When politicians chase popularity over sound economic management, it can spell disaster. Just ask Sri Lanka’s former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Rajapaksa quit in July last year after fleeing to Singapore at the height of protests against his government’s mismanagement of the economy which resulted in Sri Lanka declaring sovereign default in April 2022. Many blame Rajapaksa for driving the country into its worst economic crisis since independence, leading to severe shortages of fuel, food and medicines.
While it’s easy to blame one person, Sri Lanka’s economic crisis and sovereign default were the result of long-lasting fiscal indiscipline, weak institutions, lack of transparency and accountability and short-sighted economic policies that were taken for political popularity.
