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It would be better for former President Ranil Wickremesinghe and more importantly, for the democratic health of Sri Lanka if he retires gracefully from the political stage, sooner rather than later.

A diversion from the failings in governance

Effectively Mr Wickremesinghe has become President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD)-led National Peoples’ Power (NPP)’s strongest ally, it seems. His disingenuous if not discordant ramblings, including a satirical offer to ‘teach the Constitution’ to the NPP’s transitional Cabinet of three, only aggravates public distaste towards the ‘old’ political establishment. These antics are akin to manna dropped from heaven for the fledgling administration, diverting attention from its failings and numerous retreats from pre-presidential election promises.

We will return to that point later. The fact remains that the former President’s pronouncements on matters ranging from the continuation of privileges of former Presidents to paying public service salary hikes, are precise trigger points for voters as to why they rejected the ‘old’ and turned towards the ‘new.’ Like Banquo’s ghost in Macbeth, the interventions continually prod the guilty conscience of the citizenry, reminding them of their gullibility in voting for ‘corrupt rogues’ of the Rajapaksa (Mahinda and Gotabhaya) regime, later ‘protected’ by Mr Wickremesinghe.

That historic sin in falling for racist rhetoric which enabled the robbing of the public coffers in broad daylight by the ‘men who won the war’ led to the country being swept into the abyss of bankruptcy decimating the lives of thousands of ordinary Sri Lankans who live planets far removed from the glitter of Colombo. Without a doubt, the visceral public fury which prompted the 2022 ‘aragalaya’ (public protests) was skillfully manipulated by the NPP in September’s presidential polls, propelling its national vote base to swell from 3% to 42%.

Two and two makes five

All this is nothing very new. But Mr Wickremesinghe’s desperate flailing about post-presidential elections, though applauded by his audiences of a select few, is hardly conducive to Sri Lanka’s recovery to a measure of democratic functioning. This is much like the idiotic laughter of Sri Lanka’s accountants when three former Presidents (Wickremesinghe, Kumaratunga and Sirisena) cracked unseemly jokes about the country’s endemic corruption culture.

The former President’s most recent extraordinary interpretation of the September poll result was that 42% of the Sri Lankan citizenry had made Mr Dissanayake a ‘minority President’ and that therefore, 58% of the Sri Lankan citizenry had approved of the 16th Parliament of Sri Lanka. Thus, he claimed that the NPP has no right to say that the 16th Parliament was full of ‘rogues.’ This stand astounds both commonsense and numerical logic, to put it mildly.

First, the fact that Mr Dissanayake became a ‘minority President’ does not in any sense infer that these who refrained from voting at all or voted for Mr Sajith Premadasa of the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) who came second, ‘approved’ of the behaviour and conduct of the members of the 16th Parliament. That may not be true even of those who voted for other candidates, including Mr Wickremesinghe himself coming as a poor third.

Not a ‘few rotten apples’
in former Parliament

In fact, it is completely to the contrary. It will be safe to assess that the numbers who voted for the NPP and the SJB at least heartily disapproved of the disgraceful happenings in the House.  That included, as we may recall, the majority of members repeatedly voting in favour of a Speaker whose decisions offended the principle of neutrality as well as dismissing an Opposition-led no-confidence motion against a Health Minister in former President Wickremesinghe’s Cabinet on grounds of gross corruption.

It was purely due to dogged persistence on the part of the media in bringing this corruption to the notice of the public that, finally, law enforcement authorities had no choice but to arrest him earlier this year. So when the former President tries the same tactic as the Sri Lanka State in regard to human rights abuses by pointing to a ‘few rotten apples’ in the ranks of his political loyalists, he must be speedily corrected.

Secondly, it is really not a question of a ‘minority’ or ‘majority’ President as the case may be under and in terms of the Constitution and the law on presidential elections. Simply put, September’s presidential win for AKD was a result of him coming first among those who contested as per the strict letter of the law. As Mr Wickremesinghe is generous with his promises to teach the law to those who do not know, he may as well acquaint himself with that fact.

Mistakes caused by the NPP’s own doing

Thus, when he points an accusing finger at the NPP’s mathematical ability and pontificates that with a 42% mandate, the new President has no right to call for the new Parliament to be 100% filled with the NPP, nine fingers are pointed right back at him.  Indeed, if these antics are not reined in, their destructive impact will not end in happy outcomes in respect of whatever parliamentary opposition that will emerge following the November 14th general elections.

Apart from these avoidable diversions, mistakes caused by the NPP in these early days are entirely of their own doing, including its insistence that there is no need for a parliamentary Opposition as its (potential) Government will comprise ‘good people who will reform the country.’ This unbelievably anti-democratic stance is even echoed by lawyers of the NPP who earlier screeched about constitutional principles from the rooftops.

Moreover, the fracas over the Wickremesinghe appointed committees on the 2019 Easter Sunday reports continues in regard to the suitability of NPP appointments to two top posts in the Public Security Ministry and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). Regardless of the grinning visage of a Gammampila which sends shivers of revulsion up one’s spine, the fact remains that it is not a good defence to brush away findings of committees headed by judges by ad hoc and ad hominem attacks on their integrity or on the basis that one does not like the result.

Transparent political naivete if not back-peddling

These hiccups may be brushed away by the NPP’s forgiving constituents who would protest that a little more than one month is scarcely enough time for the new regime to ‘show its colours.’ Even so, the worry does not come from that fact. Rather, it comes from NPP top rung leaders reneging on its own good governance promises. This noticeably includes the President continuing for the second month to call out the armed forces to maintain law and order under Section 12 of the Public Security Ordinance (PSO).

These ‘special powers’ can only be used on the existence of ‘circumstances endangering the public security’ coupled with a finding that ‘the police are inadequate to deal with such situations.’ So we ask again, on what basis is resort to Section 12 sought to be legally justified? Those concerns are not met by the continuing charade of former Ministers being arrested for offences concerning ‘illegal luxury vehicles.’

Meanwhile, the NPP has back-peddled on a campaign assurance that one of Sri Lanka’s most atrocious laws, the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) will be repealed or amended. Absurdly, that has been replaced by assuring that the PTA will not be ‘misused’ in its application. Alternately, it is proposed to enact the Wickremesinghe-initiated Counter Terrorism Act (CTA) draft which is a hideous idea. This was shot down with difficulty earlier given serious legal flaws in the draft that would have made the job of national intelligence much harder, not easier.

Great caution must be shown by the NPP lest it lapses into the style of previous regimes that it criticizes with such luxurious abandon.