The JVP-led NPP government has apparently taken a leaf out of its immediate predecessor’s book, where election postponements are concerned. It has said the much-delayed Provincial Council (PC) elections will be held only after the completion of the delimitation process, which is a prerequisite for the implementation of the mixed proportional system.

The Election Commission (EC) is reported to have said the completion of the delimitation process will take about one year. The NPP is losing cooperative society elections, which are considered political windsocks, and therefore the government will try every trick in the book to delay the PC polls as long as possible.

The postponement of PC elections was widely considered a political issue, and it was thought that the most effective way to sort it out was to crank up pressure on the government, but former EC Chairman Mahinda Deshapriya has shed light on a legal dimension of the problem.

He has said the Governors are keeping the PCs under their control in violation of a Supreme Court ruling that the PCs be governed by elected councillors. He revealed this at a conference held on Wednesday. He is au fait with election laws and judicial decisions pertaining to them. Those who are genuinely desirous of having the PC polls held without further delay can now explore the possibility of seeking a judicial intervention.

During the previous government, the JVP-led NPP raked the then President Ranil Wickremesinghe over the coals for postponing the Local Government polls in defiance of an SC order. It joined the other Opposition parties in demanding that the SLPP-UNP government comply with the SC order that funds be allocated for the mini polls. Going by the former EC Chief’s contention, the incumbent NPP government and its leaders have done something similar; they have been keeping the PCs under the Governors illegally.

Presenting Budget 2026 yesterday, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake announced a government decision to appoint an expert committee to draft a code of conduct for the judicial service. Before venturing to do so, shouldn’t the government comply with the SC decision the former EC Chief has referred to and hold the PC polls soon?

The Opposition never misses an opportunity to tear into the NPP government—even unfairly at times. Strangely, it has been silent on the postponement of the PC polls. Is the Opposition also wary of facing an election any time soon?

Sri Lankan politicians are known to have king-sized egos, and they behave like emperors when ensconced in power, so to speak. An opportunity has presented itself for them to do something an extremely powerful emperor once did—cutting the Gordian Knot.

Former Polls Chief Deshapriya, who is known for his eloquence, said at the aforesaid conference, that Parliament could enable the EC to hold the PC polls under the Proportional Representation (PR) system. He said that task would require only a simple majority in Parliament. The NPP has a two-thirds majority in Parliament and bringing in a new law or amending the existing ones for that purpose should be child’s play for it. Deshapriya said the time had come for the Gordian Knot to be untied.

It will take a long time to untangle the complex knot, and what should be done is for someone to cut it, the way Alexander the Great did. We are not short of political leaders who wrap themselves in the flag, declaring that they are ready to die for democracy and the people’s franchise. So, it is up to one of them to cut the Gordian Knot by taking the initiative to make Parliament remove the legal obstacles to the conduct of the PC elections under the PR system.

No political party in the current Parliament will be able to oppose such a move, for all of them helped the Yahapalana government amend the PC Elections Amendment Act to postpone the PC polls indefinitely. They are therefore responsible for the knotty politico-legal issue their despicable action has given rise to. It is incumbent upon them to make a concerted effort to clean up the mess that they themselves have created.

Saturday 8th November, 2025

What was mainly reflected in Budget 2026, presented by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, in his capacity as the Minister of Finance, yesterday, in Parliament, was his government’s commitment to keeping the IMF bailout on track. The President spelt out how his government intended to boost investment and carry out reforms essential for economic growth. Salary/wage hikes have been proposed but the government would surely have gone out of its way to do much more for the state and estate workers if not for the economic straitjacket the IMF has put it in. It has had to act with some restraint.

President Dissanayake has set for his government an ambitious goal of achieving a 7% economic growth, in the next few years, driven by investment and productivity-led expansion. This is no doubt a tall order, given the growth forecasts.

The World Bank has projected that the economy will grow by 4.6% in the current year and slow to 3.5% in 2026. It is hoped that the goal set by the government will be attainable; the country will have to resume foreign debt repayment in earnest in 2028, and that task requires a high growth rate, which should be above 6%.

The government’s debt sustainability targets include increasing state revenue as a percentage of GDP while reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio significantly. The government has proposed to increase state revenue to 15.3% of GDP and lower the debt-to-GDP ratio to 87% in 2030.

The projected budget deficit of 5.2% can be considered something positive that signals fiscal consolidation, as the government has claimed. But one of the main criticisms of Budget 2026 is that out of 62 expenditure proposals, which account for a mere 2.4% of government spending, according to the Opposition, only 13 are directly related to development.

The Opposition demanded to know yesterday how the country could achieve its development goals without a substantial increase in capital expenditure. State expenditure has to be kept low to reduce the budget deficit, but that must not be done at the expense of investment in projects that support investment and growth.

The government’s wisdom of planning to recruit as many as 75,000 workers into the state sector stands questioned. The state service is already bursting at the seams, with about one public official per 15 citizens. It has earned notoriety for inefficiency, waste and corruption, and the government’s recruitment policy will only worsen an already bad situation. The NPP has failed to be different from its predecessors which resorted to public sector recruitment for political reasons.

There has been a sensible suggestion that instead of expanding the public service, the government seriously consider reskilling and reassigning excess workers in state institutions as a solution to shortages of human resources elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the IMF programme requires Sri Lanka to restructure quite a few loss-making state enterprises while implementing land and labour reforms, and adjusting tax policies to promote investment. These are politically sensitive issues that the government needs like a hole in the head, with the Provincial Council elections expected late next year. The government is also required to increase electricity tariff, but a Public Utilities Commission intervention has stood in the way of a power tariff hike. However, it may get what it wants, early next year, when the electricity tariffs will be up for revision. It has also proposed to reduce the annual turnover threshold for VAT registration from Rs. 60 million to Rs. 36 million. A positive feature of the revenue enhancing strategy is the proposed streamlining of tax administration.

Overall, the economic outlook may be positive, but it will be far from plain sailing for the NPP government, which is tasked with pushing a major reform package uphill amidst protests and resistance, while fulfilling the aspirations of the public. 2026 is going to be a challenging year for both the government and the public.

Friday 7th November, 2025

Partisan politics has spared hardly anything in this country, with politicians striving to gain political mileage out of everything. It is therefore not surprising at all that the so-called ‘national programmes’ end up being mere political campaigns and run out of steam with the passage of time. Operation Yukthiya, launched by the previous government with the ambitious goal of neutralising the underworld, is a case in point.

The Mahinda Rajapaksa government branded its political opponents as ‘traitors’, and made the most of the defeat of the LTTE to further its political interests. President Maithripala Sirisena embarked on an anti-narcotics campaign to prepare the ground for his re-election bid, and condemned his critics as crooks. His plan went awry due to the Easter Sunday terror attacks (2019). The NPP government has launched a country-wide drug-bust, and is demonising its opponents as drug dealers.

The NPP made use of an increase in drug detections in Tangalle and adjoining areas to make the SLPP out to be a party of drug dealers. It used the alleged involvement of a former SLPP local government member in the drug trade to bolster its claim. The boot is now on the other foot. An NPP local councillor, her husband and her son have been arrested and remanded on narcotics charges. The Opposition has got hold of something to beat the government with.

The NPP politician’s husband, arrested with heroin, is a school principal. This shows the gravity of the problem. Drug dealers are a very innovative lot. They use multiple facades and fronts to conceal their dirty operations. Following the 2004 assassination of Sarath Ambepitiya, an upright High Court judge, we revealed that Kudu Nauffer, who masterminded the murder, had, through a front, sponsored food and beverages served at a judicial officers’ function. A drug dealer, named Shiyam, and his wife, posed as wealthy garment factory owners, before being arrested with a huge stock of heroin in their Ward Place residence, where they had entertained political and business leaders among others. Kudu Lal, a heroin supplier in Colombo, had himself elected to the Colombo Municipal Council. Subsequently, he fled the country. In 2002, the then IGP T. E. Anandaraja attended a drug dealer’s party in a Colombo hotel. In 2013, a drug dealer obtained a letter from the then Prime Minister D. M. Jayaratne’s office, requesting the Customs to clear some freight containers on a priority basis; the Customs detected 131 kilos of heroin, concealed in one of them. Such is the socio-political clout of drug barons, who are also known to shower funds on some politicians and political parties.

In democratic societies, regimes change, with the declining elite being replaced by a new, more vigorous one. This is what Vilfredo Pareto called the circulation of elites. In this country, regime changes lead to the circulation of underworld figures as well, with the criminals identified with the outgoing regime being replaced by those working for the incoming one. However, criminals, such as drug dealers, do not circulate when regime changes occur. They retain their political clout through various means and carry out their sordid operations under all governments.

As for the proliferation of narcotics, the wild allegations the NPP and its opponents are trading and their arguments are tainted with false generalisation or drawing conclusions about a whole group based on a small or unrepresentative sample. These claims and counterclaims have riven the electorate along political lines, much to the detriment of the country’s efforts to eliminate the drug menace.

It is imperative that the government and the Opposition stop their mud-slinging campaigns and take cognisance of the severity of the drug problem and how drug dealers have infiltrated political parties, the police and other state institutions. They must join forces to eliminate the hydra-headed drug scourge.