Sunday political commentary repeatedly referenced “emergency provisions” used during disaster response — a phrase that has become dangerously normalised.
Emergency powers are meant to be exceptional. In Sri Lanka, they are routine.
Each crisis expands the scope of executive discretion. Procurement rules are relaxed. Oversight timelines are extended. Parliamentary scrutiny is deferred. The justification is always the same: speed saves lives.
Often, it does. But speed also erodes institutional muscle memory.
When emergency mechanisms are used repeatedly, institutions stop preparing for non- emergency governance. Systems adapt to discretion rather than discipline.
Over time, what was temporary becomes structural.
Sunday papers rarely interrogate this drift. Emergency actions are reported as necessity, not precedent. But precedents accumulate quietly.
The risk is not authoritarianism in its dramatic form. It is administrative erosion — where normal rules are seen as optional, slow, or inconvenient.
Sri Lanka’s governance problem is not the use of emergency powers. It is the failure to exitthem.
Each disaster should trigger two processes: Immediate response
Post-crisis rollback and review
The first happens. The second rarely does.
A state that governs permanently in emergency mode loses its capacity for reform. Everything becomes urgent; nothing becomes sustainable
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