From “No Kings” to “No Clients”: Political and economic gravity – Part 1

THIS essay examines Sri Lanka's political and economic trajectory through the metaphor of "political gravity," drawing on Eliot A. Cohen's Newtonian framing and Cicero's republican ideal that no ruler stands above the law.

- By Dr. Jayalath Bandara Adikarige

Abstract

It argues that power, inflated by illusion, remains subject to accountability's pull. Reformist promises have turned to elite consolidation, while the rhetoric of sovereignty conceals dependence on IMF-shaped policies. Using Asoka S. Seneviratne's recent arguments as counterpoint, the article exposes the illusion of independence amid fiscal orthodoxy and social austerity.

Declining investment in education and widening inequality reveal how debt now governs the republic's moral economy. Official claims of a "zero-corruption culture" are tested against continuing double fuel allowances and hidden asset declarations. The piece concludes that when moral claim diverges from civic reality, political gravity reasserts itself-aligning economic hardship, institutional distrust, and civic frustration into the conditions for renewed republican accountability.

1. Introduction

For two and a half centuries the American ideal has rested on a Roman inheritance: the law stands above men, not men above the law.

Cicero and Cato taught that liberty survives only where rulers are subject to the same restraints as citizens. That ideal is what recent "No Kings" protests in the United States seek to defend. It is also the lens through which to read Sri Lanka today, where the language of constitutionalism persists but the practice has been bent into a choreography of spectacle and exemption.

2. Political gravity: Why overreach meets resistance