- Wickremesinghe is no political novice. Having been in this game for almost five decades he knows the legalities and loopholes of the Constitution. So, he must surely know that as Executive President with unprecedented powers under the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, he can, if he wishes to, call the shots.
- The more important issue is, is this the Cabinet Wickremesinghe would prefer to work with? The list of Cabinet ministers reads like a ‘who’s who’ of the incompetent, inefficient and incorrigible.
It has been seventy-five days since Ranil Wickremesinghe assumed duties as the eighth Executive President of Sri Lanka. However, he has been unable to swear in a Cabinet of his own.
The Cabinet he functions with is one of the many Cabinets appointed by former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa with one exception. Former Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris has been replaced by Ali Sabry.
Peiris has paid the price for nominating Dullas Alahapperuma to contest Wickremesinghe at the parliamentary ‘election’ to choose a President. Who among Peiris and Sabry is the better Foreign Minister is a moot point. However, Wickremesinghe has once again showed that he is unable to rise above petty personal considerations- even when the highest office in the land landed on his lap by chance.
The more important issue is, is this the Cabinet Wickremesinghe would prefer to work with? The list of Cabinet ministers reads like a ‘who’s who’ of the incompetent, inefficient and incorrigible. These are the remnants of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) that Rajapaksa had to resort to, when there was a public uprising against his previous Cabinet which comprised of five Rajapaksas and others who are best described as the corrupt and the criminal. Joining them have been a few power-hungry stragglers from other parties, including the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the SJB (Samagi Jana Balawgaya)
This Cabinet then is most certainly not the crème-de-la-crème among the 225 parliamentarians that presently inhabit our legislature. Two and half months into his Presidency which would be of twenty-eight months duration, why is Ranil Wickremesinghe not choosing the best talent he has available to him?
The short answer can be given in two words: Basil Rajapaksa. The creator of both the SLPP as well as the country’s current economic chaos has submitted a list of ten names to Wickremesinghe from the SLPP for inclusion in the Cabinet. They include the likes of Mahinda Aluthgamage, Rohitha Abeygunawardena and Johnston Fernando. Reportedly, Wickremesinghe is loath to appoint them as ministers, knowing that it will damage his credibility. Hence the dilly-dallying over the appointment of a ‘full’ Cabinet of thirty ministers, which Wickremesinghe is entitled to under the Constitution.
To be fair, Wickremesinghe has an unenviable dilemma. It is the SLPP which voted for him en masse, so he could become President with 134 votes from a 225-member Parliament. It is the SLPP which still retains a parliamentary majority, however wafer-thin that is now. It is therefore the SLPP which Wickremesinghe has to rely on, to get his legislation through Parliament. For all these reasons, Wickremesinghe is obliged and beholden to the SLPP for his survival as President. In short, Ranil Wickremesinghe is a prisoner of the SLPP- and of Basil Rajapaksa.
However, Wickremesinghe is no political novice. Having been in this game for almost five decades he knows the legalities and loopholes of the Constitution. So, he must surely know that as Executive President with unprecedented powers under the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, he can, if he wishes to, call the shots.
While it is true that he relies on the current Parliament which has a SLPP majority for support, it is also true that, if he so wishes, he can dissolve the current Parliament in a few months’ time, in March 2023. So, if he really wishes, he can have a cabinet of his choosing and if the SLPP disagrees with that, he can dissolve Parliament come March and work with whichever party that wins office- which, almost certainly will not be the SLPP.
Wickremesinghe has not opted to do so. That begs the question, why?
Having reached the highest office in the land by default, by sheer luck and by being in the right place at the right time, Wickremesinghe is not content to let that be the high point of his career. He has set his sights firmly on the 2024 presidential elections. He feels this is his best chance of becoming an elected President, especially because the rest of the political landscape will be littered with rivals- the Premadasas, the Dissanayakes, the Sirisenas, the Ranawakas, the Alahapperumas and the Weerawansas- who all believe that they are the panacea for the country’s woes.
If the anti-SLPP vote, which will be a majority of the electorate, is split among these contenders and the SLPP supports Wickremesinghe, then he could be a properly elected President. That we believe, is not impossible because, from the SLPP’s perspective, knowing that its chance of securing victory in 2024 is virtually zero, it is willing to wait until 2029 for Namal Rajapaksa to pick up the baton from Wickremesinghe and let the latter hold the fort until then.
Wickremesinghe has, of course, contested the presidential elections twice before, in 1999 and 2005 and lost to Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa respectively. That was with the unstinted support of his own United National Party (UNP).
Thanks to his own incompetence and lust for permanent leadership of the ‘Grand Old Party’, the UNP has today been reduced to a shadow of its former glory. There have been recent efforts to revive its fortunes since Wickremesinghe became President but, given his own performance of pandering to the SLPP, conducting a highly repressive style of government and not providing economic relief to the masses, public support for the UNP still remains abysmally low, with little hope of resurrection by late 2024, when presidential elections will need to be held.
This is precisely why Wickremesinghe needs the SLPP for his political end game. He is well aware that, should he rely only on his own UNP, he will be a dead duck at the 2024 presidential elections. This is why he does not crack the whip on the SLPP and also why he does not exercise all the extraordinary powers at his disposal by virtue of the 20th Amendment.
Ranil Wickremesinghe has said that politics is not a sprint but a marathon. The rest of the nation believes that he is at the end of a 45-year marathon. Wickremesinghe believes that the marathon has only just begun. That is why he is behaving the way he does now.
