Editorial

Two major hurdles need to be cleared for Sri Lanka’s future, the destiny of which will be determined abroad. One is the drag-on debt restructuring issue and the other is the Human Rights sessions in Geneva.

China still kept the rest of Sri Lanka’s creditors guessing over its commitment to reschedule debts at the G-20 meeting of Finance Ministers in Bangalore on Friday. On the other front, one will have to wait and see how the Geneva sessions pan out. The Government is moving ever so slowly to react to the repeated resolutions getting passed at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and getting deeper into trouble with the West, while appealing to the West at the same time to bail it out of the debt restructuring impasse.

The President said little in public on the Government’s strategy in Geneva – if there is any strategy, but kept repeating his mantra on the state of the economy with specific reference to the IMF bailout expected next month even though it hinges on the final outcome of negotiations with the country’s creditors.

In Kandy last weekend, the President announced that his administration has fulfilled the 15 conditions imposed by the IMF for the bailout. He identified only one of the 15 – the recent steep electricity tariff leaving the country to guess what the other 14 were. He then told Parliament that he would submit the IMF proposals to them with a caustic ‘take it or leave it’ approach suggesting that if they say dump it, they, and the country, would face the consequences.

Outside Parliament, the unions were up in arms screaming at the increased tariffs and the additional tax imposed. These protests reflect the views of the people to the extent that the Government has been somewhat insensitive to the realities of their daily struggles for over a year after three years of Covid lockdowns.

One may look at it differently as well.

For too long has Sri Lanka gone on bended knee before the IMF seeking assistance during difficult times – some 14 times in all before this, only to renege on the pledges made to implement reforms to the economy. Sri Lanka was able to get away all 14 times, but not this time because now Sri Lanka is bankrupt unlike before. No foreign lender is willing to play Santa Claus in these circumstances. There’s now a President willing to bite the bullet and offer to steer the country towards an IMF programme so that the country can survive.

Being unelected with no mandate and all that his critics accuse him of, maybe the best thing to happen because he should have no obligation to pander to electoral politics. It was those elected in the past, and with thumping mandates who refused to act on promised IMF programmes of yesteryear, fearing a backlash at the next elections and ran the country in the meantime to a state of bankruptcy; a country the world quotes as an economically failed state.

The Government must, however, keep a close eye on the poorest of the poor, the city workers on a fixed salary and see that they are not thrown to the wolves in the process of the country getting discharged from its own bankruptcy. Those who earn foreign exchange, viz., the tea and commodities sector, the apparel industry, tourism, and so on, must be given special treatment and tax concessions before they go under, unable to compete in the world markets, as foreign investments in the present climate of political uncertainty are going to be few and far between.

Cost-cutting: Travel by example

 

Orders from the Presidential Secretariat to the public sector to cut expenses have extended to foreign travel. The Foreign Ministry which arguably has to spend the most on foreign travel given the nature of its work has rebutted a news item last week in this newspaper that its officials travel Business Class.

Given the high cost of air travel nowadays as airlines try to make up for lost revenue and international travellers rush to catch up on lost time due to the near three-year Covid restrictions read with the Government’s economic crunch, these are long overdue orders.

As further cost cutting, the Foreign Ministry and the Government must explore the cost-benefit of continuing with diplomatic missions in countries like Poland, Cuba, Brazil, Seychelles etc., and divert those savings to add muscle to the missions in India, China, Japan etc., and in Europe, which play a crucial role today in the economic recovery of Sri Lanka. Cost cutting, though, is not the only way to safeguard revenue reserves; there are ways to make money, especially by consular services that are provided.

In the larger scheme of things, cost-cutting in the public sector is the name of the game in these trying times. The private sector has already been forced into it for sheer survival, and its workers are taking the hit, so why not the public sector? Government Ministers must provide leadership in these matters and such Presidential directives ought to have been extended to them. There may be times when they must travel comfortably and not look sleepy and dishevelled when they go for their important meetings upon landing. It is, therefore, good that the Presidential Order has exemptions to be individually approved by the Secretariat. But these must be exceptions to the rule, not become the rule itself.

Ministers must lead by example. That is how morale is lifted. The Irish President recently flew back home from Poland on Ryan Air, a budget airline. Field Marshal Montgomery ate the same rations as his soldiers during World War II to win their unwavering support to go into battle as partners achieving one goal.

Political leaders, including ex-Presidents still active in politics are not only occupying state bungalows, but renovating them with swimming pools on government account. In the past, these leaders took planeloads of officials and hangers-on on foreign junkets. Aircraft were used like they belonged to them. Credit cards with government accounts were used to party. It was carnival time without a care in the world as to who was to pick up the bills that piled up. The ordinary people are now left to settle the arrears.

These presidential orders must, therefore, extend to Government Ministers and ruling party MPs while checking on those Ministers who slip through the net by saying their “friends” paid for their air ticket and hotel accommodation.