala spent the next year, through the lockdowns and adversity of the pandemic, putting together his “Radical Centre” movement, which he launched at Darley Road on 25 July 2021, the 38^th anniversary of the 1983 Black July riots. By this time, the Opposition had rallied in unison behind the slogan “Sir Fail”, rightly chastising Gotabaya Rajapaksa for his abysmal failure to govern. But in launching his “Radical Centre” Mangala went a step further.

He resisted the convenient slogan and inspired people to look deeper and more introspectively. “Sri Lanka has fallen into this state today because of decades of politics through the sale of false patriotism, the voters who were continuously deceived by these so-called patriots,” he said.

He did not even spare himself. “In fact, everyone else involved in governance, including myself, is to some extent responsible for the current situation,” Mangala said. He stressed that it was not just one man, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who had failed, but an entire system of political thinking.

“But it is not President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who has really failed today. It is the religious, majoritarian and outdated socialist ideologies he represents that have failed. Today, it is the Government that promised a solitary Sinhala Government that has failed. Who has failed today is the present Opposition which has gone beyond Rajapaksa in proposing an ideology containing racism and majoritarianism as a solution.”

He built the “Radical Centre” and its headquarters, “Freedom House”, to be focused on the energy, aptitude and aspirations of our youth, with a special focus on professionals who would typically shy away from politics. He planned to present the people with an alternative, educating them on the dangers of the government’s policies, and on how they could be successfully and peacefully opposed. He planned to bring the government to its knees in a way that he felt that the political opposition in Parliament simply lacked the vision, motivation or appetite to do.

His message to the youth was that we, the older generation had failed them, and that it was time that they took the future of the country they would inherit into their own hands. He planted the seeds of what would become the Aragalaya, by inspiring young Sri Lankans to unite and stand up for their rights and their future.

Despite being politically opposed to the Rajapaksas and the Podujana Peramuna, Mangala opposed them responsibly, averse to scoring cheap shots for petty political gain. Just as he was dismissive of the “Sir Fail” simplification of our country’s plight, he had quietly lent his own personal connections to the government earlier that year to try and secure additional vaccine doses and other aid for the country.

Even though he succeeded, he never sought credit, and didn’t try to get his picture in the newspapers receiving stocks of vaccine doses or supplies at the airport or distributing them on camera. He just got the job done. Mangala had risen above politics and fully embraced statesmanship. He was not a party leader. He was a real leader.

In Mangala’s final days, as his Covid-19 treatment grew more intense and his family desperately sought hard to find medication, one politician who helped secure an injection for Mangala actually took to social media to boast of his own charity and generosity. Contrast that to Mangala, who silently mobilised entire countries to procure supplies for millions, and never said a word or sought a lick of praise. That is the difference between Mangala Samaraweera and the choices we are left with today.

In addition, for months prior to launching his movement, Mangala had been writing letters and reports privately and in detail for the consumption of the Rajapaksa government, trying to explain the gravity of the economic devastation that he warned was only months away, virtually pleading with them to change course, to stop bleeding our foreign reserves dry and setting out for them a policy path that could have prevented the worst of the suffering we are enduring today. He never spoke of his fears publicly, conscious of his stature as a former finance minister and fearful of contributing towards the flight of investors or a credit downgrade. He refused to exacerbate the suffering of ordinary Sri Lankans for personal political expediency.

Perhaps, as the situation deteriorated, he would have become more vocal, and tried to use his burgeoning youth movement to advocate for specific policy reversals before the coffers ran dry and we were forced into default. Alas, we will never know. He succeeded in getting the youth to pay attention, but sadly, he was not there to help shape what was next to come.

It was just days after Mangala launched the “Radical Centre” in July 2021, that he contracted COVID-19. After several weeks of fighting fiercely against the disease, on Tuesday, August 24, 2021, Mangala succumbed, and Sri Lanka lost one of its titans of democracy, its paragons of statesmanship. Just 30 days after beginning the most courageous, ambitious, and essential phase of his political journey, suddenly, Mangala was no more.

Mangala’s demise left a gaping hole on Sri Lanka’s political spectrum. He had planned to unite the youth across political party lines and coordinate the peaceful fight against the Rajapaksas with one voice. But with his demise, no leader had the courage or vision to step in to fill that void. No leader had the credibility to unite the youth in an egalitarian, liberal and secular front. No leader had the capacity or team capable enough to bring such an ambitious vision to fruition.

As the cost of living skyrocketed and the country teetered on bankruptcy, the youth took matters into their own hands, launching a leaderless Aragalaya sparked by the unbearable cost of feeding their families and the realization that Rajapaksa policies would lead to the next generations of Sri Lankans being significantly poorer, hungrier, unhealthier and worse off.

In the absence of leadership, the Aragalaya united around the lowest common denominator, a single call to action: “Gota Go Home.” Their bases became “Gota Go” gamas, or villages.

Alas, even as their numbers burgeoned, and tens of thousands more Sri Lankans rallied around the obvious truth that Gotabaya Rajapaksa had to go home, something happened in Sri Lanka that has never ever happened in any country that has undergone a revolution of this nature. What happened in Sri Lanka would never, ever, have happened if Mangala Samaraweera was alive.

While the country was clear that Gotabaya Rajapaksa had failed, there was not a credible leader in sight with the vision, courage, and political acumen to come forward with an alternative to Rajapaksa policies instead of a substitute, or Rajapaksa-lite. The opposition parties were highly effective at pointing out what the Rajapaksas did wrong. But barring a few outstandingly prescient and learned MPs who could speak in technical terms of potential alternate policies to the Rajapaksas, no leader came forward to inspire the country with an alternative vision.

Devoid of any political leadership, most of the contributors to the Aragalaya movement, especially those who were students of history, were fearful of electing leaders among themselves or making any political claims. They had clearly hoped that if they did the hard work of dislodging and breaking the most powerful, authoritarian government that had ever ruled Sri Lanka, that there would be a leader to come forward and provide an alternate path. Sadly, they could not have been more wrong.

In the absence of someone like Mangala to put forward an inspiring, thoughtful and credible alternative, much of the Aragalaya narrative was hijacked by the extreme left, those with anarchist agendas, who would burn the houses of MPs, resort to thuggery, and sought to tear down our democracy in its entirety. These people took the spotlight, torching homes and taking lives, scaring the people that what was to come was no different to Rajapaksa brutality.

As it happened, there was no one to protect the vast majority of innocent youth who devoted their sweat, blood and tears to give their children a better future. They were abandoned and on their own.

Mangala saw, over a year before the Aragalaya was born, that it would be the youth of Sri Lanka, united along all demographic lines, who would pose the only credible threat to the government. He knew they would come together as the cost of living reached for the stars. And despite knowing that this inevitability would have benefited him politically, he fought until he could no longer draw breath to prevent that outcome by privately seeking to convince the government to avoid disaster. In his absence, we are left with so-called leaders who wait with bated breath for the plane to crash, foolish enough to imagine that they can then become its next pilot.

Mangala, on the other hand, was sharper, more principled, and pragmatic. He saw, over a year before the Aragalaya was born, that such a movement could – and must – reclaim the concept of “patriotism” from the nationalists and the xenophobes. Having been called a “traitor” for years for standing by his principles, he stood fast, knowing that history would be on his side. He was right. When I saw young Sri Lankan boys and girls, Sinhalese and Tamils, Buddhists, Christians and Muslims, wrapped in Sri Lankan flags singing the national anthem as they redefined patriotism in protest against the Rajapaksas, my heart skipped a beat, my mind went straight to Mangala, and I choked back tears. If Mangala were alive to see it, he would have wept openly with pride.

Today, Gotabaya Rajapaksa is gone, but his family and political party still dominate the corridors of power. Today, the genuine youth movement Mangala saw coming has materialized, been splintered, and shattered by isolation, incarceration and disillusionment. And today, we can finally see what Mangala could see as far back as August 2020, before the SLPP ever took Parliament.

Mangala knew that the SLPP would fail. He knew that in poverty, Sri Lankans would find unity, and that no leader in Parliament would be ready with an alternative to the Rajapaksas coupled with the courage to act. He knew the risks of a poverty-driven youth rebellion, having lived through one himself, and he understood that it was essential to build a clear message of hope and an alternative to just attacking what was failing. He knew that by the time the government failed, if not sooner, the political centre had to be ready with a plan to succeed.

In remembering Mangala, we must remember his most important lesson. He warned that defeating a single President, a single family, a single party, or winning a single election, would not be enough. Gotabaya Rajapaksa left office, but the ideology he stood for, that brought us to ruin, is still very much with us. If Sri Lanka is to have any hope, this ideology must be defeated and stamped out once and for all. In the same vein, even though Mangala has left this earth, his radical centrist ideology still exists, if not in Parliament, if not in the media, at least in the hearts of the Sri Lankan youth and clear-minded citizens. And if our country is to truly ever thrive again, Mangala’s ideology must be protected, it must blossom, it must become our national ideology. It must become our new patriotism. And the true patriots of Sri Lanka must remain united and make this vision a reality. This is the only way forward for our country.

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Opinion

Ginige Palitha Sirimal Harischandra de Silva Historian and Archivist

Published

2 days ago

2026/08/28

Thilina Walpola

Haris de Silva

by Geedreck Uswatte-aratchi,
B.A.(Cey.), Ph.D. (Cantab.)

In my first year at Peradeniya, I lived in Room 54 on the ground floor of the first quadrangle of Ramanathan Hall. In room 55 lived the prize-winning short story writer Somapala Wijesinghe, in his second year. On the first night, I walked a bit late to dinner to avoid the fierce raggers. As my luck would have it, there was a short man who barked out, ‘You fresher, what school do you come from?’ ‘From Kuliyapitiya Central School’, said I, meekly. The short man laughed loud derisively, ‘Where the hell is that? You have no business to come to this hallowed place. You look starved. Go and eat, I will deal with you in time.’ I was scared and hungry. So did I meet my first and long-lasting friend in Peradeniya. Haris read history under Ray Chaudhry, Sinha, G. C. Mendis and Lakshman Perera. The brilliant historians of Peradeniya were yet to come. I read Economics in the Takaran Shed School on the embankment across the road from the Arts Building.

Haris had an irresistible impish sense of humour. It did not spare friend or foe. When he came to Peradeniya, he brought his decrepit bicycle by rail. It had no bell, no lights, front or tail and no breaks but he never hurt himself or another except once and that grievously when he was very young in Panadura; he lost one eye in a road accident. The offending party was not Haris. That in no way spoiled the fun he had on his bicycle in Peradeniya or later. He was wildly popular and much admired. There was hardly any student in Peradeniya who did not know Haris. Among other things, I learnt from him to wear my shoe, making a slipper of it by beating down the heel.

There were several student’s societies in Peradeniya. It was usual for some of these societies to organise a bus tour to some place of interest. Usually, they came back late at night having shouted themselves hoarse and dead tired. One of our mutual friends joined a trip that year. In the evening, after dinner, Haris came to my room glistening with mischief. We both went in to our friend’s room and systematically dismantled his bed, put the mattress atop the closet, undid the springs and left them all over the floor. Our friend came back eager to hit the pillow but there was no bed. We came solicitously to help him re-assemble his bed and dismount the mattress. Our friend was furious with us till next morning. He bided his time. I joined a trip to Mahiyangana, mainly to go down the 18 bends. I came back dog tired fearing the worst. There might be a bucket of water ready to drench me as I opened my door. There wasn’t but my mattress was atop the closest. Never mind, mi pan rai, as I learnt to say in Bangkok, much later.

Vernugopal, who played hockey and later was a Certified Public Accountant in New Jersey, Haris and I nearly fell into serious trouble in our second year. Norman, son of Weerasuriya, QC, came to see Peradeniya, where he was scheduled to come into residence next year. I did not see him but he had come in a Mercedes Benz and had worn an expensive warm jacket that he had bought in London, earlier in the year. Vernu, for one reason or another, had lifted it and given it to Haris for safe keeping. Ever out for mischief, Haris rushed it to my room and asked me to keep it with me and, the next morning, move it out of the Campus, unobserved. He pressed me the next morning and I complied and forgot about it all. Not for long. One day the Warden knocked on my door; very unusual, I thought. ‘Do you have in your possession an expensive jacket belonging to a visitor to our Hall?’, he asked. ‘I have a jacket but I don’t know whom it belongs to. I will have to consult Haris who gave it to me a few days ago.’ ‘No matter all that. I want the jacket in my quarters before 6, this evening.’. I learnt about the episode later. Nicholas Attygalle had succeeded Ivor Jennings as Vice Chancellor. Attygalle and Weerasurya (Snr.) were pals. We all would have been in trouble if the jacket went missing. I was mighty relieved when all was settled.

Harris had a long string of cousins who lived mostly along Galle Road. They were his mother’s siblings’ children. I lived in a boarding house in Bambalpitiya to go to work. One Saturday morning Haris and I set out in his car to go to Hikkaduva (not the Hikkaduva of today) for the weekend. We visited one cousin in Moratuva, several in Panadura, another in Kalutara and so on and reached Ambalangoda about four in the afternoon. I declined the offer to ride back with him and took the 3.15 next day afternoon train to the Fort.

Haris’ hobby was carpentry. He parked his car on the lawn and the garage turned into a workshop. He had a good collection of tools. Some of the furniture in his house was made by him. He insisted on repairing his roof. One morning someone called from his home that Haris had fallen from the roof and we rushed much concerned. The turf had received him gently and he was none the worse for the accident. He kept on mending his roof.

Hema was a fitting companion to Haris: joyful and a perfect host. Mali and I spent many happy days with them, especially after the two children were born. Haris did a tremendous job bringing up the two of them by himself to be distinguished and highly productive citizens of this country. One of them lived with her family in the father’s house and Haris took great pleasure as the grandchildren went to good universities and eventually took up interesting work.

A hallmark of Haris’ life was the simplicity in which he lived it. The lives of Haris and family were almost stoic. Their home, the furniture in it, the clothes they wore and the occasions in life that they celebrated were all lessons in simplicity. One of the children, who was in a learned profession, once worked in Polonnaruva. She came to her home in Colombo, when she could, by bus. She later worked in Panadura and similarly often came back to Colombo by bus. Among a people who notoriously exhibit wealth they do not fully possess (read the ratio of household debt to household income), here was an oasis of serenity and simplicity. I respected him and his family very much.

Haris came to Peradeniya with some familiarity with research work. At Ananada Sastralaya, Kotte where Haris studied to enter university, young Amaradasa Virasinghe was a teacher. Virasinhge had been much inspired by Professor M.D.Ratnasuriya, who came from London University. The world of English literature was rocked by F.R.Leavis’ journal Scrutiny. Gananath Obeysekere had graduated from the English Department which was headed by E.F.C. Ludowyk who had graduated from Cambridge and was familiar with that work. The two young graduates decided to publish a quarterly Sinhala literary review and the first issue of Samskrti appeared in 1953. Haris had a hand in putting the first issue together in Obeysekere’s home in Lauries Road in Bambalapitiya. Virasinghe and his colleagues published Samskrti for about 20 years when Virasinghe decided to go to Pennsylvania. Amaradasa Gunewardena (Sinhala, Ramanathan, 1954) heroically carried on the journal for several years irregularly, until when it ceased publication. Virasinghe came back in 2000 or so and wanted to revive samskrti. With time, much had changed. The original enthusiasts all had moved, except two: Susil Siriwardena from Oxford and Usvatte-aratchi, who had come back after 25 years overseas.. They revived the journal to survive till 2015. Although the university population had multiplied several-fold and the Sinhala readding public even more, publishable material was scarce. And the journal spurted on for a year or two and died.

When Haris joined the Department of Government Archives under Amaravamsa Devaraja, the Department was in Nuvara Eliya. It had been moved from Colombo when there was a risk that Japanese might bomb the capital and the archives might be lost. Further, the cooler and slightly drier climate in Nuvara Eliya was likely to preserve the documents at lower cost. Peradeniya which turned out to be a major user of Archives was in the neighbourhood. However, Colombo had many users who could not afford the delays and the cost of driving to Nuvara Eliya. As time went on three universities had sprung up in and near Colombo and there emerged many users. President Jayewardene himself was a keen reader of Sri Lanka’s history. And there was an excellent site in Independence Square. It fell to Haris who was Deputy Director then to take care of the project to put up the new building and equip it. They could not have found a better person, had they searched the world for years. His integrity in the management of funds was rock solid. He had the cheque ready the day before payment was due and the builder had his first day of surprise when he was so informed. With many young students of history, law, economics and anthropology, there was a heightened interest in Archives and they found an excellent archivist in Haris.

Haris himself enjoyed the work immensely. As time permitted, he wrote two well-researched and data rich valuable works, as I recollect. He never lost interest in history and archives and we regularly chatted about what we were reading, thinking or writing. I dared not make a mistake in history. Haris’ red pen would find employment.

Haris was the first friend I made in Peradeniya and he is the last to whom I bid adieu. You made history and history will treat you splendidly.

Opinion

Handcuffs without consequences: Why Sri Lanka’s anti-corruption drive keeps missing the target

Published

3 days ago

2026/08/27

Sahan Weerasooriya

By Mahil Dole, SSP (Retd.)

Senior Security Analyst | Former Head of Counter-Terrorism, State Intelligence Service | Managing Director, Smart Security Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

The daily procession of arrests has become one of the most familiar rituals of public life in Sri Lanka. Politicians, senior officials, state enterprise executives and private-sector figures are regularly produced in court. Some are remanded. Others walk free on bail. A number simply disappear beyond effective reach. The pattern is so constant that many now regard it as evidence of a deeper national failure. One recent comment captured the prevailing mood: corruption has become mind-boggling, damaging the country’s image and sending damaging signals to investors, international financial institutions and those who still provide aid.

That observation is not unfair. Visibility of wrongdoing is high. Yet Sri Lanka is not without formal safeguards. Stringent laws exist. Specialised agencies operate. Disciplinary procedures are written down. An often aggressive media continues to expose scandals. Religious and cultural traditions across communities teach honesty, selflessness and restraint of greed. Places of worship are numerous, and large numbers of citizens participate actively in religious life.

At this very moment, Parliament is engaged with further legislative efforts to strengthen the anti-corruption framework. The Anti-Corruption (Amendment) Bill, already gazetted, seeks to tighten the 2023 Act by introducing heavier financial penalties (including a mandatory additional penalty of not less than three times the value of property gained through corruption), fuller recovery of losses caused to the State, and stricter bail provisions for serious offences. These moves are timely. They also make the questions raised in this discussion more urgent: will stronger laws on paper finally change outcomes, or will the same incentive problems and selective application continue to blunt their effect?

Why, then, does the country continue to be widely regarded, both at home and abroad, as significantly corrupt?

The answer does not lie in the absence of rules or moral instruction. It lies in the gap between formal architecture and lived outcomes.

As Lord Acton observed more than a century ago, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” When power is weakly constrained by institutions, and when the practical incentives facing those who wield it reward extraction rather than stewardship, even the best-written laws struggle to hold.

The Limits of Formal Safeguards

Laws and procedures create the possibility of accountability. They do not automatically produce it. Enforcement is carried out by people and organisations that respond to the rewards, risks and constraints they actually face. When the expected benefit of corrupt behaviour remains high and the expected cost, legal, career, social or material, is low or selectively applied, formal rules lose force.

Detection and prosecution are frequently reactive. Media exposés and agency raids often occur after significant damage has already been done. Prevention, the reduction of opportunities and the raising of risks before the act, remains weaker. Court processes are slow. Asset recovery is incomplete. Absconding continues to be possible. The result is a cycle of arrest theatre that generates temporary political credit while leaving the underlying incentive structure largely intact.

It is essential, however, to state a foundational principle with clarity. Every person accused of wrongdoing is presumed innocent until proven guilty through a proper judicial process. Sri Lanka maintains this position with utmost confidence. The presumption of innocence is not a technicality; it is a cornerstone of the rule of law. Any anti-corruption effort that abandons this principle, or appears to do so, risks transforming a legal process into something closer to political retribution. Transparency, not opacity, is therefore indispensable. The public must be able to see that investigations and prosecutions are conducted according to law, applied equally to every alleged wrongdoer, and free from the taint of selective targeting or “witch-hunting.” The new legislative proposals now before or approaching Parliament will be judged by precisely this standard: whether they strengthen genuine legal accountability or merely add new tools that can still be applied unevenly.

Religious and cultural values are sincerely held by many. Yet they are frequently compartmentalised. Ethical teachings against greed can coexist with different standards of behaviour in political and bureaucratic life. When public office is widely perceived as a platform for resource allocation rather than stewardship, personal devotion does not automatically translate into institutional integrity.

How Incentives Shape Enforcement

Enforcement agencies and the individuals within them operate under multiple, often conflicting, incentives.

Career progression in many public institutions has historically depended more on political reliability or bureaucratic loyalty than on the successful pursuit of complex, high-value cases. Investigating powerful figures can bring transfer, sidelining or delayed promotion. Pursuing lower-level or politically convenient targets is safer and still produces visible statistics. Performance metrics that prioritise the number of arrests or cases filed over the quality of convictions and the recovery of proceeds encourage quantity over substance.

Political incentives cut both ways

Governments gain short-term popularity from high-profile actions, especially against previous regimes or opponents. The same governments face strong incentives to shield their own networks. Selective enforcement therefore becomes rational from a political-survival perspective. Long-term institutional credibility is a public good that individual political actors may undervalue when their time horizon is short.

As the saying reminds us, “Laws are like cobwebs: they catch the weak and small, but the strong and powerful break through.” When the powerful face different practical consequences from ordinary citizens, the deterrent effect of even the most severe punishments collapses. The same danger arises when enforcement appears driven by political convenience rather than consistent application of the law. Opacity in process fuels precisely this suspicion. Transparency in investigation, charging decisions and court proceedings is the surest way to demonstrate that the system is engaged in a legal anti-corruption effort, not a campaign of selective persecution.

Personal risk also matters. Investigators and judges who pursue well-connected targets can face threats, legal harassment or professional isolation. Where institutional protection is weak, rational self-preservation leads to caution. Material conditions reinforce the problem: relatively modest public-sector salaries alongside large discretionary powers create opportunities for compromise.

The Critical Role of Whistleblowers

In this environment, whistleblowers become especially important. Most serious corruption is not visible from the outside. It occurs inside procurement processes, regulatory decisions, financial flows and internal communications. Insiders who see the documents, attend the meetings or handle the payments are often the only people positioned to raise the alarm early enough for evidence to be preserved.

Whistleblowers supply leads and evidence that agencies may lack the incentive or capacity to generate independently. Credible tips can shorten investigations, strengthen cases and raise the political cost of inaction. The mere possibility that an insider may speak alters the risk calculation of potential wrongdoers.

Sri Lanka’s Anti-Corruption Act contains explicit protections for informers, whistleblowers and witnesses. These include confidentiality of identity, immunity from civil and criminal liability when information is provided in good faith, protection from disciplinary action and reprisal, and criminal penalties for those who retaliate. Such provisions are necessary. Their effectiveness depends on consistent implementation: rapid response to threats, genuine confidentiality in practice, accessible reporting channels, and visible consequences for those who punish disclosures.

Without credible protection, the rational calculation for most potential whistleblowers remains silence. Strong protection changes that calculation and thereby improves the information environment in which enforcement agencies operate.

Principal Contributors to Persistent Corruption

Corrupt political leadership is often decisive. When those at the apex of power treat public office as a vehicle for personal or factional enrichment, they set the tone for the system. Leadership that tolerates, participates in or protects corruption signals that rules are optional for the powerful. It also tends to appoint loyalists rather than professionals to sensitive posts, further politicising the institutions charged with enforcement.

Politicisation of government agencies follows. When appointments, transfers, promotions and operational priorities in the police, revenue departments, regulatory bodies, state-owned enterprises and anti-corruption agencies are driven by political loyalty rather than competence and integrity, professional incentives collapse. Officers who resist improper pressure face retaliation; those who comply advance.

Politicisation of the media weakens an important external check. When significant sections of the media become aligned with political or commercial interests, coverage becomes selective. Scandals involving favoured actors are downplayed; those involving opponents are amplified. This distorts public information and reduces the reputational cost of misconduct for the protected.

Politicisation of religious platforms and organisations can compromise their moral authority. Religious traditions teach restraint and honesty. When those platforms become vehicles for political mobilisation or the defence of partisan interests, their capacity to uphold ethical standards against corruption is reduced.

Poverty amplifies vulnerability. Low relative salaries and economic insecurity create material pressure on officials and make ordinary citizens more susceptible to paying bribes for basic services. Competition and demand for scarce opportunities, licences, contracts, regulatory approvals, jobs, land, school places, combined with discretionary decision-making create intense pressure for preferential treatment. Where formal processes are slow or opaque, people and firms compete by offering inducements.

These factors reinforce one another. Corrupt leadership accelerates the politicisation of agencies and media. Politicised institutions reduce the risk of detection and punishment. Poverty and scarcity increase both the supply of and demand for corrupt exchanges. Together they create a self-reinforcing system in which formal laws and ethical teachings struggle to gain traction.

Consequences Beyond Reputation

The costs are not merely reputational. Investor risk perception rises, increasing the cost of capital and deterring higher-quality foreign direct investment. International financial institutions and aid partners attach governance conditions that become harder to meet when enforcement appears selective or incomplete. Public trust in institutions erodes, weakening the social cooperation necessary for effective policing, intelligence and community resilience.

Corruption is also a national-security vulnerability. It hollows out the integrity of the institutions that protect the state and the public. When police, customs, prisons or regulatory bodies become permeable to illicit money, organised crime and narcotics networks gain operational space. Parallel power structures emerge. In a country that has experienced prolonged conflict and remains exposed to hybrid and transnational threats, the loss of institutional legitimacy carries strategic risk.

Prevention

: Changing the Incentive Structure

Arrests and court productions are necessary. They are not sufficient. Lasting progress requires shifting the practical risk-reward calculation that public officials, political actors and private intermediaries face every day.

C.S. Lewis captured an essential truth when he wrote that “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” Systems that make integrity the safer and more rewarding path are the only ones that endure

First , reduce opportunities. Transparent digital procurement systems with automatic red flags, real-time beneficial-ownership verification, meaningful sanctions for non-declaration of assets, and clearer limits on discretionary power lower the returns to corruption. The expansion of digital asset declarations covering a large cadre of officials is a step in this direction; verification and enforcement must follow.

Second , realign incentives inside enforcement agencies. Successful high-quality prosecutions and asset recovery should be the clearest path to career advancement. Institutional independence and protection for investigators must be strengthened so that pursuing powerful targets carries lower personal risk.

Third , protect and encourage whistleblowers in practice, not only on paper. Accessible, confidential reporting channels, rapid response to threats, and visible punishment of retaliators change the calculation for potential insiders.

Fourth , reduce politicisation of key institutions. to anti-corruption bodies, regulatory agencies and senior investigative posts should be insulated from partisan control to the greatest extent possible.

Fifth , address the demand side where feasible. Streamlining and digitalising routine citizen-facing services reduces the points at which ordinary people feel compelled to pay. Greater transparency in the allocation of scarce opportunities narrows the space for preferential treatment.

Sixth , and critically, the entire process must remain transparent and firmly anchored in due process. Every accused person is entitled to the presumption of innocence until guilt is established in a court of law. Sri Lanka upholds this principle with confidence, and it must be seen to do so. Opacity breeds suspicion of political motive. Transparency, clear procedures, reasoned decisions, equal application of the law, and open judicial proceedings, demonstrates that the effort is a genuine legal anti-corruption process applied to wrongdoers regardless of status or affiliation, and not a campaign of selective targeting.

The new amendment proposals now moving through the legislative process will succeed or fail by this measure: whether they reinforce even-handed legal accountability or simply add sharper tools that can still be used selectively.

Sustained political commitment beyond electoral cycles remains indispensable. Short bursts of visible action generate headlines. Durable change requires consistency across governments and a willingness to accept that effective, even-handed enforcement will sometimes inconvenience allies as well as opponents

Conclusion

Sri Lanka possesses many of the formal and cultural instruments that theory suggests should restrain corruption. The persistence of the problem demonstrates that instruments alone are not enough. The decisive variables are the incentives that shape behaviour inside political, bureaucratic and enforcement institutions, the opportunities created by discretionary power and opaque processes, and the degree of politicisation of the bodies meant to uphold the rules.

The current intensity of arrests and investigations, together with the latest legislative efforts to tighten the Anti-Corruption Act, is preferable to previous patterns of near-impunity. It is not yet a sufficient condition for lasting improvement. Moving from reactive enforcement to systemic prevention requires changing the risk-reward calculation that makes corruption rational for too many actors. It also requires that the process itself remain visibly fair, transparent, and faithful to the presumption of innocence. Only then can the public, and the wider world, be confident that what is underway is a serious legal effort against corruption, and not a politicised exercise in selective retribution.

Until these deeper shifts become visible and sustained in outcomes, fewer large-scale leakages, higher rates of asset recovery, reduced absconding, consistent due process, and rising public and investor confidence, the perception that Sri Lanka remains a high-corruption environment will continue to be a reasonable reading of the evidence. The daily drama of arrests will remain a symptom rather than a cure. The harder, quieter work of realigning incentives, protecting institutional integrity, and conducting the fight against corruption with both firmness and fairness is the only reliable path beyond it.

(This analysis is offered in the interest of national security, institutional reform, and public safety)

Writer – Mahil Dole
Senior Superintendent of Police (Retd.)

Former Head of (Counter Terrorism), State Intelligence Service, Former Director, Police Special Branch and former First Secretary (defense) Sri Lanka Embassy – Thailand and former investigation consultant of the Sri Lanka Police Financial Investigation Division.

Handcuffs without consequences: Why Sri Lanka’s corruption fight keeps missing the target

By Mahil Dole, SSP (Retd.)

Senior Security Analyst | Former Head of Counter-Terrorism, State Intelligence Service | Managing Director, Smart Security Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Opinion

Sri Lanka cannot afford to remain silent on its demographic crisis

Published

4 days ago

2026/08/26

Sahan Weerasooriya

I venture to make this appeal because I am increasingly concerned about what appears to be an inexplicable silence surrounding one of the most consequential challenges confronting Sri Lanka, the country’s emerging demographic crisis.

Nearly a year has elapsed since the official release of the latest Census population findings by the Department of Census and Statistics. The demographic signals revealed by the Census deserve far greater public scrutiny than they have received. An ageing population, declining fertility and a contraction of the working-age population are not merely statistical observations. Together, they have profound implications for the future economic, social and institutional sustainability of the country.

Yet, remarkably, the subject has not generated the level of informed public debate one would reasonably expect from a matter of such national importance.

What concerns me even more is the apparent reticence of those who are best placed to enlighten the public, the planners, demographers, academics and scholars attached to our universities and other institutions of national importance. Their silence is difficult to understand when the demographic trajectory of a country can influence virtually every aspect of its future: economic growth, labour-force availability, pension obligations, healthcare expenditure, education planning, family structures and the sustainability of social protection systems.

This is not an issue that can safely be postponed until the consequences become unmistakable. Demographic change is notoriously slow to reverse. By the time its consequences become visible in the form of labour shortages, an excessive dependency burden or an unsustainable ageing population, the policy options available to governments may already have narrowed considerably.

The public therefore has a legitimate right to ask some fundamental questions.

Where is the national demographic strategy? What are the projections for the next 20, 30 and 50 years? How rapidly is the working-age population expected to decline? What will be the implications for economic growth and productivity? How will Sri Lanka finance the needs of an ageing population? What measures are contemplated to address declining fertility? And, perhaps most importantly, has the country begun preparing now for a demographic reality that is already taking shape?

These are not questions that should be confined to academic journals or government reports. They deserve to be debated openly in the national press and explained to the ordinary citizen in language that everyone can understand.

At the same time, I would urge our demographers, economists, planners and scholars to come forward with evidence-based assessments rather than remain silent. If my interpretation of the demographic trends is misplaced, I would welcome a scholarly rebuttal. If the situation is more serious than is generally recognized, the public deserves to know that as well.

Silence is not a demographic policy.

Sri Lanka has already experienced the consequences of failing to anticipate several national crises. We should not allow demographic change, which operates quietly but relentlessly, to become another crisis that we recognise only when it is too late to manage.

The time to discuss Sri Lanka’s demographic future is not when the crisis arrives. The time is now.

Athula Ranasinghe