By Visvanath
President Ranil Wickremesinghe yesterday (Sept. 05) sacked State Ministers Premalal Jayasekera, Indika Anuruddha, Mohan Priyadarshana and Siripala Gamlath. They are loyal to the Rajapaksa family. Ironically, they are among the SLPP MPs who enabled Wickremesinghe to achieve his presidential dream. They threw their weight behind him when the parliament elected the interim President in July 2022. Last year, he sacked Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe, who criticized him and his inner circle for defending some corrupt cricket administrators. He is on the offensive to protect his interests.
Anything is said to be possible in politics. Wickremesinghe was the sole UNP member of parliament before May 2022, but today he is sacking ministers who are members of the SLPP, which won 145 seats at the 2020 general election and mustered a two-thirds majority with the help of crossovers. The Rajapaksas are obviously furious, but there is nothing they can do. The presidential election is around the corner, and a general election is expected soon afterwards. The only thing they can do is to cry foul and castigate Wickremesinghe as an ingrate. In fact, SLPP presidential candidate Namal Rajapaksa has been doing so for the past couple of months.
During the UNP-led Yahapalana government, the then President Maithripala Sirisena likened his executive powers to a sword, which he sought to use against the UNP when he fell out with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe only to be left with egg on his face. However, the Executive President usually remains so powerful only when he or she has control over the parliament as the leader of the ruling party. This is something J. R. Jayewardene, the chief architect of the presidential system did not bargain for.
When the President and the Prime Minister happen represent two rival parties, the latter becomes more powerful than the President to all intents and purposes, as was seen during the 2001-2004 period, when President Chandrika Bandaranaike was without control over parliament, which was under Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. She even had to suffer many indignities at the hands of the UNP MPs, especially Cabinet ministers. President Sirisena experienced a similar situation between 2015 and 2019, especially after his party, the SLFP, severed links with the UNP. D. B. Wijetunga was the first President to lose a parliamentary majority. The SLFP-led People’s Alliance won the 1994 general election and formed a government under Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s leadership. President Wijetunga and PM Kumaratunga, however, got on well.
The situation changed owing to the 2022 political upheavals. When Wickremesinghe was elected President, his party, the UNP, had only a single seat in the parliament, and Dinesh Gunawardena three seats whereas the SLPP had 134 seats excluding its dissidents. But Wickremesinghe and Gunawardena managed to consolidate their positions in the parliament—something that would have been considered unthinkable under normal circumstances.
What is playing out on the political front is the exact opposite of the scenario the Rajapaksa family may have anticipated, when they handed over the reins of government to Wickremesinghe for want of a better alternative. Today, there is no way they can control President Wickremesinghe, who has won over about 100 of its parliamentary group members. Above all, he is constitutionally empowered to dissolve the parliament anytime, and the SLPP parliamentary group is at his mercy. How come Wickremesinghe, who lost his seat at the 2020 general election and entered the parliament via the National List, has emerged so powerful in a matter of just two years?
The Rajapaksas may not have expected, even in their wildest dreams, that Wickremesinghe would be in a position to turn against them, when they made him the Prime Minister in May 2022 and then elevated him to the presidency two months later. They claim that they offered the premiership to several persons including Sarath Fonseka and Sajith Premadasa after mass protests had led to the resignation of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Cabinet, but they turned down that offer and only Wickremesinghe had the courage to accept it amidst the worst-ever economic crisis and political upheavals. They may have invited others, as they claim, but it is doubtful whether they would have appointed any of them, for they were looking for someone who was politically weak and therefore entirely dependent on them for parliamentary support so that they could have him on a string. Wickremesinghe, the leader of a political party with no prospect of being able to make a comeback, fitted the bill. In other words, the UNP’s weakness arguably stood Wickremesinghe in good stead.
SLPP founder and strategist Basil Rajapaksa has gone on record as saying that he and other members of his family brought Wickremesinghe in as the President to restore the law and order situation, stabilize the economy and provide relief to the public. What he has left unsaid is that their safety was foremost in their minds, and President Wickremesinghe protected their interests. It was obvious that the Rajapaksas were waiting until the time was ripe for them to make a comeback. Speculation in political circles was that the SLPP and the UNP would come together to contest future elections, but it was obvious that Wickremesinghe and the Rajapaksas had other plans as well.
If President Wickremesinghe had succeeded in winning over at least two dozen SJB MPs and shoring up the UNP’s chances of winning the presidency, the Rajapaksas would have thrown in their lot with him and settled for the premiership for one of them. Wickremesinghe was expected to announce his presidential candidacy on May Day this year. But he failed in his endeavour; he could lure only a few SJB MPs into joining him. Fearing the prospect of having to face a presidential election first, the SLPP pressured President Wickremesinghe to hold a snap parliamentary election so that it could win as many seats as possible before its electoral weakness was exposed. The President did not want to dissolve the parliament prematurely because the UNP had failed to regain its electoral strength, and he apparently thought he would be able to leverage his position to outperform others in a presidential contest, as an independent candidate with the help of the SLPP. When the Rajapakasas refused to back his presidential candidacy, he resorted to engineering crossovers from the SLPP as he was left with no alternative, given the extremely high stakes in the upcoming presidential election.
Adversity and political expediency made the Rajapakasas and Wickremesinghe strange bedfellows in 2022. Today, they are at war. There is nothing that politicians baulk at subjugating to self-interest.
