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The man who reversed economy’s slide faces his toughest political battle
View(s):- Wickremesinghe’s two-year presidential journey through troubled times and political minefields
Time was when, not so long ago, Ranil Wickremesinghe, as Leader of the Opposition or Prime Minister, was lampooned mercilessly for his uninspiring style of public speaking, conveying the impression of an aloof politician distanced from the masses and having difficulty reading the pulse of the people. Comparisons with his political bete noire of the day, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Great Communicator, were inevitable.
Compare this with President Ranil Wickremesinghe, now the Eighth Executive President of Sri Lanka, who assumed that office exactly two years ago. Just last week, he was addressing a gathering of a one-time rival party, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), in Kalutara. Seated on the front row were all the Rajapaksas except Chamal. Speaking off the cuff, Wickremesinghe went on to deliver a masterclass in political putdowns that had the Rajapaksas laughing—because that is all they could do to avoid embarrassment. A popular YouTube channel called the performance a ‘roasting’ session. Wickremesinghe has certainly lost the title of the most awkward political speaker.
In his speech, Wickremesinghe clearly outlined why he was compelled to align with the Rajapaksas and asked whether any alternative would have been better for the country. If anything, that speech was evidence that in President Ranil Wickremesinghe, what we have is a political entity entirely different from Prime Minister Wickremesinghe or Opposition Leader Wickremesinghe.
Wickremesinghe, who first entered Parliament in 1977, had to wait forty-five years to become Head of Government and Head of State. Yes, he has been Prime Minister a record six times, but, with the exception of Dingiri Banda Wijetunga, the premiership was always under a president from a rival party, with whom he never quite got along. Chandrika Kumaratunga, on the other hand, first entered Parliament as Prime Minister and, in less than three months, was Head of State and Head of Government.
Has the long wait paid off? Has experience and maturity added value to the unexpected political windfall that came Wickremesinghe’s way on July 21, 2022, forty-five years to the day from when he was first elected as a fresh-faced Member of Parliament for Biyagama in 1977?
President Ranil Wickremesinghe: Facing many dilemmas as the presidential election nears
Fortuitous
Even Wickremesinghe’s harshest critics will concede that it was fortuitous that he was Prime Minister when Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned suddenly on July 13, 2022, after the volatile events that began in April and culminated on July 9 that year. By virtue of being Prime Minister, Wickremesinghe became Acting President, and his first task was to prevent the country from descending into anarchy in the aftermath of Rajapaksa’s resignation, with mobs marching towards Parliament after gaining control of other key locations. This he did, being savvy enough to retain the top brass of the armed forces who were loyal to Rajapaksa the Second. Even an active pacifist like Albert Einstein said, “Organised violence has to be opposed by organised violence.” He was referring to the rise of Hitler’s fascism in Germany prior to World War II.
In the week that followed those tumultuous three months of mass protests, there was undoubtedly backroom politics involved in ensuring that the ‘Acting’ tag was replaced by a more permanent tenure, at least until the end of Rajapaksa II’s term. This is what Wickremesinghe does best. So, in the election in Parliament to choose a president, we saw the ironic spectacle of SLPP MPs voting for the leader of the United National Party (UNP), while former UNPers now with the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) voted for the SLPP’s Dullas Alahapperuma and against their former leader.
Once in power and place, Wickremesinghe’s first task was to ensure that his government was stable and that he could count on the support of SLPP MPs for the remainder of his term. This too was achieved—not by handing out Cabinet portfolios to MPs willy-nilly. In fact, he has done quite the opposite, retaining almost the same Cabinet as Rajapaksa II and resisting repeated entreaties and threats from the SLPP to allocate more portfolios to party MPs.
The next, and most challenging, task was restoring the economy. Opinions about this are divided, perhaps in the tradition of economists, where it is said no two economists can agree on anything. With a lifeline from India, the urgent measures that were put in place brought an end to the queues for fuel and gas and ensured an uninterrupted electricity supply. The trade-off was sky-high taxes and inflation, which still remain that way. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been wooed and won to the extent that even the left-leaning Jathika Jana Balaya (JJB) concedes it will have to negotiate with the IMF—and not arbitrarily abrogate any agreements—if it does assume power.
Politically, Wickremesinghe has been slowly but surely building his support base. His powerful office is a magnet that draws political pole-vaulters. Assorted Rajapaksa acolytes support him, ranging from the Ali Sabrys to the Aluthgamages. Others, such as Prasanna Ranatunga and Kanchana Wijesekera, heirs of regional political parental dynasties with roots in the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), are now the most vocal advocates for a second term for Wickremesinghe. A second tier of SLPPers, a group of state ministers assiduously cultivated by Wickremesinghe—Pramitha Bandara Tennekoon, Shehan Semasinghe, Dilum Amunugama and Lohan Ratwatte, to name a few—are known in the corridors of power as ‘Ranilge puththu’ or ‘Ranil’s sons’ and are among his most loyal supporters. It is like in America, where former President Donald Trump’s vehement critic of yesteryear is now his running mate for the November US presidential election. Trump says, “Yes, he criticised me, but that was before he knew me.”
So, in the past two years, Wickremesinghe has succeeded in winning many friends and influencing more people. He must also be watching with great satisfaction as the SLPP divides into several factions and the SLFP is shattered into smithereens, each with a sizeable section that backs him for another term. The former is mostly due to some SLPPers wanting to distance themselves from the Rajapaksas. Maithripala Sirisena can take responsibility for the latter, but being an ardent believer in ‘divide and rule’ Wickremesinghe will not complain, having with him his strongest asset, patience, to allow divisive party politics to take its course.
The party that he has actively tried to divide, the SJB, is, however, still mostly intact, despite Sajith Premadasa’s “L’etat, c’est moi” approach. Harin Fernando and Manusha Nanayakkara departed early to enjoy the spoils of a cabinet portfolio, and Diana Gamage, who followed them, had to make an undignified exit. Champika Ranawaka, elected from the SJB, calls himself ‘independent’. Expectations about the cross-overs of Rajitha Senaratne, Sarath Fonseka and Kumara Welgama have been like waiting for the success of our cricket team: the hope is always there, but they are yet to deliver.
Even so, with a significant group of the SLPP already backing him, his own UNP, a number of people grateful for his achievements and recognising his skill to steer the ship of state to a safe harbour, and significant support virtually guaranteed from the North and East, Wickremesinghe’s bid to be an elected president must surely be in the bag already.
Wickremesinghe will be the first to agree that this isn’t so. In staying at the top for the past two years without any support from his own political party and having to rely on his previous rivals, Wickremesinghe has had to play tough and deliver some below-the-belt blows to his opponents. That may be the secret of his survival until now, but it has also come at the cost of losing his lustre as a liberal democrat who fosters fair play. This in turn has cost him significant support, in addition to those citizens who blame him for imposing hardships on them by dancing to the tune of the IMF.
Weaknesses
A big bone of contention is Wickremesinghe’s cohabitation with the SLPP, which has an ample quota of individuals with various charges about nefarious activities. Among them, the only person behind bars is former Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella. It has been noted that, even as charges against Rambukwella kept piling up, he wasn’t sacked but only shifted to a different ministry until he was remanded. It then became impossible for him to continue as a cabinet minister due to the unceasing media spotlight on the corruption in the health sector until Rambukwella himself resigned.
Other events that erode Wickremesinghe’s credibility include his inertia in acting against Diana Gamage and, in fact, defending her in Parliament when the evidence against her was similarly mounting. The appointment of Deshabandu Tennakoon as the Inspector General of Police at the behest of Minister Tiran Alles when the Constitutional Council did not wish to do so will be another blot in Wickremesinghe’s political copybook. His handicap in not having his own MPs and the need to rely on what was left of the SLPP to get his legislative programme through were weak arguments for not taking firmer action against the reeking corruption of that party when in office.
The sale of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), whether they are carried out due to sheer necessity or because of IMF dictates, has provided grist to the opposition rumour mill. Tales of unscrupulous politicians, their officials, and their agents making big bucks while the average citizen is struggling to make ends meet are many. The recent hullabaloo about outsourcing on-arrival visas at the Colombo Airport in response to an unsolicited proposal is just a case in point. At the end of the day, rightly or wrongly, the buck stops at the top, which is where Wickremesinghe sits.
His famous words, “there is no election, even if there was, there is no money,” to put off local government elections indefinitely have come back to haunt him as the presidential poll nears. Indeed, this is one reason why people suspect his involvement when Fundamental Rights petitions are filed week after week asking for a postponement of the presidential election. They also attribute ulterior motives to him when a constitutional amendment to rectify an anomaly in the text referring to the reduction of the president’s term is rushed through the Cabinet at the eleventh hour before a presidential election, and months of speculation are fuelled whether there will be an election in the first place.
Being the avid student of politics that he is, Wickremesinghe will know that the upcoming presidential election will be like no other. All previous contests have been between the two major coalitions with their roots in the UNP and the SLFP. These two entities are not what they were in their heyday. The SLFP is moribund, and the UNP is still ailing and struggling to recover from its defeat in 2020. Even with a president in office, it could only take a minuscule advantage for mass mobilisation. The SJB, the UNP’s political offspring, and the SLPP are having their own problems with internal divisions being the plague of both houses. Encroaching into this political vacuum is the JJB, the modern-day re-incarnation of the more militant Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), now dressed in the costume of moderation as a social-democratic party and offering the slogans of restoring law and order and battling corruption which has some resonance with the voter. Their critics, however, warn that they will promise voters the moon and only deliver a DVD of Apollo 11 landing on the moon.
A three-way contest for the Presidency (between Wickremesinghe, Premadasa, and JJB leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake) is uncharted territory in Sri Lanka. For Wickremesinghe to prevail in such a contest, he must split the SJB and seduce the SLPP. Historically and ideologically, the SJB was his (UNP) voter base. At the same time, because his own UNP is still struggling to find its feet, he must rely on the grassroots network of the SLPP, which is Rajapaksa territory.
Therein lies Wickremesinghe’s dilemma: most in the SJB, many in the SLPP who are from the Nimal Lanza-Anura Yapa faction, and the Nimal Siripala de Silva group of the SLFP fear their own chances of re-election to the next Parliament will be affected if Wickremesinghe aligns himself with the Rajapaksas. Yet, joining the Rajapaksas may be a poisoned chalice that Wickremesinghe is compelled to drink from.
These circumstances should also impress upon Wickremesinghe the need to rejuvenate the Grand Old Party and to do so soon. At present, it is preoccupied with the impending election, but the truth is that its second-tier leadership is having its own internal battles, trying to score brownie points with the boss and jostling with each other to be second in command. The sooner Wickremesinghe oils the UNP’s election machine, the better it would be for the UNP and, by extension, for the country because the party can at least be an effective opposition when it is not in government. A parliamentary election will follow the presidential election, whoever wins.
Wickremesinghe read his political ABCs under the watchful eyes of his uncle, J.R. Jayewardene. Like JR, he was not first elected president but appointed to that office. JR postponed a general election and held a referendum; Wickremesinghe has already postponed local government elections. JR divided the SLFP by depriving Sirima Bandaranaike of her civic rights, leading to a split in the party. Wickremesinghe hasn’t had to do anything himself except watch the SLFP self-destruct, but he has coaxed, cajoled and convinced some SLPPers that they would be better off under him, virtually dividing that party.
What Wickremesinghe would really like to do now is emulate his uncle and win a presidential election. That would be a fitting finale to a four-and-a-half-decade career in politics. Nevertheless, when retirement finally reaches Wickremesinghe, he can always be content that he rose to become president from being a solitary National List MP. There may be a stroke of good fortune in that, but it is also testimony to his tenacity, resilience and versatility that he was able to rise to the top after many had written his political obituary.
Wickremesinghe has always been and will always be a polarising figure in Lankan political history. He is now desperately seeking to have the people accept him as a national statesman. As he approaches the critical last few months of his current term, his loyalists hope he has one good fight still left in him, but his critics wish to dispatch him to the political sunset as soon as they can.
It is indeed premature to judge Wickremesinghe’s presidency or his political journey. He came forward to serve his country when others vacillated. He turned around the economy from bankruptcy, kept foreign powers at bay, and won their support to get us back on our feet with an astute, non-aligned foreign policy. Sadly for Sri Lanka, the presidents of this country have come to be defined, not by what they achieved or by comparison to their predecessors, but by being benchmarked against the follies and failures of their successors. Will that be the case with Ranil Wickremesinghe too?
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