If Verite research says that the Government has a 62 percent approval rating, according to their surveys, and adds that 55 percent think the economy is improving, it appears doomsayers would necessarily have to take pause. Fitch Ratings too states something to the effect that the steps taken towards financial consolidation in the Budget are positive.
All this comes at a time there was Opposition and social media insistence that the economy was tanking. They said the Government messed up the rice issue, and they simultaneously decried ostensible skyrocketing prices across the board. It seems they were not aware that economic sentiment is a complicated subject.
The rice-issue is a single concern, though it is correct that rice is our staple diet. But many people don’t necessarily think that rice economics is economics. They are past that. Even assuming that the retail price of rice fluctuated, this fact didn’t represent ordinary people’s broad reality. Sri Lankans have a decade long history of making consolidating-gains under a system that encouraged free markets.
LEISURE
Despite everything including a debilitating war, Sri Lankans for the most part benefited from this market economy and over time, built at least a modicum of wealth that saw them past the era of rice politics. Rice politics belonged to a different era, of Dudley Senanayake and Sirimavo Bandaranaike.
At that time, the population subsisted on rice handouts and beyond feeding themselves and attending to the most rudimentary basics, most families had no opportunity to think of a better, more comfortable life. People fed and clothed themselves, and sent children to school, and had little wealth to do anything beyond that.
That’s when rice politics mattered. But rice politics is not the be all and end all anymore. Pocketbook issues are not about people feeding themselves, or barely managing to exist. Instead, they are about upward mobility, opportunity for a better quality of life that leaves room for leisure pursuits, and for lives devoid of drudgery with access to modern conveniences.
People now — in the first few months of 2025 — see economic movement that makes social mobility perceptions look very sanguine. Markets are moving, and business is thriving. People get about, they enjoy their leisure time, dine out, purchase stuff that’s not strictly essential, but brings satisfaction and enhances the quality of life.
This is not a backdrop in which they are prone to size up their notions of economic wellbeing by focusing on the price of rice. The retail price of naadu, samba or kekulu haal may be of vital importance to some impoverished people — a distinct minority — but the vast majority of folk have bigger fish to fry, so to say.
DIFFERENCE
They are thinking of the possibility of educating their children abroad, and of, perhaps, taking that trip abroad themselves, on vacation. They are also thinking of striking out on a business venture themselves, and looking out for an opportunity to find the capital to do so. If they belong to a less wealthy social stratum, they are eyeing that trip to Jaffna or Nuwara Eliya perhaps, and investing in a tiny startup business.
They see that cars are being imported again, which may strictly not mean much to them, perhaps due to the high-taxes on the imports, but signifies the fact that there is gradual forward movement and a willingness to break the shackles from the bad days of the meltdown.
These buoyant sentiments have a knock on effect. When people patronise restaurants and do some shopping and dining out on the weekends, the taxi drivers or the freelance Uber drivers see more opportunity. If the people in the ride hailing business are happy, those in the vehicle maintenance business are happier, because they are bound to get more business if there are more cars on the road.
It is so basic that there is no need to labour the point. What’s the difference between this time last year, and the present? It is perhaps the fact that the economy is back with people not being constantly reminded that they are being “rescued”, and the economy is recovering due to the grace of the leader. Positive perceptions originate from a place that allows for robust business to take place under normal circumstances. If people are constantly being reminded that they are still being rescued, and that they are only having it good because of the grace of the leader, that doesn’t help bring about normalcy.
People are also seeing results and are not at the butt end of incessant, guilt-inducing rhetoric. The best form of Government is the one in which results speak for themselves. People don’t need the constant drumbeat of propaganda and promotion. That has the effect of giving rise to questions such as ‘what is there to crow about so much if everything is fine?.”
As far as perceptions go, the Government doesn’t need to do much except ensure that negative messaging is mere background static in the face of results. In a democracy, there would be a constant barrage of negative messaging originating from the Opposition ranks. In these days of social media, this messaging is amplified. But countering every bit of misinformation or hyperbole targeted at destroying the positive vibes accompanying sanguine perceptions, is counter-productive. It gives a certain legitimacy to those who seek to destroy stability through campaigns of circulating disinformation. Positive perceptions are not created by the captains of industry making pronouncements from seminar rooms.
They are created by ordinary people who discover that there is much more forward momentum in the economy than in the year just behind us. People discover this when they try make small investments, or when they attempt to sell something and find that there is a healthy competition out there. The naysayers lament that many promises made have not been kept. They say the tax on fuel is still excessive, for instance.
But people are sensitive to contrasts. They fathom exactly what has happened when they discern momentum in the economy, compared to how it was when the same people who remind them about promises-broken, were in power last year. The pundits who pontificate on TV will focus on whether car imports at high-tax rates are viable.
They will speak as if this is a pivotal point on which the economy depends. But all of this information doesn’t create a blip on the radar of most ordinary people, who drive positive perceptions by shopping more, making more transactions, and experiencing first hand an economy that’s finally having some forward momentum.
People register it in their private radar when they see a positive economic surge. This is why more Presidents have won second terms in office than not. President J. R. Jayewardene began the trend, and won entirely due to the fact that there were positive perceptions on the economy during those early days of market liberalisation.
MOUTHPIECE
It was during and not before his second term that other issues intervened, and the social fabric was torn apart. The point being made is that no amount of negative messaging can derail a Government if it is seen to be delivering the goods on the economic front. The Verite Research report indicating a 62 percent approval rating for the Government comes from a source that is definitely not a mouthpiece, or a puppet of Government propagandists.
It is a private research organisation that has liberal leanings and is, therefore, not in any way identified with a populist Government that doesn’t represent either the business class or the liberal elite. The Opposition would have to take such a survey seriously and would ignore it at their peril.
No Government is expected to get everything right. The Opposition makes a mistake by imagining that they can harp on some ‘broken promises’ and skew those positive perceptions.
But they are missing the big picture, and as far as that’s concerned if the people feel there is forward momentum vis-à-vis the economy, that’s hard fact and there is little or nothing any detractor could do to change those perceptions. Practising dark arts on social media is not necessarily a winning strategy.
