Echelon Magazine - February 2025

I dette nummeret

Hold Fast
The JVP-led NPP government is learning the hard truth: governance is not the same as governing. One can only hope that the naive populace, who expected change, is learning, too.
Holding power is one thing; managing the machinery of the state is another. Nowhere is this more evident than in the long lines of fully loaded container trucks stranded around Colombo Port, bottlenecked by Customs clearance delays. Importers and truckers protest the inefficiencies, but solutions remain elusive.
Meanwhile, rice and coconut shortages persist, with prices refusing to drop. Large-scale millers, exploiting the system as always, are purchasing paddy at rock-bottom rates while farmers—many of whom backed the NPP—watch helplessly. As expected, their calls for a guaranteed price go unanswered. Governments, it seems, have perfected the art of waiting—allowing major millers to stockpile before introducing price controls.
In the transport sector, private buses have blatantly disregarded the highway component of the Clean Sri Lanka initiative. The much-touted promise to fix overnight passport delays has crumbled, with officials now saying the backlog will last until August 2025. And if that weren't enough, reports suggest the country is now facing a salt shortage.
So where is the system change? Governance is not just about grand promises but delivering results. The burden of reform is as much on the government to act as it is on the people to endure a slow and painful recovery.
Or must we believe?
To borrow a line from a certain dismally eternal Hogfather wannabe:
"Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet—you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged."
And yet, we must believe. Because, in the end, that is the point.