Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the outspoken Catholic Church leader of Sri Lanka, said the country needs “a national transformation or a new beginning” to overcome the economic crisis it is facing.
“It has been 74 years since our independence and Sri Lankans need to answer the question of whether the path they have chosen for prosperity is real,” said the cardinal in a homily early this week.
He said the country is “in a hopeless situation,” adding that “it is the result of a series of wrong choices made not only by politicians but also by citizens who have allowed themselves to be exploited by the political and cultural forces that handed down our destiny.”
“Over and above the subject of individual conversion in the context of the actual situation of our beloved motherland, we too need a national conversion or a new beginning as a nation,” he said.
“We need to come to our senses, understand that we have made mistakes, that a new beginning or a national conversion is very much needed,” said Cardinal Ranjith.
“All of us are in the same boat. Are we going to sink? “is the question we have to ask ourselves,” he added.
The archbishop said the situation needs the Lord’s assistance “to usher in an era of social transformation, unity, transparent honesty, equality and the rule of law a deep sense of concern for our beloved motherland and its people, especially the poor and the suffering masses.”
The South Asian nation of 22 million people is in the grips of its worst downturn since independence, sparked by an acute lack of foreign currency to pay for even the most essential imports.
Diesel — the main fuel for buses and commercial vehicles — was unavailable at stations across the island on Thursday, according to officials and media reports — crippling public transport.
“We are siphoning off fuel from buses that are in the garage for repairs and using that diesel to operate serviceable vehicles,” Transport Minister Dilum Amunugama said.
Owners of private buses — which account for two-thirds of the country’s fleet — said they were already out of oil and that even skeleton services might not be possible after Friday.
“We are still using old stocks of diesel, but if we don’t get supplies by this evening, we will not be able to operate,” the chairman of the private bus operators’ association, Gemunu Wijeratne, told AFP.
The state electricity monopoly said it had enforced a 13-hour power cut from Thursday — the longest ever — because they did not have diesel for generators.
Reservoirs, which provide more than a third of electricity demand via hydro power plants, were also at dangerously low levels.
The electricity rationing also hit mobile phone base stations and affected the quality of calls, operators said, adding that their stand-by generators were also without diesel.
Several state-run hospitals have stopped conducting surgeries as they have run out of essential life-saving medicines.
Colombo imposed a broad import ban in March 2020 in a bid to save foreign currency needed to service its $51 billion in foreign debt.
The government has said it is seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund while asking for more loans from India and China.
IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters in Washington on Thursday that such talks should begin “in the coming days”, with Sri Lanka’s finance minister expected in the US capital.
Sri Lanka’s predicament was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which torpedoed tourism and remittances.
Many economists also blame government mismanagement including tax cuts and years of budget deficits. – with a report from AFP
