Columns

• Time for Ranil to move on and allow Rajapaksas to fend for themselves
• Chips are down for PM as minister demands his ‘finance’ head
• Monks in Satyagraha demand President and Cabinet to resign

If the knives are out for Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, it was only to be expected. Surrounded by a predatory pack into whose lair he had willingly gone, first blood was drawn when the first stab was made on Wednesday by a political novice to the game.

In other words, Ranil had asked for it.

He was given his comeuppance when first time cabinet minister billionaire Dhammika Perera demanded his immediate resignation as the Finance Minister and damned him as a Minister of ‘no plans’.

Perhaps ignorant of the concept of collective cabinet responsibility and that he too was bound by the cabinet approved decisions of his fellow cabinet ministers, which made it incumbent on him to defend in public whatever misgivings held in private, the seven day old newly installed Investment Promotions Minister Dhammika Perera launched a no holds barred onslaught against his Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, asking nothing less than his head.

Holding a special press conference, Minister Dhammika Perera claimed he too will ‘come out in support for the Aragalaya’ since if he waited without speaking out after what he had seen in his seven days of office, he ‘will be unable to solve the people’s problems.’

Reading out from a piece of paper, he declared: ‘The Finance Minister plans for disaster. The Minister of Finance has a no plan, no appetite to resolve the current dollar crisis. All of Sri Lanka’s economic challenges are linked to the current dollar crisis. The Finance Minister plans to borrow money from friends. The Minister of Finance has no future cash flow planning for the country. The further the Minister delays all the matters related to the dollar earnings, borrowings, bridging finance, available credit lines, and essential credit lines. I think, for these reasons, the Finance Minister should resign.’ He added, ‘I am doing this because I cannot allow this country to go beyond this disaster.’

SATYAGRAHA UNTO THE END: Buddhist monks vow not to rise from their seat of passive political resistance at Pettah’s Bo Tree, whilst some stage a fast unto death, till Gota leaves his presidential seat (Pix by Pradeep Dilrukshana)

Certainly, he cannot. If this country were to plummet further and find a graver disaster in a deeper hellhole, it would spell the end for his blue chip companies in his billion buck business empire as well.

A few days before his advent to the haloed world of cabinet ministers where, as per the rule that such ministers of power should give up their directorships in companies or their professional practice and should not have any conflicting interests with his sacrosanct duties but assume the exalted position of being above suspicion like a Caesar’s wife, he had scrupulously relinquished direct control of his vast business empire.

Like a wandering hermit renouncing his earthly possessions before setting out on a lifelong voyage of truth, Dhammika Perera had temporarily renounced his business ties by appointing safe nominees to supervise his companies. The casinos – the cash cows that had financed his business acquisitions – had been left to his two brothers to manage through proxy. In fact, as he said in a TV interview, he had even paid some of the casinos’ tax arrears before climbing the political stage.

Having made such visible sacrifice, no wonder he was in a hurry to get his hands on the wheel of the fast sinking ship before it sank irretrievably to the ocean floor. One of the unpardonable sins he found in Ranil was his habit of blocking his projects to bring dollars into the country.

Citing an example, he said: “I do not have an issue with his PM post. As the Finance Minister, the PM should not walk around reciting people’s problems at this time. The cabinet had given approval for the ten-year multiple visa. It’s been a month, and the project is still stagnant in the Treasury. There is a habit of the PM to stop the project because it helps to bring dollars into the country. More than 50 people have come here to get the visa after paying US$100,000, and another 300 are in the queue. If we implement that project, US$30 million would be brought into the country this month. The PM won’t let the project be implemented’.

Of course, the USD30 million this would have brought would hardly have sufficed for one shipload of fuel but to a country thirsting for dollars a few drops would count, no doubt, without, as Ranil may have demanded, the time delaying process of first conducting preliminary background checks on the calibre of people who were queuing at bankrupt Lanka’s door with USD 100,000 each to reside here for 10 years.

But Dhammika may have an issue with Ranil on another matter. On Monday, two days before his angry call for Ranil to resign from his Finance portfolio, Ranil had obtained formal cabinet sanction to regulate the wildcat casino business and to impose stringent taxes on its gambling income.

Under the Casino Business Act 1988 and the Betting and Gaming Levy Act 1988, licenses should have been issued to operators to continue casino operations.  However, the Department of Government Information had noted that no such licenses were issued under the Act, which had made it difficult for authorities to collect imposed taxes from the operators. According to PublicFinance.lk, the four casino operators owed Rs.2.67 billion in taxes to the Inland Revenue Department as of 2021.

As Finance Minister, Ranil received cabinet approval to issue orders under these two Acts and licence all casinos which were presently operating illegally without licenses.  He also planned to raise the annual levy to Rs. 500 million from Rs.200 million but these tax proposals would require amending the Betting Act.

This new move by Ranil, just 5 days after Dhammika had made his debut at the cabinet table, may have touched a raw nerve in Dhammika. The timing may have been construed as a personal attack at the root of his success which has been, and still is, his casino empire. Understandably, it would have been taken as a personal affront, as an insidious attempt to clip his financial wings, wings which had, hitherto, given him meteoric flight to the utmost edge of Lanka’s corporate world and enabled him to become chairman of blue chip companies. Certainly, no mean feat.

Has Ranil finally met his match? Had he underestimated Dhammika’s ire? That while he was on his feet in Parliament that Wednesday, answering the Opposition and defending the Government, his new cabinet colleague Dhammika would also be on his, holding a live press conference, condemning him as a Finance Minister of ‘no plans’ other than a disaster recipe; and demanding his immediate resignation?

Even before Dhammika Perera took his oaths as an MP on June 22, he was widely tipped to become the Finance Minister. His appointment as the Minister of Investment Promotion on June 24 — with a vast array of subjects held by the President, including Port City and BOI, transferred to the new ministry by gazette, even before he had been sworn in as its Minister — was expected to be merely a stepping stone to the Finance Ministry and, thereafter, quite possibly to the Premiership.

If Ranil Wickremesinghe had thought that Dhammika didn’t have the President’s blessings to call for his resignation, which no other cabinet minister would have dared done, he has been proved wrong. On the contrary, the President publicly reinforced his immense trust and confidence in Dhammika by transferring on Friday by gazette, his own Defence Ministry’s government owned security firm, Rakna Arakshaka Lanka Ltd., to Dhammika’s Investment Ministry and two other state institutions.

No greater affidavit than Friday’s published gazette will be needed to show in any public court the implicit faith the President reposes in Dhammika’s loyalty and judgement. It is also tacit affirmation that the President sees no wrong in a cabinet minister breaching collective cabinet responsibility by publicly demanding the resignation of one whom the President himself had appointed as both Prime Minister and Finance Minister.

Isn’t it time for Ranil Wickremesinghe to take the Presidential cue and move on; and let the Rajapaksas, now emboldened enough thanks to his services, to fend for themselves? To consider the call for him to instantly step down as Finance Minister as an insolent slap on his Prime Ministerial cheek?

If the Prime Minister resigns, the entire cabinet will automatically stand dissolved; and the President will be driven back to square one, to the same isolated spot he was on May 9 when Mahinda quit. This time, he will be forced to shuffle anew his old SLPP pack to fill the ministerial slots. Nothing will get better but nothing will get worse either, except that IMF talks will be put on hold and Indian ships will be delayed further. Fuel queues will vanish as the people will give up in disgust their futile wait and instead take to the strident streets of protest.

The move to make the nation keep its tryst with destiny has now begun, Already the people are on the march. Hirunika gave the clarion call on Tuesday by bravely storming the barricades to reach the Presidential gates. She, and a handful of similarly brave women, slipped through the massive security gauntlet that now gloves the President’s House, with none wising up to their arrival until they got a foot in at the gates.

This heralded the mass protest campaign launched on Thursday to determine whether Gotabaya’s tenuous legal right to remain as President, without the people’s mandate, can withstand the force of public opinion.

Protest marches began from various towns and cities to converge on the capital on Saturday. In the heart of Pettah, scores of monks, began their Satyagraha declaring they will not rise from their seats until Gotabaya has left his Presidential seat. They also demanded the simultaneous exit of the Prime Minister and Government.

The Catholic Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith called on Wednesday for President and Cabinet to step down, stating, ‘the biggest obstacles for the liberation of this country are the Rajapaksa’s continuance to stay in power’. The Church of Ceylon called on Thursday for the President and Prime Minister to resign, stating that its prayers were with the people’s struggle.

If Ranil Wickremesinghe has still not heard the uproar on the street, clamouring ‘Gota go home’, he cannot afford to remain aloof to the President-backed Dhammika’s shrilling cry for his own resignation. Though hard to stomach the insult coming from a tyro in politics, it should serve to make Ranil realise that, for all the services rendered to the Rajapaksa clan, he had lost his flavour and ended up like a chewed up gum gone insipid in their mouths, awaiting  to be spat out at their will.

Take the Boris case. There were no protesters at a ‘Borisgovillage’ camped outside No 10 Downing Street in London. Nor were there marches held throughout Britain with people roaring ‘Boris buzz off’.

Despite surviving a no-confidence motion brought by his own Tory backbenchers a month ago, Britain’s PM Boris Johnson felt the heat build-up when two cabinet Ministers resigned this week in protest over his leadership.

All this because he had appointed a Tory MP, Chris Pincher as a government minister, a man who had a history of groping men. Though Boris denied he knew of it, it later became clear he did know that a formal complaint had been lodged.

Yet, claiming he had the mandate of the British public, having won the largest Tory majority since 1987, and would serve the remainder of his term, the exodus of 52 junior ministers on Wednesday made Boris realise he had lost the mandate of his party. In the best traditions of British politics, the increasingly isolated Boris threw in the towel on Thursday and quit as Britain’s Prime Minister. In his farewell speech, he said: ‘No one is remotely indispensable.’

It’s too much of a miracle to expect the same to happen in Lankan politics, especially in the case of a President who refuses to go even after his errors of judgment bankrupted the nation. But no man can survive alone and an internal collapse of his government might well drive Gotabaya to the brink. And it’s in Ranil’s hands to trigger the collapse.

If he resigns now, it would leave Gotabaya bereft of a Cabinet as well as the permanent secretaries of all the ministries, all of whom, as per the Constitution’s Article 52(3), automatically cease to hold office upon the Premier’s resignation. Finding acceptable MPs from his own party or even stragglers like Harin or Manusha, who have lost all public respect, from the opposition benches will be akin to finding unrusted needles in a hay stack.

Before Ranil loses the last shred of his dignity or shame and is ignominiously booted out, he should resign forthwith. As Boris said, no one is remotely indispensable. If he fails to recognise that discretion is the better part of valour and stays put against the will of the people, he risks being tagged as the great betrayer of the people’s struggle to free themselves from the terrible Rajapaksa yoke.

Or else, the nation’s leaders who now laugh whilst people are brought coffined home
from queues, may have to weep when they see them triumph.