{"id":249942,"date":"2026-11-14T11:31:51","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T06:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=249942"},"modified":"2026-11-14T11:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T06:06:12","slug":"the-budget-the-price-paid-for-lowered-standards-becoming-the-norm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-budget-the-price-paid-for-lowered-standards-becoming-the-norm\/","title":{"rendered":"The Budget & The Price Paid For Lowered Standards Becoming The Norm"},"content":{"rendered":"

By C. Mendis<\/a> –<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Every year in Colombo, the presentation of the national budget in Parliament arrives with all the pomp and pageantry of a coronation. The budget proposals are shrouded in secrecy as ministers file into the chamber clutching tightly bound folders, television commentators dissect tax brackets as if they were constitutional amendments, and the public, still bruised from the economic collapse of 2022, leans forward in anticipation. Yet in the wake of the 2027 budget presented by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake<\/a><\/span>, the prevailing sensation across Sri Lanka is not hope or even anger, but a quiet, sinking self-pity. We have seen this movie before, and we have all seen how it ends, with empty promises and little execution, if at all.\"\"<\/p>\n

For a country trying to climb out of sovereign default, incrementalism is a luxury it cannot afford. Sri Lanka does not merely need to stabilize. It needs to sprint. To pull millions of families back from the precipice of poverty and absorb a generation of disillusioned youth, the economy must break out of its sluggish, low-growth trap and sustain an annual expansion of 7 to 8 percent. Instead, the budget handed down to Parliament reads like an exercise in routine bookkeeping, a patchwork of familiar revenue targets, tariff tweaks on \u2018sprats\u2019, \u2018umbalakada\u2019 and \u2018dried chillies\u2019, and cautious adjustments that manage decline rather than engineer economic transformation.<\/p>\n

Consider what this looks like on the ground for an ordinary Sri Lankan family or a small business owner. A young software developer or an apparel exporter looking at this budget does not see a bold blueprint to integrate Sri Lanka into high-value global supply chains or a sudden clearing of the bureaucratic red tape jungle that chokes local enterprise. Meanwhile, a middle-class household monitoring the cost of electricity, transport, and daily essentials sees minor tax-threshold adjustments that barely keep pace with the quiet erosion of their purchasing power.<\/p>\n

It is tempting to blame this lack of imagination on the constraints of an IMF program or on global economic headwinds. Those pressures are real. Yet a more uncomfortable truth sits at the heart of the President Dissanayake administration’s policy paralysis. You cannot draw water from a dry well, and you cannot expect bold, world-class economic architecture from a Cabinet of Ministers that lacks the technical depth, global fluency, and institutional exposure to conceive it.<\/p>\n

Anyone who has watched Sri Lankan politics over the decades can rattle off names of past cabinet ministers who, whatever their political flaws, commanded genuine stature. Think of a figure like Lakshman Kadirgamar or even GL Pieris or Mangala Samaraweera, whose intellectual command and diplomatic gravitas could hold a room at the United Nations in thrall, or Lalith Athulathmudali or Colvin R De Silva or even Thilak Marapana, who brought rigorous legal and economic strategy to trade and national security, or Ronnie de Mel or NM Perera or Sarath Amunugama for that matter, who could negotiate complex international financing with authority. These were intellectuals, seasoned administrators, and formidable parliamentarians whom the public could look up to as benchmarks of capability. Today, looking across the Cabinet of Ministers table, one struggles to find a single figure who inspires that same confidence. Too many ministers visibly fumble in parliamentary debates and public forums because they simply cannot fathom the scale of the task at hand.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka is hardly the only democracy discovering the steep price of replacing expertise with allegiance. Across the Pacific, in the aftermath of the recent midterm election losses of President Trump in the United States, political analysts and historians have delivered a blistering verdict on the second Trump administration. Critics in Washington have pointed out that when a leader prizes personal loyalty over proven distinction, the result is a cabinet of lightweight loyalists, figures like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who pale in comparison to the seasoned giants who once held those offices. Following the Republicans’ sweeping defeat, even conservative commentators noted that governing power requires people who actually know what they are doing.<\/p>\n

There is a universal lesson in that American reckoning. In the early twentieth century, the British political theorist Harold Laski who wrote \u2018The Grammar of Politics\u2019 warned that modern governance demands specialized knowledge, noting that the expert must remain on tap, not on top, yet a government that dispenses with expertise altogether soon finds itself flying blind.<\/p>\n

Yet across the highest rungs of Sri Lanka’s Cabinet, Ministries, State institutions, Statutory commissions, and diplomatic missions today, the prevailing requirement appears to be party loyalty rather than mastery of complex systems. In ministry after ministry, policy is being shaped by figures who struggle to grasp the mechanics of global capital flows, supply chain competitiveness, or export diversification, and who too often mistake defensive rhetoric for a development strategy.<\/p>\n

This deficit is compounded by a quiet, pervasive mediocrity and insecurity at the top of the government. Throughout history, confident leaders have surrounded themselves with people smarter than they are. Think of Barak Obama, Tony Blair or even JR Jayawardena who had competing minds in the Cabinet or ever revered Abraham Lincoln, who famously assembling his \u2018team of rivals,\u2019 bringing fierce, brilliant minds into his cabinet because he cared more about saving the Union than protecting his own ego. Insecure leaders do the exact opposite. They lower the bar so they never have to look up. Over the past two years under the President Dissanayake administration, Sri Lanka has witnessed a subtle but unmistakable erosion of institutional standards. The message has been clear. Ones pedigree, rigor, correct mindset and international polish are no longer prized, but are treated with suspicion.<\/p>\n

Critics who point out this decline are routinely dismissed as nostalgic elitists clinging to colonial-era metrics, people who judge a leader by the cut of their suit or the cadence of their English. That is a convenient distraction. The issue is not accent or upper-class manners. It is the ability to engage the world on equal footing. Picture a present-day Sri Lankan minister sitting across the table from counterparts in New Delhi, or Brussels. Global investors do not adjust their standards out of sympathy for Sri Lanka’s political revolution. Capital flows to clarity, predictability, and institutional sophistication. When a country represented by a mediocre minister coupled with narrow-mindedness and administrative hesitation, opportunity quietly moves next door.<\/p>\n

Consider the stark regional contrast. In the past, neighbors like Bangladesh, Thailand, Pakistan and Vietnam looked to Sri Lanka’s human capital, administrative traditions, and strategic strengths as benchmarks for their advancement. Today, Vietnam is aggressively courting global tech giants and high-value manufacturing with laser-focused industrial policies. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka debates a national budget that offers no credible roadmap for technological leapfrogging, no audacious blueprint to turn the island into a services hub, and no structural revolution to free small entrepreneurs from the suffocating grip of state bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

To expect a 7 percent growth miracle from an apparatus that struggles with basic policy innovation is to ask a local village council to design a space program. The tragedy is not that the current leadership lacks good intentions. It is that good intentions, untethered from expertise and intellectual rigor, inevitably default to the safest, most unimaginative path available, the same old formulas dressed in new populist vocabulary. Until Sri Lanka restores meritocracy to its institutions, welcomes rigorous expertise back into the rooms where decisions are made, and sets its sights higher than mere political survival, its budgets will remain monuments to missed potential and dedication to mediocrity, and its people will continue paying the price for a revolution that stopped halfway.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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