Thursday 6th November, 2025

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is scheduled to perform an unenviable task tomorrow—presenting Budget 2026. The JVP-led NPP raised people’s expectations beyond measure to win elections, and it is now under tremendous pressure to honour its pledges.

State sector trade unions are demanding pay hikes and tax relief, as usual. The Government Medical Officers’ Association is prominent among them. It has called for a salary increase and a PAYE tax reduction for its members.

The ordinary people are also crying out for relief. The only way to ease their economic burden is for the government to reduce taxes and tariffs substantially. But the government will have to increase state expenditure significantly if it is to increase public sector salaries, reduce taxes and tariffs and grant other forms of relief. At the same time, it has to curtail expenditure substantially to boost state revenue, reduce the budget deficit and, above all, fulfil the IMF bailout conditions. This is a typical Catch-22 situation.

The government has been able to achieve a 30% revenue increase, according to media reports, which also reveal a 10% increase in state expenditure. Overall, this may look like a positive development, but capital expenditure has been curtailed. An increase in capital expenditure is a prerequisite for economic development, but it will cause the budget deficit to widen. There’s the rub.

There has been a 4.8% economic growth during the first eight months of the current year, according to some media reports, but experts inform us that the government will have to increase the growth rate at least up to 6% for the economy to remain robust and for the foreign debt repayment to commence in earnest in 2028. This is an uphill task.

Vehicle imports have given a big fillip to the ongoing efforts to increase state revenue, but it is not advisable for the government to rely solely thereon for that purpose. There will be a decrease in vehicle imports sooner or later, and they have led to a huge increase in the outflow of foreign exchange. Taxes and tariffs have already been pushed to the maximum, and further increases therein and/or new taxes are fraught with the danger of causing public anger to spill over onto the streets. The NPP came to power, promising to slash taxes and tariffs.

The government will have to introduce economic reforms expeditiously to achieve its revenue targets, spur growth and keep the economy on an even keel. But going by stiff resistance the Ceylon Electricity Board workers have put up against the proposed power sector restructuring, the government has apparently come up against a brick wall.

Loss-incurring state ventures are a drain on the state coffers, and the people have to pay through the nose to maintain them. President Dissanayake, speaking at a Ratnapura District Coordination Committee meeting, recently, declared that local government institutions should not engage in business activities, such as building supermarkets, as they were best left to the private sector. He revealed a plan to seek private sector participation in running the state-owned rest houses across the country. That declaration, which runs counter to statism, a hallmark of socialism, signalled an ideological volte face on the part of the JVP, which calls itself a Marxist party. Yet the President’s contention at issue makes economic sense, at least where state ventures in this country are concerned. He said such infrastructural projects had become huge white elephants, causing staggering losses to the state. Curiously, the government has retained the loss-incurring national carrier as a state venture, and keeps on injecting billions of rupees in tax money into it annually.

It remains to be seen how the government will navigate the treacherous economic waters between Scylla and Charybdis.

Wednesday 5th November, 2025

It is said that the purpose of education is not just to accumulate facts or acquire knowledge but to develop problem-solving skills and critical thinking abilities, but in Sri Lanka the education sector itself has become a problem, as evident from the ongoing battle between the government and teachers’ trade unions over the proposed education reforms. Teachers, principals, politicians and policymakers themselves seem to lack problem solving skills and critical thinking abilities.

A collective of trade unions representing the state-sector teachers and principals has taken exception to a government move to extend the school day by half an hour to 2.00 p.m. But Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, who is also the Minister of Education, is determined to carry out the government decision at issue, and the teachers and principals have threatened to launch a strike. All signs are that the game of chicken between the government and the warring trade unions will disrupt school education.

It is undeniable that the education sector needs reforms, but they must be formulated and implemented with the consent of all stakeholders. Problems arise when politicians prepare reforms, according to their whims and fancies and try to ram them down the throats of teachers and principals. Reforms, educational or otherwise, must not be presented as faits accomplis, if they are to be acceptable to all stakeholders, whose consent as well as cooperation is a prerequisite for their implementation. Any reform process sans transparency and consultation runs into resistance and tends to fall through. But governments with steamroller majorities are no respecters of dissent and seek to railroad all others into endorsing their reform projects. Politicians become impervious to reason when power goes to their heads.

It is puzzling why the government has proposed to extend school hours as part of its education reform package. Teachers’ trade unions are right in demanding to know from the Education Ministry whether its move at issue has any scientific basis. The government says extra time will help teachers cover syllabus content, free from stress. But teachers’ workload, student engagement and whether the additional time will be used productively have to be factored in.

Government propagandists have put forth an argument that teacher unions are protesting against the proposed extension of the school day because it will adversely impact the lucrative private tuition industry. This line of thinking is flawed in that the many large-scale private tutors openly campaigned for the NPP, and therefore the incumbent government will not do anything that will jeopardise their interests. On the other hand, shadow education or private supplementary tutoring is not peculiar to Sri Lanka. A global phenomenon with an enormous market believed to be worth US 227 billion, it is a major feature in Asia. It has taken root in countries with large Asian immigrant populations, like Australia, as well.

State employees tend to resist change. Teachers are no exception. Politicians are in the habit of introducing change for political reasons. Successive governments have meddled with the education sector and introduced reform haphazardly instead of formulating a national policy with the help of all stakeholders.

The proposed education reforms have become a problem because the government and the teachers’ trade unions remain intransigent. The solution, in our book, lies equidistant between the positions taken up by the government and the trade unions, and the challenge for both parties is to make a concerted effort and figure it out. This task requires all stakeholders to subjugate their personal interests to the pressing need to enhance the quality of education and ensure the wellbeing of the student community. Meanwhile, there should be a countrywide public engagement programme to ascertain the views of the parents of students and other such stakeholders, whose voice is not heard in the ongoing debate on education reforms.

Tuesday 4th November, 2025

The police are always in the news for the wrong reasons. This time around, they have made headlines over a corrupt deal and a hostile campaign against an intrepid whistleblower in uniform who exposed it.

A senior police officer is reported to have incurred the wrath of his superiors for having blown the lid off a procurement racket in the Police Department. The Opposition says the officer sought to have someone make a complaint to the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption about the corrupt deal, as he had no other way of bringing it into the national spotlight. The whistleblower is now in the crosshairs of his superiors, who have allegedly launched a witch-hunt against him.

A newly formed Opposition alliance is scheduled to hold its inaugural rally in Nugegoda on 21 Nov., and it is sure to take up the allegations of corruption against the police top brass. Pivithuru Hela Urumaya leader and former Minister Udaya Gammanpila yesterday tore into IGP Priyantha Weerasooriya for the sorry state of affairs in the police, and sought to implicate the latter in the hostile campaign against the beleaguered whistleblower. It behoves the police to counter the Opposition’s allegations and clear their name, if possible.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has vowed to rid the police of all rogue elements in the pay of drug dealers. His efforts will surely have the blessings of all right-thinking people. However, the task he has undertaken is no less arduous than the Labours of Hercules. One can only hope that he will succeed in his endeavour. He ought to make a similar effort to cleanse the police of corruption as well. Now that an alleged procurement racket therein has come to light, the government must order a thorough probe into it.

The police have a pivotal role to play in the ongoing anti-corruption drive, and therefore they must be made to put their own house in order. Most of all, efforts being made in some quarters to hound the whistleblowing cop out of his job must be frustrated.

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Listen to warring dons

The NPP government, which enlisted the support of trade unions to capture power, seems to consider it infra dig to listen to workers. Many university teachers threw their weight behind the NPP in last year’s election campaigns, and some of them are in the NPP’s parliamentary group. But the teachers of the Rajarata University have had to resort to a strike to pressure the government to appoint a Vice Chancellor and take action against some administrators for alleged malpractices. They issued repeated warnings before launching their strike, which could have been averted if the government had heeded their protests.

A few months ago, an NPP Minister bragged that trade unions would become redundant under the current dispensation because all workers’ problems would be solved in double-quick time. But workers still have to launch strikes to make the government negotiate with them, much less solve their problems.

A defining feature of all Sri Lankan governments has been their penchant for ignoring worker’s problems until they find expression in protracted trade union battles that cripple state sector institutions.

The issues that have driven the Rajarata dons to strike are not difficult to resolve. A university needs a Vice Chancellor and allegations of malpractices must be probed expeditiously. After all, the NPP has embarked on a crusade against corruption. Why the government has not cared to get the protesting teachers’ representatives around the table and make a serious effort to solve their problems through negotiations is the question.

Sri Lankan universities are characterised by inordinate delays, and strikes by teachers or others will only make an already bad situation worse.