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As this is being written Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa is presenting his maiden budget to Parliament. What further shocks await a hapless public already struggling under constantly rising food prices, shortages including household requirements such as gas to keep the home fires burning will be known by the time this appears.

It might be recalled that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa warned a while back that the country must be prepared for further hardships. So if fuel prices are jacked up as Energy Minister Udaya Gammanpila seems to anticipate by preparing the ground talking of price increases in other countries, then that will be another big ‘shokku’, as the Japanese would say.

One need not have attended Minister Bandula Gunawardena’s economics classes to grasp that higher fuel prices have a spiraling and spreading effect that increases prices of other products such as vegetables, coconuts and many others that need to be transported.

Moreover the finance minister has to build up his fiscal reserves which, like everything else, have been heading for the bottom of the pit unless the Central Bank Governor who, by the way, is an accountant and not an economist, keeps his finger on the printing machine switch and churns it out like some Greek Bonds he should be familiar with.

At the beginning of this government some taxes were removed or adjusted in a gesture of political magnanimity or mistaken profligacy resulting in tax revenues plunging. Now that the Government has capitulated and agreed to adjust the salaries of teachers and principals in this budget itself after finally conceding the demands of education unions, the finance minister will be compelled to increase the budgetary allocation for education or divert funds already planned for other sectors in the education vote.

It seems incredible that health–with the pandemic still alive and kicking– and education should figure so low in government priorities whereas the military budget tops the priority list for the second year even when there is no war on, unless one anticipates military action of some sort before long.

Whatever the financial Aladdin who was brought into the cabinet with a Dickensian great expectation that he could revive the economy by rubbing the magic lamp or fill the coffers with a Midas touch as he did with the political fortunes of the Rajapaksa family by cobbling together a vote- winning party, the hallmark of the Government in the last several months is its capacity to backtrack, U-turn and side-step issues making one wonder whether adhoc-ery is the principle that guides governance.

Nothing illustrates this better than the recent creation of a Task Force(TF) to dictate the way to a “one country, one law” system and the composition of its membership headed by a monk whose activities and actions have been the subject of angry and clamorous debate and judicial reprimand.

When the appointment of the Task Force and its composition were announced it raised hell in the country and outside it. Not just the ethnic and religious minorities but sections of the majoritarian Sinhala and Buddhist communities, political circles, legal bodies and others raised Cain and the Justice Minister Mohamed Ali Sabry was prepared to throw in the towel at what was surely a gesture that seemed to question his ministerial competence.

President Rajapaksa reportedly told Minister Ali Sabry that there were errors in the drafting and later a new gazette notification not only carried the amended role of the TF but also corrected a major lacuna in the composition of the Task Force by including representatives of the Tamil community which had been ignored in the first announcement.

Moreover, the role of the TF was downgraded from what was much more than what might be called a supervisory role to an advisory one. Given the importance attached to the one country, one law concept, the new gazette could be said to denote a seismic change though the controversial chairperson remains unchanged. What is more, the TF is now expecting to call for public views!

The important question is who was responsible for the original draft that created such a furore’ and how the said errors–if they were mistakes to begin with– were not spotted and corrected earlier shows the quality of the officials entrusted with these tasks.

Beating the retreat on this is not the first time—and perhaps not the last—that u-turns and gazette withdrawals are hastened as ill-conceived policies produce negative results and prices keep heading for the stratosphere and shortages of some essential items continue to bedevil particularly daily wage earners.

Earlier it was possible to blame all the lapses and governance failures on the pandemic. That blame game is running out of gas like the LPG. So now ministers and others have found a new scapegoat. Now they use the “M” word.

Here, in the UK, the use of the “P” word—a racist slur that has been abbreviated to avoid utterances that hurt some South Asian ethnic communities—has stirred up real trouble particularly over Yorkshire cricket administrators ignoring racist remarks directed at those of Pakistani origin by ‘white’ cricketers.

Out in the Resplendent Isle abbreviations are a rare commodity, as those listening to parliament proceedings would concede. Anyway “M” stands for Mafia and every prices rise and every shortage is blamed on the local mafia.

It is the loquacious Agriculture Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage who uses it most as though it is a punctuation mark. One year ago he talked of a “vegetable mafia”. Later he mentioned a rice mafia, a fertiliser mafia and a “trade mafia”. To listen to his lamentations the Mafioso are running this country.

Is he saying that the local Sicilian clan has outwitted the Rajapaksa clan? That surely is a poor reflection on this powerful administration.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London)