-By LeN Political correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -02.Nov.2025, 11.10 PM) Colombo’s think-tank circuit can, at times, resemble a cocktail party for policy hobbyists rather than a crucible of economic thought. Last week’s “Policy Changes in Globalisation” Q&A session hosted by the “Advocata Institute” was the most recent example of how Sri Lanka’s self-styled free-market apostles can turn intellectual discourse into a farcical self-promotion exercise.
Barely fifteen attendees gathered in a conference room, air-conditioned more heavily than the arguments presented. At the centre of this exercise in neoliberal navel-gazing stood “Mr Dhananath Fernando” CEO of Advocata — a man who appears to mistake confidence for competence and verbosity for vision.
Flanked by former President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Dr Rajapathirana -
Mr Fernando promised an “open dialogue on the future of Sri Lanka’s global integration.” What emerged instead was a confused monologue of economic platitudes delivered in halting English and punctuated by nervous laughter from the audience.
Advocata likes to call itself an “independent policy institute dedicated to promoting economic freedom.” Its glossy website glitters with free-market catchphrases — deregulation, liberalisation, privatisation — yet offers little in the way of original research or empirical evidence.
Most of its so-called studies read like thinly repackaged ideological tracts lifted from American libertarian templates. The tone is evangelical, the data fragmentary, and the conclusions preordained. It is less an institute than a -public-relations front for economic orthodoxy-,operating under the illusion of intellectual gravitas.
The problem is not just ideological bias — most think-tanks have one — but -Advocata’s startling lack of academic rigour- When asked about peer review, methodological transparency, or field data, the answers tend to evaporate into buzzwords. The group’s reports on trade, taxation, and labour are long on slogans but short on substance.
Mr Fernando, Advocata’s chief executive, is the public face of this campaign to resell neo-liberalism to a weary nation. He seems convinced that a sprinkling of Milton Friedman quotes and PowerPoint slides can cure Sri Lanka’s chronic economic ailments.
Unfortunately, his public interventions often betray an uncomfortable truth: -the message is undermined by the messenger-. His English delivery, riddled with mispronunciations and misplaced idioms, has become the subject of academic amusement among Colombo’s professionals.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with imperfect English. But when one aspires to be the face of Sri Lankan economic liberalisation on the global stage, linguistic clarity is not a luxury — it is part of credibility. Economists, after all, are judged not merely by graphs but by precision of argument.
One might ask why “former President Ranil Wickremesinghe” whose tenure was marked by economic stagnation and the infamous - Central Bank bond scandal-, was chosen to speak about “policy reform under globalisation.”
The irony was not lost on the audience. Mr Wickremesinghe, once hailed as the architect of Sri Lanka’s “open economy,” now carries the baggage of mismanaged privatisations and industrial closures. When he served as Minister of Industries in the 1980s, his policies paved the way for a wave of foreign acquisitions that gutted local enterprises.
Among the more memorable casualties was the -state-owned leather manufacturing plant-, allegedly sold to a personal associate, P. G. Martin — a deal that left hundreds unemployed and an entire sector crippled. Yet here he was, extolling the virtues of globalisation to a roomful of devotees nodding dutifully.
The Advocata stage thus became a tableau of contradictions: a discredited political figure advising on reform, and a think-tank pretending to conduct research while doing little more than -public relations for outdated ideology-
If Mr Fernando is the voice of Advocata, Mr Murtaza Jafferji- is its intellectual patron. With a background in finance and a taste for policy evangelism, he frequently appears on panels advocating deregulation, tax cuts, and “ease of doing business.”
Yet the ease with which Mr Jafferji himself does business raises uncomfortable questions. His family empire, the -Jafferjee Group-, has operated in trading, apparel, and logistics for decades — sectors notorious for political patronage and sweetheart deals with customs officials.
Several business insiders allege that the group benefited from preferential access to import licences and tariff exemptions during the liberalisation wave of the 1980s and 1990s — the very era Advocata romanticises. While no formal investigation has been published, the absence of transparency fuels suspicion.
-Mr Jafferji has never publicly disclosed the tax liabilities of his associated companies-, Nor has Advocata, under his chairmanship, revealed the extent of corporate sponsorships funding its operations. In a country where corruption and lobbying blur into one another, such omissions matter.
Critics argue that Advocata’s advocacy for deregulation conveniently aligns with the financial interests of Sri Lanka’s business elite — those who gained from monopolies and import licences rather than from genuine competition.
Transparency is the lifeblood of any credible think-tank. But when asked who bankrolls Advocata’s slick operations — from rented auditoriums to high-production video content — the answers become evasive.
Insiders admit that -foreign embassies and donor agencies- have quietly financed several of Advocata’s projects. Representatives from Western missions have been seen attending their events, often lured by the promise of “capacity-building” in economic reform.
Yet this donor dependency creates a new kind of intellectual colonialism: -policy by patronage-. Instead of home-grown research, Sri Lanka gets -imported ideology-, filtered through local spokesmen who repeat Washington Consensus slogans with little contextual understanding.
Diplomatic sources privately express fatigue with what one termed “policy panhandlers” — think-tank executives making rounds from one embassy to another, seeking grants for studies that seldom materialise.
Advocata’s glossy presentations may impress donors unfamiliar with the local context, but their lack of empirical research — no surveys, no economic modelling, no primary data — makes their policy claims academically hollow.
It is painful to watch how institutions like Advocata, intended to elevate public debate, have become -caricatures of scholarship-, Their shallow presentations, couched in half-digested jargon, have turned Sri Lanka into a sideshow in the global policy community.
At international conferences, visiting economists whisper about “that Colombo think-tank that quotes Hayek without having read him.” One diplomat described Advocata’s recent Q&A session as “a masterclass in self-congratulation and miscommunication.”
The embarrassment is not just linguistic; it is intellectual. When policy debates are led by individuals who cannot explain the country’s fiscal deficit beyond reciting imported catchphrases, the national discourse suffers.
An examination of Advocata’s publications reveals a pattern. Their flagship reports often cite outdated data or unattributed graphs lifted from foreign sources. References to Central Bank statistics are incomplete, and their footnotes occasionally cite Wikipedia.
The supposed research team is rarely identified by name, and no methodology section is provided. For a think-tank claiming to be “evidence-based,” this absence is extraordinary.
Requests to access their internal research processes have been ignored, while the organisation continues to release glossy PDFs with donor logos and celebratory launches.
One former employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the process bluntly: “It’s cut-and-paste economics. We download papers from global libertarian websites, add a local paragraph, and release it as our own study.”
Sri Lanka’s -National People’s Power (NPP) Government- which has pledged to clean up the country’s policy ecosystem, should take a closer look at think-tanks operating under the guise of intellectual independence.
While civil society and academic institutions must remain free, there is a case for greater disclosure requirements — particularly for groups soliciting foreign funding and influencing public policy.
Regulation need not stifle debate; it should simply enforce transparency of funding, qualifications, and research standards . Think-tanks should declare their donors, their methodologies, and the academic credentials of their researchers.
If Advocata and similar outfits truly believe in competition, they should welcome scrutiny. Genuine scholarship thrives under examination; ideological echo chambers do not.
Advocata’s central narrative is that Sri Lanka’s salvation lies in resurrecting the “open economy” of the late 1970s — a mantra inherited from the *J. R. Jayewardene–Ranil Wickremesinghe school of liberalisation*.
But the historical record is sobering. That era dismantled local industries, widened inequality, and entrenched corruption. The promised foreign investment never translated into broad-based development.
Factories closed, rural poverty deepened, and dependency on imports grew. Yet Advocata insists on replaying this failed experiment, ignoring decades of empirical evidence and the global re-evaluation of unregulated markets.
In short, -Advocata’s globalisation gospel is yesterday’s sermon preached to a disillusioned congregation-.
In the spirit of investigative journalism, several key questions remain unanswered:
1. Who funds Advocata’s operations and how much of it comes from foreign diplomatic missions?
2. What are the qualifications of its researchers and executives, particularly those writing policy briefs?
3. How many original research projects have been conducted with peer-reviewed data?
4. Does Advocata disclose conflicts of interest given the commercial interests of its board members?
5. Why does Advocata continue to host political figures like Ranil Wickremesinghe whose records contradict its stated principles?
Until these questions are addressed, Advocata’s credibility remains as fragile as the ideological scaffolding it stands on.
If the Q&A session on globalisation was intended to showcase Advocata’s intellectual prowess, it instead exposed its nakedness. The event revealed a think-tank trapped between -wannabe cosmopolitanism and parochial amateurism- dressed up as policy innovation.
The laughter that rippled through the audience was not one of joy but of disbelief. As one university lecturer whispered on his way out: “If this is the standard of policy discourse in Colombo, no wonder the IMF keeps rewriting our homework.”
The story of Advocata is not just about one think-tank. It is a mirror to Sri Lanka’s broader failure to build credible institutions of research and debate. The country’s intellectual space has been colonised by corporate apologists and donor-driven ideologues who confuse publicity with policy.
What Sri Lanka needs are not more imported prescriptions but *independent, evidence-based, home-grown analysis*. Until then, the Advocatas of Colombo will continue to fill conference halls with empty words and self-importance — while the real work of rebuilding the economy remains undone.
In the end, the “naked truth” about Advocata is this: it is less a think-tank than a theatre troupe — performing neoliberal fantasies to a dwindling audience that long stopped believing in miracles.
-By LeN Political correspondent
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by (2025-11-02 18:27:58)
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