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Last week saw another crisis add to the long list of crises faced by the country currently. This was as a result of the political convulsion caused by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa sacking Ministers Wimal Weerawansa and Udaya Gammanpila.

The cracks in the Government which have been simmering for sometime finally erupted last week, with 11 constituents of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) led Government alliance making public a set of alternative proposals to deal with the multiple issues faced by the country.  

Listening to the speeches at the seminar at which these proposals were released, one could detect one common grievance that the constituent parties had.

It was the failure of the President to consult the leaders of the constituent parties when taking decisions relating to Government. Prof. Tissa Vitharana had made public this failure on several occasions by pointing out that former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was in the habit of meeting them once a month unlike the current President.

On Thursday former President Maithripala Sirisena added his voice to the disappointment of the party leaders. He said prior to the 2019 Presidential election he was made the joint chairman of the SLPP Alliance but was never consulted after the Presidential victory.

The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) has been given short shrift by the SLPP since the Presidential election victory. They were denied the share of nominations in the Parliamentary election and the quota of ministerial positions agreed upon when they signed an electoral alliance.

According to the SLFP leaders even at the grass roots level their supporters were discriminated against and not given the recognition for their role in helping to make Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the President.

The National Freedom Front (NFF) leader Wimal Weerawansa who had earlier gone public on the attempt to push through the sale of 40 percent share of the Yugadanavi Power Plant to the United States based New Fortress Company without discussion at the Cabinet, made several revelations about Basil Rajapaksa.

According to Mr Weerawansa, Basil Rajapaksa made a bid to obtain a nomination for the Presidential election in preference to Gotabaya Rajapaksa. When he failed in his bid, he wanted to be appointed Prime Minister but Mahinda Rajapaksa did not approve of the idea.

Weerawansa laid the entire blame for the current economic crisis at the door of the current Finance Minister whom Udaya Gammanpila dubbed “the Ugly American.”

Piling on the allegations against Basil Rajapaksa, Mr Weerawansa claimed that the Central Bank Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal had made several proposals to resolve the current crisis to the Finance Minister but had never received a response. Reports of the media conference held by the Central Bank Governor the day following Mr Weerawansa’s allegation did not refer to any response by him with regard to the NFF leader’s comments.

Mr Weerawansa also claimed that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa never sought or abided by the advice of experts when taking decisions. The same was true when the President sought to implement an overnight transition from chemical fertiliser to organic fertiliser against all conventional wisdom of agricultural experts.

While the two sacked ministers have been accused of violating collective responsibility by criticising the Government publicly, the dissident leaders of the constituent parties state that in the absence of internal forums to air their views, they were left with no alternative but to go public.

This position was strongly articulated by veteran communist D. E. W. Gunasekera on an earlier occasion.

But the million dollar question in the minds of the public is why it took the dissidents so long to detect the SLPP’s trait of treating their political partners with contempt. With their political experience they should have realised that by supporting the 20th Amendment they were more likely to be further ignored.

Despite the similarity of the ideological thinking that bind the two sacked ministers with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, they have taken upon themselves the daunting task of challenging the all powerful executive president whom they themselves helped to create by supporting the 20th Amendment.

The Government for its part seems to have tied itself up in knots by some of its own acts thus rendering itself incapacitated. At the time the 20th Amendment was being mooted, the President assured Wimal Weerawansa and Udaya Gammanpila that he would repeal the clause that permitted those holding dual citizenship to hold high office in Government when the new Constitution was enacted.

If the President keeps to his word, this would effectively take Basil Rajapaksa out of the political equation as the latter has repeated on more than one occasion that he does not intend to give up his American citizenship. Despite the President’s assurance that a new Constitution would be adopted by the time he completed his second anniversary in office (November 2021), there is no sign of any draft coming to the public domain as yet. One reason for the delay could well be the dilemma faced by the President on how he can keep his word on the question of dual citizenship without offending Basil Rajapaksa.

In the meantime the ship of State keeps drifting without any sense of direction as a result of poor leadership. While the Government should be tapping all the expertise available both nationally and internationally to devise solutions to the multiple problems faced by the country, it seems totally indifferent and unconcerned about the woes faced by the people.

The people are literally and metaphorically kept in the dark with regard to the state of the economy with the Finance Minister failing to take Parliament into confidence by briefing the House regularly.

The solution may have been for the Government to eat humble pie and throw in the towel and go for an election and ask for a fresh mandate. But even this is not feasible in the short run as an election campaign at this stage will only make the day -to-day problems of the people worse.

A prudent alternative may be to form a national government for a limited period of one year during which all sections of society come together to make a joint effort to bring some degree of stability to the economy. At the end of one year elections must be held and the people given the opportunity to elect a government of their choice.

A national government is one of the most undesirable mechanisms in normal times as it deprives the country of a political opposition that keeps the Government in office on its toes. But this is a desperate situation. And desperate situations require desperate remedies.

(javidyusuf@gmail.com)