Wednesday 20th May, 2026

The police did precious little to prevent the various events, held in the North and the East on Monday, to commemorate the LTTE members killed during Eelam War IV. Some of the youth who attended those commemorations were seen blatantly flouting traffic laws by riding motorcycles without wearing helmets in an unruly manner. The police looked the other way. But they went all out to prevent a group led by National Freedom Front Leader and former minister Wimal Weerawansa from paying a floral tribute to the War Heroes’ Memorial at Battaramulla on Monday. Subsequently, they claimed that they had done so in view of rehearsals for the following day’s commemorative event, and warned that legal action would be taken against Weerawansa. This is an instance of the police resorting to lawfare to harass and intimidate the political opponents of the government. It is something to be expected, for the JVP/NPP has elevated two of its Retired Police Collective members as the Secretary to the Public Security Ministry and the Director of the CID, which is apparently busy with political work rather than crime investigation.

The police statement on Monday’s incident at the War Heroes’ Memorial is as absurd a claim they made during the Mahinda Rajapaksa government when they were asked by the media why they had allowed a group of pro-government goons armed with clubs to operate alongside the riot police to crush an Opposition protest in Colombo. The then Police Spokesman had the audacity to claim those characters may have carried ‘sticks’ to chase away street dogs.

The police are adept at fabricating stories in a bid to justify their politically determined action aimed at pleasing governments. There is no way they can justify their action near the War Heroes’ Memorial on Monday. It was obvious that Weerawansa and his supporters sought political mileage by visiting the place with television crews in tow. However, there would have been no commotion if the police had allowed them to lay flowers at the memorial.

The police were part of the JVP/NPP ensemble that recently enacted the “Malwana drama”, where some members of the JVP’s university student wing grabbed a state-owned mansion set on fire during Aragalaya (2022). The JVP undergrads overcame what the police made out to be resistance, forced themselves into the mansion and spent several days there. The incident reminded us of “Police Kolama”, a comic segment in Sri Lanka’s masked folk drama. Subsequently, Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, in a cameo, displayed her acting skills by meeting the dramatis personae of the Malwana play, which was directed and produced by the JVP/NPP, and agreeing to have what remains of the mansion taken over by the University Grants Commission. They could have reached that agreement without an absurd drama. The police did not initiate any action against the JVP students for the forcible occupation of state property. They also looked on when a group of JVP members blatantly violated the law by parking their buses on the southern expressway on 01 May, 2025. They unashamedly sided with a JVP mob that stormed an FSP party office in Yakkala, assaulted FSP members and seized control of the place. The JVP/NPP politicians are free to drive under the influence of alcohol, and breathalyzers mysteriously disappear from police stations when they happen to cause accidents. But the police swing into action when Opposition politicians hold protests or commemorative events that are not to the liking of the JVP-NPP government.

Oddly, the JVP-led government has done to the police what the JVP accused the previous government of doing to them; it has reduced them to mere putty in its hands and uses them to suppress the Opposition. The police, who were accused of using extrajudicial methods to crush two JVP uprisings, are now at the beck and call of the JVP, which is emulating the previous governments in handling dissent. So much for the new political culture the JVP/NPP promised to usher in.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake often claims that his government has restored the rule of law, and no person/institution is above the law. If he supposes so, one will say a la Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist, the law is an ass.

Tuesday 19th May, 2026

Seventeen years have elapsed since the defeat of LTTE terrorism, which plagued the country for about a quarter century. If not for the successful military campaign that eliminated the LTTE leadership, thousands of lives would have been lost in terror attacks and on the battlefield since 2009, and it would not have been possible to rekindle democracy in the North and the East. Today, children can go to school without fear of being abducted and turned into cannon fodder by the LTTE; political dissent is no longer violently suppressed; people can exercise their franchise freely in the former war zone, and there are no political assassinations. Ironically, those who did not oppose the LTTE’s terror campaign or supported it are now championing democracy and human rights. Among them are prominent Tamil politicians, civil society activists and religious leaders.

Terrorism is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end. Hence, the need to eliminate it in all its forms and manifestations. There were numerous attempts to persuade the LTTE to agree to a political solution, but Prabhakaran remained intransigent, and his terror had to be wiped out. There is space for the remaining LTTE members and their sympathisers to take to democratic politics. They ought to learn from the former southern terrorists.

What paved the way for the JVP’s re-entry into the democratic process and rise to power was the decimation of its leadership and military wing, which was responsible for many gruesome crimes in the late 1980s. The JVP killed thousands of dissenters and state workers who did not follow its illegal orders, and destroyed state assets worth billions of dollars. Today, a JVP-led government is trying to develop the country.

Attempts are being made in some quarters to revive memories of old battles to reclaim lost ground on the political front. Prominent among those who are doing so are SLPP politicians who were in power when the LTTE was defeated. They are trying to rouse nationalism in a bid to make a comeback. They would not have been in the current predicament if they had not misused the defeat of terrorism for political gain.

What the Rajapaksas and their allies did to the country, after defeating the LTTE, was like saving a damsel in distress and abusing her. They laboured under the misconception that the defeat of terrorism for which they provided political leadership was a special licence for them to do as they pleased. They sought to politicise and monopolise the war victory to accelerate their dynasty-building project and perpetuate their hold on power. The post-war Mahinda Rajapaksa administration became a government of the Rajapaksas by the Rajapaksas for the Rajapaksas, with a member of the ruling family in almost every key position in the state sector. They bulldozed their way through, launching as they did witch-hunts against their rivals. They also resorted to state terror to further their political interests. Blinded by the arrogance of power, they ruined things for themselves and suffered a humiliating electoral defeat in 2015. They succeeded in returning to power four years later, as the public thought they had changed and voted for them, only to be disillusioned again when they mismanaged the economy, indulged in corruption and bankrupted the country.

The Rajapaksas squandered an opportunity that presented itself, after the conclusion of the war, to bring about national reconciliation and defeat the LTTE ideology politically. The entry of war-winning Army Commander General Sarath Fonseka into the presidential fray in 2010 at the behest of the JVP and others, provided the pro-LTTE groups, here and overseas, with a rallying point; they crawled out of the woodwork and backed Fonseka in a bid to see the back of Mahinda Rajapaksa, albeit in vain. They succeeded in 2015, and emerged stronger, after enabling Maithripala Sirisena to secure the presidency. In a dramatic turn of events in 2024, they threw their weight behind the NPP led by the JVP.

An oft-heard lament is that reconciliation continues to elude this country. This sorry state of affairs has come about because reconciliation has become a victim of hypocrisy. Those who claim to champion reconciliation are using it to further their own interests, and those who should have made a serious effort to help achieve it after defeating terrorism did not care to do so and chose to advance their own political agenda.

Monday 18th May, 2026

The government has realised the need for a decisive intervention to curtail the burgeoning import bill, which is a drain on the country’s foreign currency reserves. It has imposed a 50% surcharge on custom duty on vehicle imports for three months. Vehicle prices are bound to increase substantially.

Explaining why the government decided to impose a duty surcharge on imported vehicles, Deputy Minister of Finance and Planning Dr. Anil Jayantha Fernando has said import expenditure has increased sharply to USD 2 billion over the past two months. Letters of Credit for vehicle imports are also being opened rapidly, and therefore instead of banning vehicle imports, the government decided to impose a duty surcharge to manage the situation, he has stated, requesting that the importation of vehicles for personal use be postponed by three months.

It became clear a few months ago that the sheer volume of vehicle imports would pressure foreign currency reserves. The government moved to boost its tax revenue by lifting restrictions on vehicle imports in keeping with IMF conditions, but it apparently did not maintain a balance between higher taxes on imported vehicles and foreign currency reserves. Perhaps, having claimed that it strengthened the economy and built foreign currency reserves, the government did not want to restrict vehicle imports.

Oil accounts for about 20% of Sri Lanka’s import bill, and therefore a strategy to curtail the foreign exchange outflow consists in reducing fuel consumption. The West Asia crisis has driven the global oil prices up and left the developing economies struggling. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has recently lamented that the national fuel bill increased steeply from USD 98 million in February to USD 368 in April, and the projected bill for May is USD 522 million. He has stressed the need to reduce fuel consumption. This situation has come about due to global oil price hikes caused by the Iran conflict rather than an increase in the fuel consumption by the public. However, there has been a massive increase in fuel imports for power generation.

What the President has left unsaid is that fuel imports have increased because oil-fired power plants have to operate to meet a generation shortfall at Norochcholai, caused by low-quality coal imports. Experts have pointed out that about 800,000 litres of diesel have to be burnt daily to compensate for the Norochcholai generation loss. Strangely, no one has been arrested over the fraudulent procurement of substandard coal, which has not only caused huge losses to the state coffers but also adversely impacted the country’s foreign currency reserves.

If the government hesitates to adopt drastic measures to restrict vehicle imports and shore up foreign currency reserves, it might be left without forex for fuel imports, and queues might return in such an eventuality, with newly imported vehicles waiting near filling stations for days on end, as in 2022. It must stop dilly-dallying and pluck up the courage to grasp the nettle. Most of all, it will have to bring the cost of power generation down.

It is high time the JVP-NPP government adopted austerity measures it promised and curtailed state expenditure while reducing the import bill. India has also experienced a decline in foreign currency reserves due to rising global oil prices, central bank interventions to defend the rupee, foreign investor outflows and global uncertainty arising from the West Asia conflict. Although India’s foreign currency reserves have shown some signs of recovery recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for austerity measures. They include postponing gold imports, curtailing travel, both foreign and domestic, carpooling, reducing the consumption of imported goods and promoting import substitution. PM Modi has requested the centre and the states to reduce ceremonial expenditure, ensure a reduction in fuel use by ministers, shift more meetings online and reduce the size of official motorcades. Sri Lanka should learn from India.

In 2022, Sri Lanka faced a double whammy—a rupee crisis and an unprecedented depletion of foreign currency reserves. It had to opt for a soft sovereign default and seek IMF assistance because the then SLPP government had played politics with the economy and closed the stable door only after the horse had bolted. Those blunders must not be repeated. The restive horse is snorting, stamping the ground and straining against the halter, again. The time for closing the stable door is now. Otherwise, the current leaders, too, will have to bolt with the horse, the way their immediate predecessors did in 2022, with irate protesters in close pursuit.