By Sonali Wijeratne –

Sonali Wijeratne

Let the people have no illusions and face the facts. We are now in a bankrupt country that has declared its inability to pay its total outstanding debt  rising  from a level of US$ 83 Bn. in 2022 to over US$ 100 billion todate. The government has appealed for the 17th time to the Lender of the Last Resort, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to bail it out. According to all international analysts, the underlying root cause for the economic collapse  remains the persistent and large fiscal deficits, elevated foreign debts and lack of resources to service these.It is a fact that we have been voting in irresponsible governments that unfailingly neglected to balance their budget of Government Expenditure with Revenue. Instead, they had been cumulatively  borrowing to bridge this deficit without having the means to pay back and spending exorbitantly, engaged in corruption, bad governance, nepotism, raising ill gotten wealth for several  generations of their families.

Despite decades of “Export Oriented Market Economy” “Dharmishta Society” “Yahapalanaya” “ Regaining Sri Lanka” “Vistas of Prosperity” claims, the country is still precariously poised on the fragile  crutches of foreign remittances and tourist earnings both of which were brought to a standstill during the Covid Pandemic and National Security issues and are likely to fall prey to similar instabilities. About 80 percent of Sri Lanka’s total exports still number 4 – 5 product categories for decades. e.g. Apparel remains the main foreign exchange earner covering 42.8 percent of total export value, followed by Tea, Rubber Coconut and Precious stones and semi-precious stones. During 2010 to 2022 for eg.out of a total of approx. 3500 – 4000 tariff line products, only 100 top products of these 4 – 5 sectors account for 80% of our total exports.There is hardly any diversification seen for increasing export earnings.

It is an undeniable fact that the credit for 76 years of misrule, mis-management, corruption, nepotism, perpetual budget deficits, infinite indebtedness of a country that is now desperately trying to restructure its pending debt, must be given to the collective responsibility of the Presidents, Prime Ministers, Cabinet of Ministers, and Ministers represented in Parliament of the UNP, SLFP, SLPP and their hybrid crossovers in successive governments.

Moreover, there have been irreparable damages and blunders incurred by these parties on the journey from independence to bankruptcy.To mention a few,t hese range from adoption of “populist  Sinhala Only “ Sinhala Buddhist mentalities to the exclusion of a secular multicultural identity ”Sri Lankan” resulting in 26 year internecine civil war. Remember the practice of State Terrorism, during the UNP Premadasa regime where we saw hundreds of youth slaughtered, their heads impaled on iron fences, with Young Rebels buried in mass graves during SLFP/SLPP regimes as well. The politicisation of the public service ,the use of State Institutes for unproductive political appointments, mega corrupt deals by politico business nexus, procurement fiascos resulting in death of patients fed on medicines procured by the  government under heinous corrupt deals are verifiable records. The denial of basic democratic rights to the citizenry of this country to demonstrate in peaceful gatherings are met by rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannon even up to the present day. The sudden disappearances of students and rebels who are incarcerated, tortured and imprisoned without trial are legion.The “White Van” culture of enforced disappearances, the Mother’s Front bemoaning their  innumerable slain sons, Richard De Zoysa type of killings, Batalanda Torture Camp, are all in different decades, the progeny of the Rajapaksa and Premadasa party clan! The level of dangerous drug infestation, addiction, and political  promotion of dangerous drugs, booze, illicit trade, divestiture of national assets keeping commissions for themselves by Ministers from the political parties of SLFP/SLPP and UNP/SJB, etc all these and more are widely known, reported, and seen in practice.

Does anyone wonder anymore  about who killed Lasantha Wickrematunge, MP Lalith Athulathmudali, what lay behind the Easter Sunday Bombing of 2019; where is Ekneliyagoda, the journalist and many other missing persons?

Ironically,It is the People who remain the beasts of burden for the transgressions of successive governments as the UNP, SLFP, SLPP and several Alliances comprising cross overs of these same parties. It is they who must bear the cost of IMF conditional loans, the personal taxation, VAT, escalating cost of living that has quadrupled, cutbacks on welfare, education, health, utilities, diminishing purchasing power etc. The level of Sri Lankans leaving the country consequently has risen to its zenith over 03 laks per year (Controller of Immigration and Emigration)

The question arises as to what reasons people may give for their choice of voting in any one of the main Presidential Candidates who have spent their entire political lifetime in the UNP/SJB and SLPP collectively bringing down the Nation to its bankrupt knees.

I append below a compendium of a few ”reasons” that the reader will find, cannot be termed as ”reasonable” but mere brutish extensions of personal vested interests, class, ethnic and cultural prejudice, and  self-centred, business profit making. These are the voters who are either ignorant of the actual plight of our country, unable to recall or wilfully blind to the atrocities, misrule, inefficiencies wrought by the Presidential Candidates who lived and worked in the notorious Parties that led the Nation to destruction over the last 76 years.

Consider those who fear that a more socialistic NPP government may make them own less property, be less wealthy or tax their riches or that more power will devolve on the trade unions and workers who will gain more rights over capitalists! These cannot visualise a more equitable society with less disparity in the distribution of income, lower poverty levels with opportunities for the impoverished.

Some others candidly say they have always voted for either the UNP or SLFP alias SLPP candidate since they have received houses, lands, jobs, promotions, and other personal benefits. Some villagers remain dyed in the wool UNP or SLFP/SLPP supporters depending on who is giving them contracts, and other favours in their locality.

Another mindless few who proclaim “Api UNP” “Api Mahindata” are forever Green, or Blue irrespective of whatever havoc, mega deals and thieving of national assets such  parties have wrecked on the Nation.

Then there are the paranoid who have nightmares over a few JVP rebel students scraping their cars, threatening them not to attend work, recall visions of Communists Leninist/ Stalinist eras of more than 100 years ago and label all “Rathu Sahodarayo” the same as proscribing land ownership and taking over empty rooms of large mansions.These still live in a time wrap forgetting that today, even China is a self proclaimed mixed developing market economy, that it is Revolutions that were far bloodier and claimed millions of Life in France, United States, Europe and Russia that made way for the the Modern State.

In comparison, recall Sri Lanka’s poor insurrections of the early 1970’s and late 1980’s that proclaimed the woes of unemployed, the dispossessed whom the Ugly Beast of State Terrorism (Black Tigers, PRRA, and those killer outfits masquerading as Rebels) struck down dead.

Then there are the English educated, so called elites of the upper and lower bourgeoisie for whom the fact that the NPP Leader does not speak in English is a major anxiety. His simple homespun rural origins, the lack of the western colonial attire are viewed with great  trepidation. The fact that many countries in the post colonial age have developed their own national cultural identity and  character, when Political Leaders even of China and France rely on English Translators/Interpreters is largely lost on this kind of  “class” votership. These are joined by the fading remnants of the old feudal aristocracy clinging to lost social hegemonies and rights of the Maha Mudaliyar. These parties scorn the rise of a son of the soil from a remote hamlet in Anuradhapura, a former kingdom of Sri Lanka.

There are some voters for whom corruption and the proclaimed destruction or reduction of it by a consistent campaign and exposure of such by the Presidential Candidate of the NPP in particular is of no special interest. The fact that the NPP has yet shown no record of corruption and nepotism is not a great plus factor. The  Monster of Corruption has grown filthy fat over 76 years underlying all levels of Sri Lankan society, from the top echelons of politicians to minor staff levels. (Sri Lanka scored a 34 on a scale from 0 (“highly corrupt”) to 100 (“very clean”). When ranked by score, Sri Lanka ranked No:115 among the 180 countries in the Index, where the country ranked No:1 is perceived to have the most honest public sector. (Transparency International 2023)

I have met voters who say that as long as they can get their gas cylinder, petrol, groceries without a queue, life here is hunky dory and nothing else matters. These are the few who have conveniently forgotten that the immediate causes for the crisis of shortages/mile long queues lay also in the impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic, 2019 Easter Sunday Bombing and their toll on the two crutches of Tourism and Foreign Remittances on which our Economy is precariously allowed to run. And that this was not merely due to the hopeless SLPP candidate Prez Gota’s blunders on tax cuts, money creation, the sudden switch to organic fertilisers over chemical fertilisers, but also most importantly the 2017 Exchange Control Act of the Yahapalanaya Government which is said to have syphoned off over billions of dollars of export earnings to foreign banks abroad contributing to the Foreign Exchange crisis that gave rise to the acute shortages of the basics.

The Yahapalanaya government borrowed International Sovereign Bonds at high interest to the tune of US Dollar Bn. 12 and were also party to the biggest Central Bank Robbery of the Bond Scam II subject to several investigations  with the Ranil Wickremesinghe’s CBSL Governor appointee Arjuna Mahendran still in hiding in Singapore. The Nation knows how the Rajapaksa Government nearely outdid them with their own alleged Bond Scam under their protege Cabraal appointed as Governor of the CBSL.

Those who equate Ranil Wickremesinghe as “a great stabiliser of the economy” must acknowledge that he still  continues on the roll of increasing fiscal deficits to the tune of 19% in 2024, relying on  National Debt from USDollar Bn. 83 in 2022 to approx US Dollar Bn. 102 todate and the continued divestiture of national assets to make ends meet.

The Prez. candidates viz. M/s. Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sajith Premadasa and Namal Rajapakse who are now floating magnificent Economic Resurrections in their gilt edged manifestos, were active proponents of the very governments that brought the Nation to its downfall. The sins of the fathers  may well  follow their sons.

Let us not Vote for a Hell of a Nation!