Columns

As young students we used to be fascinated with the 14th century tale of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, and the spider.

Apocryphal or not, it conveyed a valuable lesson. King Robert who fought the King of England and was defeated on the battlefield six times, was hiding in a cave and contemplating the future when he espied a spider trying to weave a web with the silken thread it spun.

But try as it would the threads would give way and the spider would fall. Still, each time it fell, it would try again until on the seventh occasion it finally succeeded, its web complete.

Having watched the persevering spider, Bruce thought if the spider could succeed so could he. Bruce exhorted his soldiers with the encouraging words “If you fail once, try, try and try again”. At the seventh attempt Bruce with a much smaller army defeated the King of England on the battlefield and later achieved his precious goal– independence for Scotland.

Ranil Wickremesinghe might have forgotten this school-day story. But he does not seem to have forgotten the lesson it taught. That seems to have been etched in his memory.

Despite the humiliating defeat the Wickremesinghe-led UNP suffered at the August 2020 parliamentary elections when it lost every seat it contested including that of its leader, Wickremesinghe worked his way back into parliament. It was a quirk in the electoral system that allowed him to do so.

Though he had been prime minister five times prior to his return to parliament last year, that manoeuvre was seen as a stepping stone to higher things. To Robert the Bruce defeating the King of England in battle was not an end in itself. Winning independence for Scotland was the end game.

To Wickremesinghe the end game was not so dissimilar. It was to hold the highest office in the country as the President of Sri Lanka. Not that he had not tried to achieve that goal. The first time was way back in 1999 when fortuitous circumstances—the wounding of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga by LTTE suicide bombers– might have deprived him of victory on that occasion.

The next was six years later when a Machiavellian deal between Mahinda Rajapaksa’s backers and LTTE leader Prabhakaran forced the Tamils in the LTTE controlled areas to abandon their right to the use of the franchise which cost Ranil Wickremesinghe the presidency.

Still Ranil Wickremesinghe’s ambition was made of “sterner stuff” in the words of Mark Antony. He learnt the art of politics early in life. And he had good teachers. Most commentators and analysts point to JR Jayewardene, the first executive president and the architect of the presidential system and an uncle of Ranil as the great teacher.

A master craftsman of political manoeuvre JR was called the “Old Fox” or as my brother Mervyn called him “20th Century Fox”. To relate some of JR’s political doings, including a planned amphibious attack on UNP headquarters Siri Kotha, then located on the seaside at Kollupitiya sounded like something straight out of fiction. Yet as he recounted those stories I knew they were not concocted. To repeat them would take much more than a few newspaper columns.

But even before Ranil picked up the wiles of his uncle, he would have learnt many lessons from his father Esmond Wickremesinghe, an internationally-known newspaper baron, strategist and political adviser and special envoy to several UNP leaders.

Both at Lake House where Esmond was MD of the editorial department and later in other positions, and on foreign assignments I worked under and with him which was indeed a crucial learning experience.

When Ranil was appointed Minister of Education by President Jayewardene, I asked Esmond Wickremesinghe why he allowed his son to accept such a troublesome ministry as we had come to realise as journalists.

I have never forgotten his reply. If Ranil cannot manage a ministry such as education, he will never make a good politician, he said. In fact, he had thrown Ranil into the deep end to test his mettle and see how he comes out of it.

Starting as Deputy Foreign Minister he was later elevated to cabinet rank serving in different ministers which was intended to broaden his knowledge and
experience in different areas of governance.

Esmond was astute, affable, diplomatic had a keen mind, a tactical flair and a fantastic memory and a wonderful persons to work with. Ranil had absorbed both from Uncle JR and father Esmond qualities such as perseverance, persistence, sense of timing and political manoeuvring which became even more evident since he re-entered parliament last year.

I was asked the other day why Ranil Wickremesinghe did not enter parliament earlier using the national list vacancy. To me it seemed clear enough. It was a tactic based on timing. Had he taken his seat in parliament with other MPs he would have been humiliated and dismissed as the leader who had reduced his party to rubble.

He bided his time until all that had died down. Moreover he obviously sensed the political mismanagement and the economic crisis confronting the country due to hasty and ill-conceived policies.

So from the first days in the House and armed with statistics he sounded alarums, warning of the economic dangers lying ahead. As the situation worsened and Wickremesinghe’s warnings calling for urgent action became even more strident, he came to be seen as the “new messiah” and the only politician with experience, a steady hand and pro-western connections that could save the day and the nation.

Those the special statements he made in parliament were on the worsening economic situation and nightmarish visions of a country about to implode as thousands on the streets called for an end to Rajapaksa rule.

While President Gotabaya Rajapaksa turned to Wickremesinghe as the possible saviour of the Rajapaksas and the prime minister who can stir international interest sufficiently to help Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickremesinghe had placed himself in a position for take-off with a little help from the Rajapaksas.

President Gotabaya provided that help with his surreptitious disappearance leaving Ranil Wickremesinghe almost on top of the totem pole. Within days he was sitting on high.

Ironies abound in this climb to Olympian heights. Curiously he had to depend of the Pohottuwa MPs playing sherpas to a man they saw as their political enemy. At some stage Ranil would want to strike off on his own, surrounding himself first with his own cronies and importantly with his former Royal College mate Dinesh Gunawardena, a very close associate of the Rajapaksas, he appointed his prime minister.

Maybe he has an agenda in mind. But to push that through he needs parliamentary support — not merely the Pohottuwa MPs who won the vote for him but others too. Although he has urged all parties to rally round him to rebuild the country Ranil Wickremesinghe’s experience in coalition politics has not been smooth as one saw during the days of cohabitation rule with President Chandrika Kumaratunga and President Maithripala Sirisena.

One of his first acts as president has been to let the armed forces and police loose on some hapless protesters who had already announced they would quit the presidential secretariat they had occupied. The strong-arm tactics might be inherited from Uncle JR, rather than father Esmond of the later years.

Moreover the diplomatic reaction to the police-military attacks on protesters has been critical, coming from the UN and western nations including US. If such action is perceived in western chanceries and parliaments as hardly conducive to achieving stable government as the IMF and lending institutions and donor nations demand there could well be trouble ahead.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London)