The calls for the President of this country to resign amid the unprecedented economic chaos are increasing, and it is time the feasibility of such a mea culpa should be considered. This writer thinks it is not the role of any columnist to ask the President to resign. But it’s the role of a columnist to determine whether the President should weigh his options, resignation being one of them.
Why is resignation looking as if it is one possible course of action the President could take? It is because he would be able to come out of the situation with at least some of his honour intact, politically speaking.
Even President Putin gave up the reins of power once in the past and had an understudy – Medvedev – running the country. This is not to compare President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to Russia’s President Putin. The latter is strong and has proved he is no pushover in the most challenging of circumstances. It goes without saying that at the moment, the Sri Lankan President looks like he is the most ineffectual leader we have had in generations. That is the stark reality. The President has stated that the current crises are not one of his own makings. To give him the benefit of the doubt, even if they aren’t, it is clear that he has failed miserably to manage the crises, no matter whose makings they are.
The simple question that needs to be asked is why the current impasse was not anticipated and remedial measures taken? Whichever way it is cut, the answer has to be that it is due to the obdurate nature of the current leadership. Without any evidence to support any such premise, the President runs very often with the idea that he is correct and that he should be allowed to be correct because that’s leadership – i.e. what is laid down in policy must be followed through.
But that’s not leadership, it’s recalcitrance – a stubborn refusal to listen to any advice whatsoever has been the hallmark of this administration.
In fact, the President’s reflex has been to hit back at anyone who criticises his policies. This is the mindset of the army man; that’s how things happen in the army. Orders are issued, and nobody asks questions, because orders are followed without questions asked, in the military. That’s great for the military but it is not good for a country, particularly one that has to be governed with due regard to all variables, ramifications, etc. As Imran Khan said of one of his predecessors, Musharraf, army generals are trained to “go capture that hill” or do something akin to that – single, concretised tasks, approached with a one-dimensional mindset. But running a country is not remotely like that. A leader with just an iota of common sense – not vision, but mere everyday intelligence – should be able to grasp the nuanced nature of policies that are required to run a country.
But what was the modus operandi of the current President?
It seems that for him, everything was zero-sum. His fertiliser policy was zero-sum. Instant passage into an era of 100% reliance on organic fertiliser was so much pie in the sky. Today, our tea yields, never mind our agricultural crops, are 40% below normal, and that is insanity. It is particularly insane when we need every export dollar we could get. His other policies were zero-sum too. The dollar was maintained at an artificial peg when it was obvious that whatever foreign exchange that may have been forthcoming by way of remittances were being blocked due to this recalcitrant policy. Of course, it is true that prices would skyrocket once the rupee was allowed to float against the dollar; that’s inevitable. But at least we would have had some dollars which would have helped pay for the import of essentials.
And in this way, the list goes on. His obduracy was such that he relied on policy decisions without so much as making a common-sense reference to whether those policies would hold, never mind whether he was willing to talk to the experts or not. For example, you don’t need to talk to the experts to realise that if you are not getting the dollars from anywhere, there would be no choice except to float the rupee and expect some remittances to trickle in. Also, if there were no alternatives – and the leadership should have known that – he should have been able to realise, reasonably early, that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may be the only route available.
But all the cues were missed, as a result of which the people are facing unprecedented, untold suffering. The middle and the lower-middle classes that rely on essentials such as gas are hit because they do not have fuel for their vehicles or gas to fire their stoves.
To get back to where this article began, in that event, should the President think of resignation as an honourable way out? He should certainly weigh his options on that, as that may be the only way in which he could – as Putin did after Medvedev – think of salvaging his honour and making maybe another face-saving bid to recapture power on a later date.
As of now, the people have made up their minds, by and large, that the enormity of the crises is such, that it cannot all be credibly fathered on the Covid-19 situation and the global economic slump. The President was at pains to state in his last address to the nation that we are not the only country that is currently undergoing difficulties. But it is apparent that only in a very few countries is the situation so abysmally bad.
The people are not morons. They are able to discern simple facts. They are able to intuit that for instance, just to take one stark example, our Covid-19 lockdowns were crazy – a pig-headed policy that broke the back of the domestic economy.
When this writer wrote innumerable articles – which are on record and can easily be retrieved – that these lockdowns are crazy and that they will break the back of the domestic economy, the powers that be were deaf to such opinions. On the one hand, obdurate policies such as the dollar issue and the refusal to restructure debt even at the risk of soft default caused the foreign exchange crisis.
On the other hand, what would have been a saving grace in this situation – the domestic economy – was dealt a body blow as well. Wasn’t there one smidgen of prescience to envisage what would become of the economy with such bad policy? The President says now that he has saved “you and your children” from the perils of a dangerous disease: Covid-19. Really? By bringing us as a country to the verge of total economic collapse? By driving the economy to its most dangerous impasse ever, in our post-independence history?
This is the stuff that resignations are made of. Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa may think that he should be made President but that’s pie in the sky too. But the incumbent President could weigh his options and think of handing the baton to someone in his own team at least, as Putin did with Medvedev. For better or for worse, the President and his Government were granted a two-thirds majority. Under those circumstances, there is no case for a transfer of power to the Opposition, particularly if Premadasa cannot command a parliamentary majority and wants power in the form of the presidency transferred to him on a platter. That suspiciously looks like he just wants to be President because he is in love with the trappings and the power. That’s nonsense – nobody is made President like that, however dire the situation may be.
But that does not mean that the failed presidency of Gotabaya Rajapaksa is necessarily viable anymore. If he weighs his options and considers letting the chips fall where they may, he may be able to retire at least with a smidgen of his honour intact, after the unmitigated disaster he has spawned, in just a couple of years on the job.
(The writer is a former Editor-in-Chief of three national English language publications and a practising Attorney-at-Law. He is an Editors’ Guild award-winning columnist, and contributing writer and columnist for the Nikkei Asian Review and South China Morning Post, while his editorials have been published in The Australian)
………………………….
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.
The honour of a presidential resignation
21 Mar 2022
The honour of a presidential resignation
21 Mar 2022
The calls for the President of this country to resign amid the unprecedented economic chaos are increasing, and it is time the feasibility of such a mea culpa should be considered. This writer thinks it is not the role of any columnist to ask the President to resign. But it’s the role of a columnist to determine whether the President should weigh his options, resignation being one of them.
Why is resignation looking as if it is one possible course of action the President could take? It is because he would be able to come out of the situation with at least some of his honour intact, politically speaking.
Even President Putin gave up the reins of power once in the past and had an understudy – Medvedev – running the country. This is not to compare President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to Russia’s President Putin. The latter is strong and has proved he is no pushover in the most challenging of circumstances. It goes without saying that at the moment, the Sri Lankan President looks like he is the most ineffectual leader we have had in generations. That is the stark reality. The President has stated that the current crises are not one of his own makings. To give him the benefit of the doubt, even if they aren’t, it is clear that he has failed miserably to manage the crises, no matter whose makings they are.
The simple question that needs to be asked is why the current impasse was not anticipated and remedial measures taken? Whichever way it is cut, the answer has to be that it is due to the obdurate nature of the current leadership. Without any evidence to support any such premise, the President runs very often with the idea that he is correct and that he should be allowed to be correct because that’s leadership – i.e. what is laid down in policy must be followed through.
But that’s not leadership, it’s recalcitrance – a stubborn refusal to listen to any advice whatsoever has been the hallmark of this administration.
In fact, the President’s reflex has been to hit back at anyone who criticises his policies. This is the mindset of the army man; that’s how things happen in the army. Orders are issued, and nobody asks questions, because orders are followed without questions asked, in the military. That’s great for the military but it is not good for a country, particularly one that has to be governed with due regard to all variables, ramifications, etc. As Imran Khan said of one of his predecessors, Musharraf, army generals are trained to “go capture that hill” or do something akin to that – single, concretised tasks, approached with a one-dimensional mindset. But running a country is not remotely like that. A leader with just an iota of common sense – not vision, but mere everyday intelligence – should be able to grasp the nuanced nature of policies that are required to run a country.
But what was the modus operandi of the current President?
It seems that for him, everything was zero-sum. His fertiliser policy was zero-sum. Instant passage into an era of 100% reliance on organic fertiliser was so much pie in the sky. Today, our tea yields, never mind our agricultural crops, are 40% below normal, and that is insanity. It is particularly insane when we need every export dollar we could get. His other policies were zero-sum too. The dollar was maintained at an artificial peg when it was obvious that whatever foreign exchange that may have been forthcoming by way of remittances were being blocked due to this recalcitrant policy. Of course, it is true that prices would skyrocket once the rupee was allowed to float against the dollar; that’s inevitable. But at least we would have had some dollars which would have helped pay for the import of essentials.
And in this way, the list goes on. His obduracy was such that he relied on policy decisions without so much as making a common-sense reference to whether those policies would hold, never mind whether he was willing to talk to the experts or not. For example, you don’t need to talk to the experts to realise that if you are not getting the dollars from anywhere, there would be no choice except to float the rupee and expect some remittances to trickle in. Also, if there were no alternatives – and the leadership should have known that – he should have been able to realise, reasonably early, that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may be the only route available.
But all the cues were missed, as a result of which the people are facing unprecedented, untold suffering. The middle and the lower-middle classes that rely on essentials such as gas are hit because they do not have fuel for their vehicles or gas to fire their stoves.
To get back to where this article began, in that event, should the President think of resignation as an honourable way out? He should certainly weigh his options on that, as that may be the only way in which he could – as Putin did after Medvedev – think of salvaging his honour and making maybe another face-saving bid to recapture power on a later date.
As of now, the people have made up their minds, by and large, that the enormity of the crises is such, that it cannot all be credibly fathered on the Covid-19 situation and the global economic slump. The President was at pains to state in his last address to the nation that we are not the only country that is currently undergoing difficulties. But it is apparent that only in a very few countries is the situation so abysmally bad.
The people are not morons. They are able to discern simple facts. They are able to intuit that for instance, just to take one stark example, our Covid-19 lockdowns were crazy – a pig-headed policy that broke the back of the domestic economy.
When this writer wrote innumerable articles – which are on record and can easily be retrieved – that these lockdowns are crazy and that they will break the back of the domestic economy, the powers that be were deaf to such opinions. On the one hand, obdurate policies such as the dollar issue and the refusal to restructure debt even at the risk of soft default caused the foreign exchange crisis.
On the other hand, what would have been a saving grace in this situation – the domestic economy – was dealt a body blow as well. Wasn’t there one smidgen of prescience to envisage what would become of the economy with such bad policy? The President says now that he has saved “you and your children” from the perils of a dangerous disease: Covid-19. Really? By bringing us as a country to the verge of total economic collapse? By driving the economy to its most dangerous impasse ever, in our post-independence history?
This is the stuff that resignations are made of. Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa may think that he should be made President but that’s pie in the sky too. But the incumbent President could weigh his options and think of handing the baton to someone in his own team at least, as Putin did with Medvedev. For better or for worse, the President and his Government were granted a two-thirds majority. Under those circumstances, there is no case for a transfer of power to the Opposition, particularly if Premadasa cannot command a parliamentary majority and wants power in the form of the presidency transferred to him on a platter. That suspiciously looks like he just wants to be President because he is in love with the trappings and the power. That’s nonsense – nobody is made President like that, however dire the situation may be.
But that does not mean that the failed presidency of Gotabaya Rajapaksa is necessarily viable anymore. If he weighs his options and considers letting the chips fall where they may, he may be able to retire at least with a smidgen of his honour intact, after the unmitigated disaster he has spawned, in just a couple of years on the job.
(The writer is a former Editor-in-Chief of three national English language publications and a practising Attorney-at-Law. He is an Editors’ Guild award-winning columnist, and contributing writer and columnist for the Nikkei Asian Review and South China Morning Post, while his editorials have been published in The Australian)
………………………….
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.
Kapruka
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Discover Kapruka, the leading online shopping platform in Sri Lanka, where you can conveniently send Gifts and Flowers to your loved ones for any event. Explore a wide range of popular Shopping Categories on Kapruka, including Toys, Groceries, Electronics, Birthday Cakes, Fruits, Chocolates, Automobile, Mother and Baby Products, Clothing, and Fashion. Additionally, Kapruka offers unique online services like Money Remittance, Astrology, Medicine Delivery, and access to over 700 Top Brands. Also If you’re interested in selling with Kapruka, Partner Central by Kapruka is the best solution to start with. Moreover, through Kapruka Global Shop, you can also enjoy the convenience of purchasing products from renowned platforms like Amazon and eBay and have them delivered to Sri Lanka.Send love straight to their heart this Valentine's with our thoughtful gifts!