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Open any business newspaper in Sri Lanka on any given weekend and the headlines read like a celebration. Bank A’s assets have crossed Rs. 3 trillion. Bank B has reached the Rs. 2 trillion asset milestone. Bank C has posted a profit after tax of Rs. 6 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone. Bank E has reported a profit before tax of Rs. 2 billion. Bank E has cleared Rs. 1.5 billion in pre-tax profit. Bank F revealed a profit after tax of Rs. 4 billion. The numbers are staggering in a country where per capita income remains fragile, the economic crisis of 2022 has left deep scars, and some 300,000 small and medium entrepreneurs are reportedly at risk of losing the roofs over their heads, and their businesses.
So, the question must be asked, loudly and without apology: how do Sri Lankan banks manufacture such colossal profits, and who, precisely, is paying for them?
The answer lies in a three-digit spread that most depositors and borrowers never see printed side by side. Sri Lanka’s Central Bank has held its Overnight Policy Rate (OPR) at 7.75%, the mid-point of a corridor bounded by a Standing Deposit Facility Rate of 7.25% and a Standing Lending Facility Rate of 8.25%; a policy spread of a mere 1%. This is the rate at which banks lend to and borrow from the Central Bank overnight. It is the peg around which monetary policy turns. What happens when that peg meets the market is another story altogether.
A depositor walking into a Sri Lankan bank today will be offered somewhere between 6% and 9% on a fixed deposit, the rate varying by tenure, bank, and whether you qualify as a “senior citizen.” Average savings account rates sit between 2% and 5%, while fixed deposits offer 6% to 10%. Yet, the same bank will charge that depositor’s neighbour, who runs a hardware shop, a garment workshop, or a small hotel, between 14% and 24% to borrow. Credit cards carry rates at the upper end or beyond that range. The arithmetic is unambiguous: an interest spread of 8 to 14 percentage points, engineered on top of a policy rate corridor of just 1%.
A key driver of lending interest rates is the lending-deposit interest spread, which captures the efficiency with which banks allocate society’s savings to its most productive uses. High lending rates and spreads pose a challenge for policymakers: they can affect monetary policy transmission, hinder private investment and job creation, inhibit financial development and inclusion, and can ultimately compromise financial stability.
Sri Lanka’s spreads fail every one of those tests.
An international comparison that should shame regulators
To understand the scale of this extraction, one need only look at comparable economies. In India, the Reserve Bank’s repo rate stands at 6.5%, and commercial bank lending rates to prime borrowers average around 9–11%, yielding a spread of roughly 3–4 percentage points. Thailand and Vietnam, both developing Asian economies with nominal policy rates in the 2–4% range — maintain bank lending-deposit spreads consistently below 5 percentage points. Many countries in East Asia had average spreads of 5% or less during the 2010–2017 period, including China, South Korea, Japan, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Nepal, whose financial system is frequently and condescendingly compared unfavourably to Sri Lanka’s, reported a bank lending rate of 7.66% in late 2025, a figure that would be considered a floor, not a ceiling, in Colombo. Bangladesh records a lending rate of under 8%. Even Pakistan, whose policy rate touched 22% during a period of acute macroeconomic crisis, has since brought it down sharply, and its spread has never structurally embedded itself at the levels Sri Lankan banks now consider normal.
Move to advanced economies and the contrast becomes almost surreal. Japan’s policy rate remains effectively at zero; bank lending rates for business borrowers sit between 1% and 2.5%. Australia’s Reserve Bank rate stands at 4.35%, with commercial lending to small businesses typically in the 6–8% range, a spread of 2–3 points at most. New Zealand, Canada, and the United States operate within similar parameters: policy-to-lending spreads that are measured in single digits and that tighten competitively as banking markets mature.
Sri Lanka’s banks, by contrast, operate as if competition does not exist, and as if SMEs have nowhere else to go. They are largely correct on both counts.
The three creatures: A taxonomy of bank behaviour
A financial analyst, speaking in a podcast that has circulated widely among the Sri Lankan business community, offered a metaphor that deserves wider currency. Sri Lankan banks, he argued, behave with a three-stage predatory logic.
First, they are the Octopus, embracing customers tightly, wrapping tentacles around every financial transaction, every salary account, every utility payment, every insurance product. The bank becomes indispensable. It is everywhere. Cross-selling, bundling, and lock-in are the tools of this phase. The small businessman who secures a loan quickly finds that his current account, his trade finance, his letter of credit, and his overdraft are all with the same institution. He is held, firmly, from all sides.
Then, once the embrace is complete, comes the Leech, the slow, persistent extraction of blood. The interest rate spread does its patient work over months and years. A loan taken at 18% for a business generating 12% returns is a slow death sentence, mathematically guaranteed. Fees compound on fees. Penal interest accrues on unpaid interest. The CRIB record, Sri Lanka’s Credit Information Bureau system, locks the borrower in place: miss a payment, and no other institution will touch you. The leech feeds undisturbed.
And then, when the blood runs dry, when the business can no longer service its debt and the collateral has been fully leveraged, comes the Snake. Sri Lanka’s Parate Execution Law, enacted under the Recovery of Loans by Banks (Special Provisions) Act No. 4 of 1990, gives licensed commercial banks a power possessed by almost no other creditor class in any comparable jurisdiction: the right to seize and auction mortgaged property without any court order, without any judicial oversight, and without any independent valuation requirement.
Parate Execution is deeply ingrained in Sri Lanka’s legal system and has been a crucial tool for banks in recovering debts. The Cabinet-of-Ministers’ approval for a temporary suspension until December 2024 reflects a response to economic challenges, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises. In 2023 alone, over 1,750 properties belonging to SMEs were auctioned under the law. These were not abstract balance sheet entries. They were factories, workshops, warehouses, family homes pledged as collateral, and the accumulated savings of a lifetime. Around 10 SME associations are collectively pushing for the continued suspension of parate executions, warning that nearly 300,000 entrepreneurs risk losing their assets if the law is enforced without reforms.
The snake, once it strikes, leaves nothing.
The Gates Prediction and the clever adaptation
Bill Gates, in his 1997 book ‘Business at the Speed of Thought’, famously observed that banking is necessary but banks are not, that the dinosaur institutions of the financial world would be swept aside once the Internet captured the transaction infrastructure that sustains them. A quarter of a century later, the banks are still here, and in Sri Lanka they are more profitable than ever. Gates underestimated the octopus’s adaptability.
Sri Lankan banks did not resist digital disruption; they absorbed it and charged for it. Sri Lankan banks have a genuine claim to technological pioneering. They were among the earliest institutions in the world to deploy automated teller machines and some have argued that the island served as a live testing ground for ATM technology before the technology was ready for larger markets.
Internet banking reduced their branch costs while preserving their pricing power. Mobile apps deepened the lock-in. The spread, the core engine of extraction, was never threatened by technology because technology cannot dissolve a regulatory monopoly or a CRIB record. The dinosaur learned to code.
What did not adapt was the relationship between bank profit and productive economic activity. In a functioning market, high bank profitability should signal efficient intermediation, savings being channelled productively into investment, employment, and growth. In Sri Lanka, it signals the opposite: a structural transfer of income from the productive economy, particularly from small businesses, to the financial statements of financial institutions that operate with insufficient competitive pressure, inadequate regulatory oversight of pricing, and a legal recovery toolkit that would be considered extraordinary in almost any other jurisdiction.
The damage falls most heavily on small and medium enterprises, the sector that, in Sri Lanka as in every economy in the world, provides between 60% and 80% of all employment and generates the majority of entrepreneurial activity outside the formal corporate sector.
The International Monetary Fund has called for the reinstatement of parate execution, warning that prolonged suspension hinders banks’ ability to manage non-performing loans and price credit risks, potentially destabilizing the financial system. The IMF’s concern is legitimate in principle but perverse in practice. Non-performing loans in Sri Lanka’s banking system did not emerge from borrower profligacy. They emerged from a combination of historically high interest rates, a catastrophic economic crisis that was itself partly the product of fiscal and monetary mismanagement, and a forced-sale recovery mechanism that, when applied during a downturn, a double blow, destroys the very collateral value it claims to protect. When 1,750 properties are auctioned in a single year, supply floods a distressed market and prices collapse, damaging the bank’s recovery as much as the borrower’s livelihood.
The case for structural reform is not a case against banking or against profitable financial institutions. It is a case against a system that has substituted regulatory capture for competitive discipline, and legal coercion for constructive engagement.
Three reforms are overdue and increasingly urgent
First, the interest rate spread must be subject to transparent regulatory oversight. The Central Bank publishes the Average Weighted Prime Lending Rate and related statistics, but there is no binding ceiling on the spread between what banks pay depositors and what they charge borrowers for equivalent-risk instruments.
Second, the Parate Execution Law requires comprehensive reform, a genuine rewriting that introduces judicial oversight, mandatory independent valuation, and a structured mediation requirement before any forced sale can proceed.
Third, SME credit must be deliberately repriced. A development banking framework, should offer structured SME lending at regulated spreads, with the Central Bank providing concessional refinancing. Several peer economies have such mechanisms. Sri Lanka has the institutional capacity to build one; what it has lacked is the political will to confront the banking lobby that benefits from the current architecture.
There is an ecological principle that even the most effective parasite must learn: if it kills the host, it dies, too. Sri Lanka’s banking sector has not yet killed its host economy, but the symptoms of dangerous over-extraction are visible in every gazette notice of a parate auction, in every shuttered workshop in Pettah, in every garment factory whose owner defaulted not due to bad management but due to the mathematics of an 18% loan in a 12% return environment.
The banks will continue to announce their trillion-rupee asset milestones and their billion-rupee profits. The newspapers will continue to celebrate. And the octopus will continue its embrace, the leech its quiet work, and the snake will wait, patient, unhurried, for the moment to strike. Unless someone intervenes.
(The writer, a senior Chartered Accountant and professional banker, is a professor at SLIIT, Malabe. Views expressed in this article are personal.)
Winged guardians of Sri Lanka’s natural heritage: Featured birds highlight biodiversity richness ahead of World Biodiversity Day
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According to the History of the National Physical Planning Department, the “Anuradhapura Conservation Ordinance, established in 1942, can be considered as the first legal cover presented for the preparation and implementation of plans for any identified area within Sri Lanka; it is probably the first legislation to protect a historic site in the world. Architect/Planner Oliver Weerasinghe who was entrusted with the preparation of the Preservation Plan was appointed as the first Government Town Planner in the Department of Town and Country Planning that was established by the Town and Country Planning Ordinance No. 13 of 1946
The first task of the department was to finalise the Anuradhapura Preservation Plan. The Plan consisted of two parts, the Sacred Area and the New Town”. In 1949 the Government of Ceylon launched the Anuradhapura Preservation Plan with the guidance of Oliver Weerasinghe to protect the ancient ruins by relocating administrative functions and buildings to a separate New town.”
“The Sacred City incorporates Eight Sacred Sites known as the Atamasthaana. They are: Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi, Ruwanwliseya, Tuparamaya, Abhayagiriya, Jetavanaramaya, Mirisawetiya, Lankaramaya and Lovamahapaya”. ( Sunday Times , November 8, 2026)
Although the Sacred part of the City of Anuradhapura was separated from the New Town, the Regulatory work associated with Preservation and Restoration was within the Department of Town and Country Planning during Colonial Administrations. Furthermore, notwithstanding the fact that the Sacred City was full of Archaeological Artifacts “associated with living traditions of universal significance, specifically serving as the cradle of Theravada Buddhism” (UNESCO, the statutory institution continued to be the Department of Town and Country Planning.
This status remained unchained from 1946 to 1998 i.e. 52 years, until the Antiquities (Amendment) Act, No. 24 of 1998 which states: “An Ordinance to provide for the better preservation of the antiquities of Sri Lanka and of sites and buildings of historical or archaeological importance in Sri Lanka”. Paragraph 40 (g) of this Ordinance states: “the Director General of Archaeological is Empowered–to conduct archaeological impact assessment of areas that may be affected by development, industrial or other projects proposed by the government or any person and implement any mitigatory measures that may be required”.
As the title of the Act No. 24 of 1998 states: “the Ordinance was intended to “better preservation of antiquities” and concludes that it took 52 years to realise it despite the presence of Archaeologist of world repute while UNESCO’s declaration cited below was in 982 – 16 years earlier than Sri Lanka.
The declaration of Anuradhapura was a World Heritage Site and its justification for doing so was:
“This was officially inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982 during the 6th Session of the World Heritage Committee.
The primary statutory documentation declaring its inscription is the official under the decision 06COM VIII.20 (Nominations to the World Heritage List).
The inscription was heavily based on the evaluation conducted by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). The site was admitted to the World Heritage List under three specific cultural criteria:
· Criterion (ii): The sacred city exerted a major, long-term influence on the development of local architecture over several centuries.
· Criterion (iii): It stands as a unique testimonial to the ancient Ceylonese civilisation, having served as a prominent religious and political capital for over 1,300 years.
· Criterion (vi): The city is directly and tangibly associated with living traditions of universal significance, specifically serving as the cradle of Theravada Buddhism and hosting the , a sacred fig tree grown from a cutting of the historical Buddha’s tree”
As for the Sacred City of Anuradhapura, the status quo remained unchanged until the Constitution of 1977 introduced Article 9.
Article 9 states: “The Republic of Sri Lanka shall give to Buddhism the foremost place and accordingly it shall be the duty of the State to protect and sponsor the Buddha Sasana , while assuring to all religions the rights granted by Articles 10 and 14 (1) (e)”.
Cited below are Judgments from the Supreme Court as to what constitutes the Buddha Sasana:
“In the Antiquities Amendment Bill, the Supreme Court, in its determination, observed: The expression Buddha Sasana is wider than Buddhism and includes the entire establishment, together with objects and places of religious practices and worship of Buddhists”.
In Re the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the Provincial Councils Bill, 1987 2 Sri Lanka LR 312, Wanasundera J, referring to the term Buddha Sasana, said that it was “a compendious term encompassing all ancient, historic and sacred objects and places which have from ancient times been associated with the religious practices and worship of Sinhala Buddhists”.
It is clear that the Buddha Sasana is not confined to matters of ritual or practice, but includes the substance of Buddhist teachings. This is borne out clearly in other judgments of the Supreme Court.
An explicit example is the determination of the Supreme Court in the Ayurveda Amendment Bill, SCSD, numbers 22-35/2023, where the Court declared: “We hold that Buddha Sasana in Article 9 of the Constitution includes the dhamma, principles and teachings of Buddhism, including in particular recognized and undisputed codifications of the teachings of Lord Buddha”.
Buddha Sasana (Chapter 1) as Defined by the Presidential Commission of 2002
The Commission recommends the following definition to the term Buddha Sasana”.
12.1 Buddha Sasana is defined as the Buddha, the nine super-mundane ( navalokuttara ) Dhamma, the Sangha, the Buddhist temples (viharas) with their ancillary structures, forest hermitages ( aranya senasana ) and meditation centres, Bo trees, stupas, image houses, relic chambers, dhamma books and libraries, designated buildings for performance of vinaya acts by the sangha ( uposathagara) , fields, gardens and properties belonging to the Buddhist temples, Buddhist education, devalas , nuns and nunneries, the laity who had taken refuge in the Triple Gem, Buddhist literature, culture and civilisation, Buddhist festivals and processions (peraharas ), Buddhist customs and traditions, Buddhist principles and values and all that are required for its perpetuity .
12.2 It shall be the responsibility of the State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana in terms of Chapter II of the Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. The Government, all institutions and the citizens are bound by the constitution of that country. Therefore, it is inferred by the Commission that the constitutional obligation accorded by the Constitution of Sri Lanka to give to Buddhism the foremost place and accordingly to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana devolves on the Government of Sri Lanka, all state institutions, other organizations, and all its citizens. (1.26)
Having set up the Anuradhapura Conservation Ordinance in 1942, as the first legal instrument presented for the preparation and implementation of plans, the Government’s first task was for the Department of Town and Country Planning to establish the Town and Country Planning Ordinance No. 13 of 1946. The first task of the Department was to finalise the Anuradhapura Preservation Plan, which consisted of two parts, the Sacred Area and the New Town in order to protect the ancient ruins by relocating administrative functions and buildings to a separate New town. In 1949 the Government of Ceylon launched the Anuradhapura Preservation Plan based on the fundamental concept that the City of Anuradhapura was to consist of a Sacred Area that would be separate from the New Town.
Notwithstanding this division, development work relating to both the Sacred Area and the New Town were undertaken by the Department of Town and Country Planning in the absence of any other implementing Agency. This structural arrangement meant that the Archaeological Department had NO official involvement in the preservation and restoration of the sacred part of the City that UNESCO inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1982 and named it the Sacred City of Anuradhapura.
This sorry state of affairs continued from 1946 until 1998 i.e. 52 Years, despite the fact that Article 9 of the 1977 Constitution requires the “State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasane, when the ANTIQUITIES (AMENDMENT) ACT, No. 24 OF 1998 was introduced. Paragraph 40 (g) of this Amendment requires the Director General to undertake “archaeological impact assessment” of areas that may be affected by development”. Although it is reported that the Archaeological Department had participated in the Development of the National Physical Planning Department’s Plan, up to now, no Archaeological Impact Assessment has been conducted, nor does the Public have access to the Plan despite claims of transparency.
For the status quo to continue notwithstanding that the Sacred City of Anuradhapura did not have the input from the Archaeological Department from 1946 to 1998 i.e. 52 years, and despite Article 9 of the 1977 Constitution stating that “the State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana” and for UNESCO to inscribe the Sacred City as a World Heritage Site in 1982 is a serious lapse on the part of past governments.
It is imperative that the incumbent government review the structural arrangements contemplated and acknowledge that THE ONLY LEGITIMATE INSTITUTION TO “FOSTER AND PROTECT THE BUDDHA SASANA” IS THE MINISTRY OF BUDDHASASANA, a dedicated institution mandated to give “Buddhism the foremost place”.
Furthermore, UNESCO has described Anuradhapura as the “birthplace of Theravada Buddhism”. Therefore, all resources required for development within the Sacred City should be borne ONLY by the people of Sri Lanka, without foreign inputs of any kind, irrespective of their source.
Expecting advisory bodies to undertake the task of fostering and protecting the Buddha Sasana is also foolhardy. The Sacred City is a living heritage, whereas advisory bodies are transient entities and, as such, lack enduring accountability.
Continue Reading Features Power balance tilts against US-Israel combine in West Asia Published
With the Republican Party losing its clout in the US Congress in the wake of the recent midterm election setback the power balance in West Asia could very well be tilting against the US-Israel combine for the first time in decades. In all probability the Republican administration would from now on be challenged to initiate a policy reset in the region that is more amenable to Iran considering that the latter has emerged in a somewhat commanding position from the ongoing political and military turmoil in the region.
So powerful is Iran currently that it has unilaterally set out some seven conditions to the US to bring the conflict in West Asia within manageable limits. At present it is unclear whether the conditions are receiving the undivided attention of the US, given that the central Republican administration is in an effort to pull itself together and act with a degree of policy coherence in the aftermath of the recent polls debacle.
However, the Republican centre would have no choice but to concede some of the key Iranian demands in consideration of the ‘cost of living shock’ that the war in the region has administered to the average US consumer. Provided relief is quickly delivered to the consuming public, the chances are that the Trump administration would continue to witness a slide in its popularity and power. We have another reminder here that economics basically drives politics.
From the above viewpoint, conditions 2, 3 and 4, relating to the lifting of the US naval blockade on Iran, the reopening of shipping lanes and the release of frozen Iranian assets could prove vital since they are decisive in not only worsening the material hardships of the Iranian and US publics but also those of the rest of the world. They exercise a direct bearing, therefore, on the political fortunes of the US centre and may need to be met before long.
However, it is to the degree to which the immediate political consequences from the midterm polls are effectively and swiftly managed that the US centre could give the conditions its concerted attention. But the urgency of granting the key demands of Iran would only be increasingly felt in Washington, thereby denying it the ability to deal with the foreign policy issues at hand with greater ease and freedom of deliberation. That is, Iran would be acting and even negotiating with the US from what could be seen as a position of strength.
It is possible that the Trump administration is biding its time at the moment until ground conditions stabilize and greater policy clarity could be achieved on what needs to be done going forward, but a revival of military strikes on Iran could prove both politically and economically most costly. The administration would be acting in some of the US’ best interests by choosing its policy courses with utmost circumspection.
Meanwhile, it should not come as a surprise if the US is compelled to seriously consider a policy reset towards Israel as well. It is not the case that the US would be substantially downgrading its alliance with Israel in the days ahead but it is possible that there would be reduced financial and material backing by the US for Israel. After all, the US ‘purse’ is beginning to ‘pinch’ and the affordability of US financial assistance could emerge as a major worry.
In fact there has reportedly been an effort to scale down US assistance to a degree. Whether this would seriously undermine the US-Israel alliance is yet to be seen but the development could point to possible future strains that could stringently test the alliance.
It does not follow from the foregoing that Israel would be seeing a steady diminishing of its military power to the degree to which the US cuts down on its assistance. This is unlikely to be because Israel has proved more or less self-sufficient in most respects in the past. But the perception could gain ground among Israel’s enemies in the Arab world in particular that she would be weakened militarily in the absence of continued and substantial US help. This again is primarily a matter for the future.
However, a development of note in Israeli politics at present is the possibility of opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot forming the next government in Israel. He has reportedly been called upon by the Israeli President to do so. If this comes to pass we would have in Israel a more centrist coalition government that could prove less militaristic and less religiously hard line than the Netanyahu regime.
One message that the foregoing development conveys is that the Eisenkot regime could prove more amenable to negotiations in sorting out the Middle East tangle. President Trump is unlikely to easily hear of negotiations but an incoming Democratic Party controlled Congress is likely to. Such an administration could bring pressure on Trump to consider negotiations and political solutions to the outstanding issues in West Asia. Hopefully this opening for progressive change would be seized by the Democrats and sustainably followed through in the days ahead.
An incoming Democratic Party-dominated Congress would need to work on several fronts if it is to prove sensitive to the US public’s aspirations. It would need to end all forms of conflict and war in the Middle East, cut down on needless defense spending and invigorate the weak domestic economy. There is no getting away from the need for a two-state solution in West Asia. The recent mid-term polls results amply prove that these are main among the US public’s needs.
However, incoming more democracy-friendly administrations would also need to call on Israel’s neighbours, including Iran, to cooperate in finding peaceful, negotiated solutions to the problems that have been bloodily tearing the region apart. It will need to be impressed on these neighbours that Israel would not be negotiating from a position of weakness. It is simply that diplomatic, equitable solutions would do everyone concerned good.
Iran’s first demand calls for an ‘end to hostilities on all fronts’; including Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen. This is the way forward, but Iran needs to be asked to do more than what is seen as its part to end hostilities. It should not only down arms against Israel but prove its sincerity by recognizing Israel’s right to exist.
The nuclear option, meanwhile, needs to be shelved by all concerned. It needs to be perceived by all that unending war leads to the eventual annihilation of all.
“Pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart.” Robert F. Kennedy borrowed these words from Aeschylus on the night Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, speaking to a stunned crowd in Indianapolis. Two months later he was murdered himself.
I thought of that line in Washington, thirty-two years after my father, Ossie Abeyagoonasekera, was assassinated in Sri Lanka on 9 November 1994. At my book launch at the National Press Club, I met Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Robert Kennedy’s eldest daughter. She spoke of losing her father at sixteen. I was sixteen when I lost mine. Our fathers belonged to different nations and traditions, yet violence left us the same inheritance: the knowledge that one moment can divide a life into everything before and everything after.
Some losses are not healed by time. Time only teaches us to carry them.
The assassin believes he has settled something. He kills a man to silence an argument and let fear decide the future. But the dead go on asking the questions the living would rather avoid.
My father’s question has not aged: how free is Sri Lanka to decide its own future? I believe the answer lies in two places at once, in how we deal with the world’s great powers and in how we treat our own citizens. A country cannot be sovereign abroad and fearful at home.
He led a small party in an age of executive presidents, ideological quarrels and armed insurgency. After his close friend Vijaya Kumaratunga was assassinated in 1988, he assumed leadership of the Sri Lanka Mahajana Party, which would lose 117 of its members to political violence. He stayed.
In 1986 he travelled to Jaffna with Vijaya to speak with the LTTE, when dialogue itself could be called betrayal. Years later, a former LTTE member told me my father had earned their trust. The irony is unbearable, and I will not soften it: the organisation with which he sought peace carried out the bombing that ended his life.
He did not oppose his country. He opposed the injustice that threatened it. In 1982 he challenged President J. R. Jayewardene with a symbolic rice-ration-book campaign. In Welikada prison he corresponded with Nelson Mandela, who encouraged his struggle. And he supported his opponents’ policies whenever they served ordinary citizens. Loyalty to a party, he understood, is not loyalty to a nation.
His travels took him to India, China, the Soviet Union, Libya and Europe. I lived with him in Bonn in 1988–89, as the Berlin Wall approached its fall, and learned that small nations are never alone in history. They are always being looked at by larger ones. Today the Indian Ocean is contested by India, China, the United States and others through security, infrastructure and investment. The danger begins when that competition shapes our domestic choices and the stories citizens tell about their country. A nation loses sovereignty not only when foreign soldiers cross its border, but when its leaders can no longer tell the national interest from someone else’s. Sri Lanka’s task is not to choose between New Delhi, Beijing or Washington. It is to keep the independence to decide what serves its own people.
That independence is tested at home too.
The government promised to repeal oppressive counterterrorism law. In October it tabled the Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill(PSTB) to replace the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Critics point out that it allows detention for up to a year without charge, followed by up to a year of pretrial detention, and that a magistrate cannot overturn a detention order. The Bar Association of Sri Lanka has urged the government to withdraw this bill and the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill, citing the lessons of the old Act.
The Twenty-Second Amendment deserves the same scrutiny. It raises the retirement age of Supreme Court and Court of Appeal judges. The government presents it as a way to strengthen judicial independence and clear the backlog of cases. But the Bar Association notes that the sitting Chief Justice would be the first Supreme Court judge to benefit directly, and a UN Special Rapporteur Margaret Satterthwaite has written to the President with serious concerns.
Days ago, Gampaha Magistrate Bandula Gunaratne, who had asked the President of the Court of Appeal to begin contempt proceedings against the Inspector General of Police for failing to comply with a court order, was transferred to the Judges’ Training Institute with immediate effect.
The state has a duty to protect its people from terrorism and organised crime. But a law must be judged by what it lets a future government do, not by the intentions of the present one. A government elected on the promise of greater freedom owes the public an explanation of why its laws seem to narrow it.
I have now lived more years without my father than with him. In Washington I was returned to the sixteen-year-old who believed death was history’s last word. Time has taught me otherwise. The questions remain, patient and unanswered.
My father believed politics could be an act of love: the difficult kind that demands sacrifice and defends human dignity. As I prepare to launch the Sinhala translation of Winds of Change, I hope more Sri Lankans will read it in their own language and ask these questions for themselves.
My father died believing Sri Lanka could become a more just country. Our duty is to see that it also remains a free one.
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