Wizards Of Original Sin

By Ameer Ali –JUNE 18, 2022

Dr. Ameer Ali

Parade of wizards

It started with Gotabaya Rajapaksa (GR), the strong man president who like a wizard promised “vistas of prosperity and splendour” through an undefined alternate development path. In the end, that path turned out to be a highway to economic disaster. Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR) who was also the Minister of Finance took up the task of financing GR’s highway. Eventually, it became too hot to handle and soon imported his other sibling Basil Rajapaksa (BR) from US to take over that task. BR, an imported wizard, hastily presented a so-called development budget and flew immediately to India without even listening to the debate over his budget in the parliament and begged for funds to cover his budget deficit. GR’s alternate path and vistas of prosperity, which was to be funded through deficit budgets and borrowed funds, surprisingly had a veneer of intellectuality when the handpicked Governor of CBSL, Professor W, D. Lakshman (WDL), publicly defended that path as a critique of neoliberal economics. All this drama took place in a depressive global environment created by the Covid pandemic joined later by the war in Ukraine.

As signs of bankruptcy became clearer the CBSL chief became the first notable casualty. He resigned and was replaced by accountant Nivard Cabraal (NC), a former CBSL chief turned pro-government politician who backed GR’s alternate path with new gusto. As predicted, financial bankruptcy entered through the front door and the economy needed life support. To the regime of course, the pandemic and Ukraine war became scapegoats to shift the blame. In reality tough, GR, MR, BR and all their economic and financial wizards, ignored warnings of an impending bankruptcy by experienced economists at home and abroad and by international institutions. Not only they ignored those warnings but even ridiculed the warners as doomsayers. What happened afterwards is public knowledge.

Economic chaos inevitably led to public protests and created political instability. A young and awakened generation of Sinhala Buddhists demanded GR to go home and all 225 parliamentarians to quit. More about this later. Unable to face the chaos, MR and BR resigned and NC was sacked. A beleaguered GR was looking for a new wizard to tackle the problem. His eyes fell sympathetically on the former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe (RW) who has a dubious record of a weak leader in times of trouble. He emerged as the protector of Rajapaksas and earned the nick name Ranil Rajapaksa among critiques. Under his premiership a so-called All-Party Government was formed and strangely enough there was no one within the ruling party to accept the finance portfolio. RW had no alternative but to accept that responsibility too. No sooner the new wizard took up that portfolio, he warned the people that things would have to get worse before getting better, and on that point, he was deadly accurate. Long queues for essential purchases are continuing and the country is almost at the verge of acute food shortage if not starvation, and the next rice harvest does not look promising.

In the meantime, the long-awaited IMF restoration package has not been finalized yet, but would certainly add, when implemented, to the overall misery of the masses unless some sort of a safety net is worked out in the interest of the needy and deserving. Before that, the new PM cum FM has already embarked on a series of economic reforms acceptable to IMF. Also, the newly appointed CBSL Governor Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe (NW), who RW wants removed, has reversed the easy monetary policy set by his predecessors so that the reversal falls in line with IMF restoration program. Finally, to add further vigour to the ongoing economic jihad, a new financial wizard, Dhammika Perera (DP), had been admitted through the backdoor as Minister of Technology and Investment Promotion. He happens to be one of if not the richest individual in the country, according to reliable sources. But whether he is also the highest income tax payer is another matter. But he is expected to attract foreign investment to flood the economy and boost growth. One has to wait to see whether his wizardry would be realized. In sum, over the last two to three years, there had been a parade of wizards from GR to MR to BR, WR, and DP, and from WDL to NC and NW each expected to possess a magical wand to produce economic miracles and regain the lost paradise. Yet, none of them seems to have had the wisdom or the courage to question the very foundation of the system on which the politics and the economy of the country are structured. Surprisingly and pleasantly, that questioning has arisen from an unexpected quarter in the form of aragalaya. More about this later.

Original Sin & Continuing Evil

There is no better term than St. Augustine’s Christian concept of original sin to describe what happened in Ceylon soon after it was gifted with political independence by the British in 1948. Instead of building a united nation of Ceylonese from the island’s inherited multicultural polity, as Singapore demonstrated later, the elite who received that gift started redefining Ceylon and Ceylonese in terms of ethnicity first and language and religion later. That redefinition was carried out in the interests of the dominant Sinhala-Buddhist community. Michael Robert’s equation, Ceylon = Sinhala and therefore Ceylonese = Sinhalese came to determine the democratic paradigm of parliamentary system of government based on the Westminster model. Renaming Ceylon as Sri Lanka did not change the substance of that equation. That was the original sin which snow balled over the last seven and half decades to produce series of political landmarks in the shape of racial riots, ethnic pogroms, and a civil war, all of which epitomized the redefined national identity and created an ideology of Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian supremacy. Robert’s “Where Majoritarian Part Subsumes the Whole: The Ideological Foundation of Sinhala Extremism” (Thuppahi Blog, July 28 2016) captures the essence of this sinful transformation.

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