Sri Lanka is recovering from one the worst bouts of kleptocratic rule in modern times. That recovery crucially depends of course on ending its rulers’ wholesale theft of the nation’s resources, an effort where the International Monetary Fund staff and Sri Lankan civil society have wittingly or unwittingly joined forces.

The alliance has Its roots in events of 2022. That spring citizens had had enough. With the economy cratering and poverty skyrocketing, they joined to force the latest in a string of kleptocrats from office (pictured here). That summer the replacement government pledged to fight corruption. That fall IMF staff recommended approval of a $2.9 billion loan to help the country dig out of the hole corruption dug.

Sri Lanka’s corruption was so blatant, and the link between it and the economy’s free fall so clear that IMF’s staff insisted that in return for the loan the government promise to enact a program “reducing corruption vulnerabilities through improving fiscal transparency and public financial management, introducing a stronger anti-corruption legal framework, and conducting an in-depth governance diagnostic, supported by IMF technical assistance.”   

One year on, as the IMF board considers whether to release a second tranche of the loan, that promise remains unfulfilled.  The evidence is in two reports released in September, one by Sri Lankan civil society (here) and the other by the IMF staff (here). Both chronicle the government’s numerous failures to implement promised reforms. Both point the same underlying problem: the impunity high level officials continue to enjoy.

Authors of one report concluded that there were “systematic and severe governance weaknesses and corruption vulnerabilities across state functions. . . . weak accountability institutions [and that] impunity for misbehavior enjoyed by officials undermines trust in the public sector and compounds concerns over limited access to efficient and rule-based adjudication process for resolving disputes.”

The other report identified instances, including shockingly in the disbursement of the first tranche of the IMF loan, “where impunity has accompanied the non-compliance with even legal decisions and RTI determinations. [The report determined that] a remedy for non-implementation, selective implementation and/or subversion of existing mechanisms of corruption control was . . .  of the highest priority [and that] . . . arguably the most vexed issue in the fiscal governance landscape . . . is the fact that laws and regulation either remain under-implemented or subverted, and that deliberate noncompliance goes unpunished, thereby reinforcing a pervasive sense of impunity.”

Governments rarely reform without sustained pressure, especially in weaker democracies like Sri Lanka’s where a powerful ruling elite depends on corrupt monies to maintain their lifestyles. The hope is that the alliance between Sri Lankan civil society and the IMF will be sufficient to overcome the opposition to reform.

Sri Lankan civil society isn’t the first to seek the support of the international community to force reform. As Ukrainian civil society activist Dari Kaleniuk explained in an interview with GAB publisher Matthew Stephenson, civil society groups there joined forces with the EU, the IMF, and other international donors to force Ukraine to embrace several important reforms. Progress on several continues even as the Russian war of aggression continues.

The fight against entrenched corruption in countries where, as Alina Mungiu-Pippidi has explained – corruption isn’t a deviation from the norm, it is the norm — needs all the allies that can be mustered. The Sri Lankan effort has just picked up one. Transparency International U.S. is asking U.S. NGO’s to sign onto a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin urging she direct U.S. Board Member Elizabeth Shortino to insist Sri Lanka’s government live up to its promise to fight corruption before the Fund disburses any more of the loan. (TI U.S. staffer Annalise Burkhart has the details.) Might other TI chapters or anticorruption NGOs with IMF board members follow suit?

Bonus: readers who can identify who authored which report (without peaking of course) will win a lifetime subscription to GAB.