Financial crisis, street demos and political chaos - EDITORIAL

Sri Lanka’s multiple crises caused by a lack of foreign reserves is at the heart of  the country’s huge foreign debt and the inability to purchase the imported goods that Lankans rely on, including much of their food and medicine, and all of their fuel. 

Our country needs to repay at least around US$4-6 billion in 2022 alone, but have less than half-a-billion in usable dollar reserves.
This has led to shortages of food, fuel, cooking gas, medicinal needs, and educational necessities which have converged together with a skyrocketing cost of living. Together with static wages, it has led to social unrest, with protests springing up in all corners of the country on a daily basis.

Despite ethnic, religious and linguistic differences which prevailed over the years, the protests have unified the people’s resistance to the ruling family and are demanding an end to the spiraling cost of living and shortages of essentials. 

Medicines and medical supplies – most of which are imported – have become hard to find. Doctors and medical trade unions are warning that the health system could break down.
More recently the clergy, including the powerful Buddhist clergy too have become party to demanding the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to step down and make way for a change of regime. On Friday a joint trade union action brought the country to a standstill via strike action.

But the political parties in opposition are disunited and fragmented, though they too echo the cry of the streets, calling on the president and premier to resign. The president himself has said that he is willing to appoint a new interim administration from opposition ranks if they can show a majority in parliament. But the political parties seem agreed they want no role in an interim administration headed by the president. 

The Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), the leading party in the parliamentary opposition is calling for a ‘No Confidence Motion’ (NCM) against the president including a reinstatement of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution which strips the president of his executive powers, and is collecting signatures to be handed over to the Speaker of the House. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is however against the NCM without knowledge of what the next step would be.

Even if the president were to resign, it is not clear whether opposition parties are ready to take on the responsibility of seeing the country through the economic crisis, given that we have now applied to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a debt restructuring facility and that organization is certain to impose conditions for further lending that will force painful sacrifices on average man in the street. Such a step will make whoever is in power unpopular.

The protests on the streets are spontaneous and apparently with no organized political leadership. The demand is for the president and premier to step down. Unfortunately, there is as yet, no plan for ruling the country in the event the president should agree to leave office. Not unnaturally, across the country people are getting increasingly nervous and desperate. 
Shortages of essential goods, coupled with crop failure caused by the fertilizer ban and the drop in the value of the rupee has put basic commodities out of reach for a majority of the population. High prices have hit daily paid workers, especially hard and daily paid workers constitute over 50% of the working population in the country.

At this critical juncture, the country is stuck in a political standoff. The president refuses to resign and the political opposition is refusing to come up with a plan for the country to go ahead. 
In the meantime, the crisis is worsened by power cuts of up to three to four hours daily, as power plants lack fuel to generate electricity. Lack of reliable power is forcing many businesses to shorten their hours and has led to a closure of a number of small industrial units. The time for sloganeering like ‘Gota go home’ is now over. Our politicians and political parties need to get their act together to pull the country out of its economic morass. It has been pointed out that the country’s foreign exchange reserves could run dry within weeks. 
There is no more time to waste, the alternative is a descent into anarchy.