Saturday 24th May, 2025

Sri Lanka is never short of issues, ranging from frivolous to serious, so much so that one cannot keep track of them.

The government insists that salt has been imported in sufficient quantities, and the claims of a persistent salt shortage are false. It is apparently far removed from reality.

Yesterday, Minister of Trade Wasantha Samarasinghe proudly announced the arrival of a ship carrying salt, at the Colombo Port. Nothing could be more absurd in an island state than its government’s boastful claim that a salt scarcity has been overcome by importing that commodity.

However, this is not the first time Sri Lanka has imported salt, but on previous occasions governments imported it promptly when there occurred significant drops in the local production thereof; salt scarcities like the present one never occurred previously, much less became a political issue.

A salt shortage does not occur overnight. It takes months to manifest itself. The signs of the current one were felt a few months ago; it has come about because the government let the grass grow under its feet, ignoring warnings and waiting until salt disappeared from shelves to act. Now, it is boasting of the arrival of imported salt.

Salt prices have risen steeply, and a kilo of salt sells at Rs. 400, we are told. It is doubtful whether the salt prices will come down in the foreseeable future, for Sri Lanka is notorious for sticky prices.

The NPP would not have been able to savour power if not for the stinging scarcity of essentials that prompted the people to take to the streets in 2022. A chronic shortage of fuel became the undoing of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government. Needless to say, shortages of essential commodities have the potential to bring down governments in this country.

The SLFP-led United Front government collapsed in 1977 mostly due to the scarcity of food items such as rice. Hence prudence demands that the current dispensation learn from its predecessors and do everything in its power to make essentials available at affordable prices.

In fact, the current salt shortage is more than a taste enhancer being in short supply. It is a question of the ability of the incumbent government to make strategic decisions to forestall trouble. There’s the rub.

It may not be fair to ask whether the current administration is worth its salt simply because of the prevailing salt shortage, but the question is whether a government that cannot ever much as ensure a continuous supply of salt, which is cheap and easy to produce locally, will be able to prevent a shortage of costly petroleum fuel? Hypothetical as this question may be, anything is possible in this country. Whoever would have thought that the Rajapaksa government would ever exhaust the country’s foreign exchange reserves in a couple of years and cause scarcities of fuel, milk food and many other imported goods, and, above all, its leaders would have to run away?

It is high time the incumbent government stopped bellowing rhetoric and concentrated on delivering tangible results to the public.

Friday 23rd May, 2025

The Constitutional Council (CC) has rejected President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s nominee for the post of the Auditor General. The Opposition has torn into President Dissanayake—and quite rightly so—for his attempt to have one of his cronies elected to the post of Auditor General at the expense of a highly deserving officer with 30 years of experience in the Auditor General’s Department. The rejected nominee has only five years of experience in the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, the Opposition has alleged.

Various professional associations, such as the Sri Lanka Audit Services Union, the Association of State Assistant Auditors Union, and State Auditors Union, have demanded to know why President Dissanayake overlooked the most deserving candidate for the post of Auditor General. But the government has chosen to remain silent.

The JVP-led NPP based its election campaigns on promises of good governance, etc., and flayed its political opponents for cronyism, which, it said, had ruined the public service. Now, the NPP is drawing criticism for cronyism.

The manipulation of the CC process yields adverse consequences. The incumbent government is all out to oust IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon. The controversy over his conduct would not have arisen if the Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government had not undermined the CC process to have him appointed IGP in early 2024. The CC was divided over his appointment; four members voted in favour of it, and two against it, with two others abstaining. The CC consists of 10 members, but it had only nine members at the time. The previous regime engineered a tie in the CC vote by interpreting abstentions as opposition to the appointment at issue and had Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardenea cast what was made out to be a tie-breaking vote!

One of the main reasons why President Ranil Wickremesinghe became unpopular in spite of his courageous political leadership for breaking the back of the country’s worst-ever economic crisis was that he succumbed to the arrogance of power, defended the corrupt and other undesirables, and enabled his cronies to secure sinecures and top posts in the public service. He blatantly undermined the CC and even sought to make the judiciary bend to his will, but in vain. No surprise that he came a poor third in the 2024 presidential race.

Are we to conclude that some of his predecessors’ sordid practices have rubbed off on President Dissanayake?

Politicians intoxicated with power cannot bring themselves to stomach defeat, and therefore the government will do everything in its power to have an NPP loyalist appointed as the Auditor General to ensure that its interests will be served in state audits. They know more than one way to shoe a horse or skin a cat. Hence the need for robust constitutional safeguards to prevent governments from undermining the CC process to achieve their political ends.

The CC deserves praise for having intrepidly torpedoed President Dissanayake’s move to appoint a fellow university alumnus as the Auditor General. Such bold decisions will go a long way towards safeguarding the integrity of the key institution tasked with depoliticising the public service. However, the CC has not stipulated selection criteria for the nominees for the high posts. If they had been in place, President Dissanayake or his predecessors would not have been able to nominate their cronies for the top positions in the state institutions, according to their whims and fancies. The CC stands accused of either rejecting or endorsing nominees in an ad hoc manner. Parliament and the CC must take up this issue and introduce selection criteria so that not even a government capable of mustering a majority in the CC will be able to have officials appointed to top posts on the basis of their political affiliations.

The NPP is rapidly forfeiting its good governance credentials. Out of its sheer desperation to seize control of the hung local councils, it has unashamedly opted for a political honeymoon with the very councillors it condemned as crooks before the 06 May local government elections. In power politics, expediency takes precedence over scruples. Horse-trading over the hung local councils as well as the President’s attempt to elevate a crony to the post of Auditor General has proved that the current dispensation is not capable of resisting the corrupting influence of power. It’s the NPP government’s moment of shame or lajja!

Thursday 22nd May, 2025

British apparel manufacturer, NEXT, has closed its production unit in Katunayake, causing a loss of 1,400 jobs. However, it will continue operations at its other factories, according to media reports. It has cited high operational costs as the reason for its decision to close down the Katunayake factory.

The factory closure in question should be considered a wake-up call for Sri Lanka in view of the vulnerability of its export sector, especially the apparel industry, vis-a-vis the ongoing big power tariff wars, the rising global protectionist trend, and free trade agreements among other apparel manufacturing countries and the developed nations. One can only hope that the disturbing news from Katunayake will jolt the government and the Opposition into stopping their political battles and making a joint effort to strategise to navigate the daunting challenges the country’s export sector is facing.

Gomi Senadhira, an expert on international trade policy, who served as Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organization, has, in an article published in this newspaper today, sounded a prescient warning, which must not go unheeded. For many years, he has written extensively about challenges and problems Sri Lankan exporters are facing and suggested how to overcome them, but it is doubtful whether successive governments and policymakers ever take such expert opinion on board. Commenting on the Free Trade Agreement India and the UK have inked recently, Senadhira has warned that the prevailing conditions in the UK market, 12% duty as against 0% duty for Vietnam, Bangladesh and Cambodia, don’t augur well for the bulk of Sri Lanka’s apparel exports. Duty-free access to India would further aggravate the situation, Senadhira has said, for it will reduce Sri Lanka’s apparel exports very significantly unless urgent action is taken to improve the conditions on market access through the Developing Countries Trading Scheme or other arrangements. He has called for a proactive intervention by the government to save Sri Lanka’s apparel sector.

Negative global economic developments not only take their toll on Sri Lanka’s export sector, resulting in a drop in foreign exchange reserves, but also have the potential to wipe out tens of thousands of jobs, giving rise to serious social problems and political instability. Hence the pressing need for strategic planning to face any eventuality. But the government and the Opposition are busy fighting a political battle over some local councils.

The government is apparently labouring under the fatalistic belief that the US tariff issue will go away, and it will be plain sailing for Sri Lankan exporters thereafter. The Opposition is apparently cherishing the delusion that it will be able to fix the economy without much effort if it is voted into power.

Ironically, when Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa’s father, President Ranasinghe Premadasa, launched his ambitious garment factory project, the JVP let out a howl of protest, inveighing against him for what it described as making Sri Lankan women ‘stitch underwear for white women––suddhiyanta jungi mahanawa. It also coined a pithy slogan, ‘Kellanta garment, Kollanta pavement’ —’garment factories for girls and pavement hawking for boys’. Today, the JVP has had to protect the garment factories and save jobs. It must redouble its efforts to achieve that end, and the Opposition led by President Premadasa’s son should assist the government in that endeavour. There is no gainsaying that a long-term solution is for Sri Lanka to diversify its exports and export destinations while entering into free trade agreements with other nations. But as the apparel industry is one of the mainstays of the country’s economy at present, everything possible will have to be done to ensure its wellbeing.

Meanwhile, it is only wishful thinking that Sri Lanka will be able to achieve its development goals unless urgent steps are taken to stop the flight of young human capital. It behoves those who are wielding political power, others in pursuit of it, and public officials to put their heads together and make a serious effort to eliminate the factors that are driving the country’s youth away. Sadly, the government and the Opposition are at each other’s throat over political issues.