People, places and crises from 1922 to 2022

by Rajan Philips

In a rather depressing start for the New Year, 2022 appears to be a seamless continuation of 2021 insofar as the Covid-19 pandemic is concerned. The effects of the pandemic, both in public health and in the broader political and economic spheres, are likely to be significant through much this decade. Add to that the effects of climate change and the challenges of adaptation to its recurrent fire, drought and flood disasters. A hundred years ago, the 1920s began as a time of respite for much of the world after the debacles of the previous decade including the First World War and the Spanish Flu. But early signs of a positive turnaround soon disappeared and by the end of the third decade the world was into its worst economic depression and was set up for an even more devastating Second World War. Ominous signs for the third decade of the last century emerged in 1922. The historical events of 1922 provide a temporal framework as we look for people, places and crises that would be significant in 2022.

Chroniclers have noted that in 1922, while the old Ottoman Empire was finally abolished after 600 years, the British Empire was at the height of its imperial-colonial powers, commanding over a quarter of the world and its peoples. The Soviet Union came into being on December 30, 1922. Two months earlier in Italy, Benito Mussolini staged his Fascist March on Rome and became the youngest ever Italian Prime Minister at 39 years of age. That same year, Britain allowed the Irish Free State to be born, gave Egypt self-government, but sent Mahatma Gandhi to jail on charges of sedition in India.

1922 was also the year of Germany’s hyper-inflation (with the German mark losing value from 263 to a dollar in January to over 7,000 to a dollar by year end) triggering the insolvency of the Weimar Republic, its eventual collapse eight years later and along with it the rise of Hitler. The only noted event in the US that year was President Warren Harding’s introduction of radio as a mass communication tool at the White House. China in 1922 was internally destabilized and the Communist Party founded in July 2021 was a fledgling organization.

A hundred years later, the sun has long set on the British Empire and the new Britain, for a second year in succession, is among the worst affected countries by Covid-19 infections. Compounding Britain’s woes are the fallouts from Brexit – with plummeting British exports to the EU in spite of the addition of volumes of paperwork for clearing customs. In one telling instance, Britain’s traditional exports of handcrafted black iron cookware from Shropshire (the cradle of industrial revolution) to Germany are in danger of being abandoned as a direct result of Brexit complications.

Germany is more stable than Britain and calls the shots in the EU. The US that became a superpower after the Second World War is now in a cultural war within itself. Old cleavages (race and segregation) are finding new avenues (masks, vaccination, voting and abortion) to tear the country from end to end. Harding’s 1922 radio has been supplanted by a thousand social media platforms, that individually and collectively challenge and crowd out the voice of the President of the Union. Meanwhile, China has grown to be a rival superpower to the US. India has superpower aspirations, but under Prime Minister Modi, whose main political mission is to erase the Gandhi-Nehru imprint over India, the country is headed to becoming a regional bully at most.

The Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, but Vladimir Putin has managed to thrust Russia, without any of the old Soviet trappings, into bilateral reckoning with the United States. It is a consequence of the West’s failure to accommodate Russia in the post-Cold War world without making it a new target of NATO expansion beyond its original purpose. The Russian President has had two long phone calls in less than month with President Biden to diffuse tensions over Ukraine. In 2022, the US will likely be constrained to deal with both China and Russia simultaneously, a nightmare scenario for Washington policy makers despite their best efforts to keep the two unnatural allies separate.

For their part, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have struck a mutually supportive understanding between them, with Putin supporting China over Taiwan and Xi backing Russia over Ukraine and NATO. But all three leaders along with others will also be constrained to work together over what will likely be the three dominant issues for 2022, viz. Covid-19, climate change and rising specter of inflation.

Sri Lanka’s Past & Prospects

In 1922, Sri Lanka was a British colony and was in the throes of nascent communal convulsions and constitutional trial and error. The bickering over a Tamil seat in the Western Province was the sum and substance of the political differences between Low-country Sinhalese leaders and Colombo-Tamil elites. The now familiar terminology of the national question was not in anyone’s vocabulary or part of their material experience. Moreover in 1922, Sri Lanka was under the “Temporary Constitution” of 1920. It would be nine years before universal franchise, 26 years before independence, and 50 years before becoming a republic.

It would be another 56 years before the sacking of parliamentary democracy and the imposition of an executive presidential system by President JR Jayewardene. And a full 100 years before the midlife presidential crisis of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. 2021 by far has been the worst performance by a Sri Lankan Head of State and Head of Government in 73 years. President Rajapaksa’s apologetic admirers have been hoping for a course correction in 2022, aided by the hidden or unhidden hand of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. The emergent signs are not of any course correction, no evidence of reaching out to helping hand from Mahinda Rajapaksa, but only a continuing course of denials, dismissals and resignations.

In his year-end meeting with a group of newspaper editors, President Rajapaksa provided only denials and dismissals on all the issues that have been bedeviling the country throughout 2021. On the controversial Yugadanavi LNG agreement, the President offered no explanation for the deal or an exposition of its benefits. He only blamed the Weerawansa-Gammanpila-Nanayakkara ministerial trio for their alleged failure to abide by their collective cabinet responsibility. Notwithstanding Justice Mark Fernando’s ruling that the President seems to have been tutored on, it is not the trio’s collective responsibility that is at issue. What is at issue is how and for what reasons did the cabinet headed by President Rajapaksa decide to grant New Fortress Energy the contract to build an off-shore liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal for Sri Lanka.

On gas leak explosions, the President reportedly said: “I do not see the gas explosions as incidents that occurred only under this government.” This is executive temerity in spite of all the evidence this year and the number of incidents in the months of November and December alone. The President seems annoyed with the “media publicity” given to the incidents of gas leak explosions on his watch. Media publicity only reflects the number and frequency of recent explosions. Still no explanation of what went wrong primarily at Litro Gas, who has been held accountable, and what steps have been taken by the government to ensure that standards are set and complied with, and to provide a safe supply of cooking gas cylinders.

On the fertilizer issue, the President finally seems to have conceded, “I admit that there has also been a mistake with regard to the fertiliser issue. The content of the Chinese fertilizer stock should have been tested before the issuance of the letter of credit to import them.” But who authorized the letter of credit, and why? There are no answers. Only blame, again, this time it is the fault of the Ministry of Agriculture for not correctly implementing the President’s “green agriculture programme.” Agriculture is always green, but what advice did the President ask for and receive from the Ministry before launching the programme by gazette notification?

On the ills of the economy, the President seems to be quite at peace with himself that he has nothing to do with it and it is all blamable on Covid-19. And he seems peeved that he is not being given due credit for the government’s commendable vaccination launch. Others see things quite differently and people’s experiences are diametrically opposite. And the President had nothing to say on what the government is going to do about the economy in the new year. And not a word about the IMF either. Is the government going to seek IMF help, or not? When will the cabinet, with collective responsibility, decide on this? And is Nivard Cabraal speaking for the cabinet when he insists that Sri Lanka will not seek IMF help?

Finally, as the new year dawns, the man behind the President and the source of all executive fiats and gazettes for the last two years is about to resign. The media has been reporting that Secretary PB Jayasundara has tendered his resignation to the President and is expected to vacate office later in January. The resignation apparently is the result of criticisms of Dr. Jayasundara by several Ministers for his exercising power over all ministries without being accessible to the subject Ministers. The President has publicly defended his Secretary, which is understandable, even though the same courtesy was not shown to other officials who have either resigned or gotten fired via WhatsApp. Puzzlingly, however, the President also chose to publicly berate the Ministers who have been criticizing Dr. Jayasundara, and suggested that some of the Ministers “maybe doing it to cover up their own weaknesses by just ‘playing to the gallery’.” The latter is a time-worn, old-English phrase that is hardly appropriate for a Sri Lankan President whose singular referential point in politics is the 6.9 million voters who voted for him.

After his victory in 2019, I wrote in this column (January 12, 2020) with a somewhat optimistic perspective for the GR presidency. That was the week of the hullaballoo over the arrest of actor-politician Ranjan Ramanyake (RR), and mere weeks before Covid-19 struck. I took a cue from RR’s One-Shot film, and interpreted the GR presidency, whether one term or two, as a One-Shot presidency. And given the still new (in 2019) President’s military background and unusual political path, I argued that Gotabaya Rajapaksa could become a ‘legacy president’, as opposed to being a ‘career president’.

Looking for potential ‘legacies’, I envisaged that the President would avoid touching the constitution and focus on meaningful hard infrastructure development in urban areas and the strengthening of the non-plantation agricultural sector for the rural areas. I have later argued that urban infrastructure and rural agriculture should be vigorously pursued to offset the economic setbacks caused by Covid-19.

The above were not unsolicited pieces of advice given to the Head of State, but a logical outlook for the administration of an incumbent with a non-political/non-civil-service background and elected to the country’s highest political office. Alas, the last two years have seen the GR presidency unfolding as it should not have. Of all things, the President picked constitution as his top priority and outsourced it to a committee of experts, so called. Their magnum opus of a draft is expected to be presented in parliament this January.

There is nothing to write home about urban infrastructure and rural agriculture has been temporarily destroyed by the stroke of a gazette ban on inorganic fertilizers. There are more woes, including fears of food shortage and cuts to electricity and water. For the first time since its inception 51 years ago, the islands petroleum refinery has been shut down for want of cash to ship in crude oil. In addition, the breaking news is that four turbines at the Sapugaskanda 72MW Power Station have also been shut down for want of fuel. In sum, the government offers no pleasing prospect that people can look for in 2022. It is a depressing start and there is no point in denying it.