-By LeN Diplomatic editor
(Lanka-e-News -10.May.2025, 11.00 PM) In an economic climate still battered by sovereign default, just recovering exports, and IMF-mandated belt-tightening, one group continues to prop up Sri Lanka’s faltering state finances with silent devotion: its overseas workers. In the first three months of 2025 alone, Sri Lankan migrant workers—most of them women deployed in the Gulf as domestic labour—have transferred Rs 543.13 billion (approximately US$1.81 billion) to their homeland.
These transfers, recorded via formal banking channels, dwarf the country’s current account surplus for the same period, exceed net apparel exports once costs are stripped out, and even outstrip revenue from taxes on international trade. And yet, despite their vast contributions to economic survival, these Sri Lankans remain excluded from the fundamental democratic right of voting in national elections.
It is a contradiction so striking it borders on farce: a country that survives on the sweat and sacrifice of its overseas citizens denies them a voice in how it is governed.
The scale of their contribution is sobering. From January to March this year, the Rs 543 billion remitted by overseas Sri Lankans served not merely as financial lifelines to families back home, but also as vital lifeblood to a fragile national economy. By comparison, foreign direct investment (FDI)—long considered the holy grail of development—mustered only US$761 million across the whole of 2024, and continues to stagnate under an anaemic Board of Investment bureaucracy.
At Rs 543 billion, the remittances even eclipse Sri Lanka’s total revenue in 2024 from taxes on international trade—Rs 481 billion across import-export duties, ports and airports levies, and commodity taxes. They are also larger than the country’s entire export income in the flagship apparel sector during the same three months (US$1.386 billion), especially when adjusted for the US$678 million spent on textile imports.
In March alone, Sri Lankans sent back US$693 million—higher than the IMF’s March 2023 disbursement of US$333 million and more than double Sri Lanka’s monthly foreign exchange earnings from tea exports.
And yet, these workers remain disenfranchised.
There are over 2 million Sri Lankan citizens living and working abroad, a significant number of whom departed the country after the 2022 economic collapse and mass protests. Despite holding valid citizenship, they are systematically denied the right to vote from their place of residence. Unlike nations such as India, the Philippines, or the United Kingdom, Sri Lanka offers no absentee ballots or postal voting rights to its diaspora—except for a narrow sliver of diplomatic staff and military personnel posted overseas.
The result is a democratic apartheid: those whose sweat funds the nation are shut out of shaping its political destiny.
“It’s a cruel irony,” said Nirmala Jayaratne, a domestic worker in Kuwait. “We send our money to keep our families alive. We pay fees, we pay taxes, we stand in queues at embassies. But on election day, we disappear from the map.”
In 2024 alone, more than 313,000 Sri Lankans migrated abroad for work. Most of them will now find themselves excluded from parliamentary, provincial, or presidential polls for as long as they remain overseas—unless they fly back at their own cost, during a brief registration window, with the required documentation, and face the additional hurdle of registering as a voter in a constituency back home.
No such hurdles exist for politicians to collect the taxes, fees, and remittances these workers generate.
Among the largest contributors to remittance inflows are women employed in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. Many endure exploitative conditions under the “kafala” system, working long hours for meagre wages. Yet they are often the sole breadwinners for extended families back home, sending back sums that, collectively, outperform many domestic industries.
According to Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) data, these workers kept pace with high monthly remittance levels throughout the first quarter of 2025. January brought in US$573 million; February US$548 million; March saw a dramatic surge to US$693 million. Not once did the figure fall below US$500 million—a threshold rarely breached during 2023 or 2024.
Indeed, this steady flow has helped stabilise the rupee, enhance commercial banks’ liquidity, and rebuild forex reserves depleted after the 2022 collapse.
Yet on the political balance sheet, these citizens remain invisible.
The failure to grant voting rights to overseas citizens reflects a broader systemic malaise. Successive Sri Lankan governments have failed to institutionalise mechanisms for overseas voting, despite repeated recommendations from international observers and local reform commissions.
In 2015, a proposal to introduce postal voting for Sri Lankans abroad was quietly shelved. In 2020, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs circular promised to “explore avenues for diaspora participation.” Nothing followed.
In the meantime, the state continues to benefit handsomely from its overseas workers—not only through remittances, but also in the form of passport fees, labour clearance levies, and embarkation taxes. In 2024, these generated over Rs 75 billion, government data show.
When added to the remittance inflows, the contribution of Sri Lankan migrants in that year alone exceeded Rs 2.4 trillion—approximately one-third of the government’s total revenue.
Still, they are not considered stakeholders.
Under the terms of its ongoing Extended Fund Facility with the International Monetary Fund, Sri Lanka has committed to broad economic reforms and revenue enhancement strategies. Yet little emphasis has been placed on the political enfranchisement of the migrant class underwriting those reforms.
Analysts argue that this omission is both shortsighted and unjust.
“Remittances are not just an economic tool—they are a social contract,” says Dr. Nishan de Mel, a Colombo-based economist. “You can’t expect two million people to fund the recovery while excluding them from the democratic process. It’s fundamentally unsustainable.”
Others warn that political disenfranchisement may eventually lead to remittance fatigue.
“The goodwill of these citizens should not be taken for granted,” said a senior CBSL official who requested anonymity. “In many countries, diaspora remittances fell sharply when migrants felt alienated or politically marginalised. It’s a risk we ignore at our peril.”
Across the world, migrant workers are increasingly being recognised as key democratic stakeholders. India permits overseas citizens to register as voters and recently began trials for proxy and remote e-voting. The Philippines allows absentee voting through embassies. France and Italy reserve parliamentary seats for expatriate citizens.
Even crisis-ridden Lebanon, whose economy similarly depends on remittances, offers overseas voting mechanisms.
Sri Lanka, by contrast, has remained stubbornly anachronistic—rooted in a mid-20th century model of national sovereignty that fails to account for the lived reality of its 21st-century diaspora.
The issue has occasionally surfaced during election cycles but is often buried beneath chauvinistic appeals to “homeland loyalty” and the logistical challenges of cross-border voter verification.
Critics argue this is a smokescreen.
“If we can verify people for passports, taxes, work permits, and even social media censorship, we can certainly verify them to vote,” says constitutional lawyer Lakshan Dias. “It’s a question of political will—not technical feasibility.”
As Sri Lanka prepares for presidential elections expected in late 2025, the question looms large: Will the nation extend the democratic franchise to those who sustain it?
Several civil society groups have called on the Election Commission to introduce remote registration and voting options, particularly for long-term residents abroad. Legal experts suggest that constitutional provisions already provide for such measures—it is administrative inertia that blocks the way.
Proposals under discussion include:
Online voter registration for overseas Sri Lankans with valid NICs/passports
Voting at Sri Lankan missions abroad with appropriate identity verification
Mobile ballot boxes at labour camps and hostels in major employment destinations
A pilot absentee postal ballot system, beginning with select countries
Whether these measures see the light of day remains uncertain. But with every passing month, as the rupee is kept afloat by earnings from Dubai and Doha, Riyadh and Rome, the demand for voting rights becomes harder to ignore.
Final Thought
There is something deeply unsettling about a republic that will accept the money of its citizens but not their mandate. Sri Lanka is not the first country to rely on its diaspora in times of trouble. But it may be among the few that has done so without gratitude, reciprocity, or reform.
The numbers are now too large to dismiss. Two million Sri Lankans abroad. Rs 543 billion in three months. Rs 2.4 trillion in 2024. These are not fringe voices. They are the engine room of survival.
A functioning democracy cannot afford to disenfranchise its saviours. And if Sri Lanka is serious about recovery—economic, political, and moral—it must begin by giving its expatriate citizens the vote.
After all, if they are trusted to save the country, they should be trusted to help choose who runs it.
-By LeN Diplomatic editor
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by (2025-05-10 19:23:26)
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