By Rajan Philips –

Rajan Philips

Sri Lanka will mark its 77^th independence anniversary on Tuesday, February 4. The NPP government would have been in office for about 77 days following the November parliamentary election. There are those who expected the new government to be able to resolve all the accumulated problems of 77 years in just 77 days. For the sake of argument, the NPP itself may have contributed to this notion by its insistence for over two years of campaigning that nothing has been done right ever since independence, and it is a new NPP government that is going to put everything right for Sri Lanka. This premise was totally incorrect however attractive it may have for polemical posturing.

All that said, there is no question that there are pundits who are holding the current fledgling government to a far more stringent standard of accountability than they have held governments that have come and gone in recent past. With only 77 days on, a balanced accounting of the new government should look at not only what it has done or started doing, but also what it has not been able to do as well as what it has steadfastly refused to do. Let us take the last point first.

A Princely State Mansion after 77 years

This government has distinguished itself from its many predecessors from choosing not to do a number of things. For starters, and this is a unique start for Sri Lankan politics (save for the 1956 SWRD government), there is no family in government. There is no nepotism in government appointments. There is no interference in police matters or in government procurement. There is nothing corrupt about this government, and the main criticism appears to be that the government is not moving fast enough, or it is being selective, or even revengeful, in taking action against past corruption and corrupters.

The Rajapaksa Princely State

Corruption comes in many forms. It is corrupt not only to take bribes but also to insist on entitlements that are inappropriate even if they are interpretively legal. Former presidents are entitled to their pensions and reasonable benefits. Should every one of them be given a rent-free mansion at prime locations in Colombo, with a long retinue of security and staffers, is a legitimate question to ask even if there is self-servingly passed legislation to support such post-presidential prodigality.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi famously terminated the payment of privy purses to the ruling families of India’s erstwhile princely states and passed a constitutional amendment in 1971 to implement it. The courts approved it with the exception of some individual cases involving those who had held ruling powers before independence in 1947. It would seem that in the reckoning of at least one former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the whole island has once been his princely state. Hence, his claim to palatial entitlements in retirement.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the government could have handled this matter less politically and more administratively and left it to senior government officials to deal with the VIP freeloaders as a matter of restoring government property. Now that it has become a political hot potato, former President Rajapaksa seems to be daring the government to ask him in writing to vacate the mansion he presumptuously occupies. The government and President Dissanayake would do well not to oblige Mr. Rajapaksa with the public fight he wants to have.

Let government officials send a formal letter to the former president explaining why it is inappropriate for him to insist on this palatial entitlement but leave the matter of either vacating the property or claiming squatter rights entirely to Mr. Rajapaksa’s discretion. Let him do the explaining to the people why he thinks he is entitled to this facility whereas every other retiring person has to make ends meet within the pension or EPF they get or may not get, if the country’s economy is not made solvent after what he, his brothers and their economic wiz kids have done to it.

If at the time of independence, Sri Lanka had the Uncle Nephew Party (UNP), seventy seven years later there is a Sri Lanka Privy-Purse Party (SLPP). The positive difference is that the UNP was in power in 1948, but in 2025 the SLPP is out of power and the UNP is on life support. If the SLPP thinks it can claw back to power by making a public fight over the retirement mansion of its former president, so be it. And if the SJB thinks its fortunes will swell if it throws its support behind the Rajapaksa mansion-grab, so be it too!

77 Years, 77 Days and the Year 1977

In looking at what this government has done, has been doing, and has not done or not been able to do what needs to be done, we can invoke the year 1977 as a frame of reference. Quite apart from any numerological coincidence of the double-seven numeral, 1977 is a significant watershed year that marked the displacement of parliamentary democracy with executive presidency, created the so called open economy, and expanded irrigation and agriculture that led to self-sufficiency in rice production but subject to the vagaries of weather.

1977 also saw the start of the riotous deterioration of ethno-communal relations and their rapid descent into open warfare. In foreign policy, the long (1977-1994) UNP government began with a sharp turn to the west, rebuffing India and abandoning non-alignment, but ended with the controversial Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement and the 13^th Amendment that came appended to it.

The 1977 watermarks are significant in themselves, but they are doubly significant now because the NPP government has set itself up to be measured by what it may or may not do with the principal legacies of 1977. For instance, the government is committed to restoring parliamentary democracy and reforming the executive presidency. These changes are now expected to be implemented within three years, but there is no indication of how the political relationship between communities will be addressed in a new constitution even though the government should be commended for its sociopolitical approach in envisaging a ‘post-racial’ Sri Lanka. For now, let us give the government kudos for its intentions and time for their operationalization.

The government will ultimately succeed or fail by how and what it does about the economy. So far, it has been steady in its start and going by the old wisdom the government must be getting it right inasmuch as it is being criticized by both the Left and the Right. The President has set a target of achieving USD 36 billion from export earnings by 2030. While there is no way out of settling our foreign debt without export expansion, the government should be mindful that the USD 36 billion target is supported by a detailed and feasible plan based on an identified export product mix and importing countries. Otherwise, it will turn out to be another tall talk like what Ranil Wickremesinghe did – promising one million jobs but doing nothing to create even one thousand identifiable jobs.

Within the economy, the rice situation has already become the pinch point. The government is duly concerned about it, but it is still trying to find a way out of the cycle of surpluses and shortages, let alone resolving it. Notably, the government, especially President AKD, are now realizing the huge data gap in the supply and distribution of rice, that some of us have been harping on recently. That is a good start, but there is not too much time for the government to assemble data and make decisions. The PMB, as some of us have argued could and should be used as a regulatory and data mining agency guiding the market rather than as a direct market actor compete with private rice millers. The PMB cannot be a regulator and competitor at the same time.   

In foreign policy, the government would do well to use to its advantage the chaos that the new Trump administration is unleashing on the world, by staying below the radar and dealing with reliable partner countries to steer Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange economy to stability and reasonable success. The President has proved himself to be ambidextrous between India and China, and the challenge for the government is to leverage the competing geopolitical interests of the two Asian giants to advance Sri Lanka’s economic interests without being submerged by them.

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the still fledgling government is to broaden its decision making points and public contact points and demonstrate that there is more to this government and its ministers than its executive president. President AKD is easily one of the better, if not the best, executive presidents the country has had as measured by the attributes of comportment, collegiality, and being consultative. But even he needs to possess and project a team of equals who are similarly capable. One can only wish that the broadening of the government will be achieved and matched by positive advancements as the government completes one year in office before the 78^th independence anniversary.