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Editorial

Cost of iron fist

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Thursday 17th March, 2022

Various views are being expressed about the state of Sri Lanka’s democracy, which has lost its vitality over the years, and is not a shadow of its former self. Ex-Chairman of the Election Commission of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Deshapriya, has made an interesting observation. Having had a ringside view of Sri Lankan politics for several decades, he thinks that a country’s democratic wellbeing is inextricably linked to internal democracy of political parties. He said so at a recent event held in Colombo to mark the 90th anniversary of Sri Lanka’s universal franchise.

Arguing that democracy suffered irreparable damage when political parties lacked internal democracy, Deshapriya went on to say that Sri Lanka was in the current predicament because cabals of family members or cronies had suppressed internal democracy, and ruled political parties with an iron fist. Among the culprits, he said, were the very people who had embarked on campaigns to save democracy! One cannot but agree with the former Polls Chief, who stood up to powerful politicians in the line of duty and helped retain public faith in the electoral system.

Democracy, one may argue, begins at home like charity, and any leader who does not tolerate dissent in his or her political party is not genuinely interested in preserving democracy in the country.

What characterises the rise of every autocrat is the suppression of internal dissent either violently or otherwise as a means of consolidating his power in his political party or government. The late President J. R. Jayewardene, following the UNP’s mammoth electoral victory in 1977, hastily obtained undated resignation letters from the members of his government, and kept his parliamentary group under his thumb. He abused power in every conceivable manner, but nobody in the UNP dared criticise his attacks on democracy for fear of being sacked. There were a few intrepid persons who had the courage to stand up to him, but they were the exception that proved the rule.

Deshapriya presented a strong case for holding elections on schedule. One may recall that the SLFP-led United Front government blundered by postponing a general election scheduled to be held in 1975. It suffered an ignominious electoral defeat in 1977, and the UNP received a steamroller majority. President Jayewardene did away with the 1982 general election with the help of a heavily-rigged referendum, and his despicable action paved the way for a bloodbath in the late 1980s, when the JVP staged its second uprising. If the general election had been held in 1982, people would have been able to give vent to their pent-up anger.

The yahapalana government jointly formed by the SLFP and the UNP put off the Provincial Council elections, but could not avert a crushing defeat at the 2018 Local Government polls, which the SLPP won handsomely. The UNP and the SLFP have not yet recovered from their humiliating electoral setbacks. The incumbent regime has also postponed the Local Government polls for fear of losing them. Rulers’ fear of election is the worst that could happen to a country!

Political parties are to representative democracy what bricks are to a building, and their strength is a prerequisite for a society’s wellbeing. Perhaps, nothing proves this better than what this country is experiencing at present. If the leaders of the current regime had refrained from suppressing the SLPP’s internal democracy, heeded dissenters’ views and made a course correction, most of the problems the country is beset with could have been averted. Instead, impervious to reality, they have chosen to penalise the ministers who tell them what they do not want to hear.



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Editorial

A budget replete with optimism

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Tuesday 18th February, 2025

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, in his capacity as the Minister of Finance, Economic Stabilisation and National Policies, yesterday presented his government’s maiden budget in Parliament. He said the goal of Budget 2025 was to fulfil the aspirations of the people who had voted the NPP into power, hoping for sustainable growth and development.

The NPP government’s efforts to present an election-oriented budget have partially succeeded and borne mixed results. However painful the IMF bailout conditions may be, they have made the new administration remain focused on the need to achieve economic recovery and act with some restraint, ensuring that, inter alia, its revenue will amount to at least 15% of GDP, and the primary account will have a surplus. The Economic Transformation Act (ETA) has also become a kind of straitjacket on the government. With the local government polls approaching, what the NPP administration would have done to garner favour with the public, if not for the IMF programme and the ETA constraints, is anybody’s guess. President Dissanayake has said his government intends to amend the ETA. If it is planning to lower the bar for itself, such politically-motivated action will entail adverse economic consequences.

There is no gainsaying that workers deserve better salaries. However, one wonders whether the NPP government, just like its predecessors, is labouring under the misconception that it can grant relief to the public by increasing the state sector salaries. In the late 1980s, the JVP coined a pithy slogan—kolombata kiri, gamata kekiri (‘milk for Colombo and melon for the village’)—to highlight the glaring urban bias in the allocation of state resources. Today, it looks like a case of kiri for state employees and kekiri for their private sector counterparts, who have to bear the burden of maintaining the ever-burgeoning public sector by paying high taxes. President Dissanayake lamented in Parliament that the state employees’ real income had decreased. The same holds true for the non-state workers, and other members of the public as well, but they have been left fending for themselves.

Among the budget highlights flaunted by the government is what it calls the highest-ever fund allocations for the health and education sectors. The government has undertaken to allocate Rs. 604 billion for health. The cost of social welfare (Aswesuma) will be Rs. 232.5 billion. Capital expenditure will amount to 4% of GDP. Such spending will benefit the public, but much more needs to be done to mitigate the economic hardships they are facing.

Bridging a 6.7% budget deficit will be a gargantuan task. President Dissanayake is hopeful that a 5% economic growth will be attainable in 2025. He says growth will be facilitated by a strong export sector, where the government expects the exports of goods and services to reach an all-time high of close to USD 19 billion in the current year; this growth in non-debt creating inflows along with robust economic growth and a primary account surplus of 2.3 percent of GDP will ensure that Sri Lanka will be well placed to make debt service payments from 2028 onwards.

President Dissanayake has said he expects the relaxation of restrictions on vehicle imports to deliver a bulk of the country’s revenue gains for 2025. It is fervently hoped that he is not being as optimistic as the proverbial poor man who ordered oysters for dinner hoping to settle the bill with pearls he expected to find on his plate. Some economic analysts have argued that there is the possibility of extremely high taxes, which are sure to drive automobile prices up, causing a drop in the sales of imported vehicles and preventing the government from achieving its revenue targets. How does the NPP administration propose to handle such an eventuality?

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Editorial

Sailing between Scylla and Charybdis

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Monday 17th February, 2025

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) may be no hero like Odysseus, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the irate public are certainly no immortal monsters, but the perilous economic voyage AKD has embarked on is akin to sailing between Scylla and Charybdis. The NPP government’s maiden budget is to be presented to Parliament today. It will be the moment of truth for the incumbent dispensation troubled by more than its fair share of problems. What AKD has undertaken to perform on the economic front is a high-wire act, and balance is of the essence; he has had to keep the budget within the confines of the IMF bailout programme while granting relief to the resentful public, whose patience has been wearing thin owing to economic hardships.

It is being claimed in some quarters that the budget to be presented today has already passed muster with the IMF, but even so, problems are far from over for the government. Whether the budget will be acceptable to the public at large remains to be seen. Otherwise, it will entail a heavy political price for the NPP.

In a bid to rally popular support, President Dissanayake has promised pay hikes for state employees, who number more than 1.25 million, according to official statistics, but private sector employees (about 3.63 million) and own-account workers (about 2.8 million) constitute the majority of Sri Lanka’s workforce. The number of contributing family workers is about half a million, according to the Department of Census and Statistics. So, pay hikes for the state employees will leave millions of non-state sector workers disgruntled ahead of an election.

Meanwhile, the relaxation of import restrictions on vehicles may help the government meet the IMF-prescribed revenue target (15% of GDP) without increasing the existing taxes that are already very high or introducing new ones. However, the resumption of vehicle imports is bound to have an adverse impact on the country’s foreign currency reserves, causing the rupee to depreciate and the prices of imports to rise. This is a Catch-22 situation the government may not be able to avoid.

People are in no mood for excuses, and what they expect from the government is the expeditious delivery of its election promises, which range from bringing the prices of essentials down to affordable levels and slashing automobile prices to make cars accessible to everyone. So, the challenge before the government and President Dissanayake is to ensure that today’s budget meets the expectations of the public, with local government elections slated for April.

The government finds itself in the current predicament of having to deliver on its promises even before settling down properly because the JVP-led NPP raised people’s expectations beyond realistic levels to win elections, which looked like promise-making contests, as it were. In the past, the JVP/NPP would take to the streets, asking every newly elected government to grant relief to the public; it called for pay hikes even at the height of the current economic crisis. Now, the boot is on the other foot.

The NPP is being dogged by its own pre-election promises, rhetoric and unreasonable demands during previous governments. One may recall that the NPP in the run-up to last year’s presidential election, claimed that petroleum prices could be reduced by as much as Rs. 160 overnight, and farmers paid Rs. 150 per kilo of paddy. It either did not realise the gravity of the country’s economic situation or erroneously believed that it, too, would be able to get away with broken promises, like past governments, which followed the Machiavellian precept—‘the promise given was a necessity of the past, and the word broken is a necessity of the present’. It is now under pressure from the people who gave it a supermajority to grant them relief.

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Editorial

Local elections

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The Supreme Court determination on the Local Authorities (Special Provisions) Bill read out in Parliament on Friday makes clear that these elections, last held in 2018, due in 2022 and postponed thereafter on various pretexts must be held in the coming weeks. But the question is when? The opposition urges that they be held after the Sinhala and Tamil New Year holidays are over. They argue that with the president, as finance minister, due to present his first budget which is expected to be voter friendly on Monday and the budget debate will take much of March.

The majority judgment held that the Bill must be passed by a two thirds majority which the present regime holds and has not required a referendum so there will be no legislative challenge. The matter of fixing the election dates is for the Independent Elections Commission and the government should have no say in the matter. Nominations for these elections were called and a polling date fixed in 2023 post aragalaya after President Ranil Wickremesinghe had assumed office. Deposits were paid and nominations received. But the elections were not held on the grounds that the government had no money to fund them. The courts ordered that they be held “as soon as possible.”

Some candidates for that election had entered parliament. Others have emigrated and some have died. There is an obvious need for the refund of deposits and call fresh nominations before polling which the Bill provides for. The question therefore will be in the timing of the election. Certainly it cannot be held before the budget. The present regime is very well aware that the election will be an acid test after its heady election victory and will be intent on demonstrating that it remains popular. The opposition will be determined to regain lost ground. How will events pan out? That is the million dollar question.

Gifting sight to the sightless

At the World Governance Summit hosted by the United Arab Emirates a few days ago, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake made a reference to a subject generally taken for granted by most Lankans and no longer accorded the importance or merit it deserves. This relates to the fact that Sri Lanka is the world leader for eye donations – the gifting of human corneas from those no longer living to the sightless or persons with reduced vision. The president said in his speech that anybody using a smart phone could instantly verify this fact for him or herself. The latest figure at 94,959 corneas sent abroad exceeds the 80,000 stated in the Internet. These eyes have been sent to as many as 114 cities in 57 countries since the Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) Eye Donation Society was founded in 1961 by the late Deshabandu Dr. Hudson Silva. This vast endeavor of gifting sight to the sightless has benefited over 58,000 people locally and also enabled 40,000 plus corneas being made available for research.

In his speech, the president said that the fact that this country is the world leader in overseas eye donations is ample demonstration that we are a warmhearted people, a quality that can win us friends globally. No doubt the Buddhist ethic that permeates this dharmadweepa is surely a factor that has influenced the gifting of eyes by those who no longer have use of them; and corneal grafting is now commonplace in ophthalmology. Dr. Hudson Silva’s was a household name from the 1960s onward when he enthused the nation to participate in this meritorious practice and set up the infrastructure to do so so. But, sadly, he is no longer remembered as well as he should. However, the Sri Lanka Eye Donation Society which later extended its work by setting up a human tissue bank in addition to its original eye bank remains a lasting monument to a truly remarkable man.

As a medical student in 1957, Hudson Silva was inspired by the vision of transplanting corneas from the eyes of those no longer alive to those in need of them. He told his mother to donate his eyes when he was no more. She responded that she was likely to die before him and to make sure that her eyes are donated. From this tiny acorn a mighty oak grew and today the Sri Lanka Eye Donation Society performs a tremendous service free of charge. It attracted support from the Government of Sri Lanka and various other benefactors at home and abroad and today owns an impressive headquarters building at a prime location in Colombo. At the beginning the society collected the corneas of people without custodians in government hospitals, homes for the aged and executed prisoners. It carries in its books the names and addresses of over 22 million people who wishes their eyes to give sight to another after their deaths.

It should be known that a human cornea should be removed within four hours of a death to be of future use. The eyeball can be preserved in ice for 24 hours and thereafter for 14 days after the cornea is separated from the eyeball and preserved in a special fluid. The society has over 250 branches with trained technicians to remove eyeballs so that its coverage is almost island-wide. The late Dr. Hudson Silva who captured national headlines calling the government health department “a sick giant” when he was in government service had brilliant public relations skills and media savvy for his time so that the story of what little Sri Lanka was doing in this field was carried the world-over by the international press. Thus it is gratifying that a short excerpt of a speech that the president made at a global summit has once again attracted attention both nationally and intentionally to what Sri Lanka is doing in the area of giving sight to the sightless.

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