Editorial - Markets are not politics!

Today you are against the executive power and tomorrow you are with the ruling party and voting for it. In those good old days you shouted for the rights of the young and now you may be feeling that it’s your patriotic duty to restrain the rights of the same group who have now grown old.

But, who cares? It’s all politics. If you don’t change your stance all the time, people will rule you out from it.
 

But markets are not politics. They are far more sophisticated than politics and run on integrity and sentiment. They hate uncertainty and intervention.

The recent resignation of the Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Tilak Karunaratne can be cited as a prime example of the lack of understanding of the high authorities about how markets operate.
 

The regulator went on record saying that he was under ‘immense pressure’ to resign from those who appointed him because he merely wanted to do his job!
 

Let’s all be practical. There is no doubt that to get to power you have to seek the help of certain people and you have to help them back while you are in power. Though democracy sounds grand, that’s the practical side of it.
 

But when the return part go beyond liquor permits, contracts, high positions etc. it is always advisable for a politico to drop these helpers or boldly say no to them or else, as Shakespeare so masterly said in Macbeth, you will be in a situation where “I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more,” that will destroy you ultimately.
 

It is no secret that such helpers played a key role in ousting Karunaratne, the second SEC Chairman to tender his resignation in the past nine months.

And there is no doubt that whoever the person who would assume Karunaratne’s seat will be highly conscious of what happened to his predecessors by trying to do their job and therefore may opt not to do anything but just to keep his well-paying job.
 

This will create a bunch of problems in terms of investor confidence and overall regulation of the Colombo Stock Market. Therefore it is our request to  higher authorities to refrain from playing their cheap politics where they are not welcome. They need to remember that they are not just asking a person to leave his office, but making a mockery of the entire system.