STATE OF THE NATION
CAUGHT BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE
Wijith DeChickera feels a hefty shove – one that adds insult to injury when geopolitics kicks a country that’s already down and out in the shins
A Sri Lanka free of colonial shackles awaits conversion of an IMF staff-level cheque bankrolling the nation’s food bills into the safer hard currency of an International Monetary Fund board approved bailout to bring relief to a bankrupt and cash-strapped country.
This relief for some 5.7 million people making do – the World Food Programme (WFP) pegs it as the number facing malnutrition while barely managing their daily meals – may not eventuate while Sri Lanka’s longstanding creditor China plays hardball on the courts of fiscal diplomacy, finessing a cornered government to agree to bilateral extension of its debt. China accounts for a relatively small percentage of Sri Lanka’s external dues (22% of a total US$ 40.6 billion including foreign currency debts).
But it has been perceived as an intractable player for global stakes larger than bailing out small, self-indulgent economies that have lived beyond their means for decades. Today, our minnow’s dalliance with that loan shark is reaping poor dividends: a ratcheting debt cycle (the People’s Republic accounts for 43% of our bilateral dues).
It appears China is willing to play a waiting game, being under no obligation to dance to UN agencies’ tunes dictating that bailouts for failed nations must go hand in hand with multilateral agreements to restructure Sri Lanka’s sovereign debt, necessitating we beggars go hat in hand back to our largest bilateral bankroller.
China’s hesitancy – or counterintuitive internationalism militating in favour of its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – to take a haircut on the 7.4 billion dollars owed to it by us redounds to political developments at home… where parliamentary elections could redraw the political map of Sri Lanka in favour of Eastern over Western alliances.
That economic powerhouse’s implacable refusal to join the bandwagon of countries and economic blocs (e.g. the Paris Club) that are willing to throw our floundering nation a desperately needed lifeline is sure to send strong signals to myriad states taking the modern BRI Silk Road – some to their evident short-term flourishing, others to find themselves floundering when their debts come up against repayment brick walls.
China’s ‘wait and see’ strategy anticipates what may eventuate in March when – under the provisions in our constitution – President Ranil Wickremesinghe could dissolve parliament and call for general elections.
If so, it will be a Damocles’ sword hanging over the heads of hidden – yet, still powerful – hands that have pulled the strings of this legal but not quite legitimate government for seven months.
It has perpetuated principles, policies and practices of the previous regime, which was ostensibly ousted – although it survived (in a sense) as a result of the incumbent chief executive’s demonstrated willingness to dine with the devil.
Now, the long spoon seems eminently suitable for a head of state and government with no popular mandate to feed his personal and party political ambitions by pulling the rug from under the feet of the previous regime.
The latter – which had propped him up in the hope of biding its time under a puppet government until an opportune moment to stage a viable comeback – recently suffered a setback when the president refused to dance to its tunes vis-à-vis cabinet appointments.
Contrarily, Wickremesinghe – the much vaunted master strategist – craftily bided his time and chipped away at Rajapaksa strongholds until such a time as this when the power balance could easily be reversed in his favour and that of a party demonstrably rejected by voters.
As the politico-military establishment presided over by a politician who has held the reins of power in one form or another for well-nigh half a century of Sri Lanka’s 75 ‘independent’ years commemorates our freedom in lavish style however, there are more causes for castigation, query and accountability than liberated joy.
So is the future of our people dependent on any politico (no matter how much he’s hyped), a party (they’re all opportunistic coalitions, after all) or the pleasure of an international fiscal agency (we’ve had 16 IMF bailouts before!)?
Was the erstwhile aragalaya initially demanding systemic – ahead of regime – change a lost cause from the start?
Short of millions of voters, and a handful of tired and ageing men functioning as enablers of vote seeking legislators changing their ways, as well as thinking afresh, will our societal and sociopolitical bankruptcy be saved by simply reshuffling a deck of crooked cards with the same corrupt jokers and knaves in it?
As LMD’s soon to be released coffee-table book – ‘Reflections’ (looking back on 75 years…) – muses: “Lamentable backsliding into petty political bickering for narrow electoral gains have been encircled by the threats of abysmal decision making and management of our near paradisal country’s natural resources … and of course, the cancer of corruption that has permeated both the state and society in general.”
It’s why an election will cost taxpayers Rs. 10 billion or so but losses to state and citizenry from a single scam may exceed fifteen billion rupees!
Until the perpetrators of those political heists are brought to book, what price socioeconomic justice?
