No Better Option Is Currently Visible: Should We Give The Sirisena-Ranil Combo Another Term?
Prof. Kumar David
It’s a bit of a pain to be the first person to publicly propose an idea later, especially if it woks, have multitudes climbing on the bandwagon yelling “No me said it first, no me said it first!” It happened with my Single-Issue Common-Candidate or SI-CC strategy where every two-penny commentator claims precedence and now its happening to my months’ long insistence that economic strategy give priority to the leading role of the state and to the production of material goods. Till recently government strategy has been passive, flaccid, simply INVITING private capital and foreign investment and focusing on the service sector (apartments and malls, shippers, tourism and finance).
At long last half the penny has dropped; not because of my nagging of which no bigwig takes any notICE but because the government was making to progress. Indeed no progress will occur even in a capitalist growth strategy unless the state takes an interventionist approach commonly called the Deng Xio Ping, Lee Kwan Yew, 1990s South Korea model. Now at last the wheels are creaking in that direction; and initiatives are in motion with India, China and Singapore; the name in the news in this context is Manik Samarawickrama. Though an appreciation has dawned of the state’s key in facilitating and connecting together ventures what is still missing is an appreciation that it is not the service sector but the productive sector that should be prioritised; output of agricultural and industrial goods must be given priority (not road and apartment construction). Oddly a government that caterwauls about exports is slow to cotton. No worry when debts deepen and trade deficit widens the other half of the penny will drop. There are a few irons in the fire but nothing tangible has been delivered yet.
A second term for the S&R amalgam
The previous two paragraphs are by way of introduction to something else. What I am getting at in a round about way is that the economy may pick up in three to five years but forget it, it will not improve in a short span and therefore the local government elections are a write off for the governing alliance. The Joint Opposition (JO) will gain; the government had better resign itself to that and endeavour to regain ground in the medium term. And of course that will depend on the economy and livelihood issues more than any other factor. Ranil will have to learn black-magic to create a million jobs, but if he can conjure up half that number in three to five years his government will be back in business. There is no denying that this government is much less kleptocratic than the Rajapaksa swindle-kingdom but caveats are also in order.; Yes, corruption is not as endemic at the top (though nobody seems to know what the devil the Mahendran game was about) but there is plenty of buckshee floating at lower levels. SLFP Ministers are the main culprits. There is a phalanx of Ministers (Harsha, Eran etc) who obviously are above board but conversely there are moves afoot in the power sector for example that make the bond scam look like pennies. (It could be crass stupidity not pecuniary cupidity but it’s a gigantic mess I must take up some other time). Though part of the government is at work on capitalist development goals there are also head winds which counter these gains and could blow them out of the window.
