By Roshan Pussewela –

They call him the man who “saved” Sri Lanka — the technocrat who, in the ashes of Rajapaksa ruin, stepped in to steady a collapsing state. But strip away the diplomatic flattery and IMF soundbites, and a harder truth emerges: Ranil Wickremesinghe didn’t save Sri Lanka — he managed the optics of failure.

The story of Sri Lanka’s collapse cannot be told honestly without including the part he played in creating it, and how his supposed rescue plan merely postponed reckoning. What we witnessed between 2022 and 2024 was not reform. It was showboating, a performance of stability for international creditors while the public paid the price.

The Bond Scandal That Broke the Illusion

The rot didn’t begin in 2022. It began years earlier, under Wickremesinghe’s own “good governance” administration.

In 2015, within months of taking office, his government was rocked by the now-infamous Central Bank bond scandal. Then-Governor Arjuna Mahendran, a close ally personally appointed by Wickremesinghe, oversaw manipulated Treasury bond auctions that handed billions in profits to Perpetual Treasuries, run by Mahendran’s son-in-law.

Parliament’s COPE report (2016) and the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (2017) both confirmed major irregularities and losses to the state.

“The Commission has found clear evidence of insider dealing and conflict of interest in the issuance of Treasury bonds.” – Presidential Commission Report on Bond Issuance, 2017

The scandal shattered public confidence in the so-called yahapalana (good governance) experiment. It was the first clear signal that the promise to end corruption had been replaced with a more sophisticated form of it, conducted in English, behind glass doors, and justified in the language of “market reform.”

A Debt Time Bomb with Wickremesinghe’s Fingerprints

Critics often point to the Rajapaksas for reckless borrowing and rightly so. But Sri Lanka’s debt addiction was bipartisan.

Between 2015 and 2019, the Wickremesinghe administration continued the same debt strategy: issuing International Sovereign Bonds (ISBs) to cover fiscal deficits. These short-term, high-interest borrowings increased rollover risks and foreign vulnerability.

According to the Ministry of Finance’s External Resources Department (ERD), Sri Lanka’s central government external debt rose from US $34.8 billion in April 2022 to US $37 billion by March 2024, with nearly 40 percent owed to commercial creditors (mainly ISB holders). (Source: ERD Debt Bulletin, Ministry of Finance, March 2024)

The IMF and World Bank had warned for years that Sri Lanka’s debt composition was unsustainable and that fiscal reforms were overdue. But rather than fix the revenue system or improve transparency, Wickremesinghe’s government papered over the cracks with more borrowing, the very strategy that would later explode.

The Default and the Return of the “Technocrat”

By 2022, the inevitable happened: Sri Lanka defaulted. The Rajapaksas fled, queues lengthened, and the state ran out of foreign reserves. In that chaos, Parliament elevated Ranil Wickremesinghe, not through election, but survival instinct.

To foreign diplomats and creditors, he looked like a saviour: English-speaking, IMF-friendly, predictable. The US $3 billion IMF Extended Fund Facility (EFF), restored a measure of macro stability that reduced inflation from 70 percent (Sept 2022) to single digits by mid-2024 and won cautious praise.
(IMF Press Release No. 23/120, March 2023)

But this was the easy part, stabilization on paper. What remained untouched was the culture of opacity and impunity that had wrecked the economy in the first place.

Even the IMF Called Out the Charade

In its own Governance Diagnostic Report (2023), the IMF made a rare and damning assessment:

“Serious weaknesses remain in fiscal transparency, procurement, state-owned enterprise governance, and anti-corruption enforcement.”
“Implementation of governance and transparency reforms by the authorities has been slower than expected and risks undermining the credibility of the program.”
(IMF Sri Lanka Governance Diagnostic Report, September 2023)

Even the IMF, typically cautious about criticizing member governments, admitted that Wickremesinghe’s reform effort lacked sincerity.

This is why many describe his rule as stability theatre: he performed economic discipline for an international audience while leaving the domestic system of corruption intact.

Taxes rose sharply, real wages fell, and public spending on health and education stagnated. Meanwhile, no meaningful prosecutions followed from either the bond scandal or later corruption allegations.

Austerity for Citizens, Impunity for Elites

Wickremesinghe’s “stability” turned out to be austerity without accountability.

* VAT hikes hit small businesses and consumers hardest.

* Electricity and fuel price hikes were imposed without transparent oversight of procurement.

* Income tax expansions punished professionals and wage earners while major tax avoiders, including politically connected conglomerates, remained largely untouched.

* Loss-making SOEs bled billions yet remained patronage havens.

His government excelled at producing glossy slide decks, white papers, and “reform timelines.” But the most basic reforms, transparency, accountability, asset recovery moved at a glacial pace.

Because real reform would threaten the very networks that have long protected Sri Lanka’s political elite.

Showboating in the Age of Austerity

“Stabilization” became Wickremesinghe’s mantra, but what it meant in practice was austerity without accountability.

Ordinary citizens bore the brunt of new VAT hikes and income-tax expansions while large evaders continued largely untouched. Fuel and utility prices soared under “cost-reflective pricing,” but transparency in procurement remained opaque.

His administration was full of press conferences, white papers, and “reform roadmaps,” yet the core of state capture, the revolving door between political elites and business interests, stayed sealed shut.

What passed for reform was showboating: a performance for creditors, not a transformation for citizens.

The NPP’s Rise Wasn’t an Accident – It Was a Verdict

By the time Sri Lankans voted in 2024, fatigue had hardened into rebellion. The National People’s Power (NPP) movement didn’t just promise ideological change; it promised a break from the endless recycling of elites, from Rajapaksa populism to Wickremesinghe’s neoliberal pageantry.

The election was a referendum on a system, not a man. Wickremesinghe’s defeat reflected public disgust with decades of politicians who caused crises, then demanded gratitude for managing them.

Accountability Deferred, Not Denied

To be clear, not all blame for the collapse rests on Wickremesinghe. The Supreme Court’s November 2023 ruling found Gotabaya and Mahinda Rajapaksa, Basil Rajapaksa, and senior Central Bank officials responsible for violating citizens’ rights through mismanagement leading to the crisis. (Supreme Court Fundamental Rights Judgment, SCFR 195/2022, 14 Nov 2023)

But history judges more broadly than the law. Wickremesinghe’s long tenure, six times Prime Minister, once President, spans the same decades that normalized corruption, blurred lines between private and public finance, and reduced governance to the art of perception management.

His legacy is not one of decisive reform but of administrative containment, keeping the system alive just long enough to pass it on.

Beyond the Mirage

Yes, Ranil Wickremesinghe brought calm after chaos, but it was the calm of managed decline, not renewal.

He stabilized numbers, not institutions. He rebuilt confidence among creditors, not citizens. He balanced spreadsheets, not justice.

Even the IMF, his biggest ally, could see it: stabilization without transparency is illusion, not recovery.

And illusions, no matter how well presented, always collapse in the end.

The Way Forward

If the NPP truly wants to represent a new beginning, it must learn from Wickremesinghe’s failures. Real reform is not about pleasing creditors; it’s about restoring credibility.

That means publishing all debt agreements, enforcing asset recovery from corruption cases, and dismantling the shadow networks that connect political power to financial privilege. It means making transparency non-negotiable, not optional.

Only then can Sri Lanka move beyond the age of showboating.

History’s Judgment

Ranil Wickremesinghe will be remembered in foreign capitals as the man who kept Sri Lanka solvent long enough for the next act to begin.

But at home, his legacy will be starker: a man who mistook control for credibility, PR for reform, and the applause of creditors for the consent of the governed.

True stability is not built on borrowed dollars or borrowed time — it’s built on justice. And justice, after decades of deceit, is the one thing Sri Lanka still owes itself.

Sources

1. Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Issuance of Treasury Bonds (2017).

2. Parliamentary COPE Report on Bond Issuance (2016).

3. Ministry of Finance — External Resources Department, Debt Bulletin, March 2024.

4. International Monetary Fund, Press Release No. 23/120: “IMF Approves 48-Month EFF for Sri Lanka” (20 March 2023).

5. IMF Sri Lanka Governance Diagnostic Report (September 2023).

6. Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, SCFR 195/2022 Judgment (14 November 2023).