Times of emergency have frequently raised concerns about a government’s misuse
of power or inaction. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries around
the world were experiencing democratic decline and the rise of authoritarianism.
These pre-existing situations conditioned the nature of the executive response to
the pandemic that followed. This report explores the ideas of executive overreach
and underreach through a case study of the Sri Lankan government’s response
to the COVID-19 pandemic. The report first identifies how, since the 1990s, Sri
Lanka experienced a constitutional reform rollercoaster with highs of democratic
safeguards and checks on the power of the president, and lows of presidential
aggrandisement and authoritarianism. Against this background, the report
identifies the continuation of this trend and the ways it facilitated executive
overreach and underreach that occurred during the pandemic. We identify several
symptoms of executive overreach and underreach, including evading accountability,
arbitrary decision-making, militarisation, discrimination and legal opportunism.
We illustrate these symptoms through a range of case studies involving the
president, the military and the administration. In doing so, we suggest that in
Sri Lanka, executive overreach or underreach during the pandemic should not be
seen as unusual but rather a continuation of executive aggrandisement, as typified
by the constitutional reform rollercoaster with its rapid shifts from democratic
accountability to authoritarianism and back again.