Sunday Times 2
We Sri Lankans are a fickle lot
View(s):Just a year ago, many of us were full of praise for Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had managed to steer our bankrupt economy to safety. Wickremesinghe had accepted the prime minister’s office and then the presidency when his predecessor, the much vaunted “military hero” Gotabaya Rajapaksa, fled the country in ignominy.
At the time Sri Lanka was in disarray, the economy was bankrupt, the people were struggling, and close to revolution. When he realised that the Aragalaya was not going away, Gotabaya decided it was time for him to go away. We are told that he offered the poisoned chalice of leadership at the time to several others who were too timid to accept it or laid down such unacceptable conditions that Gotabaya finally turned to Ranil.
Sri Lanka’s economy is now on the path to recovery with GDP growth projected to be around 5% in 2024. The fact that our debts have been restructured and we are not staring at bankruptcy can be attributed to the efforts of Ranil Wickremesinghe. Even his detractors would admit that the man had the stature, personality and knowledge—as well as an understanding of how the world functions—to deal effectively with the big players on the international scene. It is difficult to imagine any others at the forefront of Sri Lankan politics at the time being able to get the job done as he did.
For this and the fact that he left an economy well on the road to recovery on vacating office at the end of last year, we as a nation owe him a huge debt.
The unfortunate thing about Ranil Wickremesinghe is that his cleverness is overshadowed by his arrogance. Never having played any sports or team games while in school, he finds it difficult in his old age to function as a team player—surrounding himself with old school friends, torchbearers, and yes-men who do not question him or offer him a differing constructive opinion.
We as a nation should give him due credit for what he accomplished. The poor man, however, is someone with a good brain but poor marketing skills. He will be remembered for tolerating dishonest folk in his cabinet, for not having dealt with the rogues who bankrupted the economy, and for being aloof and unable to communicate with the vast majority of
Sri Lankans.
Another president to whom we should give credit where it is due is Mahinda Rajapaksa.
At the beginning of this century, we were all living under the spectre of the Eelam war. Nobody expected that the powerful LTTE could ever be defeated, backed as it was both overtly and covertly by major international players as well as a well-heeled diaspora overseas. These Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were one of the worst and most effective terrorist organisations in the world, hoodwinking the Norwegians and thumbing noses at the Indians.
The fact that the LTTE was soundly defeated and destroyed in 2009 is something that Mahinda Rajapaksa accomplished. If not for his leadership at the time, who knows, but we may still be suffering under the scourge of war. There are still folk in this country—folk who had lost their loved ones in that terrible war—who bless Mahinda for ending the war.
But unfortunately for us all, Mahinda did not use this time when the whole nation was in his debt for ending the war to improve the lot of the people. He and his family instead put the nation into debt by heartlessly enriching themselves. Money that should have gone to feed, house, educate, and improve the lot of our people was instead skimmed off by uneducated finance ministers, unscrupulous health ministers, and family members whom he appointed to head airlines and diplomatic missions overseas.
In Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, the funeral oration for Caesar by Mark Antony has these immortal lines: ‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.’
So it is with our two ex-presidents. It is the evil that Ranil and Mahinda did and the crookery that they condoned that our people remember today. The good results that they accomplished are forgotten by the nation because their achievements are buried beneath the evil they did.
It is too early to judge the efforts of their successor, Anura Kumara Dissanayake. In any modern organisation, a new employee is given a period of a year to achieve his or her KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) before they can have a performance appraisal.
Let us give him time. We have in AKD a capable and well-intentioned captain, and we hope that he can exercise effective command and control over his troops. But a captain is only as good as his team—and some of his team members need to up their game.
At the end of a year in office, will we be able to give due credit to AKD? Will he have accomplished some good that will live after him that we as a nation will take pride in remembering?
I sincerely hope so.