Two months ago Ranil Wickremesinghe had to decide whether or
not to contest the Presidential Election.
In 2010 he had a similar problem.
Back then few would have bet on Mahinda Rajapaksa losing. Ranil let the former Army Commander Sarath
Fonseka take the fall. Wisely. This
time, factoring in regime fatigue and many other negatives people may have
given Ranil an outside chance. In all
likelihood, however, he would have lost.
So he had to take a risk and he took it.
He opted to support someone with a better chance. Maithripala Sirisena.
All that is preamble to what we have today. Maithripala Sirisena is the President. His
first job was to appoint a Cabinet of Ministers. Maithripala at the time was virtually a
prisoner of the UNP since he was a man without a party and had only a few
non-UNP supporters in Parliament, none of whom were exactly political
heavyweights. Champika Ranawaka and Ven Athureliye Rathana Thero of the JHU
were exceptions perhaps but in purely numerical terms in Parliament they did
not amount to much. And so Ranil was
appointed Prime Minister and headed a mostly UNP Cabinet of Ministers.
The inevitable happened, as predicted by Ranawaka: the
entire SLFP declared support for the new President who was also made Chairman
of the party he had left a few months before.
Suddenly the Parliamentary equation changed. Maithripala has the numbers, Ranil does not. All he has is sway over the Cabinet. We still have the J R Jayewardene Constitution. Maithripala, theoretically at least, can do a
Chandrika (remember 2004?) and take absolute control. He probably will not. The theoretical possibility cannot be lost on
the more politically savvy sections of the UNP.
Others may have thought that Ranil executed a brilliant coup to bring
back the UNP to power, but Ranil himself knows how tenuous his hold is.
What are his options?
On the one hand he has to think of his party. A general election in a post-reform situation
will favor the SLFP. Just as Mahinda
Rajapaksa can claim ‘I did what none of my predecessors were able to do, I
defeated the LTTE,’ Maithripala can say ‘I did what none of my predecessors
were able to do, I changed the bahubootha
(multiple-monster)…sorry, ekabootha
(single-monster) Constitution.’ He will
be rewarded.
That being a distinct possibility, he could devote the next
few months to consolidate the gains of the Presidential Election, i.e. use the
ministries run by UNPers to position themselves favorably come election
time. This might require the zealous
pursuit of wrongdoers, many of whom are of course SLFPers who have pledged
support to the President given their reduced circumstances post-election. Even then Ranil could very well end up as the
Leader of the Opposition for the SLFP can support such pursuit and claim share
of clean-up bragging rights. They can
field a fresh set of candidates, for example an only-graduates team. It’s easy to erase blemishes if you really
put your mind to it, in other words.
Things are not looking good for Ranil and the UNP then. Facing a possible return to the Opposition,
Ranil has to postpone any plans he has to capturing power. The issue is how he spends the
‘interim’. In picking Sirisena (Ranil
had the first refusal, let us not forget) he gambled, but gambled on a
consolation prize. He got it. The maximum gain for the party he can hope
for is a good second-place finish in a General Election that cannot be too far
away. The ‘thereafter’ is too blurred to
warrant speculation. It is far better to
contend with the tangibles. And this is
where Ranil can make his mark, less as politician and leader of a party than as
a statesman who in defeat did as much as or more than all the big winners in
the past four decades.
Ranil, regardless of cost to self and party, can put his
full intellectual weight behind the efforts to reform the constitution and
obtain a better, more efficient institutional structure that makes for
transparency and accountability. His
detractors will point to his disastrous pact with the LTTE (the CFA signed on
February 22, 2002) and his complicity in all the atrocities committed during
the tenures of two UNP Presidents and other crimes of omission and commission,
but it is up to Ranil Wickremesinghe to prove that he is not the Ranil
Wickremsinghe of the eighties nor the Ranil Wickremsinghe of 2001-2004, but a
more mature, wiser senior politician who for once puts country before self and
party.
Ranil is eminently positioned to be such a statesman. Indeed, if promised reforms are to become a
reality much will depend on him simply because he, much more than anyone in
either Parliament except perhaps Champika Ranawaka, has the clarity of mind
sorely needed to make sure that a 2015 Constitution for all good intentions
does not end up being another corruption of the notion representative
democracy.
3 comments:
If i'm not mistaken,(Mr?) Anton Balasingham, one instant named this same fellow as " cunning fox ".
Let's wait and see how cunning this fox.
I don't know what makes you think that a post 100 days scenario would favor SLFP over RW's UNP - Mr Maithripala said just now that he will not be campaigning against UNP in this election in a way detrimental to him - and whatever SLFP does including fielding graduates would not keep the stain away because people at the ground level ( as I know) identify SLFP with those who tried to impede Sirisena's victory . I'm sure many will reward RW handsomely for both progressive budget and the reforms he spearheaded - We have seen doomsday preachers who predicted during last Presidential Election that UNPers will not vote slfp Maithree - now they are eating punnakku I suppose :)
There were also many UNPers who predicted an SLFP split. I doubt that either party is interested in electoral reform. If it does happen then all bets are off. If not, it depends how the parties play the cards. I doubt that MS only wanted to hand over power to Ranil/UNP and retire.
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