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After marathon, Ranil begins race to rebuild Sri Lanka
When Ranil Wickremesinghe led the United National Party (UNP) to victory at the August 17 general elections, it was not merely the end of a hectic 49-day campaign; it was also the culmination of a 40-year-long political career that had few triumphs and many disasters.
Ranil Wickremesinghe: One step enough for me. Pic by Indika Handuwala
Wickremesinghe was sworn in as the country’s Prime Minister for a record fourth time in a simple fifteen minute ceremony four days later. It is a feat matched only by Dudley Senanayake. Senanayake was first appointed as Premier following the sudden death of his father D. S. Senanayake but was elected to office thrice later. Wickremesinghe who was first appointed as PM after the assassination of Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993 was elected as Prime Minister in 2001, appointed as Premier earlier this year and elected again last week.
Ranil Shriyan Wickremesinghe had a privileged entry to politics. His father Esmond Wickremesinghe had been at Lake House since 1950s — when it was later said that “what Lake House said today, the (UNP) Government did tomorrow” — until a few years before it was nationalised. He was a power broker in the UNP. By the mid-1970s, Ranil’s uncle J.R. Jayewardene was leading the UNP. Young Ranil must have imbibed heavily from the heady brew of politics at the dinner table in the Wickremesinghe household and would have found it difficult to say no to being appointed UNP organiser for the Kelaniya electorate, and later shifted to the newly carved neighbouring Biyagama electorate. He has said that he would have been a journalist if he had not entered politics.
The 1977 elections that swept Jayewardene into power thrust the unassuming 28-year old lawyer in to Parliament where he was Deputy Minister to the country’s frequent flier Foreign Minister A.C. S. (“All Countries Seen”) Hameed. His period as understudy was short lived however: Jayewardene, spearheading an unprecedented economic drive appointed Wickremesinghe as Minister of Youth Affairs and Employment a few months later. He was to remain a cabinet minister for the next seventeen years, holding the portfolios of Education under Jayewardene and Industries, Science and Technology and Leader of the House under President R. Premadasa.
During the massive split in the UNP camp during the Premadasa years, when some heavyweights broke rank, Wickremesinghe stood steadfast behind his leader and helped Premadasa ride the storm. His charmed life as a government minister all those years however came to an abrupt end on May Day, 1993 when a bomb at Armour Street in Colombo killed Premadasa. In the chaos that followed, Wickremesinghe was instrumental in restoring calm and having Prime Minister Dingiri Banda Wijetunga installed as President. Six days later, Wickremesinghe was sworn in as Prime Minister.
Rebellion in the UNP
The UNP was in upheaval at the time. Rebelling against Premadasa’s authoritarian style of leadership and angry at being marginalised, party stalwarts Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake had left to form the Democratic United National Front. They attempted to oust Premadasa from office by impeaching him but had failed. Athulathmudali had been assassinated a week before Premadasa.
Premadasa’s death and Wijetunga’s ascent to presidential office saw Dissanayake return to the UNP. Wijetunge called for general elections instead of presidential polls and the UNP’s seventeen year rule was getting stale and tottering: the newly formed Peoples’ Alliance, with Chandrika Kumaratunga at the helm, won 105 seats to the UNP’s 94 — almost an exact reversal of the outcome of the recent elections. Dissanayake was busy trying to convince Wijetunga that he could cobble together a coalition and form a UNP-led government. Wickremesinghe, the incumbent Prime Minister, however, packed his bags and left Temple Trees, much to Dissanayake’s chagrin. Kumaratunga was sworn in as Prime Minister.
Forced to occupy the opposition benches for the first time in his career, Wickremesinghe found Dissanayake challenging him for the Opposition Leader’s job. Seven years senior to him in Parliament and having had a higher profile as Mahaveli Minister, Dissanayake emerged the winner in a party room vote. It was to be a poisoned chalice: contesting the presidential elections in 1994 as the UNP candidate, Dissanayake was himself assassinated during a campaign rally at Grandpass in Colombo. When Wickremesinghe went to the Colombo General Hospital to see the body, Dissanayake’s supporters heckled him but once again, Wickremesinghe was thrust in to the UNP leadership at a time the party was in crisis.
Though Kumaratunga’s government was initially extremely popular, even in the North, it was returned to power with a lesser majority at the October 2000 general elections. By now, the public was growing tired of her tardy style of leadership, the inefficiency of her government and the loss of territory to the Tamil Tigers in the North and East, the latter being cleared under Wijetunga’s tenure.
Now as Leader of the UNP and the Opposition, Wickremesinghe bided his time through all this, at times evoking the wrath of his own party members who were impatient to return to power. Then, in October 2001, he masterminded a ‘coup’ of sorts, engineering a crossover of eight Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) parliamentarians of whom S.B. Dissanayake and G.L. Peiris are the only survivors in the political arena today. Faced with the prospect of losing a no-confidence motion, Kumaratunga dissolved Parliament and called elections which the UNP won, leading Wickremesinghe to his second stint as Prime Minister.
Fate seems to conspire — even now — that whenever he is PM, someone else is in charge. Being the progeny of families steeped in politics, the story is told of how Wickremesinghe and Kumaratunga attended the same dancing classes of Sri Jayana. Kumaratunga’s brother Anura was Wickremesinghe’s classmate at Royal College. Nevertheless, there was little love lost between the duo when they were President and Prime Minister and Kumaratunga resented having to dance to the tune of her former fellow student at dancing classes who was now the Prime Minister. Their difference escalated because of the hostility shown by some ministers towards Kumaratunga.
Wickremesinghe concluded the infamous Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) with the Tamil Tigers in February 2002 — and Kumaratunga, who was Head of State and the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces who were battling the Tigers on the ground, knew hardly anything about its modus operandi. It was to become Wickremesinghe’s signature achievement (or blunder, in the way one sees it) during his term of office. The CFA was widely welcomed at the time by a war weary public and Wickremesinghe was hailed as a statesman and a peacemaker. But the Tamil Tigers grew uneasy, and the peace talks led to the first crack of the monolith organisation, paving the way to its mortal split with a breakaway faction from its Eastern Command.
As the uneasy cohabitation continued in Colombo, the strain in relations between Kumaratunga and the UNP government was growing but Wickremesinghe resisted calls by some of his party members to impeach her, even if it was only to prevent her from dissolving Parliament.
Kumaratunga hit back in November 2003, while Wickremesinghe was away in Washington, suspending Parliament, dismissing three ministers and taking over their portfolios. Wickremesinghe returned to a heroes’ welcome at the Katunayake airport taking several hours to reach Colombo. At the President’s House a nervous Kumaratunga was ready to throw in the towel had the multitude of Wickremesinghe supporters marched into Fort but the end was nigh: For some reason, which Wickremesinghe later said was to avoid blood-letting by his supporters and Kumaratunga’s Presidential Guards, he called off the protest. Kumaratunga went for the jugular, dissolving Parliament in February 2004 despite a written promise to him she would not do that, and calling for elections in April at a time when the Tamil Tigers were dilly dallying about honouring the CFA.
Political Vilification begins
Taken completely off guard, the UNP lost the poll and the election saw the appointment of Mahinda Rajapaksa as Prime Minister, a decision Kumaratunga regrets to this day. At the 2005 presidential election, a boycott call by the LTTE, apparently prevented Wickremesinghe from winning. Rajapaksa won the election by a narrow margin. The entry of Rajapaksa and his successful pursuit of a military offensive against the Tamil Tigers painted Wickremesinghe into an uncomfortable corner of the political landscape. Suddenly, he was the ‘traitor’ who bartered away the contry’s unity to the Tigers; Rajapaksa was Dutugemunu incarnate, who rescued Mother Lanka and united the nation.
Rajapaksa’s propagandists — led by the loquacious Wimal Weerawansa — made sure that he was everything Wickremesinghe was not. Rajapaksa wore the white national dress and his trademark ‘saatakaya’; Wickremesinghe wore suit and tie. Rajapaksa was fluent in Sinhala and was at ease back-slapping adults and kissing babies at the Sunday Fair; Wickremesinghe was more comfortable with English and at the Mustangs Tent at the Royal-Thomian. In the Sri Lankan psyche, Wickremesinghe came to be increasingly identified as the Kalu Sudda while Rajapaksa became the Maha Kalu Sinhalaya.
Meanwhile, Rajapaksa was busy holding election after election — provincial polls at first, presidential elections next and then the general elections — and cashing in on the war victory. The UNP was down in the dumps, thoroughly demoralised with each drubbing and Wickremesinghe’s critics were counting by the dozen the number of election defeats he had presided over.
In what was a politically astute decision, Wickremesinghe allowed Sarath Fonseka, the just retired Army Commander who led the military onslaught against the Tigers to contest the presidential poll against Rajapaksa in 2010. Many criticised him for this but had Wickremesinghe run and lost, he probably wouldn’t have survived as leader of the UNP thereafter.
In the aftermath of the 2010 general elections, when the UNP’s share of the vote felt to less than 30 percent, its lowest ever, first Karu Jayasuriya and then Sajith Premadasa challenged Wickremesinghe. It was an ugly fight, spilling over to sections of the media which lampooned Wickremesinghe mercilessly. The man who had earned the title of ‘Mr. Clean’ was being pilloried as ‘Mr. Bean’, the accident prone British film character who floundered from one blunder to another. It was also ironical that the challenges came from Jayasuriya — who entered politics late in life and was promoted over and above others by Wickremesinghe — and Premadasa, when Wickremesinghe had stood steadfastly by his father’s side when he was being pummelled by Athulathmudali and Dissanayake.
Through it all, Wickremesinghe steered clear of personal insults and did not take to the media to belittle his rivals, though he was not averse to ‘inspired leaks’ that rattled his opponents from time to time. Instead, he fortified the decision making body of the UNP, the Working Committee, with his nominees who did his bidding and retained him as leader despite the mounting election losses. Rajapaksa would tell UNP dissidents “mokadda me satana, Ranil working committee eka path karanawa, working committee eka Ranil path karanawa (what’s this struggle? Ranil appoints the working committee and the working committee appoints Ranil). And, he waited, waited and waited fending off his critics for Rajapaksa to slip up; Rajapaksa eventually did, by calling for presidential elections two years earlier than scheduled.
Political manouevre
By now, tempered in the simmering cauldron of Sri Lankan politics, Wickremesinghe knew very well that there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies in politics, only permanent interests. So, he didn’t hesitate to team up with Kumaratunga to spearhead the campaign to oust Rajapaksa. Once again, against the wishes of a significant section of the UNP he conceded the presidential election candidacy to a ‘common candidate’, Maithripala Sirisena, calculating correctly that anyone who wished to beat Rajapaksa needed the Sinhala Buddhist vote in the South — and he himself wasn’t guaranteed of that. Rajapaksa had already rubbed the minorities on the wrong side, but every vote in the South also mattered.
The rest is recent history. Within the space of a few months, Wickremesinghe has gone from zero to hero. The divisions in the UNP are no longer talked of while the SLFP haemorrhages from internal conflict, the hallmark of the vanquished party. Sajith Premadasa was heard during the recent campaign, comparing his efforts to that of his father teaming up with Wickremesinghe’s uncle, Jayewardene and pledging upon his life to make Wickremesinghe the Prime Minister!
Wickremesinghe must know that his fourth attempt at being PM will be no walk in the park. Once again, his President is from the SLFP, though being a more benign personality than Kumaratunga and one who owes a debt of gratitude to Wickremesinghe for his own election to high office. Even so, as the past six months indicated, President Sirisena is subject to pressures from the SLFP where he is struggling to assert his leadership and as a result, the decisions that he makes may not always be to Wickremesinghe’s liking although the personal chemistry between them has been one of mutual respect.
The UNP and the SLFP signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to form a national government or a government of national unity, call what you will, shortly after Wickremesinghe was sworn in but history tells us that such MOUs are sometimes not worth the paper they are written on. Lofty ideals are well and good but Wickremesinghe will have to govern with a diverse coalition which includes sections of the SLFP, the Hela Urumaya, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and some regional Tamil political parties- not an easy task by any measure.
One of Wickremesinghe’s key pledges is to restore democracy and the rule of law which had eroded during the Rajapaksa years. Having enacted legislation to repeal criminal defamation laws against the media and having presided over the introduction of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, Wickremesinghe is clearly more the democrat than Rajapaksa but he has already displayed a major chink in his armour when he stubbornly refused to take action against the Central Bank Governor over the Treasury Bond issue. He may argue on technicalities and even if justice was done, it certainly didn’t appear to be done — and that is not the high level of good governance that was expected of him.
Over the years, Wickremesinghe has been at the butt end of jokes about being where he is by default. He did become leader of the UNP only because the second tier leadership of the UNP, painstakingly groomed by Jayewardene, had been wiped out by the Tigers. Even over the past six months, Rajapaksa loyalists took great delight in labelling him a ‘pin agamethi’ conveniently forgetting that Sirisena had promised during his campaign to appoint Wickremesinghe as PM and that he therefore had a mandate.
Wickremesinghe is sometimes accused even by those close to him of being aloof and stubborn. With him, what you see is what you get. His hair is not dyed or carefully coiffured and his shirts are not immaculately creased. He doesn’t always smile for the cameras. But he is a man of purpose and convictions, steeped in Buddhist philosophy, much more than those who carry trays of flowers to the temple every day.
Wickremesinghe has a complete understanding of the patience and tenacity required in politics to stay the course; though not a great cricket-lover he knows politics is a Test match and not a one-dayer. He easily rivals the likes of S. W.R.D. Bandaranaike, Dudley Senanayake, Sirima Bandaranaike and J.R. Jayewardene who tasted bitter and humiliating defeats handed to them by the masses only to romp home to victories by the same people. As Jayewardene once told a crowd that cheered him to the microphone at a public rally; “ada appudi gahana aya thamai heta gal gahanne” (“those who applaud today will hurl stones tomorrow”). Now, Wickremesinghe must be reflecting that this also works in reverse.
In the coming years, as the UNP gets a grip on government, Wickremesinghe must also ensure that the party has a second tier and that his successor is identified and groomed, instead of leaving room for dissension and division in later years. Indeed, the progeny (Sajith Premadasa and Navin Dissanayake) and the protégés (Ravi Karunanayake) of the protagonists of yesteryear must be eyeing the UNP leadership after Wickremesinghe who should not allow history to repeat itself in the UNP.
After running a political marathon for forty years, Wickremesinghe finds himself not at the finish line but at the beginning of another race: a race to transform Sri Lanka to a prosperous, democratic and united country. At this point in time, he is probably the best man for the job. He must know though that his fourth stint as Prime Minister will be as tricky as a fourth innings in a test match: the wicket is well worn and the doosras that will come his way from an SLFP parliamentary group headed, for all practical purposes by Rajapaksa, will turn that much more sharply.
Already, the ‘national government’ that Wickremesinghe has proposed has run in to snags. The swearing of ministers has been postponed several times because of squabbling over portfolios. Whether these are mere teething problems or whether it is a manifestation of the overarching rivalry between the two major parties, time will tell.
To succeed with his national government, Wickremesinghe, the clever scrabble player that he is, must do in government what he does in his favourite game: pick up those with highest value and combine them to produce something meaningful. If he succeeds, history will be kind to Ranil Wickremesinghe and forgive him for his lapses of judgment in the past.