{"id":246584,"date":"2026-03-28T01:23:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T19:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=246584"},"modified":"2026-04-02T09:17:52","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T03:47:52","slug":"a-dangerous-misunderstanding-of-neoliberalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-dangerous-misunderstanding-of-neoliberalism\/","title":{"rendered":"A Dangerous Misunderstanding Of Neoliberalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kusum Wijetilleke<\/a> –<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The term \u201cneo-liberalism\u201d is often mischaracterised, and Sri Lankan commentary appears not to have grasped its true meaning, as evidenced by the March 23rd column in the Colombo Telegraph<\/em> by Harsha Gunasena titled \u201cDilemma of Sajith Premadasa<\/a><\/span>\u201d.\"\"<\/p>\n

Neoliberalism is not a loose collection of policies such as deregulation, privatization, or free trade. Nor is it simply \u201cpro-market.\u201d It is a policy orientation in which the state restructures markets to prioritize capital, constrain redistribution, and limit developmental intervention. That distinction is critical.<\/p>\n

Deregulation, for instance, is not inherently neoliberal. Reducing barriers to entry and enabling competition are essential to any market economy. What makes deregulation neoliberal is its selective application; when it entrenches incumbents rather than broadens participation. In weak regulatory environments, this produces concentration, not competition.<\/p>\n

In Sri Lanka, this is visible in the dominance of conglomerates across key sectors. Consider large-scale rice millers operating in what should be a low-margin commodity market, accumulating extraordinary wealth. One cannot reconcile helicopter or Rolls Royce-level capital accumulation with the economics of a staple food unless there are structural distortions. Persistent super-normal profits signal market failure, not efficiency, per economics 101. When a staple ceases to be cheap and abundant, it reflects pricing power, not productivity.<\/p>\n

Similarly, privatization is not inherently ideological. Divesting non-strategic commercial assets can be justified on efficiency grounds. But neoliberal privatization typically involves transferring control of strategic sectors and natural monopolies, often to actors with proximity to political power, without adequate regulatory safeguards. The result is rent extraction, not efficiency, which is precisely the crony-capitalism dynamic Gunasena himself acknowledges.<\/p>\n

Sri Lankan Airlines is cited as evidence that the previous government has not followed a neoliberal path. The Treasury wrote off approximately $500 million of the airline\u2019s debt to improve its balance sheet and attract investors, effectively transferring the burden to taxpayers. Yet no buyer emerged, largely because successive governments were unwilling to offer a significant controlling stake of 80-90% of total shares. This is not a failure of neoliberalism; it is a structural and political constraint. In this case, privatization would be a rational attempt to remove a fiscal liability, not a neoliberal reform.<\/p>\n

Neoliberal reform more typically refers to the privatization of natural monopolies, an approach that has been floated in Sri Lanka, often alongside concepts like cost-reflective pricing, but without meaningful reform or rationalization of entities such as the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation or the Ceylon Electricity Board. Even globally, the record is mixed: Thatcherite privatization of rail and water in the UK, the poster child for modern privatizations, is now widely questioned, with growing public support for renationalization.<\/p>\n

Since Gunasena links neoliberalism with crony capitalism and references state banks, it is worth noting that the previous government appointed a UNP Working Committee member as Chairman of the Bank of Ceylon, reinforcing the intersection of political authority and economic control.<\/p>\n

Free trade provides another example. Trade itself is not neoliberal; it is essential to development. It becomes neoliberal when pursued without domestic industrial capacity, locking economies into low-value segments of global value chains while constraining policy space for upgrading. Gunasena references globalization but does not engage with this central issue: that liberalization without capability can entrench dependency.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka, across successive administrations, has over-emphasized free trade agreements without a corresponding industrial policy. There has been little focus on building productive capacity to support exports. Notably, neither Gotabaya Rajapaksa nor the current administration articulated a coherent export-oriented industrial strategy. Among major political actors, Sajith Premadasa has been one of the few to consistently advocate for industrial policy and a transition toward higher-value production.<\/p>\n

These distinctions expose the weakness in Gunasena\u2019s argument: that Sri Lanka\u2019s problem has been insufficient liberalization, and that figures such as Ranil Wickremesinghe represent a corrective. In reality, Wickremesinghe\u2019s policy orientation is consistently neoliberal not because it embraces markets, but because of how it structures them.<\/p>\n

Three patterns are evident<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

First, a persistent reliance on indirect taxation has produced a regressive fiscal structure. The burden of adjustment falls on consumption, while higher-income groups and capital remain comparatively protected. During the Yahapalana period, despite IMF-backed reforms, tax-to-GDP rose only marginally from below 10% to around 11.5%, a major failure of that administration.<\/p>\n

Following the crisis, Wickremesinghe\u2019s administration again leaned on indirect taxes, disproportionately affecting lower-income groups, while introducing a limited progressive income tax structure with a top marginal rate of only 36%. Meanwhile, the 2019 tax cuts, costing an estimated Rs. 800 billion, delivered the largest absolute gains to higher-income groups, with little subsequent effort to claw back those significant cash windfalls. Instead, the burden shifted to ordinary citizens through VAT on essentials.<\/p>\n

Second, where there has been external sector liberalization, it has occured without industrial policy. Trade openness has been pursued without building domestic productive capacity.<\/p>\n

Third, market reform has consistently coexisted with elite access. Liberalization in sectors such as energy, SOEs, and investment has often resulted in concentration among actors with proximity to the state. This fusion of reform and concentration is not incidental, it is characteristic of neoliberal outcomes in politically embedded systems.<\/p>\n

It is therefore untenable to present Wickremesinghe as an antidote to neoliberalism, or to argue that Sri Lanka\u2019s failures stem from insufficient liberalization. The more accurate reading is that, Sri Lanka has experienced a partial, uneven, and politically mediated form of neoliberalism, one that has weakened state capacity, failed to build a competitive external sector, and produced distorted and unequal outcomes.<\/p>\n

Gunasena\u2019s argument collapses because it relies on a caricature. By equating neoliberalism with any form of market reform, it dismisses its presence entirely. But once defined by outcomes rather than rhetoric, the picture is clear.<\/p>\n

The other main critique levelled at the Leader of the Opposition is his alleged populist streak. This argument rests on an outdated and overly academic framing of populism that fails to capture its modern dynamic. Populism today is not best understood as a vehicle for predefined ideologies, whether racism, socialism, or social justice, but as a reaction against entrenched political and economic elites that have come to dominate both the left and right of centre.<\/p>\n

The reference to Ernesto Laclau is selective. Laclau does not define populism as inherently socialist; rather, he conceptualised it as the construction of a \u201cpeople\u201d in opposition to a \u201cpower bloc.\u201d That logic applies equally to both left and right-wing movements. To reduce his framework to a teleological path toward socialism is a misreading.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Paul Taggart and Margaret Canovan are cited to suggest definitional ambiguity. But that ambiguity reinforces the central point: populism is not ideology, it is political logic. It emerges when established parties converge toward the centre while failing to resolve underlying economic and social discontent.<\/p>\n

The treatment of Sri Lankan leaders is also superficial. S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike and J. R. Jayewardene are described as populists simply because they mobilised voters through language or moral slogans. This strips populism of its structural context. Bandaranaike\u2019s movement was not merely electoral opportunism; it was a response, however flawed, to elite dominance in the post-colonial state. Jayewardene, by contrast, represented a consolidation of elite power through liberalization, even while deploying populist rhetoric. To equate the two without distinction is analytically weak.<\/p>\n

Anura Kumara Dissanayake is similarly reduced to sloganism, overlooking the broader anti-establishment sentiment that underpins his support base. His appeal lies not only in rhetoric, but in positioning himself against a political-economic order perceived as captured by entrenched interests.<\/p>\n

The most critical omission, however, is the failure to recognise that modern populism, whether in Sri Lanka or globally, is driven by a collapse of credibility at the centre. Both centre-left and centre-right formations have governed within similar economic frameworks, often prioritising stability, external alignment, and elite consensus over structural transformation. It is this convergence that generates populist backlash.<\/p>\n

Against this backdrop, dismissing Sajith Premadasa as having \u201cno objective\u201d misunderstands the terrain. It also ignores even recent policy positions that sought to shift the burden of adjustment away from working people. In a context of rising poverty, high levels of income and wealth inequality, and a disintegrating middle class, is it \u201cpopulist\u201d to call for renegotiation of a flawed IMF framework to provide relief to lower-income groups and create space for productive investment? Is it populist to question whether all growth is equal, or whether the composition of debt-external versus domestic, matters? The critique presented ultimately reveals a deeper confusion about Sri Lanka\u2019s economic trajectory.<\/p>\n

In short, the argument fails because it treats populism as rhetoric layered onto ideology. In reality, populism is a signal of systemic failure, a movement against both political and economic elites when established frameworks cease to deliver. Mr. Wickremesinghe, the UNP, its neoliberal ideology and lack of appreciation for social contract theory, have failed to deliver. The Sajith Premadasa ideology, distinct from the Neo-liberalism of the UNP, is closer to the New-Deal liberalism of the Ranasinghe Premadasa era. A future victory for this project will only be possible if the party fully commits to this developmental ideology, sprinting in the opposite direction of policy platforms of the past, especially those connected to the country\u2019s history of neoliberal \u201creform\u201d.<\/p>\n

*The writer is a political commentator, media presenter, and foreign affairs analyst. He serves as Advisor on Political Economy to the Leader of the Opposition of Sri Lanka, and is a member of the Working Committee of the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB). A former banker, he spent 11 years in the industry in Colombo and Dubai, including nine years in corporate finance, working with some of Sri Lanka\u2019s largest corporates on project finance, trade facilities, and working capital. He holds a Master\u2019s in International Relations from the University of Colombo and a Bachelor\u2019s in Accounting and Finance from the University of Kent (UK).<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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