Friday 10th January, 2025

The JVP-led NPP government has announced that its ongoing programme to rid private buses and trishaws of unauthorised accessories and enforce road discipline will go on despite protests. However, following a discussion with the private bus owners, the police have reportedly announced a grace for compliance. It is hoped that noncompliance will be severely dealt with thereafter. Nobody must be allowed to trifle with the law.

Some Opposition politicians are shedding copious tears for the bus and trishaw mudalalis. SLPP MP Namal Rajapaksa has said something to the effect that the government should be lenient. The Rajapaksas’ leniency towards lawbreakers is only well known. They unashamedly shielded even notorious characters like Mervyn, and numerous other rowdies, some of whom went berserk in Parliament in 2018. The members of the former ruling family and others of their ilk, still reeling from last year’s shocking electoral defeats, are making a desperate bid to gain political traction. Some of them have the chutzpah to proffer unsolicited advice to the incumbent government on how to run the country!

Worryingly, the NPP government continues to provide a bunch of political rejects with rallying points, albeit unwittingly. They are on the offensive although they are not in a position to convince the public that they are an alternative to the incumbent dispensation. They cannot even criticise the government in a credible manner without being exposed for stretching the truth and hypocrisy. Some of their absurd claims make one wonder whether they have been able to realise the gravity of the country’s economic situation properly, far less think of a solution.

The Opposition lacks pragmatism, and its leaders except a few like Dr. Harsha de Silva talk nineteen to the dozen, and their circumlocution about economics signifies nothing. They have condemned the ongoing IMF bailout programme as an evil, but they have stopped short of offering any alternative. The same holds true for the non-parliamentary oppositional groups. The Frontline Socialist Party has sought to belittle the increase in Sri Lanka’s foreign currency reserves, which amount to more than USD 6 billion. It is also demanding an immediate end to the IMF programme.

In 2022, the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government sought an IMF bailout when the country’s usable forex reserves plummeted to about USD 20 million. That regime was left with a choice between a soft default and a hard default. It opted for the former. True, an IMF programme is not a long-term solution in itself. Nobody likes the IMF’s constricting loan conditions, which are extremely painful to the people, especially the poor, but it is a sine qua non for economic recovery. Sri Lanka will have to shore up its foreign currency reserves by increasing exports and attracting foreign investment, among other things, to achieve economic recovery.

In fact, the IMF has asked Sri Lanka to do what the latter should have done of its own volition years ago to prevent the current economic crisis. If the Gotabaya administration had asked for IMF help at the first signs of trouble, economic recovery would not have been so difficult and painful.

A claim the SJB is propagating is that the Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government undertook to resume debt repayment with effect from 2028 although the IMF had agreed to a grace period until 2033. It has not furnished credible evidence in support of its claim. Dr. de Silva found himself in an embarrassing position in an interview with Derana TV, last week, when he was asked to comment on his party’s aforesaid claim. He should not try to defend the indefensible and ruin his image as an economist.

One can only hope that the political rejects will not get an opportunity to make a comeback by capitalising on the NPP administration’s bungling.