Sri Lanka should not be another Haiti, Venezuela or Zimbabwe after Sept 21

For the first time in history,Sri Lankan voters have been given the ‘self-destruction’ option of their country. 
If they use it, their choice could well send their country down the perilous path taken by a host of others, from Haiti and Zimbabwe to Venezuela- sadly, people in those countries did not have a free choice, unlike Sri Lankans who will cast their vote on  Saturday. 

 It is neither hyper-partisan nor scare-mongering to tell the people to avoid that eventuality. 

This election is a contest between the commonsense national interest and self-entitled gripe-prone irrationality. The latter impulses have been magnified by the popular anger and despair caused by the economic crisis and exploited by the usual political spin doctors.  

The entire discourse now hovers around falsehood, myths and pie-in-the-sky promises, simultaneously devaluing and delegitimising the praiseworthy economic recovery achieved under the incumbent. The rupee has stabilised, the economy has grown by 5 per cent during the second half of this year, and the government revenue base has expanded. 

But, alas, Sri Lankans are not known to vote for the economy. 

Therefore, let’s consider several dangerous myths that could swing the election. 

Successive politicians have failed the country since independence; therefore, we need a new system. 
Sri Lanka may not have performed on par with a handful of high-achieving East Asian and South East Asian Tiger economies, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and perhaps Malaysia.

But, all these countries recorded impressive growth numbers, having suspended or greatly tamed the political process. If Sir John Kotelawala- after succeeding Dudley after the Hartal- did a bit of Suharto, suspended the political process and ruled for the next 30 years, Sri Lanka could well have been as rich as South Korea. But, successive leaders considered that as morally unacceptable no matter the economic logic. Sri Lanka is still an average performer in the economy and an above-average performer in social indicators among its peer competitors. What prevented Sri Lanka from converting its human development into economic development was insular economic policies. The same policies have yet again been touted as the recipe for prosperity by the JVP and NPP candidate and a half-baked intelligentsia.  

Corruption is the biggest problem, and ending corruption will usher miracle growth. 

Corruption is a problem in every country to varying degrees. However, Sri Lanka has two kinds of corruption problems: one is real corruption, and the other is perceived corruption, where allegations of corruption are bundled around so liberally to delegitimise anyone with no recourse to follow up action. Sri Lanka should surely strengthen anti-corruption laws and technical capabilities. But, to address corruption perception it should also incorporate strong liable laws akin to Singapore, where Lee Kuan Yew sued his opposition leader Jayaratnam into bankruptcy.  

Recovery of stolen assets would finance the expansive list of promised freebies. 

Recovery of stolen assets 

Recovery of stolen assets is time-consuming, and Yahapalanaya’s previous attempt only produced sound bites. Assuming a more concerted effort with international assistance is undertaken, it will still take decades for the process to bring back the stolen assets of the Rajapaksas and their goons. An example of how exhaustive and time-consuming this process is the Philippines’ effort to recover the national wealth stolen by Ferdinand Marcos,  who was alleged to have looted in the range of US$ 5 billion to US$ 13 billion. Like in Sri Lanka, the government of the Philippines set up a presidential commission in 1986 to recover stolen assets. During its first year, it recovered only  US$ 356m. After 20 years, by 2016, it had recovered only $ 3.7 billion, less than a quarter of looted wealth.
Recovery of stolen wealth is a moral duty, and coupled with long prison sentences, it sets a strong deterrent against crime. However, it is not a measure to finance a free-for-all system of freebies to win the elections. 

Freedom and liberty under a JVP government

 Anyone who wishes to have a taste of free participation in politics and dissent under a hypothetical JVP government should take a look at the violence in the Sri Lankan universities. That is a microcosm of the society you will have under the JVP. There are ideological drivers and a quest for political monopoly that underpin that violence, and it is the same drivers that you would be legitimising through your vote. 

Champika Ranawaka says in an interview this could be Sri Lanka’s last democratic election. As I have argued in a previous column, that could well be the case, going by the recent political history of a host of Latin American countries that voted militant left into power and are now trapped in their grip, with no recourse to get rid of them. 
‘The talented Mr. Premadasa’

Sajith Premadasa is the lesser evil of the two opposition candidates—still the second-best option compared to the incumbent, Ranil Wickremesinghe. Mr. Premadasa is not a technocrat. He is your average Third World politician, but that should not be a disqualification. However, he is also self-important. One would expect his advisors to rein in his excesses. However, the executive presidency provides untrammelled powers, which could magnify the ugliness of an individual. 

That his advisors could not stop him from getting into a fratricidal presidential contest that could very well end democracy in this country due to that single wrong choice should make one wonder whether they have leverage over him.

How should Sri Lanka look if worse comes to the worst?

Many observers have lamented that Sri Lankans migrate in droves, mostly for work. Many also called it a brain drain.

That spike has much to do with the catching-up effect after removing Covid-19 related travel restrictions. However, that is not a brain drain. Half of them are unskilled workers, and others are semi-skilled and largely clerical workers. 
Except for

the doctors, whose shortage is more than anything else due to the supply caps enforced by the government to appease the doctors’ trade unions and the absence of private medical schools, the rest of the outbound workers are easily replaceable. It is not a brain drain; it is Sri Lanka releasing its demographic pressure. 
To see what a real brain drain looks like, Sri Lankans should turn to Jaffna, where once a high-flying society is drained of the cream of its members. That segment may not be more than 5 per cent of the  Jaffna population. They are the central pillar of civilization, economy and culture and are not easily replaceable. Jaffna is barren not because of hundreds of thousands of fake and real asylum seekers that followed but because of the loss of its top five percentile of social, cultural and economic class. 

When the reality of a JVP government sinks, Sri Lanka will experience a similar flight of its civilizational elites, like Iranians best and brightest fled after the take-over by the Mullahs. And these people cannot be easily substituted. That is why countries like Haiti find it hard to recover once its best and brightest fled the country. 

Sri Lankans have been offered the self-destruction option of their country. They should eschew the temptation. They should vote for the stability and continuity of the economic reforms. 

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