Given that Sri Lanka has a post-independence history of episodic JVP militancy in 1971 and 1987, there is concern about the direction the street protests may take, writes N. Sathiya Moorthy for South Asia Monitor
Nothing explains the Sri Lankan situation better than the cliche about Emperor Nero fiddling when Rome was burning. While the rest of the world is worried about the unstoppable economic meltdown and Sri Lankans worry where their next meal will come from, the politicians are untiringly playing game after game of Russian roulette. They make the people gather at urban vantage points, especially in Colombo, where there are enough souls that want the ruling Rajapaksas out for their own reasons.
Barring former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has been left with his own parliamentary majority of one seat in a House of 225, each one of the divided opposition, or anti-Rajapaksa groups and factions, is talking about getting President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and clan members out of the government and, if possible, politics.
But there is no word about restoring the economy, reviving the much-needed forex reserves, and also re-inventing jobs and family incomes lost to China-funded white-elephant projects as the latter also brought in all the men and material.
Now, Wickremesinghe has proposed a constitutional bar on government spending without Parliament’s clearance under Article 148 of the Constitution, approaching World Bank and ADB for short-term lending and setting up an aid consortium, and continue talking to IMF for long-term cover, creditors for restructuring pending repayments, and to friendly nations for further supply of food, fuel and pharma products, among others. That is saying a lot, but it remains a cry in the wilderness as the opposition Samgi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), the majority breakaway faction of the Ranil-centric United National Party (UNP) and its self-styled economic experts continue to claim that they have solutions to the nation’s ills but would pull the rabbit out of the hat if and if only the ruling Rajapaksas get out of the way.
Economic crisis
For the first time since the economic crisis hit the political ceiling, born-again Finance Minister Ali Sabry has publicly acknowledged that the nation faced a “Herculean task”, starting with a $ 3 billion in bridge loans for procuring essential food items, fuel (including coal and LPG) and medicines, and also needed to restructure loans from creditor nations and agencies apart from $ 1 billion due to bondholders due by July. The good news is that the former justice minister who had quit a day after being sworn in as finance minister last fortnight is back in the saddle, if only to lead a team to Washington for negotiations with IMF officials for long-term arrangements.
For his part, the new Central Bank Governor, Dr Nandalal Weerasinghe, has declared that they would “function independently”, something that the nation had not seen in a long time. Declaring that “substantial policy response is imperative to arrest current inflationary pressures”, he announced an unprecedented steep seven per cent increase in deposit and lending rates of banks, to 13.5 percent and 14.5 percent respectively. While the real effect of it needs to be seen, prima facie it is seen as a welcome step after the government kept printing money in billions through the past week, in an effort to maintain liquidity in the market, or whatever remained.
Organised protests
In between, what began as spontaneous protests against the government leadership, especially seeking the exit of all Rajapaksas, starting with President Gotabaya and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, have become sophisticated with unrevealed organisational skills circulating protest venues and timings, especially in Colombo, claiming that it was all only to alert people against traffic congestion (and thus try and avoid police action for spreading disaffection or whatever). With the West, starting with the UN and the US, reading the riot act on people’s freedom to protest peacefully, the weekend saw what possibly was the biggest protest on the capital’s Galle Face Green beachfront on Saturday afternoon.
The authorities too seemed encouraged by the absence of violence from the protesters, after early errant signals, including arson outside President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s suburban Mirihana residence the previous weekend. The authorities are reportedly keeping a close watch on protest patterns, which now include groups of professionals like doctors and lawyers, college and even school students, apart from the city’s rights-conscious middle class, both men and women.
Of particular interest is the visibly high percentage of youth, both men and women, whose demands are restricted to demands for the Rajapaksas’ exit and the abolition of the executive presidency. No one, including the opposition, has taken up cudgels on those issues, or are clarifying what alternate system each of them has in mind. There is also a lack of clarity not just on the government group’s parliamentary majority and its ability to win back any or many of the 42 ‘rebel’ MPs forming three identifiable groups, but also on the capacity of the anti-Rajapaksa forces to gather 113 MPs in a 225-member House, to be able to form a government.
Civil society discomfort
The distinctive discomfort of civil society groups that have been cued on to launch the street protests, and sustain them in big or small ways, to have such ‘time-servers’ in a new government has rubbed on the SJB opposition. There are stray voices, especially from the youthful sections of the civil society groups, but whose numbers are not known, who want the whole system and all present-generation leaders to go. Neither have these faceless groups spelled out alternates and alternatives, including interim arrangements nor have their rural brethren, who have mostly kept themselves to their homes, reportedly happy with the way their stressed-out livelihood fears and concerns are being bartered away for politico-constitutional solutions that are not of prime interest to them, particularly at this hour of collective, societal distress.
Given that the nation has a post-Independence history of episodic JVP militancy in 1971 and 1987, the latter accounting for the military massacre of close to 100,000 Sinhala youth in the reproductive age group, there is unsaid concern about the direction that the street protests may take in the coming days and weeks, and their socio-political fallout, now or later, especially if the political leadership, both of the ruling and opposition kind, does not address the economic distress and constitutional issues, in that order.
The concern within Sri Lanka’s permanent State structure is if the protests were to snowball into an ‘Arab Spring’ kind of movement, with the potential to degenerate into outright anarchy.
https://www.southasiamonitor.org/spotlight/street-protests-mounting-time-running-out-sri-lankas-rajapaksas
