It is said that the government has declared the Emergency Act, which came into effect yesterday (May 06), with the aim of ensuring political stability and the smooth running of the people, which is essential for the reforms that need to be made to overcome the current economic and social crisis.
Following is the statement issued by the Director General of Government Information, Mohan Samaranayake.
In order to strengthen Sri Lanka’s food, health and energy security, the Government of India extended a concessional loan of USD 1 billion to the Government of Sri Lanka, through the State Bank of India, on March 17, 2022. The Facility is operational and food items like rice, red chillies have already been supplied under it. Several other Contracts for supply of sugar, milk powder, wheat, medicines, fuel and industrial raw materials, based on the priorities of the Government and people of Sri Lanka, have been included under the Facility.
2. SBI has released details on the operational aspects of the Facility, which is available at the following link:
Olga rudenko has a litany of worries as editor of the Kyiv Independent, an online newspaper in Ukraine. Since the Russian army invaded in February, more than 20 journalists have been killed. Throwing aside international conventions, the Russians are targeting reporters. Insurance for local correspondents is prohibitively expensive, and the paper is struggling to get hold of helmets, satellite phones and bulletproof vests. “We are being invaded by people who hate journalists,” she says.
It’s a triumph that Ms Rudenko and her team are working at all. Last year they were worrying about a threat less dramatic than Russian bombs, but still insidious: a reorganisation of the paper which they believed would undermine their editorial independence. The Kyiv Independent was born after the staff of the Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s largest English-language newspaper, suspected that the wealthy owner was seeking to influence coverage under pressure from the authorities, an accusation he denied. When they protested, he fired the whole staff in early November. Around 30 journalists, led by Ms Rudenko, decided to launch an independently funded news outlet. The Kyiv Independent has far exceeded their expectations. Since Russian missiles began hailing down on Ukraine, readers across the globe have been counting on it. As the war began and interest peaked, some 630,000 visitors a day were reading the Kyiv Independent. It has raised almost $2m in crowdfunding.
(V-Dem) Research ProjectGlobally, press freedom is in retreat. Around 85% of people live in countries where it has declined over the past five years, according to analysis by unesco of data on freedom of expression from the Varieties of Democracy (v-dem) Institute. v-dem gives each country a score from 0 (least free) to 1 (most free). The global average weighted by population peaked at 0.65 in the early 2000s, and then again in 2011, before falling to 0.49 in 2021. This is the worst score since 1984, when the cold war was raging and the two sides were propping up dictators on every continent.The sharpest decline has come in the past decade, and has included several of the most populous countries. China declined from very bad (0.26) in 2011 to atrocious (0.08) in 2021. India fell from 0.85 to 0.55; Turkey from 0.54 to 0.15; Egypt from 0.58 to 0.14; Indonesia from 0.83 to 0.68 and Brazil from 0.94 to 0.57. Russia plunged from 0.51 to 0.31 even before the war prompted President Vladimir Putin to crack down more harshly. Ethiopia opened up after 2018, but a civil war means its score for 2022 will be woeful.
Several states still deploy old-fashioned brute force against journalists. In 2021, 488 were behind bars, according to Reporters Without Borders, a non-profit group. Many more were subject to intimidation. “Government agents raided my house and threatened to kill me,” says Lucy Kassa, an Ethiopian journalist reporting on atrocities in Tigray. Ms Kassa fled Ethiopia, and, like Ms Rudenko and others, she had no choice but to try new ways of doing journalism. She is continuing to report on Tigray from exile. “I have a strong belief that the truth will find ways to reveal itself, will fight for itself,” Ms Kassa says. “And I consider myself as an instrument of that.”
Even as press freedom has declined over the past decade, the number of journalists killed on the job has also fallen, from 76 in 2011 to 46 in 2021. That may be because authoritarian leaders are finding they can control the news in less grisly ways. To direct the flow of information, many use state funding and laws purportedly meant to guard state security or even to protect the truth. They often pretend to allow a free press, and tolerate some independent voices to reinforce this claim. But they use all the power of the state, including new powers granted by advancing technology, to ensure that these voices are barely audible, while pro-regime media are lavishly favoured and funded.For such leaders, the covid-19 pandemic has been handy. New rules in countries such as Bolivia, Russia and the Philippines punish the spread of “false information” about the virus with jail time. Brazil has restricted access to government data. And reporters working from home, often on unprotected personal devices, are more vulnerable to cyber-attack. A study covering 144 countries suggests that pandemic policies have been used to justify curbs on press freedom in 96 of them.Financial pressure on independent media can be effective not least because the news industry has been in decline since the 1980s. Advertising has followed readers online, where the duopoly of Google and Meta laps up half of all revenues. PwC, a consultancy, predicts that global newspaper advertising, in print and online, will fall by about 20% between 2019 and 2024.
Source: Zenith
Against that backdrop, governments can cripple critical outlets by withholding advertising and leaning on private firms to do likewise. Meanwhile, they subsidise more servile competitors. In Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has squeezed local media by slashing the government advertising budget. The money the state does spend is concentrated with friendly outlets: more than half of its advertising goes to ten media groups, according to one analysis of the 2020 budget. In India advertisers are often frightened to back outlets critical of the ruling party.Another common trick is for regimes to nudge friendly plutocrats, who often depend on official patronage for their fortunes, to buy up independent media and neuter them. This has happened in Russia, Turkey and Hungary, among other countries. Since Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, took office in 2010, his cronies have snapped up private media groups and turned them into ruling-party mouthpieces. Some have donated their media holdings to a pro-government organisation run by former lawmakers for Mr Orban’s Fidesz party. Called the Central European Press and Media Foundation (kesma), this conglomerate now controls over 500 outlets. Mr Orban won a fourth term in office last month, thanks in no small part to his grip on the public’s understanding of reality. The opposition got almost no airtime, except to be denounced as stooges of a Jewish billionaire supposedly conspiring against the Hungarian way of life.Hungary’s journalists have not given up. Telex, a news site, has a similar origin story to the Kyiv Independent. It was founded in Budapest two years ago when more than 80 staff jumped ship from a media group run by an Orban ally. “We knew that we cannot rely on advertising revenue, because of the political influence of the advertisement market,” says Veronika Munk, co-founder of Telex. “So we decided, ‘OK, let’s turn to our readers.’”
Telex appealed for donations via YouTube, and to build trust with its audience it began sharing detailed information on revenues and spending online. In the run-up to the recent election, Telex reporting stood in stark contrast to that by government-led groups. Mr Orban’s team didn’t share details about his campaign events with independent media. It painted the prime minister as a man of the people, posting videos of him pushing his way through crowds of fans, glad-handing. Telex reporters asked readers who learned of coming campaign events to tip them off, then lingered outside. They captured images of Mr Orban driving through empty streets, closely guarded by security, to speak at tiny invitation-only gatherings.Hungary shows how press freedom can be curtailed in a country that is still, more or less, a democracy—critical voices such as Telex reach far fewer people than state-backed propaganda outlets. In truly authoritarian regimes such as China the muzzle is far tighter. Technology has allowed the Communist Party to snoop and censor on a scale and with a precision that would have been extremely hard to achieve without more brute force even a few years ago. It is not just criticism of officials that is off limits. Topics like racism and feminism can be as well. Members of the public can be terrified to speak to reporters. And when reporters and their sources put themselves at risk to produce investigative journalism, sharing those stories can be near impossible. In the midst of a covid lockdown in Shanghai in April, Caixin, a Chinese media group, posted an article exposing hidden deaths at the city’s largest elderly-care hospital. It lasted online for just an hour, then vanished.This climate of fear is now enveloping Hong Kong, which until recently allowed relatively free speech. A “national security” law introduced in June 2020 threatens severe penalties, including life sentences, for vaguely defined crimes, such as subversion, that journalists might consider just doing their job. “To simply continue at the moment feels like a revolutionary act,” says Tom Grundy, editor of the Hong Kong Free Press, the last independent English-language news outlet there. The effect, he says, can be insidious. “You get intrusive thoughts when it comes to, you know, self-censorship,” he says. “You can’t help it. Just cringing when you press publish.”
The Hong Kong authorities’ campaign to shut down Apple Daily, a pro-democracy tabloid, and silence its billionaire owner, Jimmy Lai, has provided a template for repressive regimes everywhere. The attack was financial, legal and technological.Mark Simon, an aide to Mr Lai, says the harassment began more than 20 years ago. The authorities pressed local businessmen to stop advertising with Apple Daily. Other independent news outlets were gradually bought out by pro-Beijing tycoons. Executives’ emails were repeatedly hacked. But the real crackdown came with the national security law. Mr Lai was charged with “foreign collusion” and arrested. Police flooded the Apple Daily newsroom, seizing laptops and hard drives. The death knell came in June, when the group’s bank accounts were frozen. “It wasn’t death by a thousand cuts,” Mr Simon says. “It was ten whacks.”The reporters at Apple Daily found creative ways to resist, though only for a while. When the Hong Kong police swooped into the newsroom and demanded staff tell them where the servers were, they were infuriated by the response: “in the cloud”. The IT team weren’t joking. Apple Daily had switched to a secure cloud-based publishing system managed by the Washington Post. Meanwhile, female staff took advantage of the fact that the cops were all men, rushing to the restroom and sending the day’s stories to editors in Taiwan via Facebook. But then the bank accounts were frozen, and Apple Daily folded. When the final issue was printed, Hong Kongers queued at the newsstands and bought a million copies, more than ten times the usual sales.Another threat to press freedom is common even in places where journalists are generally respected, such as western Europe. Rich and powerful folk with things to hide have found that overstrict libel laws and vaguely drafted privacy rules can be used to deter nosy journalists. “Strategic lawsuits against public participation”, or slapps, are claims that aim to exhaust publications’ time and resources. Those unable to meet legal costs are forced to take down content and often stop reporting on the individuals suing them.
Daphne Caruana Galizia, a Maltese investigative journalist known as a “one-woman WikiLeaks” for her coverage of corruption and money-laundering, spent almost every day of the last year of her life in court. Even the car-bombing that assassinated her in 2017 did not stop the harassment. Her son, Matthew Caruana Galizia, who with the rest of the family inherited the cases, recalls a hearing just a few days after Ms Galizia died, when the courtroom was filled by top officials; some of them had brought cases against his mother for her reporting. “This was only designed for one thing: to intimidate my family into shutting up,” Mr Galizia says.In a push to stop such misuse of the legal system, the European Commission sketched out new rules in April that would allow reporters to appeal to the courts to have bogus cases thrown out. In European countries, which lag behind places like Canada, Australia and some American states in the development of anti-slapp legislation, a group of non-profit groups identified around 570 such potential cases filed between 2010 and 2021. The list is not exhaustive but it does point to a trend: those bringing the cases are often politicians or public servants, and they often target independent journalists.Like the law, free speech itself, augmented by technology, has been turned against journalists. Social media provide a platform for hate campaigns that can wear down the most hard-nosed correspondent. Women have it particularly bad. A survey last year found almost three-quarters of female journalists have experienced some form of online abuse, including surveillance and threats of sexual violence.Rana Ayyub, an Indian commentator who loudly admonishes Prime Minister Narendra Modi for stoking anti-Muslim violence, has endured a campaign of intimidation by his supporters. Hindu nationalist trolls have superimposed her face onto pornographic videos, called for her murder, and shared her home address online. Fear of attack has confined Ms Ayyub to her home for long spells. Unable to eat from the anxiety, she has spent days on end in bed and been fed through an intravenous drip. “It’s a living, breathing nightmare for me and my family,” she says.As journalism has moved online, governments have found new ways to censor it. China’s “great firewall” lets the Communist Party block nearly any content it dislikes. Other regimes sometimes use cruder methods. A report in mid-2021 by Freedom House, a watchdog, found that 20 out of 70 countries had shut down the internet in the previous year to keep their citizens in the dark, typically during periods of unrest. States are increasingly using digital means to snoop on reporters, too. An investigation last year revealed that almost 200 journalists had been targeted by Pegasus spyware, which is sold by an Israeli company to governments across the globe.Journalists are fighting technology with technology. They conduct interviews on encrypted messaging apps, like Signal or Telegram. To protect whistleblowers with access to important information, they rely on new sharing tools that erase files as soon as a transfer is complete. Ms Kassa, the journalist forced to flee Ethiopia, continues to report on Tigray via the internet. From her new base, which she asked to keep confidential, Ms Kassa conducts interviews with victims and witnesses of atrocities over the phone. She asks a network of locals she has developed, people who are not on the Ethiopian government’s radar, to get hold of photographs, videos and health records as evidence. In regions where there is a communications blackout, these so-called fixers go to ngo offices, which are sometimes the only buildings with Wi-Fi connections, to share documents with Ms Kassa via messaging apps. She compares each story against satellite imagery, and she has hired experts to help her spot doctored images. An article that would have taken her one week to report on the ground now takes a month. But, Ms Kassa insists, “there are always ways.”
Reporters can be annoying. When they bang on about freedom of the press, they might sound self-serving. But as Timothy Garton Ash, a professor at Oxford University and author of “Free Speech”, puts it, “you need these pesky, difficult people.” Research shows that where there is freedom of the press there is less corruption. When autocrats distort the news, they force their publics to live in a fantasy world.Consider Russia. Even as Mr Putin is failing in his war on Ukraine, he is succeeding in mythmaking at home. His propaganda machine is spewing lies, including that war crimes committed by his forces are hoaxes staged by actors, and he has criminalised objective reporting. Victoria Arefyeva, a photojournalist for Sota.Vision, an independent news outlet, faces constant harassment while trying to report on protests: “You begin to realise you can no longer film as before.” Those determined to challenge the state narrative must take extreme steps, like Marina Ovsyannikova, a television producer who interrupted a live broadcast on state-owned Channel One holding a sign: “Don’t believe the propaganda. They are lying to you here.”
Elena Kostyuchenko, an investigative reporter, has been beaten by thugs and has seen four colleagues murdered in her 17 years at Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper. She says the new censorship laws are succeeding. Publications like hers have been forced to stop printing and to take down online articles. Even tech-savvy Russians are struggling to reach blocked content now that many Russian bank cards have been disabled, making it tricky to pay for VPN services. “ I love my country,” Ms Kostyuchenko says, when asked why she would risk jail by reporting there. “It may sound strange, but it’s still true.”Perhaps Ms Kassa is right when she says that the truth can fight for itself. But the omens are not good. As government control grows more sophisticated, even the bravest and most innovative journalists are finding it harder to do their jobs. If the steady erosion of press freedom is not reversed, governments will get away with more abuses and everyone will find it harder to understand the world as it is
■“Press freedom: what’s at stake”, a documentary film by The Economist, records our investigation into the decline of press freedom. It is available to watch here.
The Bar Association of Sri Lanka requests President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa to immediately withdraw the emergency regulations that came into effect from midnight yesterday.
The union said in a statement that emergency laws should not be used to arrest or detain anti-government protesters. The statement added that the fundamental rights of the people, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, should not be compromised in any way.
Saliya Peiris, President’s Counsel and President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, further stated that the use of emergency regulations to control the situation in the country is not an option but a matter of public opinion.
As the people in Sri Lanka are facing a catastrophic economic crisis, the government must protect the human rights of everyone and ensure an enabling environment for peacefully expressing dissent, Amnesty International said in a report released today.
In the report, ‘From Bad to Worse: Rights Under Attack During Sri Lanka’s Economic Crisis’, the organization also called for the international community to support Sri Lanka in its recovery in line with obligations around international cooperation and assistance, with a particular focus on marginalized groups who are at grave risk.
“The crisis in Sri Lanka is a prime example of the interdependence and interrelatedness of economic and social rights and civil political rights. As such, human rights must be at the heart of discussions on Sri Lanka’s economic future,” said Yamini Mishra, South Asia Regional Director for Amnesty International.
“We urge the international community to step in where possible to support Sri Lanka with necessary financial and technical assistance, such as debt relief and aid, in line with a human rights based assessment of the situation to ensure the economic crisis does not deteriorate into a humanitarian crisis.”
Sri Lanka is facing a balance of payment crisis and a severe foreign exchange shortage compounded by Covid-19 lockdowns, pre-pandemic tax cuts and loss of access to international capital markets. As it stands, foreign exchange reserves are critically low, making the import of essential medicines, food items, cooking gas and fuel, immensely difficult. This is affecting all major sectors including education, health and livelihoods.
At least five individuals have died while standing in line for essentials and to date, a total of 75 individuals have reached Tamil Nadu in India seeking economic refuge. Thousands of people in Sri Lanka have taken to the street in a show of resistance using creative slogans, art, theatre, dance, music and technology. Their demands are for the resignation of the president and the prime minister, but also include calls for accountability for wide-ranging human rights violations, inter- ethnic, religious unity and harmony. According to the information collected by Amnesty International, the protests have been largely peaceful; however, in several instances, the Sri Lankan authorities have unlawfully restricted their right to freedom of peaceful assembly including the use of force, tear gas and arbitrary detentions.
The authorities must uphold human rights to freedom of movement, liberty and security of person. Also, Sri Lanka has ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and has an obligation both individually and through international assistance and cooperation, to guarantee economic and social rights. These rights include the rights to health, education, social security, adequate food, and an adequate standard of living.
In February this year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommended that “social safety nets should be strengthened, by increasing spending, widening coverage, and improving targeting, to mitigate the adverse impacts of macroeconomic adjustment on vulnerable groups,” however to date, the only proposals approved by the Sri Lankan cabinet have been to provide ad-hoc handouts for a period of three months for low-income families. The government must urgently fund and expand social security systems and ensure that all people, including marginalised groups, are protected from the impacts of the crisis.
Amnesty International has observed that austerity measures introduced previously in several other countries in the context of economic crises have seriously impacted economic and social rights protections. In Greece and Spain, for example, austerity measures made healthcare less accessible and affordable, which had a disproportionate impact on those with lower incomes, and particularly on the elderly, those needing mental health care and treatment, those with disabilities, and with chronic health conditions.
“Lessons must be learnt from similar experiences from across the world to avoid serious repercussions,” said Yamini Mishra. “Any austerity measures introduced in Sri Lanka must be based on a human rights assessment, should be open for public scrutiny and feedback in an inclusive and participatory process, and all alternatives must be explored before they are introduced. Austerity measures must not disproportionately impact the marginalized groups and must be strictly temporary.”
Former energy minister Udaya Gammanpila has issued the warning after being sacked for criticising government policy that has taken Sri Lanka to the brink of bankruptcy.
Sri Lanka could run out of fuel and food in the next month, according to the former energy minister.
Udaya Gammanpila was sacked earlier this year for criticising government policy that has taken the country to the brink of bankruptcy.
The former energy minister told Sky News the economic crisis in his country is reaching a tipping point that could lead to the collapse of agriculture, medical services and industrial production, leading to “anarchy”.
He issued the warning before Sri Lanka‘s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared a state of emergency across the country on Friday evening effective from midnight.
It comes amid widespread protests calling for the resignation of Mr Rajapaksa and his brother Mahinda, who is prime minister, as Sri Lanka faces its worst economic crisis in recent memory.
The government notice said the state of emergency has been declared in the interests of public security.
It is the second time in five weeks the president has declared a state of emergency, which gives him sweeping powers and allows him to control protests.
The latest move comes as a general strike across Sri Lanka has brought business and transport in the capital Colombo to a halt, and saw police use water cannon and tear gas against demonstrators.
Gotabaya and Mahinda Rajapaksa are accused of nepotism, and blamed by many for a crisis that has seen Sri Lanka’s usable foreign currency reserves dwindle to less than $50m (£40m), leaving it reliant on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and India and China, for credit required to import fuel, food and cooking gas.
The Rajapaksa brothers have faced protests for more than a month amid fuel shortages, soaring medicine and food prices, and rolling blackouts imposed to ration power supplies.
Earlier this week the finance minister admitted the country has barely enough money to buy a single tanker load of fuel, leaving it almost entirely reliant on a credit line from India for petrol, diesel and kerosene.
Sri Lanka is in negotiations with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and with its major creditors India and China.
Mr Gammanpila, who was sacked in March for speaking out against government monetary policy, said the consequences of the economic crisis could be dire.
“Basically, Sri Lanka right now has no foreign currency reserves whatsoever,” he said.
“There is a risk of fuel shortages in the near future because in the last three months we have had the benefit of India’s credit line, which supplied Sri Lanka with $500m worth of petroleum products
“That’s now being fully utilised, so we have a risk of running out of all kinds of fuel. It’s like a man without blood, the body dies. The situation is terrible.”
He also warned of food shortages, caused in part by a disastrous decision to ban chemical fertiliser imports last year. Relying only on organic products saw crop yields plummet, leaving an abundant island no longer self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables, and causing dramatic price rises for staples including rice.
“In the near future Sri Lanka will have to import vegetables, fruits and grains such as rice and maize for consumption. But because of the foreign currency shortage, we are not in a position to do that right now. In the coming months, definitely, there will be a food shortage.”
Following an emergency cabinet meeting it was reported that the president has asked his brother to resign as prime minister.
SKY NEWS
Another Ferdinand Marcos is set to become president of the Philippines
It was just after lunchtime when a group of ageing men and women, dressed in red, and flashing V-for-victory signs, drifted past a Uniqlo store in one of the many malls that pass for public spaces in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. The call had gone out on Facebook for supporters of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos to come out for their presidential candidate. “I hope he will vindicate the family name,” says Carmen, 74, as she rides the escalator down towards the Zara outlet. “They are so hated.”
On the floor below, another group, this one mostly in pink, had come to prove her point. Supporters of Leni Robredo, Mr Marcos’s closest rival for the presidency, were there to show their disdain for Bongbong. “We want a clean and honest government,” says Gina Ramos, 52. She has had enough of corruption, she adds.
She is in for disappointment. Barring an earth-shattering surprise or an unprecedented polling error, Mr Marcos, the son of the Philippines’ former dictator of the same name (minus the bongs), will win by a landslide in an election on May 9th. His vice-president, who is elected on a separate ticket, will be Sara Duterte, the daughter of Rodrigo Duterte, the outgoing president. In a system dominated by dynasties, both members of the all-star team have for months polled at above 50% in their respective races. Ms Robredo’s numbers have remained stuck in the low 20s.
That is a remarkable comeback for the Marcos family, who were run out of the country on February 25th 1986 as massive street protests and the loss of support from the police and army forced Ferdinand senior to reconsider his position. The Marcoses fled to Hawaii—along with at least 24 bars of gold and 22 boxes of cash—where the deposed dictator died three years later.
The family returned to the Philippines, ostensibly to face corruption charges, in 1991. Marcos’s wife, Imelda, ran for president the following year, and lost. But Bongbong won a seat in the House of Representatives. Various members of the family have played musical chairs in provincial and national positions ever since (see chart). In 2016, Bongbong ran for vice-president and lost narrowly to Ms Robredo. Now he is about to move his family back into Malacañang, as the presidential palace is known.
Yet it is unclear what Mr Marcos intends to do with power. He has made few promises on the campaign trail, published no policy agenda and appeared in no debates. The slogan of his and Ms Duterte’s campaign is an airy-fairy “Unity”. (The pair call themselves “Uniteam”.) Despite 30 years in public life—as congressman, senator and provincial governor—he has little to show for it. Descriptions of him by supporters, critics and foreign observers are variations on a theme: “easy-going”, “laid-back”, “not very energetic”, “lazy”.
That is because the presidency, for Mr Marcos and his family, is not a means to transforming society, fixing deep-rooted problems or even plundering the treasury. It is instead an end in itself, the culmination of a decades-long effort to rehabilitate the family name, long associated with the late dictator’s brutality and corruption, and the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by Imelda, whose shoe collection now fills a museum in Manila. Thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands jailed or tortured during the period of martial law imposed by Marcos senior. Some $5bn-10bn of public money is alleged to have been looted. “This campaign did not start six years ago”, when Mr Marcos lost his bid for the vice-presidency, says Julio Teehankee of De La Salle University in Manila, but in 1986.
Over time, and more recently helped along by skilful propaganda, the idea took hold that the Marcos dictatorship was a “golden era”, when the Philippines enjoyed stability, high growth and massive investment in infrastructure. On social media and on YouTube, sophisticated campaigns push this revisionist version of history.
The lack of an agenda beyond winning is bad for the Philippines. Its population of some 110m is the second-biggest in South-East Asia. Around a quarter of its people cannot afford enough food and other essentials. Its economy, before the pandemic among the best-performing in the region, was battered by an unduly long and harsh lockdown. It is an American treaty ally with a niggling territorial dispute with China, lying within cellphone-signal distance of Taiwan. It will be on the front line in any conflict between those powers.
Mr Marcos has little to say on any of these subjects. What he has said has alarmed economists. For example, he promises to cap the price of rice at about half the current rate. That may be campaign bluster, however. Analysts expect him to forget unaffordable campaign vows and follow Mr Duterte’s example in appointing technocrats to run the economy.
On foreign policy, Mr Marcos’s family has a long association with China. One of only two Chinese consulates outside the capital is in Ilocos Norte, a province notable only for being the family’s stronghold. He is said to be China’s preferred candidate. Yet Bongbong is a cosmopolitan sort with a fondness for England, where he studied, and for American culture. There are suggestions that he might appoint Jose Manuel Romualdez, the Philippine ambassador to America (and his second cousin), as foreign secretary. But his lack of any strong beliefs of his own, combined with a susceptibility to external influence, is a potential liability. He listens to the last person he spoke to, says an interlocutor.
The greater risks are at home. Mr Marcos’s campaign may have been milquetoast but his candidacy, and probable victory, have been deeply divisive. Ms Robredo has fired up a passionate base. Her rallies draw huge crowds. Lots of Filipinos remain wedded to the ideals of the 1986 revolution that kicked out his father. It is possible they will not accept the result. Attempts to disqualify Mr Marcos are making their way through the elections commission, and will probably get sent to the Supreme Court. Whatever it decides, there will be uproar.
Mr Marcos’s administration is likely to be marked by protests and instability. That will be bad for governance, and for the economy. It will also be a headache for America—and an opportunity for China—as they compete in the Pacific. The Marcos name is rising again. But for how long?
THE ECONOMIST
A video has been circulating on social media showing a man who was protesting near the Parliament last night (06) being brutally beaten by the police.
The police have fired tear gas and water to disperse the protests affecting the locals and the children’s of the area.
The police have been the subject of intense criticism from society due to the tear gas attack on the students of the Inter-University Student Federation, the water cannon attack on the food brought by the residents of the area for the students, and the tear gas attacks aimed at residents of areas surrounding Parliament.
The Colombo Magistrate’s Court yesterday (May 06) adjourned the hearing of the case filed against former Minister Wimal Weerawansa’s wife Shashi Weerawansa’s – Randunu Mudiyansela’s Sirsha Udayanthi – for obtaining an informal diplomatic passport by submitting false information to the Department of Immigration and Emigration, until May 13.
This is the second time that the verdict, in this case, has been postponed.
The trial of the case ended in February and the verdict was due in March.
Sri Lanka’s Ambassador – designate to Myanmar assumes duties
The newly appointed Ambassador – designate of Sri Lanka to Myanmar J.M. Janaka Priyantha Bandara assumed duties at the Sri Lanka Embassy in Yangon on 02 May 2022.
Addressing the staff of the Embassy upon assumption of duties, the Ambassador stated that he is dedicated to strengthen the longstanding friendly relations based on Theravada Buddhism between Sri Lanka and Myanmar. He also emphasized the need to enhance economic, political, and cultural connectivity between the two countries for mutual benefit.
Ambassador Janaka Bandara has an illustrious and multifaceted career. He is an Attorney at Law by profession and has served as a Magistrate, an Additional District Judge and senior Legal Counsel in the Private Bar. He has been a member of the Parliament and has served as the Public Trustee of Sri Lanka, Governor of Sabaragamuwa province and held a number of senior positions including Presidential Advisor, Parliament Secretary to the Prime Minister and Chairman of the Parliamentary Public Petitions Committee.
Ambassador-designate Janaka Bandara has also served as the Ambassador of Sri Lanka to the UAE and as the High Commissioner of Sri Lanka in Nigeria prior to this appointment.
Sri Lanka Embassy
Yangon
