Editorial

The Avurudu koha (Asian koel) has appeared to herald the traditional New Year, adding to the cacophony of voices on the streets demanding the ouster of the President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The bird heralds the arrival of springtime and a bountiful harvest, but not so this year with the disastrous fertiliser ban by the President ruining the country’s agricultural sector. It must surely be asking how on earth this middle income country of yesteryear has plunged into a state of bankruptcy.

The wheel seems to have come off President Rajapaksa’s juggernaut. The world’s pity is with the people but the people are more angry than self-pitying. They feel let down by the political leadership. But in the scheme of things it is the politicians who will have to fix the broken vehicle. A popular uprising can vent its frustrations. Nothing further happens. Even the four days of debate this week in a raucous Parliament came up with no substantive solutions.

The Government leadership is like the rabbit caught in the headlights. Dazed and shell-shocked by the unprecedented wrath of the citizenry in a week of mass protests starting with a march to the President’s private residence resulting from the unprecedented economic meltdown, the crisis has transformed into a political and even constitutional one that is likely to lead to social disintegration.

It was commendable that the military high command announced it would stand by the Constitution in these uncertain times. It was reassuring for those who feared the ongoing political instability opening up a large constitutional vacuum would turn Sri Lanka into another Myanmar.

Once again there is an outcry to abolish the Executive Presidency. It always emanates from the Opposition ranks only to be forgotten when in office.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa did not promise any such thing and has said he is not going anywhere either. The Presidency, however, is a lonely place. It cuts off the holder from ground realities. President R. Premadasa woke up one morning and found his own MPs trying to impeach him. Not that the Parliamentary system is that much better. MPs are known to take bribes on crucial votes. The pre-Executive Presidency era produced a Prime Ministerial dictatorship. “For forms of government let fools contest; that which is best administered, is best.” Recent Parliaments have failed to scrutinise public finance even though they had the powers and the laws.

However, given the inability of Sri Lankan politicians to share power once ensconced in such high office; and to respect and strengthen independent institutions like the public service, the judiciary, the police, the mainstream media and the Central Bank, this country will only limp from one crisis to another. It has now reached a point of almost no return. Political instability is not what the IMF would want to deal with. If it feel it is wasting its time – and money, with its members’ funds, mapping out a programme to bail out a country from its impasse, it would rather wait for some political stability.

That is why an element of political stability is a sine qua non. And so, if President Rajapaksa says he’s going nowhere, and the Opposition is in no mood to engineer a collapse of his government or impeach him in Parliament, the onus swings back to the President to fix the problem. He sits as the head honcho after all. He wanted it that way. When a Finance Minister he appoints resigns within 24 hours and says he was “compelled” to revoke it, what half-witted signal gets sent around the world?

Given the quality of MPs he has, the President must look for a Finance Minister from outside his Parliamentary group. A former national rugby captain who was the Governor of the Central Bank, Indrajit Coomaraswamy, is an ideal non-partisan candidate for the job. Articulate, honest and possessing the skills needed at high-level negotiations, he would be acceptable to the Opposition as well as the IMF. He can surely be persuaded to accept the job in the national interest and be another Lakshman Kadirgamar. The President has to stabilise the nation first. India had Manmohan Singh, an economist and academic who was inducted by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao as his Finance Minister in 1991 and he is credited with turning that country’s then moribund economy into the thriving, robust one that it is today.

The resilience of democracy is being tested to the limits today. As the Bar Association has stated, peaceful protests should not be hijacked. Some of the uncouth, vituperative language was uncalled for, and so too the violence unleashed. The 1983 pogrom is a lesson in recent history. It triggered a mass exodus of citizens who continue to badger this country from world capitals. It was ironic to see a sticker on the Sri Lanka High Commissioner’s official vehicle in the UK saying; ‘Racist Gota go home’ – and those who only yesteryear praised the President for defeating the LTTE unwittingly cheering. There are posters blaming the Mahanayakes.

To defuse the demand for his immediate ouster, the President might consider the abolition of the Executive Presidency with a date to be determined by Parliament. Then, he must reach out to the independent experts to manage the economy as he seems to be doing now. The rogues he kept in his inner circle are deserting him one by one. The country is slipping into an economic coma. A white flag needs to be waved. An orderly default and a debt moratorium needs to be worked out together with the IMF and the bond creditors after a declaration of a debt standstill which is inevitable as the economy is collapsing like a house of cards. He has to look to the US, the Paris Club and Japan for help.

Otherwise the people will continue to say to the President as Oliver Cromwell told all the MPs of the British House of Commons and later paraphrased to Neville Chamberlain for procrastinating on the eve of World War II; “Depart, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go”. And who is to say, what can of worms opens up next. The worst may be yet to come.