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President, now a political orphan, wandering in the wilderness
It was President Ranasinghe Premadasa, who, on winning the presidential election in 1988, declared that what he had inherited was a ‘torch lit at both ends’. Premadasa was referring to the twin insurrections then raging in the North and the South of the country, due to actions of the Liberations Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP).
Thirty years later both those rebellions have been quelled but the man occupying Premadasa’s chair, Maithripala Sirisena, is faced with a similar predicament. He is facing twin revolts: one from his own Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the other from the party that catapulted him from mere minister to all powerful Executive President, the United National Party (UNP).
Sirisena’s ascent to the Presidency was serendipitous. He happened to be in the right place at the right time. Basking in the afterglow of the victory against the LTTE and with a UNP hampered by internecine infighting, Mahinda Rajapaksa believed he was invincible, sacking Chief Justices, jailing Army Commanders and amending the Constitution, so that he could rule for life.
In doing all this, Rajapaksa overstepped his mark without so much as realising it. That is why he called a presidential election two years ahead of schedule. Arguably conceding that he wouldn’t attract the required votes from the majority Sinhalese Buddhist demographic to oust Rajapaksa, the embattled UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe teamed up with Rajapaksa’s bete noire in the SLFP, Chandrika Kumaratunga, to offer what seemed, at that time, a reasonable alternative: Maithripala Sirisena, then the general secretary of the SLFP and minister of health.
It was an election of Mahinda Rajapaksa vs The Rest and there was a palpable sense of relief when Sirisena assumed duties as President. The majority felt that the country’s rapid descent towards authoritarianism had been halted. No one believed, even for a moment, that Sirisena was more charismatic, efficient or politically mature than Rajapaksa but most people would have believed that he was more sincere, transparent and had more integrity than the man he replaced. And, he had less political baggage with him.
In the first few months of the ‘yahapalanaya’ regime, the UNP led a minority government and Sirisena played along. They made significant gains: a ‘relief’ budget granted redress to those struggling to make ends meet and the 19th Amendment to the Constitution replaced the 18th, removing with it Rajapaksa’s chances of sitting on the presidential chair again. The 19th Amendment also created the Constitutional Council consisting of parliamentarians as well as eminent citizens which recommended appointments to key state institutions, replacing the Parliamentary Council comprising only parliamentarians.
Crown of thorns
Shortly afterwards, Sirisena added another jewel to his crown: the leadership of the SLFP. It was to become a crown of thorns. Soon, he was torn between loyalty to the UNP which propelled him to office and its arch rival of which he was now the leader. In hindsight, that was the beginning of the end of cordial cohabitation between the two major parties which have ruled Sri Lanka since Independence.
If accepting the leadership of the SLFP instead of staying neutral was Sirisena’s first mistake, not acting decisively against SLFP dissidents was his second. The first ‘Mahinda sulanga’ rally took place at Nugegoda in February 2015, just over a month after Sirisena assumed office. It was a signal from the Rajapaksa camp that retirement at Medamulana was not high on the former President’s agenda. Instead of taking firm disciplinary action against the dissidents, Sirisena adopted a ‘wait and see’ policy. The longer he waited what Sirisena saw was the ‘sulanga’ (wind) become a whirlwind.
The August 2015 general elections provided an insight to the political tightrope Sirisena was walking. Most SLFPers remained loyal to Rajapaksa, even if Sirisena had executive power at his disposal. They, through general secretaries Anura Priyadarshana Yapa (of the SLFP) and Susil Premajayantha (of the United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance) were exerting pressure on Sirisena to nominate Rajapaksa loyalists to contest the election.
Frustrated by these conflicting demands and still complaining that he would be “six feet under” had Rajapaksa won the presidential election, a bitter Sirisena took the unprecedented step of addressing the nation to declare that even if the SLFP won the election, Rajapaksa would not be his Prime Minister.
The SLFP didn’t win but nor did the UNP secure an outright majority. Thus was born an uneasy coalition. It was — and still is — an uneasy mix of political parties, personalities and policies that rarely see eye to eye on any issue — be it on constitutional reform, economic policy or ethnic reconciliation.
If that was a marriage of convenience, for some months now, it is as if the two coalition partners have been testing the grounds for divorce. The official Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the pre-marital contract between the two parties lapsed on December 31 last year — and has not been renewed; the legality of their union is in question. There is constant sniping between stalwarts of the two parties. Even though Prime Minister Wickremesinghe has publicly rebuked his MPs and asked them to tone down the rhetoric, Sirisena remained deafeningly silent allowing those in the SLFP to continue with their verbal barrages against the UNP — only till the local council campaign last January-February when Sirisena himself went ballistic calling both the UNP and the Rajapaksa supporters “pickpockets” (of public funds).
Among the many promises the government failed miserably to keep was the prosecution of corrupt elements in the previous regime. Sirisena blames elements of the UNP for this. They in turn accuse Sirisena of soft-pedalling corruption probes, especially in recent months. Whatever the reason, leading lights of the previous government are free and roaming the political jungle where they have been repeatedly uttering the Mahinda mantra to an electorate that has become increasingly disenchanted with ‘yahapalanaya’.
Bad miscalculation
Matters came to a head at the recent local government elections. Prior to the poll, Sirisena was playing the role of prosecutor of the corrupt. The kaduwa (‘sword’) of executive powers would be swung to deal with wrongdoers, he declared on the campaign trail. It was a double edged barb aimed at his predecessors as well as the UNP — which by then had smeared itself with egg on its collective face with the sordid details of the Central Bank bond scam becoming public through the commission appointed on Sirisena’s orders.
If Sirisena thought he was killing two birds with one stone, he miscalculated badly. If his intention was to drive the ‘floating’ voters away from the UNP towards the mainstream SLFP he headed, that didn’t happen. Instead, perhaps fed up with the underperforming, constantly bickering government that promised so much but delivered so little, they reverted to Rajapaksa’s latest political vehicle, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP).
Just prior to the election, Sirisena had, perhaps inadvertently shown his hand. He had referred the question of the duration of his term of office to the Supreme Court, seeking clarification whether it was five years or six years, apparently because there was confusion as to whether the 19th Amendment to the Constitution — which was ostensibly under his watch — applied to him.
The Supreme Court told him that it did, but the referral betrayed Sirisena’s desire to remain in office for as long as he could. Coming from someone who first pledged that he would abolish the Executive Presidency and declared not once, but thrice — when he took the office, days later at the Dalada Maligawa in Kandy and then months later at Ven. Maduluwave Sobhitha thero’s funeral — that he would not run again for President, many found it unacceptable.
It was also an open secret in the corridors of power that Sirisena, after receiving reports that the mainstream SLFP was likely to underperform, desperately tried to unite the two factions of the party so they could contest as a single entity. The SLPP’s Basil Rajapaksa, a street-smart political operator, if ever there was one, judged the mood of the electorate correctly and ensured that this would not happen.
If all of this manoeuvring suggested a hint of Sirisena’s intentions, the aftermath of the local government elections betrayed his true colours. At the polls, Sirisena’s mainstream SLFP was routed, relegated to third place in most councils — and it was not even a close third: the SLPP won 40 percent of the vote, the UNP 29 percent and the SLFP 13 percent, pushed to double digits only by the plantation votes of the Thondaman led CWC. The message from the electorate was clear: they did not approve of the UNP but they disapproved Sirisena and his faction of the SLFP even more.
On the backfoot
Now, Sirisena finds himself pinned down to a corner and struggling for survival. Those in the mainstream SLFP who had professed their loyalty to him now realise that siding with Sirisena would be political suicide. If the January 2015 results saw Rajapaksa backtrack as SLFPers gravitated towards the winner, Sirisena, the February 2018 results see a reversal of this trend with Sirisena on the back foot and Rajapaksa grinning like a Cheshire cat.
Sirisena’s SLFPers see the writing on the wall. They are eager to join forces with the SLPP which is playing hard to get. Sirisena has no choice but to agree. Had Sirisena kept himself aloof of party politics of the SLFP and if he kept to his promise of abolishing the Executive Presidency, he wouldn’t face this plight today. He could have still had a chance of being the Head of State – though not the Head of Government like in the pre-1978 years.
When SLFPers inquired what his plans were in the aftermath of the election results, Sirisena’s reply was that he would effect a ‘danena venasak’ (a change that would be felt). What he, in fact, had in mind was to remove Ranil Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister. After some of his loquacious ministers spoke publicly about this, Sirisena realised, too late, that he couldn’t sack Wickremesinghe, who will not readily forego his Prime Ministerial chair after languishing for more than a decade in the Opposition.
Meanwhile, the UNP had gone in to damage control mode. It too knows that if it didn’t get its act together now, Rajapaksa and his SLPP would wallop them at the next elections; for Provincial Councils first and then at the Presidential Election due by the end of 2019. Its strategy is to attack the SLPP by probing the alleged misdeeds of the previous regime. Towards this end, they wanted Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka in charge of the Law and Order portfolio. Fonseka had a reputation of getting a job done and being ruthless in doing so. To boot, he had an axe to grind with the Rajapaksas who sent him to jail for the crime of contesting the 2010 presidential election.
Despite numerous requests from Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, the UNP and civil society organisations which helped to bring Sirisena into office, Sirisena rejected Fonseka’s nomination because by then he was keen on having entre’ into the Rajapaksa camp. The portfolio was initially assigned to Wickremesinghe himself as a “temporary” measure. As communal unrest broke out in the Central Province and it was no longer possible to ignore the issue, Sirisena appointed Ranjith Madduma Bandara from the UNP for the job.
Sirisena’s calculations are blatantly obvious. Handing Fonseka the Law and Order portfolio would ensure that the Rajapaksas and their loyalists will face difficult questions and hard times, even if they are not convicted by courts of law. That would scupper any chances of rapprochement between the SLFP and the SLPP which is what Sirisena is seeking now. Sirisena’s metamorphosis is therefore complete: In just over three years he has gone from the statesman that he promised to be to the petty politician that he now is. The ‘yahapaalanaya’ dream, for all intents and purposes, is well and truly dead.
The Cabinet reshuffle that took place after the local government elections was described, quite rightly, by UNP MP Wasantha Senanayake as a “joke” because the only meaningful change- if it could be called that- was Lakshman Kiriella and Kabir Hashim swapping portfolios. A reshuffle of SLFP ministers was also promised by Sirisena. That too seems to be in limbo now, just another broken promise.
It is an understatement to say that relations between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe are at a low ebb. Being a prisoner of his own party — and indeed, now made to dance to the upbeat SLPP’s tune — Sirisena is not particularly hiding his efforts by some of his SLFP ministers to ensure the a motion of no-confidence against Wickremesinghe succeeds. Yet, cold feet there are despite the warm weather. Should the motion be defeated, Sirisena will find himself to be a political orphan.
The promise of a Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration ushering in a different era has been short-lived and replaced by a state of chaos in government. That has now developed into political intrigue and instability that is crippling the nation. Sirisena was elected on a platform of ending corruption, punishing those responsible for it, enacting constitutional reforms to abolish the Executive Presidency, restructuring the system of elections and to arrive at a lasting solution to address differences among the nation’s different ethnic groups.
The battle against corruption of the previous regime has been superseded by Sirisena’s crusade against the Central Bank bond scam. That would have been laudable and allowed Sirisena to take the moral high ground had Sirisena displayed the same zeal in pursuing the perpetrators of fraud in the previous regime. Instead, he is cosying up to them for political expediency. Paradoxically, while the victorious SLPP says that the UNP-SLFP combine was defeated at the February elections because of their “witch-hunt” of the Rajapaksas and their allies, their detractors say that the coalition lost for the very opposite reason — pussyfooting with the corruption cases against the Rajapaksas and their allies.
The 19th Amendment did see the light of day and that is one achievement Sirisena can take some personal credit for. He was physically present in Parliament, coaxing, cajoling and convincing parliamentarians of all hues to vote for it. They did — with a few abstentions — and that is a significant feat. However, that is offset by Sirisena’s deafening silence on the issue of abolishing the Executive Presidency. In any event, with the ridiculously misnamed ‘government of national unity’ pulling in six different directions, a two thirds majority in Parliament to abolish the Presidency is now only a pipe dream.
Ethnic reonciliation
The same holds true for reforming the system of elections. The aim of that exercise was to get rid of the much maligned ‘manaapa’ or preferential voting system. However, many say the hybrid between the first-past-the-post and proportional representation systems was an unmitigated disaster, as demonstrated at the recent local government elections, so much so that all parties have now decided to opt for the preferential voting system, at least for the provincial council elections. Again, without a two-thirds majority for any party, Sirisena will not be able to change the system of elections either.
Sirisena did make the correct moves vis-à-vis ethnic reconciliation, demonstrating that he was not inclined to take an ultra-nationalist line. If his government took one step forward in that direction, it has muddied its record with the eruption of the recent clashes in Ampara, Digana and Teldeniya. The Government’s over-reaction by a countrywide state of emergency and a ban on social media appeared draconian and suggested a government out of its depth trying to cover all its bases instead of adopting a more rational, professional and proportionate response.
More than three years into a five-year Presidency, if Sirisena cares to look back, there is not much that he can cite as achievements. His successes to date amount to enacting the 19th Amendment and restoring Sri Lanka’s standing in the eyes of the Western nations, the latter in no small measure due to the contribution of the UNP. He could also be credited with dismantling the culture of impunity that afflicted ruling party politicians during the previous regime. But there were signs that governance and decision-making were in short supply with issues like the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM) saga spilling on to the streets for days, nay months on end.
It was not that Sirisena could not always act decisively, firmly and authoritatively. A case in point was when the tenure of the former Governor of the Central Bank, Arjuna Mahendran was up for renewal in June 2016. Sirisena literally visited the offices of the Central Bank in Fort to ensure that Mahendran was not re-appointed and forced the UNP to nominate a replacement for the job. Alas, such decisive actions have been the exception rather than the rule.
Sirisena now finds that the forces that aligned with him in 2015, such as the organisation headed by the Ven. Sobhitha Thera, criticise him with the same fervour that they criticised the Rajapaksas three years ago. That is a tell-tale sign that something has gone really wrong in his Presidency.
If Sirisena hopes to run for President again and win in 2020, he must be living in a fool’s paradise. Ministers — such as S.B. Dissanayake, Mahinda Amaraweera and Duminda Dissanayake — who previously proudly proclaimed Sirisena as the SLFP’s presidential candidate in 2020 are silent now. In fact, S. B. Dissanayake, ever the opportunist, is talking of unifying the SLFP. If the local government elections are any yardstick, even if he does run on the SLFP ticket, Sirisena will suffer an ignominious defeat.
There is also absolutely no chance that the SLPP will field Sirisena as their candidate. Mahinda Rajapaksa finds himself handicapped because of the 19th Amendment but it is evident Gotabaya Rajapaksa is being groomed for the job: in interviews, he is already speaking about the possibility of renouncing his United States citizenship in order to run for President.
Political assassination
Ambitions to remain in the Presidential chair and run the affairs of the SLFP at the same time have ruined Sirisena’s legacy thus far. The big question now is what his exit strategy will be? Unfortunately for Sirisena, he seems to have run out of options.
The UNP — the party he sought refuge in, in 2015 — is tired of his machinations to reunite with the Rajapaksas and will not want to deal with him, come 2020. If the Rajapaksas regain control of the SLFP, they are unlikely to forgive and forget the man who betrayed them after that infamous meal of hoppers — and he risks being sent to the political wilderness.
Now, Sirisena’s Presidency has been characterised by inefficiency, inconsistency and indecision. Sirisena frequently tries to undo what the UNP faction of the government does — as he did recently, first by reinstating a ban on the sale of liquor to females and then in recalling Sri Lanka’s defence attaché in London. He has politically castrated the UNP Prime Minister by stripping him of his subjects and functions as a forerunner to the no-confidence motion against him. He also blows hot and cold vis-à-vis the Rajapaksas and the JO, claiming one day that if they return he would be persecuted and trying to speak to Basil Rajapaksa the next day to iron out differences.
The result is a chaos and confusion in government — and the country is heading nowhere. It is such a pity because Sirisena does not have the handicap that all of Sri Lanka’s five previous Executive President’s had, sometime during their tenure: the war against the LTTE. It would have been the ideal platform to propel the country forward and regain our standing in the world not only as a vibrant democracy but as an emerging economic power as well. That chance, at least for now, has gone abegging.
It is unlikely that history will be kind to Maithripala Sirisena. He will be appreciated for being courageous enough to take on the might of Mahinda Rajapaksa but it will also condemn him for letting Rajapaksa return without paying for his excesses and for reneging on most of his promises to the nation.
Ranasinghe Premadasa, the President who complained of being given a torch burning at both ends, was physically assassinated by the LTTE. Maithripala Sirisena, the President who bears a torch burning at both ends that is of his own making will not be physically assassinated but the day is nigh when he could very well be politically assassinated — probably by his own party.