Why can’t they downsize the military?

Now, voices are raised that our military spending should be reduced. It’s rather late, but not too late. The trouble is that neither the president, nor his advisers nor the parliament have uttered a word about it. What is discussed in the British parliament is not even mentioned in ours

This is the second part of my analysis, interrupted last week as a comment on the cricketing scandal was needed, of why we are still stagnating in this economic quagmire. We are not stagnating because we haven’t got any IMF money yet. We are getting sucked in deeper to what looks like a bottomless pit because the government is unable, or unwilling, to carry out the most obvious cuts to reduce state expenditure.

The most glaring part of this burden is our military spending. This was pointed out very clearly in a British parliamentary backbench business committee debate on Britain’s response to our human rights and economic situation recently in the House of Commons chamber.

Conservative Party MPs Elliot Colburn and Theresa Villiers were outspoken in their call for Sri Lanka to cut down on its military budget, which stands at US$1.86 billion per annum! In addition, MP John McDonnell said that alongside human rights abuses, the level of corruption in Sri Lanka is also cause for concern.

Elliot Coburn noted that “All of Sri Lanka’s projections for emerging out of the economic crisis are predicated on the country retaining its generalized scheme of preferences and trade concession. That annual trade concession is worth more than US$500 million and has boosted Sri Lanka’s exports to EU member states over the years.”
He added that Sri Lanka has failed to meet the key labour and human rights requirements for receiving that preferential treatment, and the EU recently issued a warning that it is set to lose its concession if it continues to ignore its obligations. 

Elliot further added: “As a key stakeholder at the IMF, the British Government should propose conditions on any IMF financial assistance for Sri Lanka during the current economic crisis, including that Sri Lanka should carry out a strategic defence and security review to reduce its military spending, remove the military from engaging in commercial activities, meet the criteria for GSP+, and re-engage with the UNHRC process. I appreciate that the IMF does not have powers to impose such conditions on its own, but Britain, as penholder, can have significant influence in the discussions before any bail-out is agreed.” 

He added that one condition which should be attached to any form of aid that goes into Sri Lanka—or any relationship that Britain may have in the future—is that corruption is tackled as a result of a free media un-harassed by Government.
Theresa Villiers highlighted that the Rajapaksa regime wrecked the economy and, as yet, there seems little visible progress under its successor.
Inevitably, any move to attach such conditions to any international bailout would raise the old rallying cry of the xenophobic ultra-nationalist lobby that this neo-colonialist meddling in our sovereign affairs.

I am leaving out that part about the military engaging in commercial activities, because the perspective from London is very different from what it is from Colombo. But they are right about our bloated military budget. Do we really need Britain’s backbenchers to tell us that our military spending is unaffordable? I think I was one of the first, if not the first, to raise this point in any media midway during the Yahapalanaya period, when President Ranil Wickremesinghe was prime minister. Mine was a lone voice in the wilderness. Apparently, everyone else was unwilling to state an obvious truth about what had been turned by the Rajapaksa family into a sacred cow beyond any criticism following the LTTE’s defeat.

The country I took for comparison is Nigeria, then embroiled in a bitter civil war against Boko Haram. Even with oil money and a much bigger population, the Nigerian army waging war was less than half of our peacetime army. One can take many other examples.

Now, voices are raised (interestingly, more in the alterative Sinhala media than in any mainstream media, English or Sinhala) that our military spending should be reduced. It’s rather late, but not too late. The trouble is that neither the president, nor his advisers nor the parliament have uttered a word about it. What is discussed in the British parliament is not even mentioned in ours.
Thirty seven per cent of what the government allocates for state sector salaries goes to paying the army, apart from the 12% given to the police (which comes under the purview of civil defence. This is a staggering total of 49%).

We couldn’t afford it in 2017, and we certainly can’t afford it now. Apart from salaries, everything our military needs, from ammunition to vehicle spare parts, has to be imported – the bigger the army, the bigger the bill is.
We have no external enemies. This huge military apparatus is maintained now with the sole aim of crushing internal dissent. Granted that the army has a lot of popular backing – there are many voters who still think the military can put things right, when one can point to any number of glaring examples internationally, from Pakistan and Myanmar to Argentina, where military rule went horribly wrong -- there is no reason to assume it will be any different in Sri Lanka.

One wonders if the president, at any rate, doesn’t want to ruffle the military for fear of a coup. But, if he is to prove himself a statesman at this critical hour, he should display the boldness and moral courage he displayed when he as prime minister signed the ceasefire agreement in 2004 with Norwegian backing. If he doesn’t show these qualities and talk to military leaders about painful but essential downsizing now, he will only drag us deeper into this socio-economic quagmire.
We should take an example from Brazil, where the army has endorsed the recent election victory of Inacio Lula da Silva, dealing a blow to defeated president Jair Bolsonaro’s hopes for a military-backed comeback. The Brazilian military, which ran the country for two decades, have decided that government is best left for civilians.