Editorial: Power of street protests

The surreal images of protestors storming the presidential palace and Prime Minister’s residence represent utter chaos enveloping Sri Lanka. The scenes of the protestors having a free run inside the official residences may be disturbing but they demonstrate the sheer power of street protests and frustration of the people over the deepening economic crisis. The […]

The surreal images of protestors storming the presidential palace and Prime Minister’s residence represent utter chaos enveloping Sri Lanka. The scenes of the protestors having a free run inside the official residences may be disturbing but they demonstrate the sheer power of street protests and frustration of the people over the deepening economic crisis. The Rajapaksa family is widely blamed for pushing the island nation into an unmanageable crisis, marked by shortages of food, fuel and medicines for months. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa offered to resign after being forced to flee his palace in the face of a huge crowd storming the premises. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe also said he will step down after a new all-party interim government is formed. Under the Sri Lankan Constitution, if both president and prime minister resign, the Speaker will serve as acting president for a maximum of 30 days. Parliament will elect a new president within 30 days from one of its members, who will hold the office for the remaining two years of the current term. The cash-starved nation of 22 million people has been witnessing tumultuous protests with angry citizens hitting the streets demanding the resignation of the President and Prime Minister. The economy now hangs by a thread and is dependent entirely on the ability of its political class to come swiftly to an arrangement to run the government. International aid agencies have said that some 7 million Sri Lankans, or one-third of its population, are facing hunger as food supplies have run out, or are out of reach for most.

Sri Lanka has now fully run out of fuel and has pinned its hopes on two more shipments of fuel from India, of which the first is expected to reach only by the middle of next week. The new government will have to take over negotiations with the International Monetary Fund. A severe shortage of foreign currency has left Rajapaksa’s government unable to pay for essential imports, including fuel, leading to debilitating power cuts lasting up to 13 hours. The present crisis, the worst in several decades, is largely attributed to the economic mismanagement by successive governments that created and sustained a twin deficit –- budget shortfall alongside a current account deficit. Colombo’s crisis has been in the making for more than a decade due to the country’s excessive dependence on imports and borrowings for a raft of massive infrastructure projects. It highlights how unbridled borrowing for big-ticket infra projects such as those under China’s Belt and Road Initiative can lead to terrible complications. The government’s ill-advised switch to organic agriculture and badly-timed tax cuts squeezed revenues. The pandemic dealt a further blow as revenues from tourism and remittances, the two key sources for earning foreign exchange, hit rock bottom.

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