by Vishvanath
There is no bigger shame for an incumbent President than to suffer a crushing defeat in a presidential election. The first president to have that experience was Mahinda Rajapaksa. He in his wisdom amended the Constitution and sought a third term only to lose to a dark horse in the 2015 presidential race; Maithripala Sirisena came from behind to beat him in what can be described as an upset win. It was thought that Rajapaksa would call it quits after his shocking defeat, which sent him reeling, but he made a stunning comeback as Prime Minister five years later, before being hounded out of office by protesters in 2022. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa could not complete his first term; he had to resign due to a mass uprising against him and his government for bankrupting the economy and causing unprecedented economic hardships to the public in 2022.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe suffered the same fate as Mahinda Rajapaksa in the September 21 presidential election, where he came a poor third. He was not a popularly elected President. He became the President fortuitously following the ouster of Gotabaya, in 2022, but the fact remains that he was holding the presidency at the time of his defeat. That was the third presidential election he lost. He has been defeated in presidential contests as an Opposition Leader (1999), as a Prime Minister (2005) and as a President (2024). He also skipped three presidential elections in 2010, 2015 and 2019. He also lost his parliamentary seat in the 2020 general election, and entered the parliament through the National List. Many thought it would be curtains for his political career after his defeat in September, and this view was bolstered by his decision not to contest the upcoming general election. Some of his aides said he would not enter the parliament, but he himself has not said so. He has retained the leadership of the UNP, and it is not possible to get inside his elusive mind, but one thing is clear; he has no intention of retiring from politics any time soon.
Wickremesinghe is carrying out frontal attacks on President Dissanayake and the NPP apparently for four reasons. He stands accused of having deliberately caused a split in the anti-NPP vote thereby enabling NPP presidential candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake to win the presidency in September. It is being argued in some
quarters that if he had not entered the presidential fray, SJB candidate Sajith Premadasa would have become the President.
Dissanayake’s win stood Wickremesinghe in good stead where the UNP leadership is concerned. If Premadasa had secured the presidency, he would have taken over the UNP, which he broke away from, after the 2019 presidential election, to form the SJB. One may recall that Sirisena, who was the SLFP General Secretary at the time of his defection to the UNP-led Opposition to challenge his political boss, Rajapaksa, in the presidential contest, took over the SLPP leadership after winning the presidency in Jan. 2015.
In 2005, the then President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga did not want her party’s presidential candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa to win, as Sirisena has revealed in his fawning biography, Aththai, Saththi. Kumaratunga knew she would lose the SLFP leadership of Rajapaksa if the latter won the presidential election. What she feared came to pass. In 2019, Wickremesinghe did something similar in some respects; he was blamed for not campaigning hard for the UNP presidential candidate Premadasa, who contested from the National Democratic Front (NDF), whose symbol was the swan at the time. He knew if Premadasa won the presidency, he would lose his grip on the UNP leadership.
Maybe Wickremesinghe is trying to overcome the stigma of being branded a collaborator; he is taking on President Dissanayake and the NPP extremely hard to have the public believe that there is no love lost between him and Dissanayake, and his participation in the last presidential contest was not intended to queer the pitch for Premadasa and retain the UNP leadership. Such a perception, unless effectively countered, is bound to ruin the chances of the UNP candidates and their former SLPP counterparts, contesting the upcoming general election on the NDF ticket. He will need some MPs loyal to him to safeguard his interests in view of the possibility of the JVP-led NPP turning hostile to him. In this country, political battles usually get down and dirty. Wickremesinghe knows what it is like to be at the receiving end of politically motivated investigations.
It can also be argued that Wickremesinghe has decided to remain active in politics and carry out attacks on the NPP because he does not want to let down the UNPers and the SLPP dissidents who stood by him while he was the President. They are without any other national figure worthy of the name to campaign for them, and Wickremesinghe is therefore helping them out of gratitude.
In this country, politicians do not retire; they want to savor power until they go the way of all flesh. A plausible explanation for Wickremesinghe’s anti-NPP campaign could also be that he wants to emerge as the de facto Opposition Leader in case the NPP forms the next government. Perhaps, he thinks the NPP will not be able to manage the economy properly and live up to the people’s expectations by fulfilling its election promises, and he will therefore have a role to play in national politics in the future. He takes pride in having straightened up the economy and keeps teasing the NPP leaders by asking them to seek his advice on economic management. The latter have reacted angrily to his offer, and even an otherwise mild-mannered Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya has taken umbrage. Wickremesinghe has mastered the art of provoking his political opponents and unsettling them. The NPP leaders have spent most of their campaign time either to vilify Wickremesinghe or to counter his arguments. He has apparently been able to put them on the defensive. This is something other Opposition big guns have failed to do. Attacking the government and drawing fire from the NPP in return, he has overshadowed former Opposition leader Premadasa and the heavyweights of other parties contesting next Thursday’s general election.
Whatever his motive may be, signs are that Wickremesinghe will remain very active in politics and even enter the parliament. If the NPP forms the next government, its leaders will have a formidable opponent in the person of Wickremesinghe. They will face a steep learning curve, and Wickremesinghe will be able to score political points at their expense while the anti-incumbent sentiments are taking their toll on the new government to be formed. Wickremesinghe has predicted that there will be a hung parliament, and he will be able to carve out a bigger role in national politics for himself in such a situation with a view to making a comeback. Hope is said to spring eternal.
