By TON Sri Lanka

The global community should help the island nation to recuperate from the ongoing severe crisis as Lanka in incessant financial fire. Protestors celebrated their victory after entering the building of Sri Lanka's Prime Minister’s office, amid the country's economic crisis, in Colombo, on Sri Lanka July 13, 2022.

As Sri Lanka is experiencing the country's worst economic collapse in its history. Remittances, the country's primary financial source, fell due to the Covid-19 pandemic, triggering the current crisis. Tourism, another mainstay of the income that contributed almost 12 percent of the GDP, was also sapped by the virus outbreak.

Furthermore, the government's irrational decisions on failed economic management appeared unsatisfactory. Having banned the use of chemical fertilizers, the Rajapaksa government splurged on development projects, leading to a deepening of an economic disaster.

As a result, the annual inflation rate of Sri Lanka reached a record high of 54.6 percent on June 2022 from 29.8 percent in the previous month, leaving people unable to purchase food, fuel and medicine. The country has $51 billion in loans, and its currency has collapsed by 80 percent.

The Sri Lankan Finance Ministry guesses it needs $6 billion to live for six months, but the country has only $25 million. With just a small sum in its basket, the country is on the verge of a humanitarian disaster and a bleak future; the fact that the political leadership has failed to gather the support of the people has made matters worse as worldwide actors are reluctant to bail it out.

The economic collapse also worsened people's living standards as they skipped meals and queued up to buy fuel. If that was not enough, the country has recently faced a political crisis of an unprecedented scale as people came out on the streets to take things into their own hands, owing to the failure of the leadership to get things right.

It seemed to be an end cycle of rule from members of the president family came to an abrupt end as present conceded failure, and worried about his security, chose to flee the country. He emailed his resignation letter Thursday night from Singapore, where he is hiding at the moment. The country is now in a state of disaster after president’s humiliating departure.

The people who appeared too cautious to say about their difficulties for too long ended up subjugating the presidential palace and setting the prime minister's residence on fire, effectively defenestrating president from leadership and the country itself. The people's anger results from years of mismanagement, even as political leadership focused on trivial self-interests.

This is a lesson for political leaders all over the world, not least those in Nepal, that once the people decide that enough is enough, and there is no stopping the downfall of anti-people regimes. Miserably, SAARC, as always, is non-existent at this hour of suffering in one of its member nations. It is relating to that a South Asian neighbor is going further into a political and economic abyss without instant help.

Sri Lanka still struggles to come to terms with the deep scars of the 25-year insurgency that left thousands dead, especially in the final years of the war when the then administration viciously eliminated the rebels and the public alike.

Today it has a deeply divided the nation and a further delay in bailing the country out of the catastrophe may lead to manifold forms of social catastrophes, including public robbing and communal conflicts and disharmony . The international community should assess and measure these dangers and perform sharply to help ease the Lankan people, and help the island nation to make progress from the ongoing crisis.