2022 our annus horribilis

Queen Elizabeth ll described 1992 as an “annus horribilis,” a year of disaster and misfortune for her personally and her family. Disaster after disaster hit the British Royals that year including a major fire at Windsor castle, the announcement of the separations of Charles and Diana and Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, the divorce of Princes Anne and Mark Phillips and the publication of Diana’s biography lifting the lid off her unhappiness and much more. For Sri Lanka, 2022 was an annus horribilis like no other in our contemporary history, seeing the (welcome) departure, nay the fleeing, of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa elected with so much hope and promise in November 20219, and his brother Mahinda from the prime ministry by bloodless revolution and much much else.

Apart from the political changes, the people of what was once a green and peasant land that had after long years achieved middle income status, had to endure never experienced hardships like miles long fuel and gas queues, a rupee that plunged beyond belief and a cost of living that rocket-like soared skywards. There was a sovereign debt default, a popularly elected president who was then tottering replaced his elder sibling as prime minister with a leader who had reduced his once GOP (grand old party) to zero elected seats. Thereafter Ranil Wickremesinghe was appointed acting president, and finally elected president by the pohottuwa’s (SLPP) parliamentary majority to serve out GR’s balance term. The aragalaya clearly demonstrated that the SLPP had totally lost its mandate. Yet it was able to elected a successor to Gotabaya to run this country.

No doubt Wickremesinghe has been able to restore at least a semblance of normality in the country. There are no longer fuel queues stretching endlessly and the power cuts have not become worse. Yet the people have had to pay a very heavy price for that. On top of the massive hike in power tariffs in August, we have been all but promised another major increase in our electricity bills come January. Apart from that we are treated to an agriculture minister who is boasting that he is providing us with eggs at Rs. 55 each and that too only in the Colombo and Gampaha districts. But all is not doom and gloom. The rain gods have poured foreign exchange into our hydro electricity generating reservoirs. Alongside that the country is privy to whispers that the usual cycle is that dry weather follows years of good rainfall.

We have to accept the reality that what normalcy has been restored is very largely due to the country defaulting on its debt repayment – both capital and interest. The structural adjustment facility (SAF) from the IMF hoped for first in December and then in March may very well stretch way beyond. There has been no finality on debt restructuring talks and we still live with a Sword of Damocles hanging over our banking system. The news from China is eagerly awaited and there is speculation of what might or might not come. Our regular columnist, Uditha Devapriya, has today offered some telling World Food Program statistics on food insecurity in different parts of the country. This says that the North and the East is far better off in that regard than the South. He notes the president’s focus on resolving the long-festering Tamil National Question by the 75^th Independence anniversary which has attracted some hopeful signs from Tamil political parties to be a plus; but at the same time stresses that similar emphasis on food security is vital not only for Wickremesinghe’s but the country’s survival.

There is no doubt the president is doing what he can in this regard. Wickremesinghe has not engaged in the fruitless exercise of damning Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s senseless ban on the import of chemical fertilizers that plunged the country into this calamity. He obviously can’t do that given that the Rajapaksas placed him on the presidential throne and the whole country is well aware of the present equation. But RW has not so far caved into the mounting pohottuwa pressure of expanding the present cabinet with jobs for the boys. How long he can hold out is anybody’s guess. But as commented in this space last Sunday, there are disturbing signals of a possible attempt to put off the local government elections due next March.

National People’s Front (and JVP) leader, Anura Kumara Dissanayake went on record a couple of days ago ominously suggesting that the early summoning of Parliament for and emergency session on January 5 instead of Jan. 17 as previously scheduled was related to what his predecessor as JVP leader, Somawansa Amarasinghe, once famously dubbed as a jilmaat. What’s happening now, AKD said, was an attempt at not holding the due local elections. Indubitably, conflicting signals are emerging on whether these elections will be held in time or not. On one side is the statement that this is hardly the time to spend billions on an election is becoming increasingly strident. On the other the country is being told that the election machinery is rolling smoothly. There is no debate of the fact that today’s rulers have no mandate. An election is the democratic way of righting that wrong.