Sri Lanka’s Political and Economic Crisis
BY KENNETH SURIN
2022 Sri Lankan economic crisis, people wait for long time to refill liquefied petroleum gas cylinders. Photograph Source: AntanO – CC BY-SA 4.0
Sri Lanka, an island of 22 million people, continues to be in the grip of its worst economic and political crisis since independence on 10 February 1948.
Since April there have been protests against extensive shortages of food and fuel, as well as a profound crisis of trust in Sri Lanka’s political institutions, primarily parliament and the presidency (both have faced repeated charges of corruption and nepotism for decades, a situation unable to be surmounted by a cowed judicial system).
The heart of the anti-government movement, at this point, was a demand for the resignation of the strongman president Gotab...










