Commentary | Chulanee Attanayake, Pradeepa Dahanayake, Asanka Guansekara, Sweeping victory, Great Expectations, and Mounting Challenges in Sri Lanka
Introduction
The COVID-19 global pandemic, which rose to catastrophic levels in January 2020, continues to pose unprecedented challenges to humankind causing a significant number of deaths and devastating disruptions to economies and societies worldwide. Thus, it is not simply a health crisis, but a multifaceted calamity impacting every aspect of human life. It has become a parameter to measure the leadership skills of global political leaders, as they have an unnegotiable role in confronting the pandemic.
The WHO, in its August Feature Countries report, recognised Sri Lanka for having successfully managed the pandemic. The report credited President Gotabaya’s strong leadership and prompt action for this success. However, with new waves of the pandemic engulfing the globe at a relentless pace, Sri Lanka is struggling to retain its first wave’s success. Amidst this backdrop, this paper explores how President Gotabaya’s leadership has impacted Sri Lanka’s outcome in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sri Lanka is a paradoxical case of a post-colonial state. It is a bad example of economic development, fiscal management, political engagement, and social integration. Yet, it is an exemplary case for human development despite being a low-income country. While it has failed to capitalise on the opportunities of early economic liberalisation largely due to 30-years of protracted conflict and multiple uprisings, the island state falls within the “High Human Development” category and is ranked at 72nd among the 189 countries, despite its fragile economy. Historically, the country has shown resilience in confronting exogenous events including natural disasters, ethnic wars, and terror attacks.
Sri Lanka is credited for having achieved remarkable progress in most health indicators notwithstanding limited resources. It provides free and universal health services, and has addressed communicable diseases successfully, including eradication of polio and malaria through successful surveillance and immunisation programs. Recent pandemics including the 2003 Avian influenza outbreak and the 2009 H1N1, too, were successfully manged. Still, Sri Lanka is under-resourced and only moderately prepared to face a global health crisis, and COVID-19 is its first experience in battling a global pandemic of this scale.
Sri Lanka’s Response to COVID-19
Colombo reported its first COVID-19 case on January 27, 2020, a tourist from China. A local case was identified on March 11, 2020. With a lower capacity of resources, Sri Lanka was only prepared to accommodate around 2,000 COVID-19 patients at the outset. Yet, it was able to contain the first wave of the pandemic by adopting proactive measures such as establishing the National Action Committee to tackle the spread of the virus even before a single COVID case was reported, enforcing a robust strategy of case detection and identifying close contacts, quarantining, and imposing an island-wide curfew, travel restrictions, and closing the borders. As a result, the country successfully managed the first wave with only 3,396 cases and 13 deaths. Moreover, Sri Lanka was even able to successfully hold a nationwide parliamentary election without seeing a surge of COVID-19 cases.
This success was short-lived as the second wave of the outbreak in Sri Lanka was reported on October 05, 2020, with the emergence of a new cluster amongst the apparel industry workforce. Critics blamed the government for being overconfident and relaxing the stringent measures enforced during the first wave, as well as for turning a blind eye towards the poor working conditions at apparel workshops that to led to the second wave.
Now, Sri Lanka is struggling to navigate the more contagious third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, which started in April 2021. This time, the government and the President received criticism for two mishaps: firstly, failing to commence vaccination by securing the required quantity of vaccines on time; and secondly, for lax measures of community interaction and crowd control during the festive season, which led to a surge in COVID cases. As of August 09, 2021, Sri Lanka reported a total of 329,994 cases and 5,111 deaths. Still, its South Asian counterparts, by contrast, reported significantly higher numbers: India, a total of 31.9 million cases and 428,715 deaths; Pakistan with 1,075,504 cases and 24,004 deaths; and Bangladesh with 1,365,158 cases and 22,897 deaths.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s Leadership: The Good, bad and the ugly
Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is regarded as a “strongman” in the international political arena due to his former role as Sri Lanka’s defence secretary at the time of defeating the terrorism of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009. His strongman reputation is often associated with a commanding nature, stringent policies, and ruthlessness in achieving targets. While he is internationally criticised for these qualities uncharacteristic of a democratic leader, it was these qualities in particular that seem to have been the key for success in handling the first wave of the pandemic in Sri Lanka. In fact, the WHO commended Gotabaya’s leadership and proactiveness in containing the pandemic in the first wave.
Apart from forming the National Action Committee way before a single case was reported in Sri Lanka, the President gave full political support to the Ministry of Health and Indigenous Medical Services (MoH), and encouraged the implementation of stringent policies. Directives were given to strictly impose quarantining, travel restrictions, and curfew laws with punitive measures for breaking the rules. Institutional quarantining was implemented for those testing positive both within the local community and among overseas returnees. Moreover, every single COVID-19 positive case was transferred to a hospital. In the absence of a sophisticated digitalized system for case detection and identifying close contacts, military intelligence was used. Furthermore, the military ran the quarantine centers and were at the forefront of the COVID battle. Even though the initial immunization program ran into disruptions and delays, the process was soon streamlined to successfully continue the vaccination program. On July 16, 2021 Sri Lanka administered its highest number of vaccines in a single day, nearly 400,000, with the support of the military. While these strategies were effective, Gotabaya received criticism from some quarters for militarising the process. Conversely, he was praised by others as the leader who could protect the citizens, and his stringent policies and controlling approach were seen as decisiveness. This should be read within the context of the previous Sirisena-Wickremesinghe presidential regime, where indecisiveness led to political and security chaos in the country, including the Easter Sunday Attack in April 2019.
Despite COVID-19 being a health crisis, the military’s involvement is noteworthy. The COVID-19 task force consisted of the tri-forces – the Army, Navy and Air Force – and was responsible for planning, implementing, and monitoring effective mechanisms under the guidance of the Secretary of Defense and Commanders of Tri-Forces. Then, the Army took command of the National Operation Center for Prevention of COVID-19 outbreak, which coordinated preventive and management measures to ensure healthcare and other services are well geared to serve the public. The involvement of the military appears to have been an intentional decision of President Gotabaya due to his connections with the military as the former Defense Secretary and a retired officer. The majority of the general public seems to have trust and confidence in President Gotabaya’s decisions. This is indicated by his recent election victory, which gave President Gotabaya’s party a sweeping two-thirds majority in parliament.
However, as the pandemic continued, Gotabaya’s reliance on his close military circle, overconfidence from successfully combating the first wave of the pandemic, and repeated reference to past glory, led to complacency and impeded continuous vigilance. The second and third waves of the pandemic in Sri Lanka attest to this. Every time the government eased stringent approaches to prevent human contact and community transmission, the public became complacent and ignored continuous practice of health guidelines, resulting in deadly new waves of the pandemic.
President Gotabaya and his allies hold a reputation for being Sinhala Buddhist nationalists. Thus, he is identified as an ultranationalist, feared by minority groups inside the country. His order to cremate COVID-19 victims in violation of Islamic burial rites and in defiance of the opposition of the WHO and medical professionals in the country, is perhaps a manifestation of surrendering to the whims and demands of the ultranationalist Sinhala Buddhist majority in the country. To be sure, it was this group who was instrumental in Gotabaya and his party’s recent sweeping electoral victories. However, this behaviour has significantly antagonized his opponents and minority groups, fueling their criticism of every effort of the government, whether good or bad, and drawn the criticism of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
As the political leader at the center of managing the crisis, President Gotabaya is both applauded and criticized for his leadership. Gotabaya will soon celebrate his second year in office, in November 2021. Meanwhile, his government celebrated its first year on 5 August 2021. Currently, the country’s economy and social lives are severely affected by the third wave of the pandemic, with the highly contagious Delta variant rampant in South Asia. Along with the health crisis, the economic strain has increased inflation and cost of living. There are signs that the public’s trust in government is deteriorating, as evident from multiple trade union actions by teachers, health workers, and other public officials. Thus, it is imperative that President Gotabaya brings about economic and political stability through a robust vaccination program and economic reform and regains the trust of the citizens. Whether or not Gotabaya will live up to the great expectations of his constituents and be remembered not only for defeating the LTTE but also the deadly virus is yet to be seen.
Dr. Chulanee Attanayake is a Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. She can be reached at chulanee@nus.edu.sg.
Dr. Pradeepa Dahanayake is an academic at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia.
Dr. Asanka Gunasekara is a lecturer in Management and Swinburne Business School, Melbourne, Australia.
To cite this essay, please use the suggested entry below:
Chulanee Attanayake, Pradeepa Dahanayake, and Asanka Guansekara, “Sweeping victory, Great Expectations, and Mounting Challenges in Sri Lanka,” Criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, August 18, 2021; https://doi.org/10.52698/VINR1236.