Lanka’s crisis and NATO leaders

Tuesday 28th June, 2022

The Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government has proved that it is incapable of controlling the runaway economic crisis, which has taken a turn for the worse with pumps running dry at most filling stations. Neither President Gotabaya Rajapaksa nor Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe nor Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera knows when or whether the next fuel shipment will arrive. The country is grinding to a halt for want of fuel. Schools have been closed, and many other state institutions including hospitals are on the verge of closure. The day may not be far off when the food supply chain also collapses, and food riots erupt.

Instead of finding solutions to the power and energy crises, the government has resorted to the divestiture of state assets. It has already agreed to hand over an unspecified number of Ceylon Petroleum Corporation filling stations to the Lanka Indian Oil Company (LIOC) if what Minister Wijesekera has recently told the media is any indication. He has admitted that the LIOC influenced the government decision to effect the latest fuel price hike. The Electricity Act has been amended to allow India’s Adani Group to construct a wind power plant. The government has also cut a questionable deal with a US company over the Yugadanavi power station. The country is thus losing control over the power and energy sectors while the Rajapaksas are wrapping themselves in the flag and bellowing rhetoric.

Sri Lanka finds itself in the current predicament, defaulting on foreign debt and begging for dollars because of its NATO (No Action Talk Only) leaders. President Rajapaksa summons experts and treats them to long lectures instead of learning from them. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe has become a crisis commentator, as it were; he gives ball-by-ball commentaries with ominous warnings thrown in for good measure. Minister Wijesekera is all at sea, and most other ministers are a bunch of somnambulists. Opposition top guns are laying it on too thick.

Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa would have us believe that the world is eagerly waiting for the formation of an SJB government to help straighten up the Sri Lankan economy. Speaking at a ‘Project Leopard’ event in March, he declared that three West Asian countries had agreed to supply fuel at concessionary rates to Sri Lanka for two years under a future SJB government. If so, the blame for untold hardships the people are undergoing owing to the fuel crisis should be apportioned to the SJB, for it spurned an opportunity to form a government last month. Premadasa turned down President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s invitation to take over as the Prime Minister. He remained intransigent, demanding that the President step down. Subsequently, he had a change of heart, but the President had already decided to appoint Wickremesinghe as the Prime Minister. However, it’s never too late, as they say.

JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake has declared over the weekend that his party is capable of saving the battered economy and granting the people much-needed relief. He wants the reins of government offered to the JVP on a platter for that task to be accomplished. It was only the other day that he said his party was ready to join others in making a concerted effort to resolve the ever-worsening economic crisis. At the same time, it is pushing for a general election!

Supposing Parliament resolves to hold a snap general election, will any Opposition party be able to form a strong government? The SLPP is bound to suffer a humiliating defeat, come the next election; it is in fact the political version of a dead man walking, but the possibility of the next Parliament being hung cannot be ruled out. Political instability will continue to elude the country in such an eventuality. IMF assistance will be further delayed in the event of a general election being held before the end of this year. So, the best time for all the parties that claim to be able to help the country overcome the crisis to walk the walk is now. The current administration has failed and has to step down. If the SJB helps others, especially the SLFP and the SLPP dissidents, to form a truly multi-party interim administration, joins it and brings down the promised oil shipments at concessionary prices, besides helping enlist international support, the country will gain tremendously. Soapbox oratory will not do.