By Rajan Philips –

The New Parody: NPP and its Lilliputians

Congratulations to Colombo Telegraph and Uvindu Kurukulasuriya, as they both reach the milestone of Fifteen Years since CT was launched on 12 September 2021. I looked into CT’s archives and found that the inaugural article and its title had set the tone for what has since followed and flowed – nonstop and online. Here you go: Sarath Nanda Silva: Corruption Vs CORRUPTION. Uvindu himself wrote that story and drew a quote from Lord Denning for starters: “Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us?” For fifteen years, Colombo Telegraph has been posing the same question, both literally and figuratively, in fair weather and foul, and in spite of resource constraints, to all of Sri Lanka’s wannabe rulers and judges. They came, they failed and the people have sent them packing. Colombo Telegraph keeps going, like Tennyson’s brook, so to speak. And Keep Going!

The 22^nd Amendment has given the government’s critics a convenient cudgel to beat up the government. But there has been no crushing blow by any effective opponent.  Too many people have been taking too many turns and striking too many blows, but no one has landed anything to shake the government in any way. The whole drama is the new Sri Lankan parody of Lilliputians taking on Gulliver. Nonetheless, the critics have found an opening to keep haranguing the government. There are two prongs to their exertions.

One is the pre-NPP past of the old JVP. In political years, the chasm is as wide as that between the Old Testament and the New Testament. This provides the basis for claiming that 22A is the NPP government’s first step towards ending parliamentary democracy. The hilarity of this accusation is matched by its hypocrisy inasmuch as the current chief accuser was also the high priest of the 18^th Amendment that was set up to envision a third term for Mahinda Rajapaksa. Who else – but GL Pieris. One good thing the Bar Association did was to keep GL Pieris entirely out of its entourages.       

The second front of attacks on the government is based on the JVP-NPP’s cohabitation in the Yahapalanaya diarchy of Sirisena and Wickremesinghe. Indeed, the question has been asked: Is Malimawa heading to be the second Yahapalanaya? If that were so, GL Peiris and others should be able to feign a sigh of relief that parliamentary democracy is indeed safe owing to the NPP’s incompetence. But the absurdity of the Malimawa – Yahapalanaya allusion is a different laugh. Perhaps, more than one laugh.

One is in the table-talk suggestion that “due to the misdeeds of Pohottuwa that followed Yahapalanaya, voters gave an overwhelming mandate to Malimawa…”   Sanitizing the disaster that was Gotabaya presidency as misdeed is quite a feat. A more serious look is about the voters who gave the “overwhelming mandate to Malimawa.” Most of the Malimawa voters were peeled of the Pohottuwa vote block, while Yahapalanaya voters were left to choose between Sajith Premadasa and Ranil Wickremesinghe. Namal Rajapaksa who was supposed to stand down support of Ranil Wickremasinghe in the hope of diverting Pohottuwa votes to RW. Instead, the Rajapaksa scion decided to get big race experience, fared badly in the race and caused another serial defeat for RW.

Arresting Politics

Now the political wheels are turning differently. Namal Rajapaksa has become the latest martyr of the government’s arresting politics. Illusorily or not, the young Rajapaksa believes that he finding political traction in the country and that the government is putting him behind bars to slow him down. Coming to his defence is of course the inscrutable (even to himself) Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Sajith Premadasa has apparently remained quiet so far, and so has the SJB. Neither has made any statement or expressed concern over the arrest of Namal Rajapaksa on Friday, September 4. It is not that Mr. Premadasa is becoming what Ranil Wickremesinghe was to Mahinda Rajapaksa – the government’s Minister of the Opposition, but the man has no political fire in his belly. If his passion is for wildlife, he should ask the government to put him in charge of running the Yala National Park. He can have a better animal farm there than what he seems to be suffering within his Party and in parliament.   

Mr. Rajapaksa has been arrested over the Airbus purchase scandal that goes back to 2012 and 2013. The details of the scandal are known, and allegations of payoffs have been rumoured for quite a while. Yet it is the of pattern of Friday morning questioning, evening arrest and arraignment, and weekend incarceration – that has become all too familiar and fodder for cynical misgivings. There have been too many arrests but too few trials, let alone convictions. All arrests and no trials not only erodes public confidence in the process, but also et the criminals and their beneficiaries go scot-free.

For his part, Namal Rajapaksa is claiming that the government timed his arrest to scuttle the political rally that he and the SLPP have scheduled for Saturday, September 12, in Anuradhapura. Their claim seems to that the Anuradhapura rally will mark the scion’s coming of age as a viable presidential candidate. The claim gets some credence in the context of the government’s own political planning for holding a series of pro-government public rallies where President Dissanayake will be both the show and substance. The first of the NPP rallies is coincidentally scheduled for Sunday, September 13, and also in Anuradhapura.

Next week, we will have all the commentaries and comparisons about the two rivalling rallies in Anuradhapura. Future rallies will show whether Mr. Rajapaksa is actually surging in the public recognition of his political abilities, and whether the government is actually concerned about this apparent surge and mounting a counter surge of its own. If all this were true, the irrelevance of Sajith Premadasa will become even more entrenched, and the personal relevance of Ranil Wickremesinghe will become even more real.

For the pundit theory is that while the NPP might view Namal Rajapaksa as a growing threat in popular politics, its more substantive fear is about Ranil Wickremesinghe and what he says about the economy. To wit, the government’s full throttled response to Mr. Wickremasinghe’s casual remark at a political book launch that the government may not be having enough forex reserves when foreign creditors come collecting in 2028.

The Real Question

The real question, apart from the show and tell of political rallies, is what has the government done on the economy? The government has so far been quite good at keeping the economic house in order. Keeping order is not too difficult a task once you start keeping corruption out of the door. But there are no signs of the government doing anything substantial on the economic front, especially the export sector for without significantly increasing export earnings it will be impossible to carry out debt repayment.

The government has been commended for identifying 33 State-Owned-Enterprises (SOEs) for closure or restructuring. Yet there are a few biggies left, including the debt burdened Sri Lankan Airlines with about $ 2 billion estimated to be its accumulated losses. The government has also announced a slew of mega projects in highways and the energy sector. At the same time, there are ethno-economic criticisms that the government is delaying work on the KKS Harbour and the Palaly Airport projects that have Indian funding.

Highway projects can be a curse dressed up as blessing, and they are coming out of the same Rajapaksa economic playbook. There are rumours that would be corporate beneficiaries of mega highway projects have found an inside track to government decision makers. It is up to the government to prove that such allegations are untrue and to demonstrate that it will not be bought over in contract awards. Highway construction is also import heavy even with local contractors. The economic worry should be that with too many highway projects, all going on at the same time, there will be a drain on the limited forex reserves to bring in equipment and materials. That was the experience of the highway robberies under the Rajapaksas and the NPP government can forget the lessons from that era only at its peril.

On a positive note, there is commendable activity in the renewable energy sector, amidst warnings by the Public Utilities Commission (PUSCL) about new power cuts under El Niño weather conditions. The PUSCL recently approved new feed-in tariffs for electricity from renewable energy sources and has directed the newly minted National System Operator (NSO) to expedite the implementation of Battery Energy Storage System with sufficient capacity to accommodate solar energy. There is some and back-and-forth between the two agencies about implementation details, but that is a good disagreement to have as opposed to the prolonged agreement about doing nothing on renewable energy.

There is new green light for the once controversial 350 MW LNG power project in Kerawalapitiya. The project is being undertaken by Sahasdhanavi Limited on a Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) basis, and will be implemented in two phases. The unfortunate snag is that in both phases, initial operations will be based on diesel with expectation to switch to Regasified Liquefied Natural Gas (RLNG) which will require additional infrastructure and supply arrangements. One would hope that diesel generation will not become a permanent feature in  Kerawalapitiya.

To its credit, the government launched Sri Lanka’s largest renewable energy project, the ‘Rvidanavi’ Solar Power Park project, in September 2025,  in the Monaragala District, as part of the target to generate 70% of the country’s electricity renewable energy sources by 2030. Sooner, the country reduces its reliance on thermal energy, the better for its economy and the environment.

The government seems to be wanting in messaging its achievements, big or small, to the public in consistent and convincing ways. The mode of messaging through presidential rallies may not have much benefit except during an election campaign. At the same time, the government is getting caught up in controversies of its own making. The exertions on all sides over the 22^nd Amendment is a case in point. In the upshot, it is the judiciary that has been badmouthed and diminished. The lure of arresting politics could be appealing in the short term, but can come back to haunt if no one gets convicted.

For all intent and purpose, the government has missed the bus on constitutional reforms. I would be the first to applaud if my prediction turns out to be incorrect. But the government cannot walk away from the economy the way it seems to have abandoned its promise on the constitution. And the challenge of managing even a small national economy is not getting any easier with all the havoc that the Trump Administration is wreaking on America and the world.