Wednesday 19th February, 2025

Several MPs, representing both sides of the House, were at their oratorical best, defending media freedom and people’s franchise, during Monday’s parliamentary debate on the Local Government Elections (Special Provisions) Bill, which was passed. The government members lashed out at their Opposition counterparts for having postponed elections, and not to be outdone, the latter tore into the former. Prominent among the debaters were SLPP MP Namal Rajapaksa and NPP MP and Leader of the House Bimal Ratnayake. Namal shed copious tears for the media, which, he said, was facing threats. Bimal accused the Opposition, especially the SLPP, of having postponed elections for political reasons.

A cursory look at the history of the self-proclaimed defenders of the media and democracy reveals glaring contradictions between their words and actions. What moral right does the SLPP have to flay others for threatening the media? The Rajapaksa rule was a nightmare for journalists; it earned notoriety for heinous crimes against the media, including arson attacks on newspaper presses and television stations and the assassination of Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunge. A large number of journalists had to flee the country to escape death. The SLPP has no concern for the people’s franchise. It postponed the local government (LG) elections in 2022, and the following year, it helped the then President Ranil Wickremesinghe make the LG polls disappear.

The JVP seems to think all Sri Lankans have drunk from the Lethe. It has an ugly history of unleashing barbaric violence in a bid to scuttle elections. In the late 1980s, its spree of violence left dozens of voters dead, and enabled the then UNP government to make the most of the extremely low voter turnouts in elections and retain power by stuffing ballot boxes. In 2017, the JVP had no qualms about helping the UNP-led Yahapalana government postpone the Provincial Council (PC) polls by securing the passage of the controversial PC Elections (Amendment) Bill, which contained a large number of committee-stage amendments that made the proposed law materially different from the one that had been gazetted and examined by the Supreme Court. The SLPP leaders who were in the Joint Opposition during the Yahapalana government, the SLFP, the ITAK, the SLMC and all other parties represented in Parliament unflinchingly supported that Christmas Tree Bill and helped postpone the PC elections. Now, all of them are demanding that the PC polls be held!

The JVP, whose leaders launch into tirades against former President Wickremesinghe at the drop of a hat, backed him to the hilt during the Yahapalana government. They even helped him retain the premiership when President Maithripala Sirisena tried to sack him in 2018!

The SJB leaders who pontificate to others about the virtues of democracy were in the Yahapalana government, which put off the PC polls indefinitely. They will not be able to live down that black mark.

It behoves voters to assert themselves and give governments with steamroller majorities sobering knocks in the form of midterm electoral shocks to prevent the latter from succumbing to autocratic tendencies that absolute power usually breeds. Old habits die hard. A group of JVP/NPP activists resorted to strongarm tactics to disrupt a farmers’ meeting organised by the Frontline Socialist Party in Angunakolapelessa last week. A JVP activist visited a political rival and issued a veiled threat by warning the latter about the consequences of circulating anti-government posts via social media. A deputy minister tried to enter a meditation centre in Gampaha, with a group of his supporters, claiming that he had received complaints about the place. Such matters must be left to the police and the judiciary. Are we witnessing the signs of the NPP carrying out its promise to devolve judicial powers to the villages and the ruling party politicians beginning to emulate Mervyn Silva, who took the law into his own hands with impunity during the Rajapaksa rule?

It may be that there’s a sucker born every minute in this country, but not all Sri Lankans are suckers. Let the hypocrites of all political hues posing as great democrats be urged to remember that non-voters in last year’s general election numbered more than 5.3 million. There is a groundswell of anti-politics, which they must not lose sight of if they are to avert a situation where they might have to head for the hills, the way the Rajapaksas did in 2022—absit omen!

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?

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.