Dr. Sachithanandam Sathananthan

Strategic ambiguity dribbles into the Arabian sand

India’s subservience to the United States became all too clear, if not earlier, certainly when New Delhi joined and supported US Imperialism’s brainchild, the India-Middle East-Europe-Economic corridor (IMEC) at the 2023 G20 Summit. New Delhi loyally complied as Washington manoeuvred to pit the IMEC as a political challenge to, and a strategic alternative for, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

New Delhi may be convinced that its actions are in accordance with India’s national interests. They include also its participation in US Imperialism’s anti-China 2007 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), rebooted in 2017, supposedly to ensure “free and open” Indo-Pacific maritime routes. In return New Delhi anticipated the US would side with India as a critical counterweight to China’s growing might in the Indian Ocean

India’s strategy planners masked the consequent self-inflicted geopolitical vulnerability with the slogan Strategic Ambiguity. However they perhaps ought to have paid heed to Russian General and geopolitical theorist Aleksei Vandam’s 1912 aphorism about the perfidious Anglo-Saxons: “It is bad to have an Anglo-Saxon as an enemy, but God forbid to have him as a friend!” Henry Kissinger paraphrased it for the United States.

Washington used Trump Administration’s tariffs to bludgeon New Delhi into acceding to the February 2026 preliminary Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA). The initial terms of the lopsided BTA committed India to, among others, “stop purchasing Russian Federation oil” and “eliminate or reduce tariffs on all U.S. industrial goods and a wide range of U.S. food and agricultural products”.

The near catastrophic damage the BTA would inflict on India’s manufacturing sector is obvious; it is equally clear the concessions the US extracted for its agricultural sector threatens the livelihood of almost 50 per cent of the India’s population, engaged in agriculture. Belated breast beating by nationalist Indians is unlikely to arrest what many bemoan as the gradual re-colonization of India.

Although India is a Founder Member of BRICS, New Delhi’s declaration in early March that it has “absolutely no interest” in the Organisation’s de-dollarization policy is one more reason for the growing suspicion among the Global Majority that India is a US mole within the BRICS. Consequently India’s positions in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) – a counter to NATO – too have come under a cloud, especially since both organisations are strongly backed by China and Russia.

The recent double speak by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson, that “(i)f India is part of Quad, India is equally a partner in BRICS”, convinces at best the party’s diehards. India descends to glib justifications at its peril.

Islamabad steals a march on New Delhi

Pakistan apparently took advantage of the weakening trust in India to score a stunning feat of diplomacy when both Washington and Tehran in late March accepted Islamabad as the main Interlocutor in the on going “talks” on resolving the war triggered by the US-Israeli attack on Iran on 28 February. Islamabad, as Mediator, negotiated the Islamabad Accord, a two-week ceasefire on 8 April with the full backing of Beijing and Moscow and assisted by Muscat; evidently largely due to a significant degree of trust Washington and Tehran have reposed in Islamabad.

Pakistan’s diplomatic coup came as a body blow to India’s long asserted claim to be, in effect, the singular representative of the Global South. Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar strove to minimise the political fallout; he brushed aside Islamabad’s landmark achievement: “We aren’t like Pakistan,” he disdained; “we aren’t a dalal”. Dalal (broker) or not, both Washington and Tehran trusted not India, the self-proclaimed Vishwaguru (Universal Educator), but Pakistan. Islamabad is widely seen to be acting on behalf of the Global Majority’s elites in general in the unfolding historic power struggle in West Asia.

New Delhi’s Strategic Ambiguity, in the Indian context, is arguably the myopic tactic of sitting-on-the-fence; it’s little more than village cunning, so to speak, writ large on inter-State relations. The advantages are obvious; less obvious are the costs of the resulting emasculation of political integrity, of being distrusted by almost all sides. Washington cannot but view India’s presence in the SCO with caution while Tehran is unlikely to be pleased after Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured the Israeli Knesset: “we feel your pain, we share your grief”. What’s worse, he condemned Hamas’ resistance and not Israel’s genocide in Gaza two days before the US-Israeli unprovoked and illegal February attacked on Iran, an attack he unconvincingly claimed was unaware of.

The foreign policy mandarins in New Delhi seemingly believe India’s Strategic Ambiguity involves being friends with all countries; India’s prominent role in the Non-Aligned Movement infused the stance with an element of credibility, which, however, wore off after the Cold War ended in 1990-91. Most among the Global Majority are not impressed by the foreign policy posture, as evidenced by the limited support India received, from the US, UK, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and EU, for its 2025 Operation Sindoor against Pakistan.

India’s collaboration with US Imperialism and NATO’s brutal colonial invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (2001 to 2021) also tainted its geopolitical standing. New Delhi chose to be a Development Partner, implementing a wide range of infrastructure and capacity building projects, costing more than $3 billion, it plausibly claimed to have “humanitarian” outcomes including a taste for Bollywood movies distributed to enhance India’s soft power.

However, New Delhi stood with US Imperialism and on the wrong side of history in Afghanistan. The Global Majority in general cannot but interpret India’s interventions as designed to prop up, to “stabilise”, the US colonial regime in Kabul.

Unsurprisingly, the fiercely nationalistic Afghan people, whose country has been the Graveyard of Empires, and many a Muslim-majority country could not have forgotten India’s dreadful bid to buttress the US Occupation. That deepened India’s political isolation.

New Delhi palpably hoped to worm its way back into Afghan hearts by aligning with Kabul against Islamabad in the recent skirmishes between the two nations. The ploy proved essentially futile since the April Kabul-Islamabad peace talks were held in Beijing – not in New Delhi!

Washington’s demarche

Strategic Ambiguity suffered a further setback. The visiting US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau delivered his government’s demarche to the Indian foreign policy establishment at the Raisina Dialogue on 5 March 2026, about a week into the US-Israeli aggression on Iran. He reminded New Delhi of its role as a subordinate ally: “India should understand that we are not going to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China 20 years ago in terms of saying, we are going to let you develop all these markets, and then, the next thing we know, you are beating us in a lot of commercial things.”

Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar’s tepid response, the “rise of India…will be determined by our strength, not by the mistakes of others”, dodged directly challenging Washington. The Opposition Congress Party pounced on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s timidity.

Landau insinuated the US is not fooled by India’s amorphous foreign policy position, which would not dissuade Washington from undermining, directly or indirectly, the country’s economy if that ever remotely challenged US global hegemony (as China has done successfully). Is it a mere coincidence that about a week after the US demarche, Indian security forces arrested six Ukrainian nationals and one US citizen in Mizoram and charged them with training “insurgents” and supplying them weapons in the India-Myanmar border areas?

The Clinton administration did not make “mistakes”, as Landau claimed. They supported China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1999, a White House press statement explained, to “enable Chinese businesses and consumers to connect with the global economy and advance China’s integration into that economy…This cannot help but promote the right kind of change in China.”

Reading between the lines, inviting China into the WTO is a counter-revolutionary strategy. Washington schemed that China’s private sector manufacturing and high technology entrepreneurial class, once integrated into the “global [capitalist] economy”, would grow stronger. The emboldened class could then, if necessary nudged to, challenge the Chinese Communist Party’s Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and gradually “promote the right kind of change”, towards a US-style capitalist system.

The subterfuge ignominiously failed because Beijing took advantage of Washington’s ignorance of China’s economic model and artfully dodged the trap. They exploited the expanded access to global markets through the WTO to accelerate China’s State-planned market economy and boost its own meteoric economic rise during the three post-Cold War decades (1991-2020).

Strategic Ambiguity: Gandhi’s legacy

The Strategic Ambiguity approach, arguably, is partially rooted in Mohandas K. Gandhi’s politics of non-violent resistance, predominantly through self-deprivation, against British colonial rule in India (1920 -1942). Though cloaked in the lofty concept of Satyagraha (truth as strength), most Indian housewives would readily recognise the tactic; for they routinely threaten to touch not a morsel of food, a drop of water (fasting) till the abusive husband changes his ways (if at all, and not for long). It’s a weapon of the weak.

Gandhi’s Satyagraha technique claims to not coerce but to persuade and transform the violator by the force of reason. The suffering of the oppressed is said to purify the sufferers and appeal to the soul of the oppressor. The theme is cinematically exploited by countless Indian movies (Devdas) to almost deify the sacrificial wife/lover and Hollywood (The Beauty and the Beast) popularised it globally.

No convincing historical or contemporary evidence could be found to support the contention that a victim’s suffering purified the soul of either the oppressed or the oppressor. Moreover, the practice of Satyagraha severely retards the growth of adversarial political teeth, essential to effectively interact in power-driven realpolitik. What’s worse, it avoided challenging the legitimacy of the British colonial regime.

Consequently individuals committed to Satyagraha internalised the causes of oppression embedded in the structure of the colonial State; they compensated their powerlessness by claiming an elusive moral high ground, even superiority, by eschewing violence in their asymmetric, largely losing struggles against the systemic forces of political oppression and military domination.

Trained as a lawyer, Gandhi understandably was unaware that political violence is structural. In Apartheid South Africa, where he first experimented with Satyagraha, he seemingly failed to recognise violence was not embedded in the law but was integral to the colonial system, impelled by the dominant colonising classes in pursuit of their rapacious interests. Perhaps he believed, as many in his fraternity mistakenly do, that reality follows law.

Consequently, he reduced historical processes to the individual who is an intrinsic part of, and largely constrained by, the same forces; his ahistorical approach missed the wood for the trees. Gandhi’s (and his followers’) obsession with the trees – an admittedly inspirational “be the change you wish to see in the world” – failed to grasp the historical task of inflicting a military defeat upon the colonial power.

The anti-colonial revolutions led by Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Ming, Ahmed Ben Bella, Agostinho Neto, Samora Machel, Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Augusto César Sandino and many others resolutely followed the ancient Tradition of the Warrior: that national character is forged in the Crucible of the Sword by vanquishing the gratuitous violator of one’s world.

Frantz Fanon’s formulation in his The Wretched of the Earth sharply underlines that the victory of armed revolutionary force and attendant sacrifices made during an anti-colonial war are essential to reconstitute, to decolonise, the colonised mind savaged by the coloniser.

Crucially, neither Gandhi nor his followers were physically and psychologically equipped for armed revolutionary tasks.

So, Satyagraha spurned that hallowed revolutionary tradition. It papered over the consequent ideological timidity and organisational weakness by invoking the moral superiority of Ahimsa (not inflicting suffering).

Political logic of Satyagraha

The preference for non-violence, despite its moralistic garb, assumes that the colonised people are too weak to directly challenge the colonial State’s armed power wielded by the white master, in whose Empire the sun was said never to set. Gandhi very likely imbibed these formative perceptions of unassailable British military power during his stints with the Natal Indian Volunteer Ambulance Corps in the Second Boer War (1899) and the Indian Stretcher Bearer Corps during the destruction of the Zulu Resistance (1906).

He organised the two Corps as the Empire’s loyal Subject, duty-bound to buttress its colonial wars. He attempted a short-sighted transactional ploy believing that the imputed beneficence of alleged British fair play, perhaps internalised during his legal training as Barrister-at-Law at London’s Inner Temple (1891), would reciprocate Indians’ collaboration by granting a few more rights than those allowed to South Africa’s black population. The Apartheid regime tossed a separate, third door for Indians to enter the post office to chew on, and not much more.

If, as alleged, the counter-revolutionary brutality Gandhi witnessed, especially during the repression of the Zulus, transformed him from the disillusioned Subject into a hopeful rebel, the butchery also overawed the Gandhi. It is fair to surmise that, rather than confront what he saw as devastating British military power and risk a repetition of the terrifying slaughter he had witnessed, Gandhi creatively reached deep into Indian philosophical traditions of non-violence to take refuge in the morally plausible passive resistance or non-cooperation – a sort of State-level trade union action against the British Indian regime.

The political diffidence inherited from the practice of Satyagraha against colonialism was clearly evident when Nehru invited Lord Mountbatten – the arch Imperialist – to assume the historic role of the first Governor General of India in 1947. It was in full display again in the new Indian Army’s tear-jerking farewell to the last departing British contingent, the 1st Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry. The units of the newly formed Indian Army provided the guard of honour and the Indian government gifted an oil painting, the Indian tricolour and a miniature silver replica of the Gateway of India, all presumably in appreciation of the East India Company’s pillage and British Crown’s brutal colonial rule over about two centuries.

One cannot help but contrast the historic defeat of Imperialism’s satrap Chiang Kai-shek in China and the humiliating retreat of the French and US colonial rulers with their armies as they fled Vietnam.

Eisenhower administration’s China trap

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Premier Zhou En-lai exchanged letters in 1959 over the India-China border issue. In the one dated 7 November Zhou implied neither New Delhi nor Beijing had a hand in delineating the colonial border and both sides should logically have no stake in it and, therefore, ought to reach a workable compromise.

A May 1959 note, apparently drafted by Mao Zedong, reportedly assured: “our principal enemy is US imperialism…China will not be so foolish as to antagonize India in the west.” Foreign minister Chen Yi reportedly added: “Our dispute with India is very small…We are in a serious situation and need your friendship”.

At the April 1960 Nehru-Zhou summit, Zhou reportedly suggested a “Barter” to settle the border disputes: China would recognise the McMahon Line and India’s sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh provided Nehru recognised China’s sovereignty over Aksai Chin. Nehru’s formative political grooming in Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement had not sharpened his adversarial teeth to confidently explore Zhou’s offer.

Nehru rebuffed Zhou’s proposed swap reportedly citing constitutional grounds and dismissed it as “horse trading.” He perhaps was emboldened by the Dwight Eisenhower administration’s leanings towards India in the backdrop of US Imperialism’s aggression against China in the east (Korea) and rising Cold War tensions.

New Delhi proudly and with misplaced confidence apparently assumed that the country’s moral defence of China’s right to the UNSC seat occupied by the Republic of China (Taiwan) might compensate for aligning with Washington against Beijing.

However, with the US effectively in their corner and given the deteriorating Sino-Soviet relations, the emboldened Nehru and senior Congress Party leaders adopted a firm, even unyielding, stance against the independently confident revolutionary leadership of China; though formally legal, they yet unwisely clung to British India’s Imperial Forward Policy and the British-drawn flawed border. By digging its heels in, New Delhi played into Washington’s hands.

Evidently Nehru failed to recognise the trap set by Eisenhower; it was in Washington’s geostrategic interest to block a rapprochement between New Delhi and Beijing and, if possible, fan flames of conflict. The legacy of the unresolved Sino-Indian conflict has favoured Washington, which has manipulated New Delhi’s vulnerability arising from its avoidable, hostile opposition to Beijing to this day, demonstrated by New Delhi’s involuntary involvement in the Quad and IMEC and the unsteady role in BRICS.

The credibility of Gandhi’s Satyagraha is based on the so far largely unquestioned and unproven belief that the non-violent agitation either terrified British Imperialism into retreat or reformed Imperial rulers or both to engineer a transfer of power to India. On other hand, the Red Fort Trials of captured patriotic Indian soldiers of Subhas Chandra Bose’s revolutionary Indian National Army catalysed a widespread nationalist upsurge, challenged the legitimacy of the British Indian Regime, struck a deep sympathetic cord among the majority Indian troops in the British Indian Army and arguably played a greater role to stampede the British rulers to transfer power.

*The author is a Sri Lankan independent researcher who read Political Economy for the Ph.D. degree at the University of Cambridge Wolfson College. He was Assistant Director, International Studies at The Marga Institute, Colombo; Visiting Research Scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University School of International Studies; and has taught World History at Karachi University’s Institute of Business Administration. In his Youtube channel @DrSSathananthan discusses history and politics in the current context.  He is an award-winning filmmaker. email: commentaries.ss@gmail.com

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Dr. Murali Vallipuranathan

The horrifying tragedy at the Mawpiya Sevana care facility in Anguruwatota, Horana, is a dark and indelible stain on our national conscience. At least 13 vulnerable elders and psychiatric patients were burned to death or fatally injured when an uncontrollable blaze swept through the building. The image of citizens trapped in an inferno, unable to escape the very walls meant to protect them, should haunt our lawmakers.

However, we must be brutally honest: this was not a mere accident. It is the predictable, catastrophic endpoint of a profoundly broken system. For years, privately run care homes have operated as unregulated dumping grounds for senior citizens and individuals suffering from severe cognitive, neurological, or behavioral disorders. Functioning completely in the shadows, these institutions exist stripped of independent, regular medical supervision.

The Horana inferno is the alarm bell of a systemic collapse we can no longer afford to ignore.

The Tip of the Iceberg and the Shadow Network

It is critical for the public and the state to understand that the Horana tragedy is not an isolated incident of bad luck; it is merely the visible tip of a massive, submerged iceberg. Across the island, an expansive network of similar institutions operates entirely off the grid.

These shadow facilities thrive by profiting off the desperation of families who have been utterly abandoned by the state’s lack of social safety nets. Hidden away from the view of regulatory bodies, law enforcement, and the public, they function as lawless islands.

Furthermore, Sri Lanka is currently standing on the precipice of a severe demographic crisis. We are experiencing a rapid “silver tsunami.” Our population is aging at one of the fastest rates in South Asia, with estimates indicating that by 2030, over one in five Sri Lankans will be over the age of 60. Without immediate, aggressive, and structural government intervention, the demand for eldercare will skyrocket. If the state fails to act now, it will effectively force more vulnerable citizens into these shadow institutions, escalating this crisis into an unprecedented national humanitarian catastrophe.

The Hidden Reality: Warehousing, Neglect, and Ant Infestations

As public health professionals, we have long witnessed the quiet, systemic rot inside many of these unregistered or poorly monitored facilities. Behind closed doors, away from the sanitized narratives presented to occasional donors, elders are subjected to subhuman living conditions.

It is an open secret within the medical community that some homes are so severely neglected that basic hygiene is non-existent. In the most harrowing cases, bedridden, immobile residents are left unchanged and unwashed for days, suffering from extensive ant and insect infestations on their open bedsores and bodies.

This institutional cruelty happens because these facilities are allowed to operate purely as lucrative businesses or informal, unaccountable charities. They remain completely insulated from regular, unannounced inspections by independent medical practitioners or state regulatory authorities. They are warehouses for the living, designed to hide the elderly away until they die.

The Illusion of Custody: The Illegality of Chaining and Detention

There is a dangerous, widespread misconception among the Sri Lankan public and institutional operators that individuals displaying aggressive, wandering, or difficult behavioral problems can be indefinitely locked away, detained, or physically chained “for their own safety.”

Let it be unequivocally clear: this is a severe criminal offense.

1. No Legal Authority for Private Citizens

No private citizen, family member, or care home director possesses the legal right to strip an individual of their physical liberty. Under the Penal Code of Sri Lanka, chaining, tying up, or locking a person in a room constitutes:

* Wrongful Restraint (Section 330)

* Wrongful Confinement (Section 331)

2. The Mental Health Exception

Even during acute psychiatric crises, legal detention can only occur for brief, strictly defined periods under direct medical oversight. This is specifically mandated by qualified psychiatrists within registered psychiatric facilities or specialized hospital units—never by laymen or untrained staff in a private home.

When untrained care homes informally “detain” individuals with dementia or mental illnesses, it inevitably leads to tragedies like Horana. When the fire erupted in Anguruwatota, those trapped, locked away, or unable to move due to informal physical restraint stood zero chance of survival. They were effectively handed a death sentence by their captors.

Urgently Needed: A New Regulatory and Protocol Framework

The current system relies on passive, archaic, and toothless legislation like the Protection of the Rights of Elders Act, No. 9 of 2000. While well-intentioned for its time, this Act completely lacks the teeth, enforcement mechanisms, and specialized clinical focus required to prevent these horrors.

With the demographic silver tsunami already upon us, the government must step in immediately to implement a radical, two-pronged structural overhaul:

1. Statutory Legislation for Independent Medical Audits

We need an immediate legislative amendment mandating regular, unannounced, and legally binding inspections of all elders’ homes by independent, medically qualified professional bodies (such as the Ministry of Health and college specialists). These inspectors must have the statutory power to evaluate:

* Clinical and psychiatric care standards.

* Sanitation, nutrition, and hydration.

* Fire safety protocols and emergency evacuation plans.

* The physical and mental state of residents.

Crucially, these bodies must possess the immediate legal authority to suspend operations, seal facilities, and arrest operators upon finding violations.

2. A National Protocol for Managing Severe Behavioral Problems

When families can no longer safely care for an individual suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s, dementia, or severe behavioral disturbances at home, they face a void. Sri Lanka urgently needs a formal, state-regulated medical protocol and specialized clinical pathways.

We must establish state-supervised, medically staffed psychogeriatric step-down units across every district. In these units, acute behavioral symptoms can be managed therapeutically and humanely by trained professionals, rather than criminally through chains and padlocks.

Conclusion: A Call to Action

The horrific scene at Horana did not materialize overnight; it is the grim distillation of years of institutional silence, bureaucratic apathy, and a systemic lack of advocacy for those who have lost their voices.

As our elderly population grows by the day, our collective moral failure grows with it. We can no longer look away. The state must intervene with legislative and clinical steel before the shadows of these unregulated institutions claim more innocent lives.

* Dr. Murali Vallipuranathan is a visiting lecturer at the Universities of Jaffna, Peradeniya, and Colombo, a Senior Specialist of the Ministry of Health, and a Council Member of the Sri Lanka Medical Association. The views expressed are offered with social responsibility to improve healthcare, human rights, and accountability in Sri Lanka and do not reflect official positions.

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Prof (Emeritus) Lasantha Pethiyagoda

Ever since foreign tourism was introduced to Sri Lanka, this epithet developed in scope and regularity with the ever-depreciating rupee against hard currencies. For poor people along the coastline tourist areas, this was what parents wished for the children.

Most luxury homes in fishing villages are either owned or funded by white foreigners or offspring through their often-dubious relationships with local boys, girls, women or men. No longer did fishermen, sculptors or mask-workers train their kids to follow their own trade or seek educational qualifications. Latching onto a white-skinned foreigner became the life goal.

It did not matter to poor parents if their boys offered their derrières to ageing gay white men or their adolescent girls to foreign paedophiles. Boys fare better as they do not get pregnant. AIDS and rectal tears or prolapses notwithstanding, as long as the foreigner is willing to set up their lives locally, even if only during the Northern winter season, all is kosher.

Wrinkled old hags with bellies protruding and everything else sagging are made happy by virile young studs who vigorously service them. The same goes for impotent old men who relish the local flavours in pubescent girls who they would never even dream of having in developed Western societies without risking long jail terms.

The villagers whose families manage to net white foreigners jealously guard their catch, not allowing other would-be suitors to approach them with their wares, saying “this is our white (may apey sudda)” almost as if he or she “belonged” to them. They are often treated like kings or queens, everyone deferring to them, constantly addressing them as Sir or Madam regardless of their lowly status back home.

Another common aspect of latching onto a white foreigner is to leave with him or her to the gold-lined glittering western cities they see on television, away from the sweat, dust or mud and mosquitos, traffic and daily struggles. Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, even America become halal for the star-spangled banner glowing in their starry eyes.

It is common knowledge that with these opportunistic paedophiles also come the latest most vile psychotic and hallucinatory drugs that ultimately destroy whole families. Until a few years ago, there was political patronage at the highest levels for the lucrative narcotic trade.

The sex trade is unfortunately not limited to the tourism industry. It is rife in garment factories where especially poor girls and women work for a pittance. Their major income is often derived from offering up their bodies on the streets at night, to rich merchants or other nocturnal blackguards.

In recent times, yet another avenue of illegitimacy and sex crime was exposed with the chief monk of the eight holy worship places in the north-central province. As another thug in robes recently remarked, it is a very common occurrence to service paedophile monks or priests with the often-coerced consent of parents. Although his remarks intended to dilute the gravity of the crime, it has been a norm that no one dared expose publicly as the saffron robe seemed to be above the law. It has been clear for decades that hypocrisy reigns supreme in our resplendent isle, where certain crimes are taboo while the most tragic ones are ignored.

With the momentous and revolutionary change of government from ruling class to working class power, it was expected that paradigm changes to long-held malpractices, unethical and grossly illegal practices would be severely curtailed using state power, which has been democratically and legally conferred to the people’s party.

Yet, there seem to be internal forces that pull against the progressive features of official policy. The future generations are the precious stones that lie hidden in the deep mines of society in our blessed motherland. That treasure should not be squandered.

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Basil Fernando

In recent decades, one of the most significant developments in Sri Lanka has been the rise of political journalism. There may be many reasons for this. One key reason is the severe repression, brutality, and suffering inflicted on ordinary people during certain political developments over several decades. It took time for a reaction to emerge, but eventually, mature general media channels and a more mature form of journalism developed, along with enhanced communication capacities.

In any society, the development of social space is even more important than political space. Political space becomes essential when tensions are high and harsh political powers need to be replaced with softer approaches. But once those issues are resolved, the most difficult area to face is society itself, which contains many negative aspects that hold it back in its struggle for development. By “development,” I mean the growth of both society and individuals.

The origins of these negative vectors may be very old, rooted in a past shaped by the normal process of repetition. Societies develop in both good and bad ways through constant repetition. This is unavoidable: bad qualities get repeated and become entrenched in people’s minds, souls, and actions.

Discovering these internal factors that hold society back requires inquiry. Some of this inquiry can be done through academic work. But even more important is journalistic discovery of a society’s negative factors.

The value of identifying negative factors is that many people know these factors exist, but they do not know how to speak about them, how to expel them from their inner selves, or how to communicate them in a way that makes self-criticism a normal practice. Self-criticism is not a negative thing; it is one of the most positive aspects of human life. Almost all great philosophies speak of the capacity to look at oneself. For example, a great Indian social reformer from the independence period – a contemporary of Gandhi – introduced the idea of placing a huge mirror in the center of a temple as the divine image. People who came to pray or meditate would sit in front of the mirror, so they could look at themselves. By looking at all aspects of oneself – what is good and what is bad – we develop the ability to see, and even to laugh at, our own weaknesses. A society that knows its weaknesses is stronger than one that only boasts of its successes and strengths. The capacity to understand weakness is a permanent and essential aspect of social development.

From this perspective, we have not yet developed societal journalism in any significant way. But it could be developed. Today, with YouTube channels and other popular methods in Sri Lanka, what is needed is orientation on the part of the journalist – certain trainings and ways of thinking. This could make a huge difference in the coming years, leading to a society with the internal strength to deal with its problems, where speech replaces violence. That could also reduce criminality and other violent tendencies within the people themselves.

This reminds me of some conversations I had with the late Victor Ivan, one of Sri Lanka’s prominent journalists in recent decades. When JR Jayewardene’s government was in power, officials complained about Victor’s publication, which was developing criticisms of the government at the time. One day, the President summoned Victor to meet him. Victor went. He was told that some ministers were advising the President to attack his journal’s office. Victor explained his position and showed all the past copies of the journal, pointing out various criticisms he had made. Just before he left, Victor asked the President for permission to say something. The President said, “Yes, say whatever you want.” Victor spoke: “You know what I am trying to do? Here, everybody is at everybody’s throat; they are killing each other. I want to help transform this into speech, so that they will not fight with guns and knives, but with words. They will just talk.” Victor later told me that he heard the President agreed with this line of thinking, and that may have been one of the reasons he was allowed to continue his journalism.

People clearly understand bona fide criticism made without malice, but with good understanding and rationality. Now is the time to turn toward that kind of development in socially critical journalism.

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“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see” ~ Henry David Thoreau

The National People’s Power (NPP) and its leadership, headed by Anura Kumara Dissanayake, painted an immaculate and flawless picture on the election platform. Fatigued by the successive failures of previous governments, the people chose to believe them. However, that flawless, immaculate picture is now beginning to show some hints of weakness; the glorious painting is not all that divine. Its obvious follies are not inherent in the personalities of the party; nor have they been carried over by an external factor. Instead, the flaws seem to be dwelling inside the very system that the NPP professed to change, but has not yet managed to do so.

The fundamental flaw in any system can be traced to many factors; however, the individuals who occupy government offices matter far more than we often realize. Political theorists and designers of states frequently treat institutions as self-sustaining machines, operating on rigid rules and structural checks. Yet, a system is only as resilient as the human beings who run it. When those in power lack competence, integrity, or respect for the rule of law, the most meticulously crafted constitutional frameworks can collapse from within. Ultimately, human agency remains the ultimate variable in governance, transforming paper ideals into either functional societies or failed states.

Historically, this vulnerability has repeatedly exposed the limits of institutional design. The collapse of the Roman Republic serves as a premier example: its complex system of checks, balances, and shared power functioned for centuries, yet it was ultimately dismantled by the personal ambitions of individuals like Julius Caesar who prioritized personal power over constitutional norms. Similarly, the structural integrity of pre-WW 2 European diplomacy was completely undermined not by a lack of treaties, but by the miscalculations and appeasement strategies of specific leaders who failed to grasp the geopolitical reality of their era. In both cases, the machinery of governance was helpless against the flaws of its operators.

We see this exact dynamic mirrored in modern politics, where human choices continue to override systemic design. The starkly divergent national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that identical bureaucratic and public health frameworks yielded wildly different outcomes based entirely on the communication styles, decisiveness, and political will of individual leaders. Furthermore, the modern decay of public trust in democratic institutions rarely stems from flawed founding documents; rather, it is driven by contemporary politicians who weaponize polarization for short-term gain. When the occupants of high office prioritize self-preservation over institutional stewardship, the system does not just fail—it is actively dismantled by the very hands meant to uphold it.

The same sociopolitical dynamics govern the current environment that surrounds the Sri Lankan government headed by the NPP. Having been bequeathed a system that may be flawed in some specific areas and manned by avaricious bureaucrats who depend on their fidelity to even more venal politicians, the present administration has, willy-nilly, come to terms with the very system it must use as a vehicle to deliver results for the common man and woman.

The real conundrum the government finds itself in is not a new phenomenon; its origins are not, in real terms, recent either. Democratically elected governments have had to grapple with this recurring issue, much to their dismay and to the utter pleasure of the opposition. The real problem resides in their experience, or lack thereof, in handling such parliamentary and presidential matters.

I may appear to have touched a nerve that both AKD and the NPP would prefer to disregard. Given its sensitive nature, this subject represents a recurring irritant, or perhaps more accurately, a nagging political issue. But AKD and the leadership of the NPP must realize the most elementary factor that decides the validity and legitimacy of good political leadership: leaders are judged in times of crisis. During peacetime, even a mediocre leader may survive simply because there are no immediate factors threatening their hold on power. In times of crisis, however, even the greatest leaders face a real-time verdict.

The fabric that they wove around their own legitimacy, validity, and purity must survive the harsh and pressing tensions of the various sociopolitical and economic threads that hold it together. Unlike in the past, current social tensions are subjected to minute-by-minute scrutiny by social media, amplifying the brutal stresses and anxieties caused by its very presence. Anura Kumara Dissanayake and his administration do not have the luxury of complacency. They cannot afford it. While their displaced rivals plot comebacks in five-star hotel lobbies—wined and dined by corporate oligarchs to the tune of millions—the NPP government faces a far grittier reality. To survive, NPP leaders must reject the intoxicating trap of elite politics. Instead, they must chain themselves to the unglamorous, exhausting warfare of fixing the everyday crises choking ordinary citizens in every forgotten corner of this country.

In other words, the government simply cannot afford to display any tears in the fabric they so painstakingly wove during the election. Even if such fissures do appear, they must be in a position to frame them as natural and unavoidable, rather than as a reflection of specific personalities. They set a very high bar for themselves; the image they projected was too smooth and cozy; the very personalities voters identified with were seemingly beyond question. In such challenging circumstances, the electorate is becoming increasingly demanding and impatient.

Minister Lal Kantha was one character the electorate used to identify with chaos and indiscipline. Yet he has become a personality of calm and strategy. His approach to agriculture and plantations is calculated and strategic, quite contrary to his past roles and the intense activism of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), linking him to disruptive mass movements. Since taking over, his approach as the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Lands, and Irrigation has been very structured. He has taken a highly hands-on, accessible approach to governance, including inviting citizens to raise ministry-level issues directly with him.

On the other hand, the optics around Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya was greatly exaggerated and as a result much was expected of her. But the people have begun to question her abilities and capacities. As the first female Prime Minister since 2000 and the first from an academic and activist background, expectations for systemic, rapid change were very high. The transition from being an academic and opposition MP to managing the heavy machinery of the state—especially in education and higher education—is inherently difficult. It is a common critique that the sheer weight of these initial expectations has led to growing scrutiny and questions from the public regarding the capacity to deliver on complex governance issues.

Fissures and holes have become apparent where such were not expected to appear at the beginning of the NPP government. Many other Ministers and Junior Ministers may also be among those corrupted along the way. In politics, corruption is a given passage through which almost every practitioner has to travel, emerging either stained or unstained, strictly according to the beholder of events.

Corruption apart, governance miscalculations, the failure to anticipate obvious natural events (such as severe floods), and the non-accomplishment of election promises would ultimately come into play at the next elections. Yet, the undisputed mediocrity of the current opposition and its leadership will certainly help the NPP navigate even the stormiest of waters, regardless of the relative political inexperience of their bedfellows.

Temporary patchwork will not fix the problem. A semi-permanent revolving task force dedicated to auditing the entirety of government work—a politically neutral study group, well-equipped both intellectually and materially—might be a way out. However, without total commitment to incorrupt governance and efficient implementation from top to bottom, this task force will only serve as a tool for the smoother operation of statecraft, rather than solving the root issues.

While contemporary political proposals often look toward formalized ‘Super-Ministries’ or statutory ‘Economic Delivery Units’ to drive development, they echo the functional logic of the JR Jayewardene era. The ‘Development Secretaries Meeting’ proved that informal, executive-backed coordination can bypass bureaucratic inertia. However, unlike today’s proposals—which must navigate complex legal challenges, judicial reviews, and global financial compliance—the historical model relied on raw executive dominance to fast-track national infrastructure.

While Jayewardene’s ‘Development Secretaries Meeting’ prioritized centralized, executive-led execution to bypass red tape, contemporary governance proposals focus on formalized legislative oversight—such as Sectoral Oversight Committees—shifting the national priority from raw infrastructural speed to structural transparency and anti-corruption compliance.

AKD and his brains-trust must find an equilibrium between the pace of development and the guardrails necessary to prevent corruption, while avoiding excessive bureaucratic red tape. A nuanced examination of government initiatives and their broader historical and philosophical contexts exposes the intricate issues that ruling parties must navigate. Pursuing policy based solely on ideological grounds inevitably leads to systemic failure, reminiscent of how Sirimavo Bandaranaike managed the Sri Lankan state and economy. Such an approach yields universally detrimental outcomes.

*The writer can be reached at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com

The post Holes In The Fabric appeared first on Colombo Telegraph.

Dr. Hema Senanayake

The government budget recorded an overall surplus in the first quarter of 2026. This is a record because it happened after about seven decades. Sri Lanka has not recorded an overall budget surplus since 1955. According to the provisional data, the government’s overall budget surplus is Rs. 116.35 billion. (See Table 1.0 below.)

But, unfortunately, in the second quarter of 2026, the currency is under pressure to depreciate, having significant exchange rate volatility. If the currency depreciates, budget surpluses will not sustain.

Good news and bad news together, where positive and negative developments occur at the same time. How do we understand this dilemma? Can we find remedial measures to sustain a strong fiscal situation while bringing exchange rate volatility under control?

If the budget surplus is recorded from increased tax revenues and other non-tax revenues such as fees on services, licensing fees, rents, SOEs’ profit transfers, etc., excluding import tariffs, then that is good. If import tariffs contribute to a significant revenue increase, then the pressure on the currency could be understood. This means that certain revenue policies that solve the budget deficit problem might have created another in the monetary sector that badly affects external accounts.

If the pressure on the currency continues, the budget surplus achieved will not prevail. To understand this point, let us look at one of the major external accounts, which is the national current account. In the past few years, from 2023, the current account posted a positive balance. From Q1 2025, the current account surplus declined until the end of the first quarter of 2026. We had a small surplus in the first quarter of 2026. However, in the second quarter, the current account is beginning to record a small deficit. If the said small or any deficit in the current account is offset by dollar inflows (foreign currency inflows) posted in the capital and financial account, especially through non-credit-based sources, we can still target higher economic growth.

In theory, when the capital and financial account surpluses exactly offset the current account deficit, the overall Balance-of-Payment (BoP) remains in equilibrium. In that situation, there is generally no immediate pressure on the domestic currency to depreciate because significant foreign currency is flowing into the country to meet the excess demand for foreign exchange. If the currency is under pressure to depreciate and is truly depreciating, that implies that the above-mentioned balancing act is not taking place.

All these mean, that everything in economic progress depends on external accounts and BoP, not on budget surpluses. The BoP records all transactions between a country and the rest of the world. It determines whether the country is earning/receiving enough foreign exchange to pay for essential imports, service external debt, and to ensure the stability of the domestic currency.

Geopolitical developments can certainly affect exchange-rate volatility. But it is not true that geopolitical developments solely contributed to the recent exchange rate volatility. In Sri Lanka’s recent situation, the depreciation pressure on the rupee appears to be more closely linked to domestic factors, particularly a rapid increase in private credit growth associated with the surge in vehicle imports.

In a cause-and-effect paradigm, the transmission mechanism is straightforward. Private credit expands rapidly as financial institutions finance vehicle purchases, so vehicle imports increase significantly. Importers require more foreign exchange to pay overseas suppliers. As a result, demand for foreign currency rises relative to the supply. The outcome is that the rupee comes under depreciation pressure. This has happened previously too when Mr. Ravi Karunanayake was the Minister of Finance. As Sri Lanka has been recovering from a major external debt crisis, the monetary authorities and the government should have been more careful. Unwarranted private credit expansion should have been avoided.

In a small open economy like Sri Lanka, large import-driven credit expansions can quickly affect the BoP and the foreign exchange market, especially when the imports have a high foreign-exchange content and are unable to add value and, in turn, bring in foreign currency inflows, as is the case with motor vehicles.

Economic growth requires foreign exchange to import fuel, raw materials, machinery and technology and to repay external debt while ensuring a stable exchange rate to encourage both domestic and foreign investments.

If the BoP is weak, growth becomes difficult regardless of the government’s fiscal position.

The post Budget Records A Surplus; Will It Prevail? appeared first on Colombo Telegraph.

Jehan Perera

The legal processes are steadily closing in on some of the most controversial cases that have remained as open questions without closure for many years. These include the Easter Sunday bombings of 2019, the Central Bank bond scandal that erupted in 2015, and a range of corruption allegations that became synonymous with successive governments over the past two or more decades. What once appeared to be stalled investigations are now showing signs of movement through the courts and investigative agencies. Recent developments suggest that these long running cases are entering a decisive phase. In the Easter Sunday attacks investigation, new arrests and investigations have brought renewed attention to allegations that extend beyond the immediate perpetrators and into questions of intelligence failures and possible political complicity. The arrest and detention of former intelligence chief Suresh Sallay under the Prevention of Terrorism Act has intensified public interest in uncovering the full truth behind the attacks.

The Central Bank bond scam has also re-entered the spotlight. The Supreme Court has recently overturned legal obstacles that had prevented prosecutions from proceeding and directed that the case moves forward expeditiously. This has reopened one of the most sophisticated financial scandals in the country’s recent history and brought several prominent political and financial figures back under legal scrutiny. As those implicated in these unresolved cases are leading figures from previous governments, which have spanned both sides of the political divide since Independence, it can well be imagined that there is tremendous opposition to the gradually enveloping legal processes that is both seen and unseen.

These cases that are now being investigated cut across political camps and involve individuals who occupied some of the highest offices in the country. The result is that resistance to accountability is likely to emerge from many quarters. Still to be opened are the thousands of cases of persons gone missing during the war. Presidential Commissions have been appointed with regard to them, but there has been no serious investigations of the type now taking place.

In these circumstances, it can be surmised that the government led by those who are new to power would wish to retain a maximum of power to face the pushback that is bound to emerge from those in the opposition who have wielded power for generations. The government may calculate that this is not the time to disperse authority or reduce the instruments of state power available to it. Instead, it may believe that a period of centralised control is necessary if investigations, prosecutions and reforms are to proceed without interference.

Provincial Elections

It appears that the opposition’s efforts to mobilise the people and public opinion against the government have not been successful so far. One such instance was the attempt to generate opposition to price increases. Although people have undoubtedly been affected by rising prices and economic difficulties, these efforts failed to gather significant momentum. Another attempt came when President Dissanayake predicted that opposition politicians would face imprisonment in the month of May as legal cases progressed, though this has not happened. Critics claimed that such remarks suggested an intention to influence judicial outcomes. Yet this criticism also failed to gain traction among the public. The likely reason is that public memory remains fresh. Many people continue to associate previous governments with economic mismanagement, corruption scandals, abuse of power and the eventual economic collapse. In comparison, the present government continues to enjoy a reservoir of public goodwill and credibility. As long as legal action appears to be based on evidence and proper process, the public seems prepared to give the government the benefit of the doubt.

The government’s deliberate and cautious approach to political reform that would reduce its centralised power needs to be seen in this context. The monthly approval by Parliament of the emergency regulations is justified by the government as due to the continuing need to respond to the devastation caused by Cyclone Ditwah.  However, when viewed together with the reluctance to hold provincial council elections on the grounds of electoral reform, the failure to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the postponement of constitutional reform, they all appear to reflect a preference for retaining maximum control at a politically sensitive moment. There is a logic to this approach. Governments facing major legal and political confrontations often seek stability and control. So does every despot. However, there is also a downside.

When political competition is denied to legitimate outlets, it often finds expression in confrontation, obstruction and polarisation. The advantage of prioritising the conduct of provincial council elections at this time is that it could reduce the political pressures that are building up. The main opposition parties are united in calling for these elections to be held. Conducting them would provide an opportunity for opposition political parties to obtain a measure of democratic representation and political authority at the provincial level. This would be especially true in the northern and eastern provinces, in which the ethnic and religious minorities predominate. It cannot be forgotten that the provincial council system was developed as a constructive response to the ethnic conflict. Elections at the provincial level would create opportunities for a new generation of political leaders to emerge through democratic competition rather than patronage. Many of those now facing legal scrutiny belong to an older generation to whose needs the younger may be less deferential.

Two Pillars

Another reform that could command bipartisan support is the repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The PTA has once again become controversial because it is being used in situations that extend beyond its original purpose. The detention of former intelligence chief Suresh Sallay under the Act, the continued incarceration of some Tamil detainees from the war period, and the arrest of individuals accused of speech related offences have all revived concerns regarding prolonged detention without trial and excessive executive power. The reason the PTA has been difficult to repeal is that it is closely associated with concerns regarding national security and territorial integrity. Introduced in 1979 as a temporary measure to confront the emerging separatist conflict, it survived through decades of war and has remained on the statute books long after the conflict ended.

At the same time, history shows that extraordinary powers are likely to be misused. Laws that permit detention without trial or broad executive discretion are rarely confined to their original purpose. Governments of different political parties have used such powers against opponents and critics. The temptation to do so is inherent in the possession of unchecked authority. The way forward could therefore be a combination of accountability and reform. The government should continue to support independent investigations and prosecutions in major corruption and security related cases. Demonstrating political will in this regard would strengthen public confidence in the rule of law and reinforce the principle that no individual is above the law. The PTA could be replaced with legislation that amends the Criminal Procedure Code and Penal Code in a manner that addresses legitimate security concerns while complying with democratic norms and human rights standards.

There are also international dimensions to consider. The European Union has repeatedly linked governance and human rights reforms, including reform of the PTA, to Sri Lanka’s continuing access to the GSP Plus trade concession. Progress on these issues would strengthen Sri Lanka’s international standing at a time when economic recovery remains a national priority. The government has a rare opportunity. It possesses a strong electoral mandate, public goodwill and a reputation for integrity that previous governments lacked. It can combine the pursuit of justice in long delayed cases with meaningful democratic reforms that reduce political resistance and broaden public support. At this time, accountability and power sharing are the two pillars which Sri Lankans need to be committed to build a just and democratic society for a better future without delay. Failure now would make for a long period of waiting for the next time.

The post Contest For Accountability & Democracy appeared first on Colombo Telegraph.

ජෙහාන් පෙරේරා

වසර ගණනාවක් පුරා විසඳුමකින් තොරව විවෘත ප්‍රශ්න ලෙස පැවැති, බෙහෙවින් ආන්දෝලනාත්මක නඩු කිහිපයක නීතිමය ක්‍රියාවලීන් ක්‍රමයෙන් අවසාන අදියර කරා ළඟාවෙමින් පවතී. 2019 වසරේ පාස්කු ඉරිදා බෝම්බ ප්‍රහාරය, 2015 වසරේ ඇති වූ මහබැංකු බැඳුම්කර වංචාව සහ පසුගිය දශක දෙකක හෝ ඊට වැඩි කාලයකදී පැවති අනුප්‍රාප්තික ආණ්ඩුවලට දැඩි ලෙස සම්බන්ධ වූ විවිධ දූෂණ චෝදනා මීට ඇතුළත් ය. එක් කලෙක අඩාල වී ඇති බවක් පෙනෙන්නට තිබූ විමර්ශන, දැන් උසාවි සහ විමර්ශන ආයතන හරහා ඉදිරියට යන ලකුණු පෙන්නුම් කරයි. මෑතකාලීන වර්ධනයන්ගෙන් පෙනීයන්නේ, මෙම දිගුකාලීන නඩු තීරණාත්මක අදියරකට අවතීර්ණ වෙමින් පවතින බවයි. පාස්කු ඉරිදා ප්‍රහාරය පිළිබඳ විමර්ශනයේදී, සිදුවූ නව අත්අඩංගුවට ගැනීම් සහ පරීක්ෂණ හේතුවෙන්, ප්‍රහාරය එල්ල කළ සෘජු වැරදිකරුවන්ගෙන් ඔබ්බට ගිය බුද්ධි අංශවල අසාර්ථකත්වයන් සහ කලකදී සිදුවූ බව කියන දේශපාලන හවුල්කාරිත්වයන් පිළිබඳ ප්‍රශ්න කෙරෙහි නැවතත් දැඩි අවධානයක් යොමුව තිබේ. ත්‍රස්තවාදය වැළැක්වීමේ පනත යටතේ හිටපු බුද්ධි අංශ ප්‍රධානී සුරේෂ් සල්ලේ අත්අඩංගුවට ගෙන රැඳවුම් භාරයේ තැබීම, මෙම ප්‍රහාරය පිටුපස ඇති සම්පූර්ණ ඇත්ත අනාවරණය කර ගැනීම සඳහා මහජන උනන්දුව තීව්‍ර කිරීමට හේතු වී ඇත.

මහබැංකු බැඳුම්කර වංචාව ද නැවතත් අවධානයට ලක්ව තිබේ. නඩු පැවරීම් ඉදිරියට ගෙනයෑමට බාධාවක්ව පැවති නීතිමය බාධක මෑතකදී ශ්‍රේෂ්ඨාධිකරණය විසින් ඉවත් කරන ලද අතර, නඩුව කඩිනමින් ඉදිරියට ගෙන යන ලෙස නියෝග කළේය. මේ හරහා රටේ මෑතකාලීන ඉතිහාසයේ වඩාත්ම සංකීර්ණ මූල්‍ය වංචාවක් පිළිබඳ නඩුව නැවත විවෘත වී ඇති අතර, ප්‍රමුඛ පෙළේ දේශපාලන සහ මූල්‍ය ක්ෂේත්‍රයේ පුද්ගලයන් කිහිපදෙනකුම නැවතත් නීතිමය පරීක්ෂාවට ලක්ව ඇත. මෙම නොවිසඳුණු නඩුවලට සම්බන්ධ වී සිටින්නේ නිදහසින් පසු දේශපාලන බෙදීමේ දෙපැත්තටම නායකත්වය දුන් පෙර පැවති ආණ්ඩුවල ප්‍රමුඛ පෙළේ පුද්ගලයන් බැවින්, ක්‍රමයෙන් ක්‍රියාත්මක වෙමින් පවතින මෙම නීතිමය ක්‍රියාවලීන්ට එරෙහිව දෘශ්‍යමාන මෙන්ම නොපෙනෙන දැඩි විරෝධයක් මතුවනු ඇතැයි කෙනකුට පහසුවෙන් සිතාගත හැකිය.

දැනට විමර්ශනය වෙමින් පවතින මෙම නඩු, දේශපාලන කඳවුරු සීමාවන් ඉක්මවා යන අතර රටේ ඉහළම තනතුරු හෙබවූ පුද්ගලයන් ද ඊට සම්බන්ධ වී සිටිති. එහි ප්‍රතිඵලයක් වශයෙන්, වගවීම පිළිබඳ ක්‍රියාවලියට එරෙහිව විවිධ පාර්ශවයන්ගෙන් බාධා මතුවීමට ඉඩ තිබේ. යුධ සමයේදී අතුරුදහන් වූ දහස් සංඛ්‍යාත පුද්ගලයන් පිළිබඳ නඩු තවමත් විවෘත කිරීමට ඉතිරිව ඇත. ඔවුන් සම්බන්ධයෙන් ජනාධිපති කොමිෂන් සභා පත්කර ඇති නමුත්, දැනට සිදුවන ආකාරයේ බරපතල විමර්ශනයක් මෙතෙක් සිදුවී නොමැත. මෙවැනි තත්ත්වයක් තුළ, බලයට අලුතින් පැමිණි පිරිසගෙන් සැදුම්ලත් වත්මන් ආණ්ඩුව, පරම්පරා ගණනාවක් තිස්සේ බලය හෙබවූ විපක්ෂයේ පිරිසගෙන් අනිවාර්යයෙන්ම මතුවන මෙම බාධාවලට මුහුණ දීම සඳහා උපරිම බලයක් රඳවාගැනීමට කැමැත්තක් දක්වනු ඇතැයි අනුමාන කළ හැකිය. අධිකාරය විමධ්‍යගත කිරීමට හෝ තමන් සතු රාජ්‍ය බලයේ මෙවලම් අවම කිරීමට මෙය සුදුසුම කාලය නොවන බව ආණ්ඩුව ගණන් බලා තිබෙන්නට පුළුවන. ඒ වෙනුවට, විමර්ශන, නඩු පැවරීම් සහ ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණ කිසිදු බාධාවකින් තොරව ඉදිරියට ගෙනයෑමට නම්, යම් කාලසීමාවකට මධ්‍යගත පාලනයක් අවශ්‍ය බව ආණ්ඩුව විශ්වාස කරනවා විය හැකිය.

පළාත් සභා මැතිවරණය

ආණ්ඩුවට එරෙහිව ජනතාව සහ මහජන මතය පෙළගැස්වීමට විපක්ෂය ගන්නා උත්සාහයන් මෙතෙක් සාර්ථක වී නොමැති බව පෙනෙන්නට තිබේ. බඩු මිල ඉහළ යෑමට එරෙහිව විරෝධයක් ගොඩනැගීමට ගත් උත්සාහය ඊට එක් උදාහරණයකි. නැඟී එන මිල ගණන් සහ ආර්ථික දුෂ්කරතා හේතුවෙන් ජනතාව නිසැකවම පීඩාවට පත්ව සිටියද, එම උත්සාහයන් සැලකිය යුතු බලවේගයක් බවට පත්කිරීමට ඔවුහු අපොහොසත් වූහ. නීතිමය කටයුතු ඉදිරියට යත්ම, මැයි මාසයේදී විපක්ෂයේ දේශපාලනඥයන්ට සිරගත වීමට සිදුවනු ඇතැයි ජනාධිපති දිසානායක අනාවැකි පළකළ අවස්ථාවේදී තවත් උත්සාහයක් මතු වූ නමුත්, එය එලෙස සිදු වූයේ නැත. විවේචකයන් කියාසිටියේ, එවැනි ප්‍රකාශ මගින් අධිකරණයේ තීන්දුවලට බලපෑම් කිරීමට අදහස් කරන බවයි. එසේ වුවද, එම විවේචනය ද මහජනතාව අතර ප්‍රචලිත කිරීමට ඔවුන් අසමත් විය. ඊට බොහෝදුරට හේතුව මහජන මතකය තවමත් නැවුම්ව පැවතීමයි. පෙර පැවති ආණ්ඩු විසින් සිදුකළ ආර්ථික වැරදි කළමනාකරණය, දූෂණ වංචා, බලය අභිභවා යෑම සහ අවසානයේ සිදුවූ ආර්ථික බිඳවැටීම පිළිබඳව බොහෝදෙනකුට තවමත් මතකය. ඒ හා සසඳන විට, වත්මන් ආණ්ඩුව තවදුරටත් මහජන සුභවාදී ආකල්ප සහ විශ්වාසනීයත්වයේ ප්‍රතිලාභ භුක්ති විඳිමින් සිටී. නීතිමය ක්‍රියාමාර්ග සාක්ෂි සහ නිසි ක්‍රියාවලිය මත පදනම් වන තාක් කල්, ආණ්ඩුව කෙරෙහි සැක නොසිතා අවස්ථාවක් ලබාදීමට මහජනතාව සූදානම් බව පෙනේ.

දේශපාලන ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණ මගින් තම මධ්‍යගත බලය අඩුකර ගැනීමට ආණ්ඩුව දක්වන, හිතාමතාම සිදුකරන මෙන්ම පරෙස්සම් සහගත ප්‍රවේශය දෙස බැලිය යුත්තේ මෙම පසුබිම තුළය. පාර්ලිමේන්තුව විසින් මාසිකව හදිසි නීති රෙගුලාසි අනුමත කිරීම සාධාරණීකරණය කිරීමට රජය ඉදිරිපත් කරන්නේ, ‘ඩිට්වා’ සුළිකුණාටුවෙන් සිදු වූ විනාශයට ප්‍රතිචාර දැක්වීමේ අඛණ්ඩ අවශ්‍යතාවයයි. කෙසේවෙතත්, මැතිවරණ ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණ මුවාවෙන් පළාත් සභා මැතිවරණ පැවැත්වීමට දක්වන අකමැත්ත, ත්‍රස්තවාදය වැළැක්වීමේ පනත අහෝසි කිරීමට අපොහොසත් වීම සහ ආණ්ඩුක්‍රම ව්‍යවස්ථා ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණ කල් දැමීම දෙස එකට බලන කල, ඒ සියල්ලෙන් පෙනීයන්නේ දේශපාලනිකව සංවේදී මොහොතක උපරිම පාලනයක් රඳවාගැනීමට දක්වන කැමැත්තයි. මෙම ප්‍රවේශයට සාධාරණ තර්කයක් ඇත. ප්‍රධාන නීතිමය සහ දේශපාලනික ගැටුම්වලට මුහුණදෙන ආණ්ඩු බොහෝ විට ස්ථාවරත්වය සහ පාලනය අපේක්ෂා කරයි. ඕනෑම ඒකාධිපතියකු ද එසේමය. කෙසේවෙතත්, මෙහි අවාසිදායක පැත්තක් ද තිබේ.

දේශපාලන තරඟකාරිත්වය සඳහා නීත්‍යානුකූල අවස්ථාවන් අහිමි කළ විට, එය බොහෝ විට ප්‍රකාශ වන්නේ ගැටුම්, බාධා කිරීම් සහ ධ්‍රැවීකරණයන් හරහා ය. මේ අවස්ථාවේදී පළාත් සභා මැතිවරණය පැවැත්වීමට ප්‍රමුඛතාවය දීමේ වාසිය නම්, එමගින් ගොඩනැගෙමින් පවතින දේශපාලන පීඩනය අවම කර ගත හැකිවීමයි. ප්‍රධාන විපක්ෂ දේශපාලන පක්ෂ මෙම මැතිවරණ පවත්වන ලෙස එක හඬින් ඉල්ලා සිටියි. ඒවා පැවැත්වීමෙන් විපක්ෂයේ දේශපාලන පක්ෂවලට පළාත් මට්ටමින් ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී නියෝජනයක් සහ දේශපාලන අධිකාරියක් ලබාගැනීමට අවස්ථාවක් සැලසේ. වාර්ගික සහ ආගමික සුළුතරයන් බහුතරයක් වෙසෙන උතුර සහ නැගෙනහිර පළාත්වලට මෙය විශේෂයෙන්ම සත්‍ය වනු ඇත. පළාත් සභා ක්‍රමය බිහි වූයේ ජාතික ගැටලුවට (වාර්ගික ගැටුමට) සාධාරණ විසඳුමක් ලෙස බව අමතක කළ නොහැක. පළාත් මට්ටමින් මැතිවරණ පැවැත්වීම, දේශපාලන රැකවරණ (දේශපාලන හිතවත්කම්) මත නොව, ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී තරඟකාරිත්වය තුළින් නව පරපුරේ දේශපාලන නායකයන් බිහිවීමට අවස්ථාව සලසා දෙනු ඇත. දැනට නීතිමය පරීක්ෂාවට ලක්ව සිටින බොහෝදෙනෙක් පැරණි පරපුරට අයත් වන අතර, නව පරපුර ඔවුන්ගේ අවශ්‍යතාවලට එතරම් යටහත් පහත් නොවනු ඇත.

කුළුණු දෙක

ද්විපාර්ශ්වික (පක්ෂ දෙකේම) සහයෝගය ලබාගත හැකි තවත් ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණයක් වන්නේ, ත්‍රස්තවාදය වැළැක්වීමේ පනත අහෝසි කිරීමයි. ත්‍රස්තවාදය වැළැක්වීමේ පනත එහි මුල් අරමුණෙන් ඔබ්බට ගිය තත්ත්වයන් සඳහා භාවිත කිරීම හේතුවෙන් නැවත වරක් ආන්දෝලනයට ලක්ව තිබේ. හිටපු බුද්ධි අංශ ප්‍රධානී සුරේෂ් සලේ මෙම පනත යටතේ රැඳවුම් භාරයට ගැනීම, යුධ සමයේ සිට රඳවා සිටින සමහර දෙමළ සිරකරුවන් දිගින් දිගටම සිරගත කර තැබීම සහ ප්‍රකාශන ආශ්‍රිත වැරදි සම්බන්ධයෙන් පුද්ගලයන් අත්අඩංගුවට ගැනීම යන කරුණු, නඩු විභාගයකින් තොරව දීර්ඝ කාලයක් රඳවා තබාගැනීම සහ අසීමිත විධායක බලය පිළිබඳ කනස්සල්ල නැවත මතුකර ඇත. ත්‍රස්තවාදය වැළැක්වීමේ පනත අහෝසි කිරීම දුෂ්කර වී ඇත්තේ, එය ජාතික ආරක්ෂාව සහ භූමියෙහි අඛණ්ඩතාව පිළිබඳ කනස්සල්ල සමඟ සමීපව බැඳී පවතින බැවිනි. නැඟී එන බෙදුම්වාදී ගැටුමට මුහුණදීම සඳහා 1979 දී තාවකාලික පියවරක් ලෙස හඳුන්වාදුන් එය, දශක ගණනාවක යුද්ධය පුරා නොනැසී පැවති අතර යුද්ධය අවසන් වී දිගු කලක් ගත වූ පසුව ද නීති පොතේ එලෙසම ඉතිරිව ඇත.

ඒ අතරම, අසාමාන්‍ය බලතල අවභාවිත වීමට වැඩි ඉඩක් ඇති බව ඉතිහාසය පෙන්වාදෙයි. නඩු විභාගයකින් තොරව රඳවා තබාගැනීමට හෝ පුළුල් විධායක අභිමතය පරිදි කටයුතු කිරීමට ඉඩ සලසන නීති, ඒවායේ මුල් අරමුණට පමණක් සීමාවන්නේ කලාතුරකිනි. විවිධ දේශපාලන පක්ෂවල ආණ්ඩු තම විරුද්ධවාදීන්ට සහ විවේචකයන්ට එරෙහිව මෙවැනි බලතල භාවිත කර ඇත. එසේ කිරීමට පෙළඹීම, පාලනයකින් තොරව ලැබෙන අසීමිත අධිකාරිය සතු සහජ ලක්ෂණයකි. එබැවින් ඉදිරි මාවත විය යුත්තේ වගවීම සහ ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණ යන දෙකෙහි එකතුවකි. ප්‍රධාන දූෂණ සහ ආරක්ෂාවට අදාළ නඩුවලදී ස්වාධීන විමර්ශන සහ නඩු පැවරීම් සඳහා රජය දිගින් දිගටම සහයෝගය දැක්විය යුතුය. මේ සම්බන්ධයෙන් දේශපාලන අධිෂ්ඨානය ප්‍රදර්ශනය කිරීම නීතියේ ආධිපත්‍යය කෙරෙහි මහජන විශ්වාසය ශක්තිමත් කරන අතර, කිසිදු පුද්ගලයකු නීතියට ඉහළින් නොසිටින බවට වන මූලධර්මය තහවුරු කරනු ඇත. ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී සම්මතයන් සහ මානව හිමිකම් ප්‍රමිතීන්ට අනුකූල වන අතරම, නීත්‍යානුකූල ආරක්ෂක අවශ්‍යතා සපුරාලන පරිදි අපරාධ නඩු විධාන සංග්‍රහය සහ දණ්ඩ නීති සංග්‍රහය සංශෝධනය කරන නීති සම්පාදනයක් මගින් ත්‍රස්තවාදය වැළැක්වීමේ පනත ප්‍රතිස්ථාපනය කළ හැකිය.

මෙහිදී සලකා බැලිය යුතු අන්තර්ජාතික මානයන් ද පවතී. යුරෝපා සංගමය විසින් ශ්‍රී ලංකාවට ‘GSP Plus’ බදු සහනය දිගින් දිගටම ලබාදීම සඳහා ත්‍රස්තවාදය වැළැක්වීමේ පනත ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණය කිරීම ඇතුළු පාලන සහ මානව හිමිකම් ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණවල ප්‍රගතිය නැවත නැවතත් දැනුම්දී ඇත. ආර්ථික පුනරුත්ථාපනය ජාතික ප්‍රමුඛතාවයක්ව පවතින මෙවන් වකවානුවක, මෙම ගැටලු සම්බන්ධයෙන් ප්‍රගතියක් ලැබීම ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ අන්තර්ජාතික තත්ත්වය ශක්තිමත් කරනු ඇත. ආණ්ඩුවට දැන් ලැබී ඇත්තේ දුර්ලභ අවස්ථාවකි. පෙර පැවති ආණ්ඩුවලට නොතිබූ ප්‍රබල මැතිවරණ ජනවරමක්, මහජන සුභවාදී ආකල්පයක් සහ අවංකභාවය පිළිබඳ කීර්තියක් වත්මන් ආණ්ඩුව සතුය. දේශපාලන ප්‍රතිරෝධයන් අවම කරන සහ මහජන සහයෝගය පුළුල් කරන, අර්ථවත් ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී ප්‍රතිසංස්කරණ සමඟින්, දිගු කලක් ප්‍රමාද වී ඇති නඩුවලදී යුක්තිය ඉටු කිරීමේ කාර්යය රජයට එකට ඒකාබද්ධ කළ හැකිය. මේ මොහොතේ, වගවීම සහ බලය බෙදාගැනීම යනු වඩා හොඳ අනාගතයක් වෙනුවෙන් ප්‍රමාදයකින් තොරව සාධාරණ සහ ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී සමාජයක් ගොඩනැගීමට ශ්‍රී ලාංකිකයන් කැපවිය යුතු ප්‍රධාන කුළුණු දෙකයි. දැන් අසාර්ථක වුවහොත් මීළඟ අවස්ථාව එනතුරු දීර්ඝ කාලයක් බලා සිටීමට සිදුවනු ඇත.

The post ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ නව දේශපාලන යුගයේ යුක්තිය සහ ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදය appeared first on Colombo Telegraph.

Dr. W.A Wijewardena

Costing standards for Sri Lanka

The Institute of Certified Management Accountants of Sri Lanka, known as CMA Sri Lanka, has taken another step forward in promoting cost accounting practices in the country by introducing a comprehensive set of standards to be adopted not only by cost accountants, but also by Sri Lankan private and public institutions.

CMA Sri Lanka is a professional body incorporated in 2009 by an Act of Parliament. Since its inception, it has been providing professional qualifications to Sri Lankans wishing to acquire competency in management accounting, which includes cost accounting as well. Those who acquire this professional qualification are placed on a continuous professional development program through seminars, webinars, short-term training programs, etc. on issues of current importance. It is, therefore, a lifelong training process for management accountants.

What was missing so far was a set of uniform standards to be followed by them. CMA Sri Lanka, which has been given explicit responsibility to issue and enforce management accounting standards in the country, has now filled that vacuum through its sub-unit, the Cost and Management Accounting Standards Board, set up in 2019 under the principal incorporation legislation.

The Board is expected to create a structured approach for measuring manufacturing and service costs, while providing standardised guidance to Government ministries, State corporations, and private sector firms to achieve consistency in cost classification and assignment. The leadership for the compilation of the present set of standards has been provided by the distinguished finance academic, now retired, from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Dr. Mangala Fonseka.

Reckoning hidden costs of an activity

The proper costing of an activity, whether at the company level or the national level, is a prime requirement for assessing the usefulness of that activity. The standard method adopted has been to calculate costs in terms of financial numbers, that is, the actual financing costs involved in accomplishing that activity. These are direct expenses, and if the total expenses are less than the expected revenue, it is considered a worthwhile activity.

However, from society’s point of view, there are hidden costs that are not reckoned in direct costing. In this scenario, whether such an activity contributes to society can be measured only by incorporating both direct and hidden costs into the costing structure.

Objectives of costing standards

This latest national contribution by CMA Sri Lanka, through the issuance of cost accounting standards to be practiced by management accountants in assessing any activity coming within their purview, paves the way for expanding the existing financial cost-based costing structure. It also helps management accountants follow a set of standard procedures to ensure consistency, uniformity, and accuracy, thereby eliminating divergence in application.

This is specifically important in assessing the costs of projects initiated by the Government because it ensures that taxpayers pay a fair price for contracted goods and services. In this regard, there are three core pillars of cost accounting practices.

Money costs versus actual costs

The first is measurement, which dictates how actual, standard, or historical costs are valued, such as using standard labour costs as against actual labour costs. Standard labour costs are those actually paid in monetary terms to procure labour services for an activity. However, actual labour costs differ from those monetary costs because they involve hidden or opportunity costs that society should bear.

For instance, if child or forced labour is used for an activity, its cost is not limited to the money paid for it. If the use of such labour violates international laws, society will have to bear the consequences in the form of sanctions imposed by consuming countries against that practice. A recent example in this regard has been the imposition of an additional tariff of 12.5% on countries found to have used forced labour in producing goods that are exported to the US. Sri Lanka is one of the villains, according to the US Trade Representative, which conducted the study.

Cost accounting period

The second is assignment, which determines the specific cost accounting period to which a cost belongs. This is important because it helps management ensure that expenses are recorded in the exact timeframe in which they are incurred or consumed, which is vital for correct financial reporting.

There are several advantages to adhering to this principle. It matches costs with the specific revenues they generate. It also prevents seasonal expense spikes from artificially inflating product costs. Another advantage is that balance sheets will reflect the true timing of production. Management also gets an opportunity to compare financial performance across different periods. Finally, it helps identify whether budget deviations are permanent or simply due to timing differences.

Allocation of indirect pools of costs

The third is allocation, which determines how indirect cost pools such as overheads are distributed to specific projects when several projects are undertaken simultaneously by an organisation. This prevents the usual inclination of a company to unfairly allocate overhead expenses to one project and overestimate its true costs.

Adhering to this principle will help cost accountants ensure fair evaluation, pricing accuracy, resource optimisation, audit compliance, and budget discipline. This is vital in the pricing of electricity charges by a utility provider because non-adherence will place an unfair burden on consumers.

Following other early users

With CMA Sri Lanka, the country has now joined the costing standards club. However, before it did so, India, the USA, Pakistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, and Spain, to mention but a few, had introduced costing standards for practicing management accountants.

Necessity of costing standards

Costing standards are necessary because they provide a predetermined baseline for measuring performance, controlling spending, and valuing inventory and output.

Without costing standards, firms and governments must wait for historical data following the completion of an activity. However, with costing standards, businesses and governments can use uniform standards to measure efficiency, simplify bookkeeping, and manage exceptional events or outcomes that deviate from day-to-day transactions.

As the President of CMA Sri Lanka, Prof. Lakshman R. Watawala, has mentioned in a special message to the compendium, “the importance of proper costing and the maintenance of cost records” is necessary to “improve efficiency, effectiveness, productivity and remove wastage and corruption” in organisations. When applied to business, such standard costing will make firms competitive in both local and global markets.

He has recognised the technical support provided by the Institute of Cost Accountants of India in framing the cost standards for Sri Lanka. It appears to be the result of collaborative and knowledge-sharing initiatives undertaken by the two professional bodies for decades in areas relating to cost and management accounting.

GAAP/IFRS versus GACAP

Like the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles issued under International Financial Reporting Standards, or GAAP/IFRS, a Generally Accepted Cost Accounting Principles framework, or GACAP, has been issued for cost accountants.

The former is intended for the benefit of a company’s external stakeholders, while the latter is designed to guide internal management in decisions relating to pricing, budgeting, and efficiency. These principles are to be adopted voluntarily for segmented areas such as products, projects, processes, and activities, with a dual time orientation involving historical performance covering the first period as well as future developments involving the second period.

The goal of these accounting principles is to ensure cost control, waste reduction, and accurate pricing. The framers of Sri Lanka’s cost accounting standards have used the GACAP issued by the Institute of Cost Accountants of India, the partner organisation of the Cost and Management Accounting Standards Board of Sri Lanka. Hence, the costing standards recommended for Sri Lanka’s management accountants have a global flavours.

The guidebook containing the costing standards recommended for Sri Lankan management accountants reproduces, in summary form, the GACAP issued by the Indian institution. It covers several broad areas of costing. Hence, Sri Lankan management accountants have a source document to fall back on for clarification when they face situations involving professional judgment.

22 costing standards for Sri Lanka

The Cost Accounting Standards of Sri Lanka (CASSL) contain 22 costing standards. With new developments in industry, they may be further expanded, added to, deleted, revised, updated, or reduced in the future. Hence, they are not a fixed set of standards but rather a flexible framework capable of accommodating new developments.

For instance, the present standards do not contain provisions relating to risks arising from climate risk-based activities, although these are a growing concern in business, public policy, and societal goals. Hence, a future edition of the costing standards may cover this vital area as well.

Broad areas of costing standards

The standards announced in the present edition have been broadly classified under cost classification, capacity determination, production and operation overheads, material costs, employee costs, utility costing, packing material costs, direct expenses, administrative overheads, repair and maintenance costs, service cost centre costing, pollution control costs, selling and distribution costs, depreciation and amortisation costs, interest and financing charges, joint costs, royalty and technical know-how fees, quality control, and manufacturing costs.

While most of these cost categories are generally familiar to modern-day management accountants, a new treatment that has been added relates to pollution control costs.

Pollution control costing standard

The pollution control costing standard offers principles and methods for the classification, measurement, and assignment of pollution control costs for determining the cost of a product or service so that a business can present and disclose them in cost statements.

Since businesses may use different methods in doing so, the standard presents a uniform and consistent approach to facilitate inter-business and intra-business comparisons. For the guidance of management accountants, definitions of the main pollutants and forms of pollution faced by society today have been included as part of the standard.

An important criterion recommended is that pollution control costs should cover both direct and indirect costs relating to pollution control activities. Direct costs include the costs of materials, consumables, spare parts, manpower, equipment usage, utilities, testing and certification resources, and any other identifiable costs incurred in controlling pollution.

Indirect costs include resources common to various pollution control activities, such as registration and licensing fees and overheads used for pollution control. They should also include future remedial or disposal costs that are expected to be incurred with reasonable certainty as part of onerous contracts or constructive obligations.

Legally enforceable costs, such as those arising from environmental damage, should be estimated and accounted for based on the volume of pollution generated during each period. The standards recommend that these costs be fully disclosed in costing statements.

Importance of reckoning emerging costs

As mentioned above, the costing of activities should cover both historical costs and emerging future costs. Hence, its time span extends from the past into the future. A general tendency in business today is to consider only currently incurred costs when deciding on the suitability of a product or service. However, future costs may include unforeseen expenses arising from events that cannot be known with certainty today but may develop into costs because of environmental changes.

I recall recommending, about a decade ago, to a leading three-wheeler importer in the country that the company should immediately commence work on a project to develop an electricity-driven small four-wheeler to replace existing three-wheelers, which are not environmentally friendly due to their high greenhouse gas emissions and noise levels. The company did not take this recommendation seriously, and today, as the whole world, including Sri Lanka, clamours for EVs, it has lost the market.

Likewise, I have listened to several leading businessmen being interviewed on a popular YouTube channel. When asked about their future plans, they all expressed their intention to expand their respective businesses to other countries. None appeared to have considered the need to reorient their businesses to meet society’s emerging environmental goals. This is a serious omission on their part. If they fail to adapt to these emerging environmental expectations, it is unlikely that they will survive in a hostile market. I hope their management accountants study the present costing standards and guide them appropriately.

Path-breaking activity by CMA Sri Lanka

The Cost and Management Accounting Standards Board of Sri Lanka, together with its parent body, CMA Sri Lanka, has accomplished an appreciable task by releasing costing standards to be followed by local organisations. I hope it will take effective action to ensure the successful implementation of these standards.

*The writer, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, can be reached at waw1949@gmail.com

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Uditha H. Palihakkara

On 11 June 1963, an elderly Buddhist monk sat quietly at a busy intersection in Saigon and altered the course of history. More than six decades later, the anniversary of that event invites reflection on a question that extends far beyond Vietnam: “What happens when political power loses moral legitimacy?”

Vietnam on the Brink

History is often shaped by presidents, generals, armies, and revolutions. Occasionally, however, a single individual alters the course of events in a manner that no military campaign or political strategy could achieve. Such a moment occurred in Saigon on 11 June 1963.

At the time, South Vietnam stood at the centre of one of the Cold War’s most significant geopolitical contests. Following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and the subsequent division of Vietnam, the United States invested heavily in supporting the government of President Ngo Dinh Diem as a bulwark against communist expansion in Southeast Asia.

Despite economic assistance, military support, and international recognition, tensions were mounting beneath the surface. Many Buddhists, who constituted most of the population, believed that the government favoured the Catholic minority and that their religious and civic rights were being progressively curtailed. What began as grievances over religious equality gradually evolved into a broader crisis of confidence in the state itself.

The turning point came during Vesak celebrations in May 1963, when protests over restrictions on religious expression were met with force. The resulting deaths and injuries transformed a religious dispute into a national controversy. Increasingly, the issue was no longer about flags, ceremonies, or administrative regulations. It became a question of fairness, inclusion, and legitimacy.

The Day the World Stopped and Watched

Against this backdrop, an elderly Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc undertook an act that would become one of the defining images of the twentieth century.

At a busy Saigon intersection, he calmly sat in meditation and carried out an act of self-sacrifice as a protest against what he and many others perceived as religious discrimination and political repression. Hundreds witnessed the event, and Associated Press journalist Malcolm Browne captured it on camera.

Within hours, the image had travelled around the world.

The photograph stunned global audiences. This was not an act of violence against political opponents, nor an attempt to seize power. Rather, it was a dramatic act of protest intended to draw attention to a cause that many believed was being ignored.

President John F. Kennedy later remarked that few news photographs had generated such emotion throughout the world. The image forced international audiences to confront realities that official statements and diplomatic rhetoric had largely obscured.

A single photograph succeeded where countless speeches and petitions had failed.

When a Photograph Changed Politics

The significance of the event extended far beyond its immediate emotional impact.

The image transformed international perceptions of the South Vietnamese government. A regime that had often been portrayed as a defender of freedom was now increasingly scrutinised for its treatment of its own citizens. Public opinion shifted. International criticism intensified. Policymakers in Washington began questioning whether the Diem administration possessed the legitimacy necessary for long-term stability.

Historians continue to debate the precise influence of the Buddhist Crisis on subsequent political developments. Nevertheless, most agree that it marked a decisive turning point. In a military coup later that year, the military overthrew and killed President Diem.

The photograph did not by itself bring down a government. Regimes rarely collapse because of a single event. However, it revealed long-standing, underlying weaknesses. It revealed a growing disconnect between state authority and public acceptance.

In that sense, the image became the spark that helped consume a regime.

Legality, Performance and Legitimacy

The events of 1963 raise a broader question that remains relevant far beyond Vietnam.

What gives government legitimacy?

Political legitimacy is not identical to legality. A government may possess constitutional authority, legal powers, functioning institutions, and international recognition. Yet citizens may still question its moral right to govern.

Similarly, legitimacy cannot be reduced solely to economic performance. Governments often assume that development projects, economic growth, or administrative efficiency are sufficient to secure public support. While such achievements are important, they do not automatically generate legitimacy.

Legitimacy ultimately rests upon a broader foundation: public trust, shared values, fairness, inclusion, and the belief that authority is exercised in a manner consistent with the aspirations of society.

History offers numerous examples of governments that remained legally constituted and administratively functional while suffering a profound legitimacy deficit. Such governments may survive for a time through coercion, patronage, propaganda, or external support. Yet their stability often becomes increasingly fragile.

The events in South Vietnam demonstrated that institutional power and moral authority are not always the same thing.

Can Power Survive Without Legitimacy?

The central question raised by the Buddhist Crisis is whether political power can survive once moral legitimacy has been lost.

History suggests that the answer is complex.

Governments can and often do survive the loss of legitimacy for considerable periods. They may continue to command armies, collect taxes, enact laws, and maintain administrative control. Yet when citizens increasingly perceive authority as unjust, exclusionary, or disconnected from their values, the foundations of stability begin to weaken.

The resulting gap between authority and acceptance may remain hidden for years. However, it can suddenly become visible through protest movements, civil unrest, political upheaval, or institutional breakdown.

History also demonstrates that legitimacy is neither static nor absolute. Governments may lose, regain, or rebuild legitimacy through reform, inclusion, responsiveness to public concerns, and the restoration of public trust.

The lesson of South Vietnam was therefore not merely that a government fell. Rather, it demonstrated how moral legitimacy and political stability are more closely connected than rulers often assume.

Political power may command obedience, but moral legitimacy commands trust.

The Enduring Power of Conscience

More than six decades later, the story of Thich Quang Duc continues to resonate because it speaks to universal questions that transcend Vietnam.

How should governments respond to dissent? What happens when citizens believe that institutions no longer reflect their values? Can moral conviction influence political outcomes? The events of 1963 suggest that it can.

Regardless of one’s views on the method adopted by Thich Quang Duc, the episode demonstrated the extraordinary capacity of conscience to shape political events. The power of the protest lay not merely in the act itself but in the questions it forced governments, citizens, and the international community to confront.

Today, memorials in Vietnam commemorate the event, and the vehicle that carried the monk to his final act remains preserved as a historical artifact. Yet the true legacy of that day lies not in monuments or photographs. Its legacy lies in a lesson that remains relevant to every society.

The most durable governments are not necessarily those with the strongest armies, the largest budgets, or the most extensive powers. They are those that succeed in aligning authority with fairness, inclusion, justice, and public trust.

History remembers many rulers who possessed immense power. It remembers far fewer individuals whose conscience altered the course of nations.

Thich Quang Duc was one of them.

More than sixty years after that June morning in Saigon, the flame that shook a nation continues to illuminate an enduring truth: political power may survive the loss of moral legitimacy for a time, but its long-term stability becomes increasingly uncertain when public trust and moral authority are allowed to erode.

*Uditha H. Palihakkara is a former Chairman of the Finance Commission of Sri Lanka with expertise in financial management across various sectors. He has worked as a Financial Management Specialist at the Commonwealth Secretariat and focuses on governance, fiscal policy, and institutional reform in a comparative context.

The post The Flame That Shook A Nation: When Conscience Challenged Power appeared first on Colombo Telegraph.