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Presidential contender Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe’s ‘Puluwan Sri Lanka’ (We can, Sri Lanka) agreement signed with ‘thirty four parties and alliances’ this Friday ahead of forthcoming elections on September 21st 2024 invokes as many ghastly jokes as the somewhat unfortunate allocation of a gas cylinder as his election symbol by the Elections Commission.

A ‘fresh mandate’ with ‘old rogues’

Some of these ‘parties and alliances’ are not worth the paper that the agreement will be written on. Undeterred, Mr Wickremesinghe triumphantly proclaimed ‘We can, Sri Lanka’ after handing over nominations at the Elections Secretariat, flanked by the Prime Minister and other sundry ‘Rajapaksa breakaways. Confident and smiling, he said that, ‘huge crowds have come to celebrate this day to the Secretariat, all this is possible because we do not have food queues, gas queues…’

That is true, it must be conceded. So too, his claim that ‘we increased wages of the estate sector, the private sector, now the economy is improving…we will make a new economy for the future.’ But when Mr Wickremesinghe declares that, as an ‘independent candidate,’ he is asking for a ‘fresh mandate’ from the people and a ‘new future for the youth’, that is less convincing. Put bluntly, the optics of that exceedingly optimistic ‘ask’ directly conflicts with the rascally sight of the ‘Pohottuwa‘ rogues around him.

In other words, the President is in an unenviable situation of ‘damned if he does, damned if he does not’; veritably the old Greek dilemma of being caught between “Scylla and Charybdis’ as it were. Shorn of the support of breakaway ‘Pohottuwa’ frontrankers and with his battered if not broken United National Party (UNP), he will stand little chance in the September hustings. This reality has been brought about by the UNP being torn asunder by Mr Wickremesinghe’s own ugly machinations for power during the past decade and more.

Poetic justice to a bedraggled UNP

Its present plight is nothing short of poetic justice as the UNP breakaway, the Premadasa led Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) is now Wickremesinghe’s political bête noire, (for want of a better translation, ‘pet hate’). Not that the SJB itself is not riven through with contradictions as it accepts dubious ‘crossovers’ into its ranks. Even so, the level of political ugliness there is infinitely less than what the ‘Pohottuwa crossovers’ portend. So with ‘Pohottuwa’ support, Mr Wickremesinghe risks alienating a support base primarily in the cities drawn to the promise of the ‘last of the Mohicans.’

Without a doubt, that constituency will remain repulsed at the very sight of the worst of the Rajapaksa era aligning with him. That the Rajapaksas themselves are left stranded at the altar of political expediency with their previously fawning sycophants deserting them (though that desertion may only be temporary) to worship at the Wickremesinghe shrine does not detract from that popular distaste.

But this is a gamble which the President, (who is contending to be the ‘future President’ and claims marvellously if not untruthfully that he will not promote himself as the incumbent), has obviously taken with ‘eyes wide open.’ Cynically assessed, he has preferred the ‘Scylla’ of the (probable albeit tarnished) ‘Pohottuwa’ supporters who were once his bitter critics, to the ‘Charybdis’ of being abandoned with the remnants of the UNP.

Is an ‘exploding Wickremesinghe candidacy’ in store?

That being said, this particular (old) elephant has not abandoned the fight. We can see this as he raised his clenched fist in the air on Thursday, reminding his supporters that in 2022, ‘no one thought that let alone the holding of an election, Sri Lanka would have a Government…’ Meanwhile Mr Wickremesinghe has been allocated the gas cylinder as his symbol by the Elections Commission, leading to a flurry of unseasonable jokes. This was naturally so, given the fuel and cooking gas shortages in Sri Lanka after the Rajapaksa Government left a bankrupt Treasury in 2021/2022.

Then we had the startling phenomenon of gas cylinders exploding across numerous Sri Lankan kitchens. Deaths and injuries of/to householders have yet not been compensated. ‘Will the Wickremesinghe candidacy explode or not explode?’ an inveterate cynic asked me this Saturday with a sneering smirk along the lines of Hamlet’s ‘to be or not to be…’ This is the million rupee question. For now, all bets are off and all calculations remain in the realm of the impossible.

Meanwhile, across the Palk Straits, the Indian media had also picked up on Wickremesinghe’s allocation of a ‘gas cylinder’ election symbol with enthusiasm. Reporting on this, the Indian Express was notably kind in its summing up of the President’s accomplishments. It remarked that, ‘the gas cylinder symbol allocated to 75-year-old Wickremesinghe is significant as it represents his two-year legacy of being the stop-gap president’ after widespread mass protests due to the shortage of essentials.

 An ‘economic revival’ but with political crooks?

Prefacing that the Washington based International Monetary Fund (IMF) has praised the Government for macroeconomic policy reforms which are now ‘starting to bear fruit’, the Express went on to add that, ‘(by) on-going debt restructuring negotiations, the government was hoping to get time until 2042 to repay….’  It pointed out that, ‘Wickremesinghe (has) appealed for public support to continue with his economic revival programme.’  All well and good but we repeat the question, how does an ‘economic revival’ sit credibly with bare faced crooks of the Pohottuwa regime?

Not to add the Wickremesinghe UNP loyalists clustering around him who are scarcely squeaky clean. And therein lies the rub. Certainly his comment on Nominations Day that, ‘we would be like Bangladesh if I had not prevented the ‘takeover of Parliament’ (in 2022), we would have shooting from trees, mass killings on the ground…’ calls for rebuttal. Granted, reprisals against Awami League party members and the targeting of minority communities in the wake of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s humiliating flight from Dhaka are of grave concern.

Even so, extraordinary stories of hope have emerged from the ruins of the Hasina regime. Survivors of long term abuse, incarceration and torture have pledged renewed commitment to rebuild their nation. Fresh appointments of the Governor of the Central Bank and the Chief Justice of Bangladesh evoke confidence in the return of the Rule of Law. A new – albeit uncertain – future is being forged. Elections will be held under the leadership of an interim government led by a Laureate affectionately hailed as ‘banker to the poor.’

 Sri Lanka’s ‘revenge of the poor’

This is a long cry from Sri Lanka’s post 2022 developments despite the Express reminding us of the IMF praising ‘macroeconomic reforms.’ Those reforms left ‘the poor’ in the dust, literally not metaphorically it must be said. Its ‘fruits’ are yet to be realised by the populace, one fourth of which is below the poverty level after the disasters of Rajapaksa rule. So Mr Wickremesinghe’s easy referencing of Bangladesh, which is free from the awesome severity of Sri Lanka’s financial stress, does not hold water.

He admitted on Nominations Day that, ‘people have problems, they live with difficulty. I am angry with those responsible, those who ran away…’ But these election motivated admissions come across as consummate – and familiar – political acrobatic juggling on his part. Thus, the President’s promise that, ‘I will change that, give me that chance,’ may be (famously) too little, too late.

For good or for bad, it is the ‘revenge of the poor’ that will determine the trajectory of Sri Lanka’s eagerly anticipated September Presidential polls.