How Ranil Wickremesinghe became Sri Lanka’s unlikely repairman

[1].BERTOLT BRECHT’S The Caucasian Chalk Circle is probably the best-known international play in Sri Lanka, thanks to a superb Sinhala rendering by the dramatist Henry Jayasena in 1967. A parable set in a city facing an anti-feudal revolt, the play revolves around the kitchen maid Grusha and her decision to risk her life to save the abandoned baby of the deposed governor..In one scene, deeply embedded in the Sri Lankan cultural consciousness, Grusha crosses a rotten bridge over a glacier, holding tight to the infant. Ranil Wickremesinghe invoked this iconic image when he addressed the nation soon after becoming prime minister in May 2022..“Son, don’t look,” Grusha sings in the play’s popular Sinhala incarnation. “The abyss is deep.” Wickremesinghe asked Lankans to do the opposite – to look into the abyss and understand both its immensity and its nature. “Just as Grusha carried another’s child across a vine bridge, I now face an even greater challenge,” he said. “The abyss is deep, the bottom unseen. The bridge, a fragile sheet of glass, offers no support. With no handrails in sight, I tread cautiously, burdened by shoes with sharp iron nails.”.Politicians are given to hyperbole, but this was no exaggeration. When Gotabaya Rajapaksa assumed office as president in 2019, he took charge of a lower-middle-income country. He began his tenure with a massive tax cut, making the fiscal deficit an insatiable maw, then printed trillions of rupees to feed it. The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the crisis by shutting down tourism. Foreign-currency reserves were sacrificed to prop up the Sri Lankan rupee. Remittances from migrant workers – the country’s main source of foreign earnings – dropped sharply due to its unrealistic value. When dollars ran low, the government forced farmers to go organic so it could skimp on importing chemical fertilisers. Agricultural yields crashed, food stocks disappeared. .In 2022, the country was in slow-motion collapse. Schools closed and government hospitals barely functioned. The working week in the public sector was reduced to four days so that government workers could grow vegetables in their homes. More than eight in ten families were either skipping meals or cutting back on the quantity or quality of what they ate. In Colombo, the number of women entering sex work shot up by a third. Sri Lanka became second only to notorious Zimbabwe in the American economist Steve Hanke’s global Inflation Dashboard. There was no more gas or kerosene to cook with, no petrol or diesel to make anything move. “Last option what?” a part-time driver in Colombo told a reporter. “Without food we are going to die. That will happen hundred percent.” By April, Sri Lanka was a bankrupted, beggared land, dependent on international charity for its survival..Protests started springing up across the country in March, as crippling shortages, unending queues and power cuts stretching up to 13 hours shattered ordinary lives. Public ire zeroed in on the Rajapaksas: particularly Gotabaya, or “Gota”, who had made his name during Sri Lanka’s civil war overseeing the bloody extermination of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE); Mahinda, his older brother, who was president from 2005 to 2015, and now held the post of prime minister; and Basil, the youngest Rajapaksa sibling and minister of finance, seen as the brains trust of the family enterprise..When a group of online activists called for a day of mass protest on 3 April, the government imposed a curfew. Hundreds of thousands of people, often entire families, wilfully broke it – a Sri Lankan first. The popular resistance movement known as the Aragalaya – the Struggle – was born. .On 9 May, goons backing the Rajapaksas’ Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (the SLPP, or the Sri Lanka People’s Front) attacked protesters camped outside the Presidential Secretariat. When the news broke, tens of thousands of ordinary citizens poured out onto the streets in angry waves. Disregarding a hastily imposed curfew, they torched the offices and homes of numerous SLPP politicians. In Nittambuwa, near Colombo, an SLPP parliamentarian and his police guard were beaten to death by a mob of citizens..That evening, Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned from the premiership, leaving the country with no government. The president remained, armed with enormous powers but incapable of enforcing even a simple command. It took Gota hours to get the military to rescue brother Mahinda from Temple Trees, the official prime-ministerial residence, after it was surrounded by furious protesters. As chaos raged, the president asked leader of the opposition Sajith Premadasa and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP, or People’s Liberation Front) leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake to form a government. Both refused, demanding his resignation as a precondition. They did not dare to cross the people, who had stuck fast to the popular demand that “Gota Go Home”. At the heart of the state was a vacuum with no civilian takers to fill it. .On the night of 10 May, a panicked president called in the army with shoot-on-sight powers. The next morning, armoured military vehicles manned by stony-faced soldiers rolled down Colombo’s deserted streets. The images caused a profound shock. Most Sri Lankans outside of the country’s North and East – heavily militarised, Tamil-dominated areas that experienced brutal fighting during the civil war – had only seen these machines on television or during military parades. Now they patrolled urban centres and rural towns of the Sinhala-dominated South, an army watching for an enemy at the epicentre of national power..The military met with no public resistance. Having vented their rage, the people were back in bystander-mode. The Aragalaya activists were too disparate and disorganised to make a decisive intervention. For a fraught moment, a military takeover seemed imminent, with or without the president. The armed forces were the only entity left with the organisational power – and fire power – to bring order out of chaos, and they were still popular with Sri Lanka’s Sinhala majority, which formed the backbone of the protests. .It was only then, with all other options seemingly expended, that Gota asked Ranil Wickremesinghe to form a government. Ranil, the leader of the United National Party (UNP), was sworn in as prime minister on the night of 12 May..Since the country’s independence, the UNP had been the single largest political party in Sri Lanka. But it had suffered a devastating schism in early 2020, when Premadasa had left to form his own party – the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB, or the United People’s Power). In the August 2020 parliamentary election, the newly minted SJB came second, with about a quarter of the vote. The UNP, meanwhile, was reduced to barely two percent, and just a single nominated seat in the house. Wickremesinghe, who even failed to win his own constituency, entered parliament by awarding himself that single seat. It was generally seen as a shameful denouement to an underwhelming career. Now he was prime minister – for the sixth time, no less. In a season of surprises, this was probably the greatest one. .Yet greater shocks were in store. .Himal is on a mission to give you great independent journalism on Sri Lanka and all of Southasia. Become a paying Patron to support our work..ON 9 JULY, with no end to their suffering, more than a million Sri Lankans converged on Colombo. A massive crowd surrounded the president’s official residence. Gota fled first Colombo and then the country. Having driven out the man they correctly blamed for their plight, most of the protesters went home. A minority stayed behind to demand Wickremesinghe’s resignation. They occupied the presidential secretariat as well as the prime minister’s office and official residence. That evening, a small group of protesters torched Wickremesinghe’s private residence, destroying his precious collection of books, paintings and manuscripts..On 14 July, Gota sent in his letter of resignation from his self-exile in Singapore. As per the constitution, Wickremesinghe temporarily took his place. When the parliament assembled to pick between three candidates for a permanent replacement, Wickremesinghe won the vote, with the full backing of the Rajapaksa-led SLPP..Hours after being sworn in as president, Wickremesinghe sent in the police and military to dismantle the remaining protesters’ encampment, despite a publicised decision by the protesters to leave the next day. The pre-dawn raid was executed with unmerited ferocity, yet it did not elicit any mass response. Wickremesinghe was proven right in his assessment that the million-plus people who had descended on Colombo to drive Gota out had been satisfied – for now. Their main aim was not to change the system but to restore a modicum of normalcy to their daily lives. Wickremesinghe had some time, a couple of months perhaps, to deliver this before they moved against him..Soon after being made prime minister, Wickremesinghe had set up a group of experts to create a system to regulate fuel distribution and sales, ensuring they were not hobbled by political interference. Within a fortnight of becoming president, he introduced the new QR code-based system for rationing and distributing fuel. The gas shortage had been created in part by the incompetent favourites appointed by Gota to head Litro, the state-owned gas company. Wickremesinghe appointed a former general manager of Litro, a person even the usually fractious trade unions praised for competence and experience, as the company’s chairman. The new management effected a turnaround, enabling Litro to order several fresh consignments of gas. The power cuts became shorter and inflation returned to the double digits, having peaked at well over 100 percent according to independent estimations. Soon gas and fuel queues were gone. With that, tourism picked up and foreign remittances bounced back..In July, the JVP’s Dissanayake had said on a popular talk show that his party, if allowed to form an interim administration, would restore social normalcy within six months. He itemised what this restoration would entail: reopening schools and offices, ensuring medical supplies for hospitals, and ending shortages of gas, fuel and other essential goods. .Wickremesinghe had achieved those broad aims in five months. .His was an unlikely success story. In the 1990s, as the UNP under Wickremesinghe lost a series of provincial and local elections, the government minister Mangala Samaraweera had debuted the slogan “Ranil can’t” – and it stuck. His record up to that point, and after it, gave the phrase plenty of ballast. Wickremesinghe was the scion of a prominent family, with great clout in the media and political circles; his maternal grandfather had started Lake House, the country’s first newspaper chain, in the 1920s. In 1977, he became the youngest cabinet minister in a pivotal new government and was seemingly destined for great things. Yet, from there, he twice failed to win the presidency, developed a reputation for losing elections, and set a record as Sri Lanka’s longest-serving leader of the opposition. On his watch, the UNP went from the largest, best-organised political party in the country to an electoral has-been incapable of winning even a single parliamentary seat. .He was uncharismatic, incapable of appealing to the emotions of a crowd. His bookishness – “My biggest wealth and treasure were the 2500 books in my library,” he lamented in parliament after his house was burnt down – was also held against him, popularly seen as a sign not of intellect but of remoteness from the harsh realities on the ground. He seemed a man cursed with an anti-Midas touch, the gold he touched turning quickly into dross..Now, at long last, he was president and his decades-long run of bad luck seemed to be over. By the end of 2022, Wickremesinghe was the country’s least unpopular leader – an acknowledgement of the deftness and speed with which he had restored some societal normalcy. But this relative popularity turned out to be ephemeral..In March 2023, Wickremesinghe proved the opposition naysayers wrong again. He secured a bailout package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that opened up vital credit lines to Sri Lanka’s ailing economy. His supporters celebrated. Yet the victory turned out to be a pyrrhic one in electoral terms. The massive hikes in electricity and water rates that he introduced as part of that deal caused him immense political harm. The poorest consumers bore the heaviest share of the burden; a million electricity lines were disconnected in 2023 alone. .His dependence on the Rajapaksa-led SLPP for survival did not help. With the UNP holding just one seat in parliament, and the SLPP still enjoying a majority in the house, he needed the Rajapaksas’ backing to avoid impeachment and to keep the government going. What he was compelled to do to pacify them further tarnished his image. He appointed 37 deputy and state ministers in his government, incurring the lavish expense of their upkeep while poverty continued to rise. He also failed to hold the Rajapaksas to account for the mess they had made, even after the Supreme Court found them guilty of causing the economic collapse. In sharp contrast, he hunted down Aragalaya activists with single-minded ferocity, even misusing the Prevention of Terrorism Act for the purpose. .Gota returned home from his deluxe exile less than two months after Wickremesinghe took over. The Rajapaksas – Mahinda, Basil, and Mahinda’s eldest son, Namal – began flaunting themselves as puppet-masters of the government. Wickremesinghe was soon saddled with a new label, “Ranil Rajapaksa” – even as, behind the scenes, the Rajapaksas plotted to eventually jettison him..Wickremesinghe’s opponents saw the relationship as a marriage, with Wickremesinghe cast derogatorily as the female partner – thus the change of surname. But this was no special tie-up, more a standard political alliance based on opportunism. The Rajapaksas thought they were getting a pawn in Wickremesinghe. They evidently did not feel threatened by him, believing he could not move against them without doing himself in. Their backing gave Wickremesinghe a window of stability to govern and to enact a record number of new laws, many of them on pressing social issues – strengthening the juvenile justice system, for instance, and criminalising sexual harassment. .But Wickremesinghe also found the means to get his own way. He circumvented the Rajapaksas by obtaining opposition support to pass the 21st Amendment, reducing presidential powers and keeping dual citizens, such as Basil, out of parliament. Characteristically, his preferred methods were evasion and procrastination rather than confrontation. A case in point was how he responded to the incessant Rajapaksa demand to give ministerial portfolios to Namal and several of their key loyalists. Wickremesinghe never rejected the demand. He merely sidestepped it until continued non-compliance rendered it moot. .All the while, he was undermining the Rajapaksa hold over the SLPP. The extent to which he had eaten into the party became obvious only after the declaration of the 2024 presidential election. When Wickremesinghe made clear his intent to run as an independent candidate, the Rajapaksas refused to back him. But, in July, a majority of the SLPP’s parliamentarians threw their support behind Wickremesinghe, ignoring threats of disciplinary action by the Rajapaksas. “He is attempting to dismantle our party,” Namal, who became the SLPP’s candidate for president, complained to the media. “He has a history of dismantling parties and organisations, including the United National Party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, the Good Governance government, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, and even the LTTE.”.The insight came too late. Wickremesinghe saved the Rajapaksas from popular fury, but only to achieve his long-unrealised personal and political goals. Wickremesinghe, the supposed Rajapaksa pawn, has done more to undermine Rajapaksa power – perhaps even fatally – than those who shouted loudest against them..On 21 September 2024, Sri Lanka will hold its 9th presidential election. Unlike all previous such polls, which were in effect two-way battles between the governing party and the main opposition party, this is a three-way contest between Wickremesinghe, Premadasa of the SJB and Dissanayake of the JVP – the latter heading a coalition dubbed National People’s Power (NPP). According to available opinion polls, the main contest is between Premadasa and Dissanayake. Wickremesinghe’s chances of winning a second term seem low. .But the election is taking place on a battleground largely of Wickremesinghe’s making. The 21st Amendment he pushed through gave birth to an independent Election Commission. He also enacted a campaign finance law that enables the commission to decide the amounts candidates can spend and to enforce these limits. The commission is conducting this election with unprecedented even-handedness and applying long-ignored election laws – including against Wickremesinghe’s own campaign..Wickremesinghe’s deal with the IMF earlier came under severe opposition criticism; a potential finance minister in a future NPP administration went so far as to call it the most vicious IMF agreement ever. Both Premadasa and Dissanayake promised to renegotiate the entire deal if they win. Yet, as the election nears, they have changed their stance. Now they agree to continue with the IMF programme Wickremesinghe signed on to, limiting themselves to tweaking it where possible. .Wickremesinghe’s campaign theme, “Sri Lanka Can”, is a spin on the decades-old “Ranil Can’t”. He claims credit, rightly, for saving Sri Lanka from going the way of Lebanon or Greece, and for achieving an economic turnaround less than two years after the country went bankrupt. It is due to his machinations that the Rajapaksa candidate is vying for third position in this election rather than first. And despite his authoritarian tendencies, he has contributed to the strengthening of Sri Lankan democracy. .The 2024 presidential election promises to be Sri Lanka’s most free, fair and non-violent poll in living memory, thanks in the main to the constitutional and legal changes Wickremesinghe effected. And, unlike with some past presidents, there are no fears of him overstaying his welcome. As Dissanayake said during a recent talk show, when the election results come in, a defeated Wickremesinghe will just go home..[2].RANIL WICKREMESINGHE got his start in national politics in 1977, when the UNP won a landslide victory in a parliamentary election. He was one of the Young Turks surrounding the new prime minister, J R Jayewardene, though not a front-ranker. After a brief stint as the deputy minister of foreign affairs, he became, at the age of 28, Sri Lanka’s youngest ever cabinet minister to that point, in charge of youth affairs and employment. In this capacity he set up the National Youth Council, which provided many talented young men and women with a springboard into prominence and success, especially in the cultural fields. He also gained notoriety for his alleged involvement in an attack on a group of anti-government students in the University of Kelaniya..In 1980, Wickremesinghe became the minister of education. By then Jayewardene had introduced two systemic changes which remain in place today. He opened up the economy, doing away with a model of protectionism and state control that had resulted in major shortages and queues in the preceding years. He also replaced the parliamentary form of governance with a particularly authoritarian executive presidency – which, unsurprisingly, he assumed himself. .In 1945, Ceylon – still a British colony – introduced free primary and secondary education. Free tertiary education soon followed. But by the late 1960s and early 1970s, free and universal education had given rise to an “inflationary” situation in the labour market, with too many graduates – mostly from the arts stream and largely mono-lingual – chasing too few jobs, mainly in the public sector. In 1971, the JVP launched an insurgency that exposed this contradiction and its political consequences, with educated but unemployed youth forming the main force of a bloody attempt at armed socialist revolution. .Wickremesinghe proposed a set of education reforms as a solution to this problem. The main aim of his proposal – known simply as the White Paper – was to reduce unemployment by making future graduates more employable in the private sector. University admissions were to be streamlined based on the needs of the economy, producing fewer graduates in the arts and more in fields like science and technology. Arts students would be taught at least one science subject. Students would be exposed to industry, schools would have career-guidance units, and students would have to choose between academic and vocational or technical education when they reached the eighth grade, leaving the school system if they picked the latter..But the proposals failed to contend with a fundamental fact: an absolute majority of graduates did not want to be employed in the private sector. Most students belonged to the Sinhala rural middle class, and this class had long regarded government jobs, with their permanence and pensions, as the acme of success. More than that, these students regarded government jobs as a right – particularly after the Sinhala Only Act and other reforms in the preceding decades had tilted the balance of public education and employment in the favour of the Sinhala community, while shutting out the country’s Tamil minority. They regarded Wickremesinghe’s reforms as a class-based conspiracy to deprive them of upward social mobility..The White Paper failed to withstand the opposition to it, which crossed party lines, and Wickremesinghe was forced to withdraw it. University student unions played a leading role in securing this outcome. Then, in 1983, democratically-elected student councils were abolished – a decision commonly blamed on Wickremesinghe. This would soon backfire. For as long as they were elected bodies, student councils had to maintain a balance between political and welfare work. The unofficial and unelected action committees which replaced them could focus on politics alone..The ban led to the rapid radicalisation of the student movement and its eventual takeover by the JVP. This movement played a key role in a second insurgency, in the latter half of the 1980s, that was even bloodier than the first. Wickremesinghe was accused of being involved in an alleged detention and torture centre used to suppress the insurrection, although this was never proven..Wickremesinghe’s botched attempt at educational reform bestowed on him a lifelong reputation for being inorganic, a socio-political and cultural alien. The UNP, despite commanding a rural support base, was commonly regarded as less of a pro-people party than its main competitor, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), which called for socialist economic policies (in reality, state capitalism) and championed Sinhala nationalism. Some UNP leaders were able to transcend this to an extent with popular programmes and a populist demeanour – the future president Ranasinghe Premadasa, for example, whose signature scheme was a massive housing programme. Wickremesinghe may have meant his reforms to be a popular platform for his own ambitions, but they achieved the very opposite effect. His stiff public manner, his manifest inability to connect with an audience – already in evidence in his failure to sell his reforms to the populace – further cemented his image as being disconnected and withdrawn. It would come to haunt him at critical points in his career..If Wickremesinghe lacked the gifts of a natural politician, he was amply blessed in social and political pedigree. Born in Colombo in 1949, he was a nephew of J R Jayewardene and the grandson of D R Wijewardene, the country’s pioneering press baron. His father, Esmond Wickremesinghe, was a prominent UNP leader and the chairman of the Lake House publications until they were nationalised by an SLFP government in 1973. By then Wickremesinghe had passed through Royal College, one of the country’s most distinguished schools, and then the University of Ceylon, where he studied law and became involved with the UNP’s youth wing..Wickremesinghe got his most important break under Jayewardene’s successor, Ranasinghe Premadasa. Premadasa appointed Wickremesinghe as the leader of the house in 1989, soon after he took over the presidency, bypassing Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake. Athulathmudali and Dissanayake had been Premadasa’s competitors for the UNP leadership. He did not trust them and felt they would try to undermine his leadership at the first opportunity. Wickremesinghe, by contrast, was younger and thus not a threat. .A joint attempt in 1991 by Dissanayake, Athulathmudali and the opposition to impeach Premadasa proved his instincts correct. When Sirisena Cooray, Premadasa’s long-standing companion and UNP general secretary, organised a round of top-secret meetings between the UNP and the rebels, Wickremesinghe was asked to join – a sign of the trust Premadasa reposed in him. The talks failed, as did the impeachment, and Athulathmudali and Dissanayake were expelled from the UNP. Wickremesinghe became, by default, a frontline leader of the UNP..Wickremesinghe remained steadfastly loyal to Premadasa before, during and after the impeachment attempt, defending the president within and outside parliament. And, over the years, he built up a reputation for understated competence. He did not dazzle, but did the job he was given without making unwanted waves. .If Wickremesinghe had leadership ambitions, he did not wear them on his sleeve. Instead, he built a close relationship with important Premadasa loyalists – especially Cooray. By inches, he cemented an image of himself, based largely on fact, as a true party-man, a loyal UNP-er who never let the side or the leader down..The seeds of Wickremesinghe’s reputation as a protector of the minorities were also sown during this time. In July 1983, Sri Lanka’s ethnic tensions erupted in a barbaric anti-Tamil pogrom. Militancy escalated in the North and East, and the Sri Lankan state entered a decades-long war against Tamil separatist groups. Premadasa took office while the LTTE was locked in a brutal war with the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), which had come to Sri Lanka, at Jayewardene’s invitation, to monitor the implementation of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka Accord. Premadasa invited the LTTE for talks, much to India’s chagrin, and the Tigers accepted. In 1989, he publicly asked the IPKF to leave. The move was aimed at neutralising the JVP, which had cast its second insurgency as a national liberation struggle against occupying Indian forces. .In mid-1990, the peace talks with the LTTE collapsed and the war resumed. Yet Premadasa kept the door open for negotiations and said so. He also became a proponent of the 13th Amendment, which addressed Tamil demands for self-government to a degree via the devolution of some government powers to provincial councils. He also publicly accepted the need to go beyond the 13th Amendment, encapsulating a possible solution as “Ellam not Eelam” – Everything except Eelam, or a separate Tamil nation-state. Wickremesinghe defended these positions, in sharp contrast to the opposition SLFP, which refused to acknowledge the existence of the ethnic problem. .On 1 May 1993, Premadasa was killed by an LTTE suicide bomber. D B Wijetunga, Premadasa’s hand-picked prime minister, became the acting president and was soon confirmed by parliament. Wijetunga, at the request of Sirisena Cooray, appointed Wickremesinghe as prime minister. Wickremesinghe was also generally credited with the smooth transfer of power following the assassination, thereby gaining a reputation for a cool head in a crisis and a thorough grounding in constitutional nitty-gritty..Later that year, Wijetunga brought Gamini Dissanayake back into the UNP fold. Dissanayake made no secret about his leadership ambitions. Cooray responded with a highly symbolic gesture; he presented Wickremesinghe with Premadasa’s Colombo-Central constituency – which Premadasa had called his “other child” and had handed over to Cooray when he became president. A tussle for eventual party leadership was in the making, with Wickremesinghe pitted against Dissanayake..In 1994, Wijetunga called a sudden parliamentary election, taking even his own cabinet by surprise. The gambit did not work out well for him or the UNP. The party was roundly beaten by the People’s Alliance (PA), led by Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga of the SLFP. Dissanayake tried to form a minority government with the backing of smaller parties and possible crossovers, with himself as prime minister. Wickremesinghe forestalled him by resigning from his post as acting prime minister and leaving Temple Trees in a highly publicised and choreographed move – a harbinger of much more UNP infighting to come. Kumaratunga formed the government and took the prime minister’s seat. After 17 long and turbulent years in government, the UNP was back in the opposition..The Wickremesinghe who went into the opposition in 1994 was a very different animal from the Wickremesinghe who entered the government in 1977, his transformation closely linked to the changes in his party. The UNP had begun its 17-year rule by slashing subsidies and ending a decade-old system that gave every family – rich or poor – two pounds of rice per month for free. It ended its time in office as the party which introduced the country’s first dedicated poverty-alleviation programme, built houses for the poor, gave all university students from economically disadvantaged families a monthly scholarship, and arranged for all school students to get free textbooks, uniforms and a mid-day meal..The party presided over a mass sacking of workers to crush a general strike in July 1980, the burning of the Jaffna Library, an openly fraudulent referendum which postponed parliamentary elections by six years, the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom, the start of the civil war, the LTTE’s fight with the IPKF, the unjust proscription of the JVP, the bloody second JVP insurgency and its equally bloody suppression. It also made the state less Sinhala Buddhist-centric by re-enfranchising Malaiyaha Tamils, and by braving armed pressure from the JVP and unarmed pressure from the SLFP to pass the 13th Amendment – which, besides devolving a degree of power to the provinces, also introduced linguistic parity by making Tamil a national language on par with Sinhala..Wickremesinghe was not directly responsible for any of these momentous events or changes. But he was now a legatee of them all. .In the intra-party contest for the position of opposition leader, amid more infighting, Wickremesinghe lost to Dissanayake by two votes. When a presidential election was called soon afterwards, Dissanayake became the UNP’s candidate. Wickremesinghe, it seemed, was in danger of being put out to pasture. But then the LTTE intervened, again, in deciding Sri Lanka’s trajectory. .By this time, the SLFP under Kumaratunga had finally acknowledged the ethnic problem, and her government had begun its own attempt at negotiating with the LTTE. That did not stop a female suicide bomber from assassinating Dissanayake as he addressed an election meeting in Colombo. Hoping to benefit from a wave of national sympathy, the UNP nominated Dissanayake’s widow as its presidential candidate in his stead. That calculation turned out to be way off the mark. Kumaratunga won the presidency by a massive margin and became the country’s first non-UNP president. Wickremesinghe became the leader of the UNP – a position he continues to occupy three decades on. .[3].SOON AFTER TAKING over the UNP, Wickremesinghe gave himself the title “The Leader”. With hindsight, it is easy to see the link between this self-aggrandisement and his subsequent conduct, from annihilating inner-party democracy to clinging to leadership despite serial electoral debacles. .Over the years, Wickremesinghe changed the party constitution to make it literally impossible to effect leadership changes, marginalised potential challengers, promoted seemingly untalented loyalists, backstabbed allies, and installed a private-sector executive with zero political experience as party general secretary at a critical moment. Critics accused him of autocratic conduct and of trying to run the party along the lines of a business. When a committee appointed by him, the eponymous Panditharatne Commission, concluded in 2004 that sixty percent of party members were disillusioned by his leadership, Wickremesinghe swept its report and recommendations under the carpet..He contested the presidency twice, in 1999 and in 2005. Both times, the war and the ethnic problem occupied centre stage. On both occasions, the LTTE intervened decisively, contributing to Wickremesinghe’s defeat – in 1999, incidentally; in 2005, intentionally. .Kumaratunga’s peace efforts collapsed in 1995 and the war resumed. In 1996, she proposed a package of reforms that included the abolition of the executive presidency and extensive devolution of power to the provinces. The proposal, known popularly as the Package, would have transformed Sri Lanka into a federal state from a unitary one. It envisaged turning the existing provinces into autonomous regions and redefining the country as a Union of Regions. It also proposed setting up an unelected Supreme Council representing the interests of the Buddhist clergy, and making it mandatory for the government to consult it on a range of unspecified issues – probably as compensation to the Sinhala Buddhist lobby. .Wickremesinghe’s UNP continued to support a negotiated end to the war and a political solution to the ethnic problem. It refused to resort to racism to attack the government. Yet the party – and Wickremesinghe as its leader – was also instrumental in defeating the most generous power-sharing deal offered to the Tamils by any Colombo government. .Jayewardene had promised that an empowered executive presidency would bring about political and economic stability. But the years since had witnessed unprecedented political turmoil and economic turbulence. He, and everyone else, regarded the executive presidency as a de facto monarchy. It bred autocratic leaders, and around them coteries of yes-men and yes-women. Gota – and his family and hangers-on – were able to bankrupt Sri Lanka with such ease and speed because of the presidency’s massive powers and the megalomania it generated. .Kumaratunga had been elected president promising to abolish the executive presidency within one year. She presented the Package as a fulfilment of that promise. Yet her reforms also contained a measure that would have enabled her to continue her political life – the sitting president be allowed to function as the first executive prime minister for the remainder of her term with no election. The UNP and Wickremesinghe used this as an excuse to justify their opposition to the Package..The Package was rejected by the LTTE as inadequate and by Sinhala Buddhist hardliners as giving too much to the Tamils. When Kumaratunga presented her reform bill in parliament, UNP members acted disruptively, some even setting fire to the document while Wickremesinghe looked on. Had the LTTE been responsive, and had the UNP and the government worked together, The Package might have cleared the twin hurdles of a two-thirds majority in parliament and a simple majority at a referendum, as required for major constitutional amendments. The deal died for the absence of any takers..By the time the 1999 presidential election was called, the war had been raging again for six years, the economic situation was dire, and Kumaratunga’s magic had faded. Wickremesinghe, meanwhile, had reversed roles: after earlier undermining the Package’s proposed settlement with the Tamils, he now presented himself as the candidate of peace. In his manifesto, ‘My Pact with the People’, he promised to sign a peace deal with the LTTE and come up with a negotiated end to the war. Many Sri Lankans were tired of the war and burdened by economic distress. Wickremesinghe had a fighting chance of winning the presidency..Then, again, the LTTE struck. A suicide bomber tried to assassinate Kumaratunga at her final election rally in Colombo. The president survived the attack but lost an eye. A wave of public sympathy propelled her to victory two days later with 51 percent of the vote. .The wave of sympathy was short-lived, and Kumaratunga’s PA failed to win a majority in the 2000 parliamentary election, forcing her to form a minority government. The war continued to go badly for the government. In July 2001, the LTTE attacked the country’s only international airport, damaging or destroying 26 aircraft. Trust in the government tanked, tourism evaporated and the economy crashed, recording negative growth for the first time since the country’s independence. The government lost its razor-thin majority after a group of legislators defected to the UNP, prompting another parliamentary election in late 2001..The UNP’s popular support had not increased much, but the PA’s battered state enabled it to win a plurality of seats in parliament. Wickremesinghe formed a government in alliance with minority parties and became prime minister for a second time..The new government and the LTTE signed a ceasefire agreement two months later. Six rounds of peace talks followed. The LTTE was allowed to run a parallel administration in the areas under its control, in the North and East. It set up its own police force and courts, and simultaneously assassinated many of its opponents and critics in the Tamil community. Wickremesinghe, meanwhile, crisscrossed the world building international support – and a safety net – for his peace effort. He seemed to believe that having de facto control over the North and East, combined with international pressure (and largesse), would prevent the LTTE from breaking off negotiations and reigniting the war, as it had done twice previously. It was a miscalculation. .The LTTE was finding the peace process politically unaffordable. Unknown to the public, a schism was developing within the organisation. Its head, Velupillai Prabhakaran, feared – probably correctly – that key LTTE leaders were vulnerable to the lure of peace and willing to entertain a compromise that fell well short of the creation of an independent Tamil nation-state. In 2003, the LTTE withdrew from the talks. .The peace Wickremesinghe had pushed for collapsed, leaving him vulnerable. Kumaratunga, as president, had given him a free hand to appoint his cabinet and implement his agenda, even conceding the defence ministry to his nominee. But relations between them were frosty at best. Now she moved against him, taking over three ministries – including media and defence – while he was on an official visit to the United States..When Wickremesinghe returned, he was greeted at the airport by tens of thousands of UNP supporters who wanted to march on the president’s house. He refused to mount a direct challenge to her and asked them to return to their homes. Perhaps Wickremesinghe, the constitutionalist, baulked at mounting an extra-constitutional challenge to Kumaratunga since she had acted very much within the bounds of the constitution. He could also have been concerned about the violence that would have resulted from a march on the president’s residence. In 2001, police had opened fire on a peaceful UNP protest against the rising cost of living, killing two party activists. Wickremesinghe may not have wanted to risk a repetition. .Within a year, Kumaratunga dismissed Wickremesinghe’s government and dissolved parliament. The UNP lost a fresh election to a revamped Kumaratunga-led alliance, and Wickremesinghe returned to the now-familiar post of leader of the opposition..Wickremesinghe had become prime minister in late 2001 in a country with a contracting economy. During his brief tenure, he effected a turnaround. The economy recorded positive growth in 2002 and 2003, a progress enabled mostly by the absence of war. The ceasefire was initially popular in the Sinhala-dominated South, but as the LTTE violated it in increasingly blatant ways the sentiment of fear and distrust returned. This, and the Wickremesinghe administration’s unwillingness to institute new welfare measures to ease economic distress, contributed to his fall..As her new prime minister, Kumaratunga was compelled to appoint the leader of the opposition during Wickremesinghe’s tenure, Mahinda Rajapaksa. Her first choice for the post had been Lakshman Kadirgamar, the former foreign minister. But Mahinda had forced her hand, in typical style, by bringing busloads of supporters to Colombo for a public showdown. In 2005, when Wickremesinghe again contested the president’s post, it was Mahinda who stood as his opponent..WICKREMESINGHE AND MAHINDA were at this point friendly rivals – and, in significant ways, a study in contrasts. Both hailed from prominent political families but each occupied opposing political and ideological spaces. Mahinda had been a lifelong SLFP-er – his father was a founding member of the party. A rousing orator who revelled in his machismo, Mahinda had a penchant for grassroots politics, quite unlike the awkward Wickremesinghe. He was at home in a temple or a paddy field, and knew how to speak to the fears and desires of the Sinhala Buddhist masses. In pursuit of the presidency, he formed a Sinhala nationalist alliance with the Jathika Hela Urumaya, a hardline Sinhala Buddhist party, as well as the JVP, whose supposed fidelity to Marxism was no bar to its ethno-nationalism..After the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987, both the UNP and the SLFP had gradually adopted a pro-devolution stand. By the mid-2000s, both parties had come around to accepting federalism. Mahinda’s new alliance, however, moved away from this consensus, downplaying devolution and affirming fidelity to the unitary state..Given this, Wickremesinghe had every reason to think that most Tamils would vote for him. But the LTTE thwarted his ambitions by imposing an election boycott on all Tamil voters. Even Tamils in Colombo, far from the areas under LTTE control, obeyed. In a country with over two million Tamils, Wickremesinghe lost the presidency to Mahinda by just 180,000 votes. Many speculated that Mahinda and the LTTE had an understanding because the rebels preferred a clear enemy in Colombo rather than someone Tamils could regard as sympathetic..Mahinda’s victory marked an inflection point. He did not abrogate the ceasefire agreement he had inherited, and even engaged in a round of negotiations with the LTTE. At the same time, he allowed the Sri Lankan military a freer rein. In December 2005, for instance, the navy retaliated to an LTTE bombing by attacking a residential area in the northern town of Mannar. In 2006, the JVP, then in Mahinda’s alliance, filed a case in the Supreme Court seeking the abolition of an earlier merger of the Tamil-dominated North and East, effected in 1987. Fighting escalated and the ceasefire collapsed. Mahinda and Gota – by then appointed the secretary to the ministry of defence – followed the LTTE’s example by opting for a strategy of total war..The fighting finally ended in 2009 with mass civilian deaths and the extermination of the LTTE. Thousands of Tamil survivors were incarcerated in prison camps. The Rajapaksas intended this to be a permanent arrangement and dismantled them only due to strong international pressure. The victory, and the refusal to make any political concessions to the Tamils, turned the two brothers into Sinhala national heroes. .The Rajapaksas’ drive to stamp out dissent and centralise power in their own hands began while the war was still raging. Part of the process was a wave of murders, abductions and disappearances. After the end of the war, the 18th Amendment removed presidential term limits and the few remaining checks on the president’s power. Rajapaksa family members hogged key ministries and state institutions. Allegations of corruption mushroomed, defence expenditure soared, and the militarisation of civilian spaces accelerated. Tamil areas were placed under de facto military rule and a new campaign commenced to demonise another minority, the Muslims. An international borrowing spree and high indirect taxes financed prestige infrastructure projects with little economic viability. The Rajapaksa model, which would culminate in Sri Lanka’s bankruptcy and the Aragalaya, was born..Over nine years of Rajapaksa rule, Wickremesinghe remained on the back foot. He was nominally the leader of the opposition but spent more time and effort combatting dissenters within the UNP rather than the government. His focus was on retaining party leadership, not gaining the presidency. In 2010, he willingly conceded the presidential candidacy of a united opposition to Sarath Fonseka, the war-winning army commander, knowing well that Mahinda was bound to win that year’s presidential election. A Wikileaks cable reported Gota praising Wickremesinghe as a “very reasonable, a professional politician.” According to the same cable, Gota told Wickremesinghe, “You should have been the candidate; you would have got more votes.”.Wickremesinghe defeated a couple of challenges to his leadership, reportedly with some Rajapaksa help. In 2011, for instance, a UNP faction backing Sajith Premadasa planned to hold a satyagraha outside the party’s headquarters to demand an open leadership contest. On the day, the road leading to the headquarters was closed by the police to facilitate urgent repair work by the ministry of highways. The brewing rebellion collapsed..BY 2014, Wickremesinghe had been the leader of the UNP for 20 years but had recorded just one victory in a parliamentary election, in 2001, and one in local government elections, in 2002. It was a lacklustre record by any standard. By this time, the slogan “Ranil Can’t” had gained currency even within Wickremesinghe’s own party. .So when Mahinda called an early presidential election, and electoral trends hinted at his possible defeat, fielding Wickremesinghe as a common opposition candidate was not even considered. Maithripala Sirisena, the general secretary of the SLFP and a key minister in Mahinda’s cabinet, was picked for the role after he agreed to defect from the government during secret negotiations. Wickremesinghe went along on the understanding that he would be made the prime minister in a future Sirisena government..With economic distress, anti-incumbency, minority voters and corruption allegations all acting against the Rajapaksas, Sirisena convincingly won the 2015 presidential election. But it was far from certain whether the Rajapaksas would honour the electorate’s decision or try to cling to power via extra-constitutional means. According to media reports, when he realised the election was lost, Mahinda summoned the commanders of the armed forces, the Inspector General of Police and the attorney general to check with them about the possibility of overturning the results, and was advised not to by all of them. .In the end, Mahinda accepted the verdict and stood down, and Wickremesinghe was pivotal in ensuring that outcome. In the early hours of 9 January, he visited Mahinda and reportedly brokered a smooth transition. Mahinda, according to accounts at the time, was worried that he and his relatives would face harassment and arrest by the Sirisena government, or have their security removed. Wickremesinghe delivered assurances of security and protection, and the deal was done. .He was the right man for such a delicate job with so much riding on it: violence was a certainty if Mahinda refused to accept the election result and leave. Wickremesinghe had excellent relations with most of the country’s political leadership, ranging from the Rajapaksas and ex-president Kumaratunga to the JVP..Sirisena appointed Wickremesinghe as his prime minister and the latter was sworn in for the third time. Wickremesinghe retained the post after the UNP won a plurality at the parliamentary election that soon followed. He performed exceptionally well at the polls, with a personal preference vote of over 500,000 – a record at the time. The Rajapaksas, having failed to regain control of the SLFP following Mahinda’s defeat, founded their own party, the SLPP, in 2016. .The new administration christened itself the Yahapalanaya, or “Good Governance”, government. Its inaugural budget brought in a slew of popular measures. Indirect taxes were slashed, bringing prices down, while direct taxes were increased. Public-sector employees were given a pay hike and their peers in the private sector asked to follow suit. Sirisena and Wickremesinghe also shepherded through the 19th Amendment, which reduced the powers of the presidency and re-imposed term limits on the office. For a brief while, it looked as if the new government might live up to its chosen name..It did not take long for the public mood to sour and for Wickremesinghe’s star to crash back down to earth. The Yahapalanaya government appointed a new Central Bank governor – Arjuna Mahendran, Wickeremesinghe’s pick and known friend. The bank then held a bond auction where a large portion of the bonds went to a company linked to Mahendran’s son-in-law with suspiciously high interest rates. When the scandal broke, much of the outrage attached to the prime minister, and delays in investigating the matter were blamed on his interference. Until then, Wickremesinghe had not been saddled with any significant allegations of corruption. Now he became synonymous with what was remembered as the Bond Scam..Other unpopular measures, such as handing a deepwater port in Hambantota over to China on a 99-year lease, were also blamed on him. The port had actually been Mahinda’s pet project, built in his home district at enormous cost and against much advice as part of his debt-fuelled infrastructure push. The government defended the deal as a way to bring in some much-needed cash as Sri Lanka struggled to pay its soaring foreign debts – including massive sums due to China, which had been glad to bankroll Mahinda’s spree..Contrary to persistent allegations, Sri Lanka did not take on unprecedented debt during the Yahapalanaya years. That administration proved to be a more responsible economic steward than the Rajapaksas. The country’s total debt stock did rise sharply on its watch, but almost 90 percent of that was down to servicing loans taken out prior to 2015..At local government elections in 2018, the UNP was trounced. Wickremesinghe was rightly held responsible and the discontent with his leadership of the party reached new heights. He suffered more damage with his handling of anti-Muslim riots that same year. The trouble began in the town of Teldeniya, in the centre of the country, where Sinhala Buddhist mobs went on a rampage. It soon spread through the surrounding district of Kandy. As things escalated, Wickremesinghe appeared inexcusably silent. By the time the government finally restored order, after a week of unrest, Wickremesinghe’s twin images as crisis-manager and minority-protector were in tatters..Then, in October 2018, came the 52-day coup mounted by Sirisena in alliance with Rajapaksa. Sirisena dismissed Wickremesinghe as prime minister and appointed Mahinda to the position. When it became clear that Mahinda lacked a parliamentary majority, Sirisena dissolved the parliament. .Uncharacteristically, Wickremesinghe stood firm. He would not concede the premiership or accept the dissolution of parliament. In a symbolic move, he refused to vacate Temple Trees and opened the hallowed mansion’s doors to UNP members. He led the battle against Sirisena and Rajapaksa both within and outside parliament – building alliances with other opposition parties, reaching out to civil society groups and mobilising party activists. In a career deficient of inspiring moments, it was perhaps his finest hour. .The reason for his activism was perhaps not hard to comprehend. Wickremesinghe was fighting to save his own seat, of course, but there was also the fact that Sirisena’s actions were unconstitutional. Wickremesinghe, the constitutionalist, was fighting for and within the constitution. The Supreme Court eventually confirmed that Sirisena had exceeded his authority and Wickremesinghe got to keep his post. Once the battle was won, Wickremesinghe as prime minister returned to his uninspiring ways..There was one last test. In April 2019, on Easter Sunday, a local Islamist group carried out coordinated bombings at three churches and three luxury hotels. Sirisena was caught out of the country and out of his depth. The state apparatus was left headless, with no one taking charge, and there was real fear of reprisals against Muslims. Wickremesinghe stepped into the breach, rallying the police and military to apprehend the surviving conspirators and maintain civil peace..But, once again, his charmlessness betrayed him. The media and public chose to focus on his supposedly unsympathetic manner during a visit to one of the bombed churches. Instead of winning praise for his leadership after the attacks, he was blamed for not stopping them – even though Sirisena had cut him out of the loop on security matters and did not allow him to attend the National Security Council after October 2018..Wickremesinghe intended to contest the 2019 presidential election. But, under pressure even within his own party, he had to concede the candidacy to Sajith Premadasa. Gota contested as the SLPP candidate since the 19th Amendment had reintroduced term limits, disqualifying Mahinda. His campaign was based on anti-Muslim hysteria, and he swept to victory on an unprecedented wave of Sinhala support. .In early 2020, when Premdasa decided to go his own way, Wickremesinghe failed to stop a split in the UNP or prevent the party’s voters from moving en masse to Premdasa’s new SJB. Even after his party – and he himself – suffered humiliation in the next parliamentary election, Wickremesinghe held tight to the party leadership. No attempt was made to build up a new generation of activists and leaders, to revive the once-grand party now reduced to a solitary legislative seat. In political terms, Wickremesinghe sank into near non-existence. It was the nadir of his career..In an interview with a local channel in 2021, he was asked whether he spent his nights plotting a comeback. “I’m watching Netflix at night,” was his prompt reply. That seemed to be the final word. Except that it wasn’t..[4].IN OCTOBER 2006, amid much fanfare, Mahinda as president and Wickremesinghe as the leader of the opposition signed a Memorandum of Understanding. The agreement was to last for two years and was aimed at implementing a Common National Agenda: a political solution to the ongoing conflict in the North and East, a reformed electoral system, good governance and social development. “This agreement today is to achieve peace and a political solution,” Wickremesinghe announced; “We have placed the country first,” Rajapaksa stated. The agreement collapsed just four months later, with mutual acrimony, when a group of UNP parliamentarians crossed over to the government. .The agreement was signed when both men were facing rebellions in their own parties and needed political breathing space to beat back their internal challengers. The Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe alliance of 2022 was not too dissimilar. The Rajapaksas had a world to lose, and Wickremesinghe a world to gain. The Rajapaksas needed protection from an enraged public; Wickremesinghe needed an escape from irrelevance. Each was a lifeline to the other. The Rajapaksas gave Wickremesinghe the presidency he had worked towards for most of his political life. He ensured their safety from the public and the law and reopened the political space for them..In the early, idealistic days of the Aragalaya, three young people, two of them women, walked the roughly 125 kilometres from Kandy to the main protest encampment in Colombo in an act of solidarity. As one of the female marchers told the media, “We managed not because of the strength of our bodies but because of the strength of our minds. We don’t have a personal problem with the government. We are not asking anything from the government either ... We are saying leave us a country where we can live in freedom and manage with the income we earn through our work.” Wickremesinghe’s survival, first as prime minister and then as president, depended on giving the people this. .While Wickremesinghe was trying to consolidate his position by laying the groundwork for ending fuel and gas queues, the Rajapaksas were plotting a comeback. When Mahinda resigned as prime minister on 9 May, the cabinet was automatically dissolved. It was reappointed after Wickremesinghe became prime minister, sans the four Rajapaksas it had earlier contained – Mahinda, Basil, Chamal and Namal. Wickremesinghe himself took over the finance ministry from Basil, which was vital for the economic tasks he had set himself..In June, Basil also stepped down from his parliamentary seat and asked Gota as president to appoint an SLPP member to be prime minister. Within days, the billionaire businessman and long-time Rajapaksa supporter Dhammika Perera paid his back taxes and joined the Rajapaksas’ party. He was soon appointed to Basil’s vacated seat. Two days after that, Perera was presented with a specially crafted mega ministry with seven key institutions, including the Board of Investment, the Colombo Port City Economic Commission, and the department of immigration and emigration. On 6 July, he called a press conference to read out a statement titled ‘Sri Lanka’s finance minister’s plan for disaster’, and demanded that Wickremesinghe resign as finance minister. On 7 July, Gota presented Perera with three more institutions. The replacement of Wickremesinghe with Perera, first as finance minister, then as prime minister seemed imminent. .As the Rajapaksas scrabbled to keep power, the national condition nose-dived. Spontaneous popular resistance had flagged after 11 May, due to fatigue and a desperate willingness to give Wickremesinghe a chance to perform. As queues lengthened and the Rajapaksas refused to even acknowledge the public’s distress, resistance picked up again. .On 5 July, as the Rajapaksas were finalising their plan to replace Wickremesinghe with Perera, a 60-year-old man died in a petrol queue in Colombo – the 14th such death. On the same day, Aragalaya activists gave Gota an ultimatum: leave by 9 July. The Rajapaksas, busy with their power play, did not take the ultimatum seriously. Exactly on deadline, more than a million Sri Lankans descended on Colombo and turned the slogan “Gota Go Home” into reality. .Sobered, the Rajapaksas saved themselves by helping Wickremesinghe win the presidency. His brutal suppression of the remaining stump of the Aragalaya and the public’s return to a wait-and-see state enabled them to resume their political machinations. Sanath Nishantha, a minister of state and close Rajapaksa associate, told an interviewer in December that Wickremesinghe was a tool to be used against the Aragalaya. Basil gave a hint of the comeback plan that same month when he told a local newspaper that Mahinda should be made the prime minister again. He also told a television channel, “If people were patient a little more, the economic crisis would have been resolved.” .Wickremesinghe’s own countermoves began with the 21st Amendment. One of its primary aims was to keep Basil – who is also a US citizen – out of parliament by reintroducing a bar on anyone with dual citizenship contesting elections. When the Rajapaksas rejected the proposed amendment, Wickremesinghe outsmarted them by winning the opposition’s backing for it and using that support to break the Rajapaksas’ stranglehold on their party. He marshalled a groundswell of support for the amendment among SLPP parliamentarians, and the Rajapaksas, unable to contain it, gave in. It was an omen of things to come..More often, Wickremesinghe undermined the Rajapaksas with inaction rather than action. By not appointing Mahinda as prime minister after moving into the president’s chair, and not expanding the cabinet as the Rajapaksas wished, he reduced the family’s capacity to play patronage politics. The Rajapaksas had built their political empire precisely by rewarding loyalty with perks, positions and impunity. Wickremesinghe denied them this capacity without ever saying an outright no..As became clear with hindsight, Wickremesinghe’s strategy was to use the presidency not to rebuild the UNP but to marginalise the Rajapaksas via incremental weakening and by grabbing a large chunk of the SLPP. Borrowing a page from the Rajapaksas, he now played patronage politics with SLPP members himself. He groomed a set of younger SLPP parliamentarians – including Kanchana Wijesekera, Shehan Semasinghe and Premitha Bandara Tennakoon – giving them the opportunity to work and make names for themselves. He also tacitly encouraged a group of SLPP members to distance themselves from the Rajapaksas and function as an independent body backing him..The results of his behind-the-scenes work came into the open in July 2024, when the Rajapaksas refused to back his presidential candidacy. An absolute majority of SLPP parliamentarians abandoned their former patrons and threw their support behind Wickremesinghe. The haemorrhaging spread from the national to the provincial and local levels, leaving the Rajapaksas with only a rump in their own party..According to all pre-election polls, Namal, as the SLPP’s candidate for the 2024 presidential contest, occupies the fourth position of preference, well behind the JVP’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the SJB’s Sajith Premadasa and Wickremesinghe himself. It is an unimaginable comedown for the once-mighty Rajapaksas. .Support Himal's independent journalism on Sri Lanka. Become a patron today!.WICKREMESINGHE’S EFFORTS to also win over a segment of the SJB were less persistent and less successful. The SJB and the JVP could not get over their chagrin at letting Wickremesinghe steal a march on them by seizing, and making good use of, the chance to govern that they turned down. It did not help that, at that key moment, both parties failed to put forward a cogent programme of recovery or even a single convincing proposal to relieve the economic emergency. In mid-2022, a top JVP leader stated that a government helmed by his party would resolve the fuel crisis using dollars sent to Sri Lanka by comrades living abroad. The SJB’s Premadasa could not come up with any better measure to ease the crippling shortages than to request fuel shipments on loan from a friendly Arab power..Wickremesinghe asked for cooperation but was unwilling to make concessions of his own. There was also his administration’s witch-hunt of Aragalaya activists – fuelled in part, it would seem, by his enduring bitterness over the burning of his home – which fed the idea of him as a Rajapaksa stooge. This made any détente between him and the SJB impossible. .But the “Ranil Rajapaksa” label is a misleading one, like so many other labels attached to Wickremesinghe over the years. His supposed liberalism runs counter to the Online Safety Act he pushed through as president, which gives the government sweeping controls over online expression and is a ready weapon to suppress dissent. He also tried, but failed, to pass the extremely repressive Anti-Terrorism Act. After getting the 21st Amendment through with great difficulty during his first half-year as president, Wickremesinghe has spent the rest of his tenure trying to regain some of the powers he gave up by trying to undermine the independent commissions the amendment enabled. .The notion of him as an economic neo-liberal is equally – if not more – misleading. He supports privatisation and has tried to sell state enterprises such as Sri Lankan Airlines and the telecom provider SLTMobitel, as well as to and part-privatise the Ceylon Electricity Board. But he also backs progressive direct taxation. Sri Lanka’s proportion between direct and indirect taxes has changed under his presidency from 20:80 to 30:70. If elected, he has pledged to introduce a wealth tax and an inheritance tax. .He has also launched his own version of land reform by giving ownership rights to farmers working on government land. Tens of thousands of families have benefited so far, including in the North and East. This was followed by another programme giving ownership rights to low-income families living in government-built housing complexes. At a gathering in November 2023 to present deeds to some beneficiary families, Wickremesinghe questioned the logic of giving freehold land to the Shangri-La Hotel while denying the same right to farmers who have cultivated their plots for generations. .Wickremesinghe is equally hard to pin down when it comes to foreign policy. Far from being “pro-China” or “anti-China”, “pro-India” or “anti-India”, he has drawn closer to India while trying hard not to antagonise China, and notably struck a debt-restructuring deal that kept creditors from both countries on board. Wickremesinghe is close to the West, which the Rajapaksas antagonised, but did not hesitate to invite the president of Iran to inaugurate an Iranian-funded irrigation scheme. He supports Palestine openly and unstintingly – the head of the UNRWA, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees, has thanked Wickremesinghe for a relief fund he set up to help Gaza amid Israel’s ongoing destruction of the territory. Yet his government continues to send Sri Lankans to work in Israel..Wickremesinghe speaks of law and order and the need to promote foreign investment. Yet he did nothing when supporters of a state minister attacked an Omani national who was managing a garment factory. The Omani investor, unsurprisingly, packed up and left. .He is on a collision course with the judiciary, a worrying development which can turn dangerous if by any chance he regains the presidency. The judiciary has become a bulwark against Wickremesinghe’s authoritarian tendencies. Last month, for instance, it ruled his unilateral postponement of local government elections to be unconstitutional and ordered the Election Commission to hold the polls as soon as possible. When two citizens earlier sought judicial intervention to postpone the presidential election by one year – allegedly on Wickremesinghe’s behalf – the Supreme Court struck down the attempt unequivocally..Yet the Supreme Court effectively squashed the Gender Equality Bill, aimed at eliminating discrimination and inequality based on gender and gender identity. Unanimously approved by the Women Parliamentarians’ Caucus, it was challenged by the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress and several well-known racist monks. The bill was progressive, its quashing retrogressive. But those who criticised Wickremesinghe’s intemperate outburst in parliament against the judiciary after the Supreme Court’s verdict had little or nothing to say about the bill itself. It was as if even the cause of ending gender-based discrimination becomes less desirable if it is tainted by the Wickremesinghe touch..On other fronts, Wickremesinghe’s presidency has been damaged by his inability or unwillingness to stand up and fight for the principles he espouses. For instance, he promised to finally implement the 13th Amendment, more than 35 years after it was passed – but gave in to raucous opposition by the Sinhala Buddhist lobby, led by a host of political monks..His refusal to back down over the Kurundi issue was a rare – and inspiring – exception. At stake was control over an ancient site at Kurundi, near Mullaitivu in the North, claimed both by Tamil Hindus and Sinhala Buddhists. Political monks, resorting to a proven tactic of using “Buddhist” archaeological sites to expand Sinhala Buddhist settlements in the North and East, tried to frame the issue as a battle against Tamil expansionism and separatism. Wickremesinghe intervened. He faulted the director general of the department of archaeology for allowing powerful monks to influence his decisions, and refused to back down when challenged by monk-led protesters. Then he effected a compromise by granting land for the construction of both a Buddhist temple and a Hindu kovil near the contested site. Here was a glimpse of what his presidency could have achieved if, instead of subsuming principles to power, he had stood up for his beliefs more often..Wickremesinghe’s most consequential failure was in the realm of economics, where he did not fairly distribute the costs and benefits of the country’s recovery. He stalled the economy’s free fall, ended queues and gave weary Sri Lankans a degree of normalcy and stability. But normalcy and stability did not work for all Sri Lankans the same way. Wickremesinghe did not move with enough speed or originality to address the economic suffering of the bottom 60 percent of the populace..In a sign of recovery, the economy began to record positive growth again in the third quarter of 2023 and the upward trend continued into 2024. But activity in many vital areas – such as education, health and social welfare – has been contracting. An ambitious poverty-alleviation programme, Aswesuma, was introduced last year, yet poverty has continued to rise. Currently, around a quarter of Sri Lankans live below the poverty line, and more than half are classed as multi-dimensionally vulnerable. “Households have adopted risky coping strategies to deal with lower incomes and price pressures, including using savings, taking on more debt, and limiting their diets,” the World Bank warned in April 2024. “Food insecurity rose during the second half of 2023, with 24% of households being food insecure.” An IMF-dictated removal of VAT exemptions at the beginning of the year – including on books – likely hurt living standards still further, and perhaps added to already high poverty levels..Wickremesinghe began to rectify the issue only in mid-2024, once attempts to get the presidential election postponed via a supposed constitutional loophole had failed. Utility rates and fuel prices were decreased, subsidies were provided to several key sectors, and promises were made of public-sector salary increases. In opinion polls, his earlier sinking popularity began to rise in tandem: where just nine percent of respondents in February said they would vote for Wickremesinghe, by July that figure was up to more than 20 percent..A survey from a leading Sri Lankan think tank, following interviews conducted in July, showed that the public has a far more nuanced and incisive assessment of Wickremesinghe than his political opponents do. More than 40 percent of respondents said that, though the economic crisis continues, the country is making serious progress. Wickremesinghe was the more favoured candidate among all the presidential contenders when it came to finding alternate approaches to economic recovery, upholding democratic rights, addressing unemployment, maintaining law and order, negotiating a better deal with the IMF, and resolving the economic crisis. He was also the candidate that most Sri Lankans – almost a quarter of them – thought can address the current needs of their families. .This evident confidence might not translate into hard votes – especially since more than 75 percent of Sri Lankans say their personal economic condition has gotten worse in the last year. Still, many seem to be willing to credit Wickremesinghe for getting them safely over at least the most perilous parts of the rotten bridge. .The valley should belong to those who water it, says the last line of The Caucasian Chalk Circle. By that point Grusha, after many travails, has been granted custody of the child she saved, overriding the claims of its biological mother. Therein the moral: the work of care can override brute habits of ownership. .“We don’t mind Ranil or Basil or whoever,” a man in a queue for cooking gas told a television crew in May 2022, during the worst of the economic crisis. “We want solutions to our people.” Wickremesinghe found solutions to the most immediate of those problems by ending the shortages that made day-to-day life impossible. And while he has often displayed authoritarian tendencies as president, he prevented direct military intervention in 2022 and has defanged the Rajapaksas – for the moment, at least..A week in politics is a long time, the one-time British prime minister Harold Wilson is believed to have said. In Sri Lanka, it can be aeons long, especially in an election season. Over the last weeks, with the election imminent, Wickremesinghe has abandoned his fiscal prudence and economic responsibility by granting a set of giveaways to the electorate, from public-sector salary increases to the slashing of farmer loans. If implemented, they would destroy the economic turnaround he enabled in the last two years, pushing the country into a worse financial crisis. If he is elected and takes the giveaways back, massive protests could ensue, followed by brutal repression. Having saved the economy from the Rajapaksa-generated freefall, he seems willing to plunge it into the abyss again, just to win a second term. .Wickremesinghe is no saviour in the classical Sri Lankan sense: he is no Sinhala Buddhist supremacist, no ethno-populist. But he has saved much. The electorate is unlikely to acknowledge it on 21 September. But posterity, and history, might – especially if the new saviour that wins the presidential vote, like all previous saviours, fails to deliver the promised paradise.