Courtesy Daily Mirror

• Government delays the appointment of the Auditor General to secure a party-aligned nominee
• Govt should decide what is needed to be done with foreign assistance
• Funding post-disaster rebuilding through high-interest borrowing is risky
• Govt should reconsider proposed expressways
• Kandy, Ratnapura are fragile cities, fresh urban planning needed

United Republican Front (URF) leader Patali Champika Ranawaka, in an interview with Daily Mirror, responds to questions about the government’s alleged failure to take measures for the mitigation of Ditwah impact, the delay in the appointment of the Auditor General and the post –disaster development strategy needed for the country.

QYou remarked to the press that the government disregarded warnings regarding the cyclonic development and failed to take steps for mitigation of the damage. How do you support your argument?

The government was always arguing that the Department of Meteorology had not properly advised them about cyclone Ditwah and its possible implications. That is not true. If you go to the department’s website, you would be able to see a lot of warnings.

 After November 25, they had warned that a cyclone is developing with possible impacts for Sri Lanka and over 200 mm rainfalls might be happening. The Disaster Management Centre (DMC) should be having a detailed report. The DMC and its Director General must know about them all.

Apart from this, there are two other agencies which knew about such developments. One is the Ceylon Electricity Board which maintains daily hydrological curves so that they can maintain the hydro- base electricity generation. They calculate each day the rainfall in the catchment areas of the reservoirs- Mahaweli reservoirs and the Kelani- based reservoirs , inflows and gaps between the spill levels and the existing level so that they can manage the whole hydropower generation .

The Mahaweli authorities have dam safety manuals. The Kotmale dam was built by Sweden, Victoria by the British, and Randenigala by Germany. All these countries are highly equipped, knowledgeable in engineering.

There are detailed dam safety manuals to be maintained by the Mahaweli Development Authority. They clearly stipulate how to handle that kind of situation. It was in written form then. Now it is the computerized era.

In Polgolla, there is a real-time data centre. It has proper rainfall data about the buffer stock. There are details about the capacity of the reservoir concerned, the rates at which water flows in and is discharged.

The government always argues that they don’t have proper data. But it is very clear right now. The Mahaweli Development Authority and the CEB data clearly showed what happened on November 26 and 27. In the span of 48 hours, a sharp increase of water level had occurred. 

After November 26, you were able to see heavy rainfalls in Randenigala, Victoria, Upper Kotmale, Kotmale, in Nawalapitiya. By around 9 o’clock, someone there should know that all these reservoirs were going to overflow during the day. So they have to manage the water levels accordingly.

For instance, if the Kotmale Reservoir is managed from around 9 a.m. with a controlled release of about 800 cubic metres per second, the resulting rise in the Mahaveli River downstream is limited to roughly one foot—posing no flood risk at all. Even if such a release is sustained until the following day, it would still not trigger flooding. A huge flood happened in Gampola, Gelioya, Gatambe or Peradeniya and Randenigala, though. The Mahiyangane town was inundated and a lot of destruction happened as a result.

 A proper analysis of rainfall data from Hunnasgiriya and surrounding areas would have enabled timely warnings to affected communities. Instead, people were forced to flee only when massive landslides were already crashing into their homes.

Well before the disaster occurred, Assistant Divisional Secretaries and local police stations had the capacity to warn residents to evacuate vulnerable areas. In some locations, alerts were issued only after the 27th or 28th—by which time the damage had already occurred. Crucially, there was no significant rainfall after the 28th. Following Cyclone Ditwah’s landfall, the system moved northwards, while rainfall across Badulla, Kandy, Matale and surrounding districts remained minimal, posing no real threat. In effect, the risk was limited to just two days and could have been managed with timely intervention.

Q So you mean to argue that there was no proper coordination among these institutions?

That’s the thing. The most responsible person is the President because he is the head of the Disaster Management Committee.

He has not been able to convene that committee before. He did it on November 27. Then, the disaster has already happened. Suddenly, all the gates were open and a huge volume of water was released to the Mahaweli River.

QYou hold the President directly responsible for this?

I don’t know whether he was informed or not. But there should be an impartial, professional inquiry into this matter.

QHow can the President be taken to task over this because he is the Executive President?

The system remains. The disaster management act, disaster management policies, disaster management action plans are there. The Disaster Management Centre is there. The Disaster Management Director General is there. He must brief the President.

 They should evaluate the whole picture and alert the President. I don’t know if it has happened or not, but there should be an impartial inquiry. 

QThe World Bank has estimated the damages to be US $ 4 .1 billion. According to your knowledge and experience, how long will it take for Sri Lanka to recover from this disaster?

I think within one year, we can recover. But you have to have a proper pragmatic plan. First of all, they have to identify where to dump debris. Now, everyone knows that they are dumping things everywhere. But they have to identify some places to dump debris. That is one thing.

The second thing, you can’t keep people there in safety centres. You must involve these people to rebuild their houses. In order to do that, you have to identify proper plots of land and prepare them to stand resilient against landslides and other environmental disasters in the future.

QAre you referring to smart engineering techniques like in Japan?

Not in Japan, everywhere, they have been practiced.

QWe see a lot of assistance coming in from different countries. India has come out in a big way. How do you see this phenomenon?

That is India’s soft power politics. Earlier, they had hard power politics in the 1980s. Now they have this kind of soft power politics.

We have to choose what to do- what to do with Indian aid or the other countries ‘aid. We have to have a proper plan to do that. For example, I think the government should redraft the budget proposals.

The government is now trying to have both budget proposals and the reconstruction phase as well. For example, the government capital expenditure budget during 2025 is around Rs.500 billion. The President himself admitted that it’s around 45 percent successful.

He is now going to handle Rs.2000 billion this year. The government should redirect and reformulate the budget proposals. For example, they are planning to have expressway linkage from Rambukkana to Kandy. Kandy is now an environmentally fragile city.

The population there should not be increased. There is a proper scientific urban plan developed by Japan. So instead of this expressway, they have to develop this urban plan for Kandy.

There is an alternative plan for Kandy’s road network. That is to connect Kurunegala to Galagedara via Mawathagama by a four-lane road. It’s one-tenth of the cost of the expressway. Ratnapura is also a fragile city right now. They are trying to have a Ratnapura expressway. All these projects are there.

That seems to me that the government is trying to have both things. But, they don’t have the proper capacity. Some proposals such as these expressways are unscientific. They are against the national physical plan of Sri Lanka. 

QWe have to redo this central expressway plan. Don’t we?

Yes, definitely. The Colombo – Kurunegala expressway is okay. But beyond that, you have to have a separate plan to connect Kegalle and Kandy with this expressway. It has to be a separate plan. 

There is a plan by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to connect Homagama in Colombo with Pelmadulla via Ratnapura. It is a four-lane road. What we should do is to dedicate the inner two lanes as an expressway. Other two lanes as a public way so that way you can reduce the cost by one-tenth. All these plans are there in the Road Development Authority (RDA). That is to reduce environmental cost, urbanisation problem and also the debt problem.

The bigger question is how such projects are to be financed. With commercial borrowing costs hovering around 8 percent—and even IMF lending close to 7 percent—the space for debt-financed expressway construction is extremely limited. The proposed US$200 million from the IMF risks repeating past mistakes. Sri Lanka has been down this road before: under Mahinda Rajapaksa, high-interest loans were channelled into expressway construction that generated little or no revenue, contributing directly to the eventual bankruptcy.

There is a real danger that the current administration will follow a similar path. India has so far extended around US$350 million in soft loans, but Sri Lanka must be acutely mindful of interest rates and, more importantly, the economic viability of the projects tied to such financing. Beyond this, the government has indicated that it intends to pursue an international donor conference.

QHow do you look at the participation of these foreign powers in the rebuilding process here?

First of all, the government should have a proper plan as per the national fiscal plan to rebuild all these broad networks and urban areas and also the livelihood of the people. Without that, you can’t go to donor conferences with empty hands. My opinion is that the government has enough money in the treasury.

As per the Committee on Public Finance meeting, Rs. 1 trillion remains with the treasury. They hold this buffer stock. They are spending around Rs. 20 billion as per the treasury. So what is the World Bank estimate? The World Bank estimate is around 1,300 billion. 

It’s borrowed money. They overdrew money at the additional cost of 20 billion per annum. They should use this money. There is no need for this country to be indebted further.

QDo you think there should be a level playing field for all major countries to participate in the process?

 The countries can come. The government should only decide what kind of grants and loans are needed and what is best for Sri Lanka. It should look at the interest rates they are going to ask for us. But the government has Rs. 1 trillion in the treasury.

QFinally, there are a lot of allegations against the government and the President regarding the delay in the appointment of the Auditor General. What is your view?

The government is effectively waiting for the establishment of a new Constitutional Council so it can secure a nominee of its own—essentially a party loyalist. This directly contradicts the promises made when it came to power last year, when it assured the public that key oversight institutions, particularly the Auditor General’s Department and the Audit Council, would function as genuinely independent bodies.

That independence is now being systematically dismantled. A politically aligned Auditor General is set to take charge at a time when the Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) is being empowered with some judicial authority. COPA’s work is fundamentally driven by reports issued by the Auditor General. If both the Auditor General and the COPA chair are party loyalists, the risk of selective enforcement and political punishment—under the guise of parliamentary oversight—becomes very real.

What is unfolding mirrors troubling developments seen at the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC). The appointment of its Director General itself has been challenged as unlawful, yet the commission has launched a wave of cases claiming to expose bureaucratic misconduct and financial misappropriation. However, accountability remains one-sided. Responsibility at the political level is conspicuously absent.