Persistent failures and confusion in policy making and implementation are at the heart of Sri Lanka’s governance crisis
What Gotabaya Rajapaksa What did he achieve when he entered his third year as the President of Sri Lanka on 18 November? Governance has a not so fascinating record of failures.
President Rajapaksa is also losing the public’s support, popularity and trust that brought him to power in November 2019.
The current crisis that President Rajapaksa and his regime is facing has four interconnected dimensions – economic, social, governance and legitimacy.
Sri Lanka’s deteriorating economic crisis is not the creation of Mr. Rajapaksa. Yet, he and his team of policy advisors are also at a loss to understand its seriousness and its disastrous consequences that people are forced to endure.
While the impact of the prolonged public health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on Sri Lanka’s economy may take a few years to manage, its social impact has been devastating. There is also a new social crisis in the absence of any effective government intervention to alleviate the economic hardships faced by the poor, the new poor, working people and all sections of the middle class, both urban and rural, born of the pandemic.
a strong leader
Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa began his term as President in November 2019 by promising the people of Sri Lanka a new beginning for a future of stability, security, development and prosperity. He was also open about his ideological project that prioritized the aspirations of Sri Lanka’s majority ethnic community, Sinhalese Buddhists. He also had no democratic pretense. Mr Rajapaksa’s promise was for a ‘strong government’ under a ‘strong leader’ to ensure national security, law and order, political stability and peace with ethnic minorities.
Soon after taking office, he began a program to restore Sri Lanka’s individual model of executive authoritarianism, which had been suspended by the previous government under the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. For this purpose, Mr. Rajapaksa used the public health emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.
Bypassing the then opposition-dominated parliament, Mr. Rajapaksa concentrated much of the financial and administrative power in his own hands, re-establishing the presidential executive as the central body of state power. In October 2020, Mr Rajapaksa used a newly obtained two-thirds parliamentary majority to strike down the 19th Amendment. Under the 20th Amendment, Sri Lanka was brought back to executive presidency, which has been a mainstay of Sri Lanka’s democratic decline for decades.
civil-military relations
Mr. Rajapaksa ushered in a new trend in civil-military relations within the framework of Sri Lanka’s governance. Appointing an army commander to head a new presidential task force to manage the public health crisis and placing the military on politicians as well as medical and civilian professionals were the first signs of this. Serving and retired senior military officers have been given an important role in the new political and administrative set-up.
As critics emphasize, the militarization of public administration is a key component of Mr. Rajapaksa’s project of democratization.
Persistent failures and confusion in policy formulation and implementation are at the heart of the ongoing governance crisis since the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the middle of last year. After being persuaded by nationalist thinkers and local conspiracy theorists, President Rajapaksa initially stressed the need for rapid vaccination programs across the country. His encouragement of witchcraft and sorcery to combat the pandemic has thrown public health policy into disarray. It was only after the pandemic reached crisis proportion by the middle of this year that President Rajapaksa turned to science, expert advice and vaccination.
Meanwhile, the current controversy over the president’s ideologically motivated decision to ban chemical fertilizers and inputs in all sectors of agriculture symbolizes the Rajapaksa regime’s record of inept and autocratic approach to initiating economic and social change.
This reckless haste and unfair policy interventions have already caused much social unrest and discontent among a very wide section of farmers.
Similarly, Sri Lanka’s recent handling of the chronic foreign exchange crisis has further destabilized the country’s currency and economy, leading citizens to fear that continuing economic policy failures will lead to economic losses. There may also be a collapse.
Furthermore, amid the uncertainties and confusion in policy decisions and their implementation, the government’s repeated failures to intervene to reduce prices of essential consumer goods and manage the runaway cost of living has made the president’s much-publicized claim an efficient results-oriented, professional, technical, and no-nonsense style of leadership and governance.
core issues
Thus, the Sri Lankan government’s apathy towards people’s suffering amid rapidly falling income levels and erosion of living standards and economic insecurity due to a massive economic and financial crisis is one of many examples of serious failure in governance. In addition, the severity of the economic crisis has also made it impossible for President Rajapaksa to launch state-sponsored social assistance programs for the poor, the new poor and vulnerable sections of the people. Obviously, this is the mainstay of Sri Lanka’s growing social crisis at present.
Amidst all this, what amazes President Rajapaksa’s critics and supporters is how insensitive he and his government have been to their policy failures and the consequences of the regime’s crises to people’s lives and their existence. Is.
It is the accumulation of failures at multiple levels of policy, governance and leadership that have severely eroded the popular support that Mr. Rajapaksa had received just two years ago. It also constitutes the core of the legitimacy crisis which he has to deal with at the individual level as well.
The Rajapaksa administration now faces open defiance and opposition from three large sections of citizens who may have voted overwhelmingly for him in November 2019: rural farmers, small producers engaged in export agriculture, and public sector school teachers. . Many of them are told in their protest rallies, defying police threats and ridiculed by politicians from the ruling party, now regretting that they voted for a band of such rulers in power Is.
It is an open expression of a generalized sense of political confidence and public disillusionment with President Rajapaksa’s leadership that symbolizes the gravity of the legitimacy crisis in the weeks and months to come.
international Relation
One area where the president has managed to achieve some success is foreign relations. He seems to have drawn attention to the bad press locally, regionally and internationally for his regime’s closeness with China at the expense of Sri Lanka’s traditional allies and friends. Improving relations with India, Europe and America seems to be a recent policy change by him.
However, the President is determined to remain in power until the end of his current term and beyond. If Charles de Gaulle and Lee Kuan Yew were the idols of former Sri Lankan leader JR Jayawardene, then Lee Kuan Yew and Chinese President Xi Jinping are the idols of Mr. Rajapaksa. An important lesson that they have learned from all those leaders is that one term of office is hardly enough for a ruler who considers himself a symbol of the fate of the nation.
Meanwhile, a weak and politically vocal parliamentary opposition appears to be President Rajapaksa’s only credible political asset at the moment.
Jayadeva Uyangoda is a former Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science and Public Policy, University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Views expressed are personal
.