By Vishvanath
The NPP government was fighting a political battle with a section of the Opposition over a presidential committee report on the failure of state intelligence agencies to thwart the Easter Sunday carnage, carried out by a jihadist group from the Eastern Province, when a warning of potential terror attacks on tourist locations in the East came. The US issued a travel advisory, alerting its citizens to a potential security threat. The UK, New Zealand, Australia and Russia did likewise immediately afterwards.
Gone are the days when military conflicts and diseases affected only the countries where they occurred or the states in close proximity. Today, they transcend national boundaries in some form or another and spare no country however far it may be. The Covid-19 pandemic, which reportedly originated in China, left a trail of destruction across the globe. The ongoing military conflict in West Asia is having a similar effect. Its ramifications have reached as far as Sri Lanka, which has had to adopt extraordinary security measures to ensure the safety of the Israeli tourists in its holiday resorts, especially in the Eastern Province, which became the cradle of National Thowheed Jamaath terror.
It has now been revealed that Sri Lanka’s law enforcement and defence authorities rolled out a security plan in the Eastern Province about a couple of weeks ago, following a warning of possible terror attacks on the Israeli nationals. That led to the travel advisories in question, which attracted international media attention to the situation here. The government did what needed to be done and obviously did not want to leave anything to chance.
Public Security Minister Vijitha Herath told the media, on Thursday, the National Security Council had met several times since the induction of President Dissanayake; intelligence about possible terror attacks on tourist locations in the East had come several days before and all necessary measures had been adopted to meet any eventuality. He denied that the warning had been issued by an Indian intelligence outfit.
Some Opposition politicians however have demanded to know why the government did not apprise the Colombo-based diplomatic missions of its security plan, with an assurance that their citizens visiting this country would be given maximum possible protection so as to prevent adverse travel advisories being put out much to the detriment of Sri Lanka’s tourism, one of the mainstays of the country’s economy.
Former Minister Kanchana Wijesekera published a post of X to this effect, and then made a statement to the media, criticizing the manner in which the government had chosen to handle the situation. Former Minister Dullas Alahapperuma, who is an SJB national list nominee, addressing the media on Thursday (24), said an investigation had to be conducted to find out whether the warnings of terror attacks here were part of an international conspiracy to destabilize the Sri Lankan economy.
Opinion may be divided on the Opposition’s view on how potential terrorist threats are being handled, but the warning of a possible terrorist attack on tourists could not have come at a worse time for Sri Lanka, which is expecting a huge increase in tourist arrivals during the coming season. The severity of the impact of the security scare on the tourism sector is contingent upon how the threat is handled and neutralized. Three suspects had been arrested at the time of writing.
Thankfully, nothing untoward has happened. So far so good. One hopes that what is feared will not come to pass. However, hardly anything more worrisome could have happened to the NPP in the run-up to a crucial election. The impact of a setback for the tourism sector will be both economic and political. A possible drop in tourist arrivals will make it even more difficult for the next government to be elected to achieve its revenue targets set by the IMF. The rupee has shown signs of recovery with a slight gain against the major foreign currencies, especially the US dollar, but if revenue from tourism drops due to security threats, foreign exchange reserves will decrease causing a depreciation of the rupee, driving import costs up and aggravating the country’s balance of payment woes.
The Easter Sunday terror attacks (2019) crippled the tourism sector. Tourist arrivals plummeted, and hotels either survived by catering to local tourists or closed down. Tens of thousands of people lost their livelihoods. The situation took a turn for the worse owing to a string of lockdowns due to the Covid-19 pandemic subsequently. Besides the potential economic cost of a possible setback in the tourist sector, the security scare has led to an unforeseen challenge for the government on the political front.
National security has apparently returned to the center stage of politics the way it did in 2019, following the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks, which ruined the chances of both the UNP and the SLFP of winning elections as they had failed, as partners of the Yahapalana government, to prevent the tragedy that shook the world. The massive security failure sealed the fate of the UNP-led government, paved the way for former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s entry into active politics and enabled the SLPP, whose leaders had overseen the country’s successful war against the LTTE, to win the 2019 presidential election and the parliamentary polls that followed in 2020.
The SJB consists of the former UNP members who were in power at the time of the Easter Sunday terrorist bombings, which could have been prevented, and therefore it cannot make the most of the current security situation. Needless to say, the same goes for the UNP led by former President Ranil Wickremesinghe. The SLPP is only a shadow of its former self. It could obtain only 342,781 votes (2.57%) in last month’s presidential election, and it is not likely to make a comeback in the foreseeable future, but it will be able to gain some mileage from the current national security concerns ahead of next month’s general election. This is not a situation the NPP bargained for when the parliament was dissolved last month.
Current threats to national security are not likely to change the dynamics of the upcoming parliamentary contest drastically provided they do not materialize. However, the possibility of their influencing the outcome of the upcoming election to some extent cannot be ruled out.
