Sri Lanka’s Reshuffle repair?
Differences between the two national ruling parties were exposed during the local elections where what was at stake included not only the 341 local bodies up for grabs but also national elections not far down the road.
( February 25, 2018, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Few analysts were venturing guesses on what the cabinet reshuffle expected to be completed today will bring us. The signs are that Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe will make some changes on the UNP side but there have been no hints that President Sirisena, whose SLFP/UPFA fared worse that the UNP at the Feb. 10 local election, will do likewise. Wickremesinghe has made some mea culpa noises after the results were declared; but not so Sirisena who has laid all the blame at the UNP’s door. Whether making some changes on who occupies which ministry for the next two years will make any real differences in the government’s report card is unlikely. Law and Order Minister Sagala Ratnayake has publicly indicated willingness to step down from that ministry although he’s expected to remain Minister of Southern Development. The prime minister is reported to favour Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka to take responsibility for law and order although whether the president and SLFP will agree to that is a question that remains wide open.
Fonseka, once described by his then commander-in-chief, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa whom he challenged for the presidency in 2010 as the “world’s best army commander,” paid dearly for his effort to dethrone Rajapaksa. He was cashiered from the army, stripped of his rank, medals and decorations, deprived for his pension and court martialed and jailed. A tough military officer who neither gave nor sought any quarter during his military career, Fonseka endured tough prison conditions that might have been made easier had he been less unbending. The ‘common candidate’ formula which worked for Sirisena did not work for Fonseka who was confident of victory in 2010. Following Sirisena’s 2015 victory, Fonseka was pardoned and a newly created rank of field marshal was bestowed on him. Given the rough treatment he received at the hands of the Rajapaksa dispensation, conferring the law and order ministry including overseeing investigations heaped on the Rajapaksas following the regime change, on Fonseka will be akin to setting a rotweiller on the former president and his family including then Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. In that event, there will be no room for allegations of the kind that has been leveled against Sagala Ratnayaka who was accused of going ‘soft’ on the former first family.
Even if the UNP wishes to make the appointment, whether President Sirisena will go along with it remains an open question. Despite his assertions to the contrary, there is no ironclad guarantee that the incumbent is not seeking a second term. His recent bid to build up his SLFP at the local elections at the cost of the UNP points in the direction that Sirisena is nursing that ambition. Many of his campaign statements, including one saying that his present government is more corrupt that that of the Rajapaksas’, was aimed at the UNP. While the prime minister reined his own side and did not permit UNPers to do unto Sirisena what the president was doing unto them, there is no escaping the reality that both major constituents of the ruling coalition has emerged battered and bruised from the Feb. 10 contest which some political analysts say has “also exposed the failure of their long-term political strategies.”
Differences between the two national ruling parties were exposed during the local elections where what was at stake included not only the 341 local bodies up for grabs but also national elections not far down the road. Mahinda Rajapaksa’s pohottuwa has already seen the coming colour although its leader cannot run for president again under terms of the present constitution. A general election must be held in 2020 and this must be preceded by a presidential election. While Sirisena said soon after he took his oaths at Independence Square in January 2015 that he does not plan to seek a second term of office, his silence on this score since then has been eloquent. Also leading members of the SLFP he leads have gone on the public record saying that the incumbent will be their candidate and the president has not contradicted them. Wickremesinghe who chose not to run against Rajapaksa in 2010 annointing Fonseka as the ‘common candidate’ did likewise five years later. Nobody would attribute altruistic motives for these decisions. On both occasions, it was obvious that the best chance of de-throning the war-winning Mahinda was ensuring a Mahinda vs. the Rest match and what better candidate to field in 2010 than the general who commanded the army in May 2009 when the LTTE was finally defeated after a near 30-year war. Apart from the UNP, Fonseka was then even able to enlist the support of the TNA and the JVP. But it took five more years for that strategy to work and Wickremesinghe had to be content with the second slot of prime minister – an office he had held twice previously.
He has not formally announced his candidature for the presidency next time round but most observers think he will want to crown his political career with the office at least three incumbents promised to abolish but welshed on their promise to the electorate. After the drubbing his party suffered at the local elections, Wickremesinghe has gone on record saying that the UNP must set about the long- neglected task of grooming a future leader. But there have been no signs of anything of the sort happening. Whether two years are long enough for the UNP, regarded the senior partner of the ruling coalition, to deliver on the expectations of the people enabling its leader to make a pitch for the presidency Ranil might have won in 2005 but for the LTTE which prevented Tamils in the north voting to emerge from the wings and take center stage remains to be seen.
( The writer is the editor of the Sunday Island, a Colombo based weekly newspaper where this piece first appeared)
