Friday, 12 May, marked somewhat of a milestone in Sri Lankan politics which rather surprisingly went unnoticed in a nation where even the most insignificant of things are ceremoniously ‘commemorated’. The day marked one year since Ranil Wickremesinghe was propelled into high political office as Prime Minister for a sixth time following persistent people’s protests that led to the resignation of the then Prime Minister and the entire Cabinet of Ministers on 9 May 2022.
The month of May this year also marks yet another ‘un-commemorated’ milestone for Wickremesinghe, as it marks the completion of three decades since he first became Prime Minister of Sri Lanka in May 1993, following the assassination of President Ranasinghe Premadasa. While the then Prime Minister D.B. Wijetunga ascended to the presidency to fill the vacuum created by Premadasa’s assassination, Wickremesinghe, by virtue of being the Leader of the House at the time, became Prime Minister.
But let’s revert to the premiership stakes of one year ago. Following the resignation of the Mahinda Rajapaksa-led Cabinet in response to the unprecedented public outcry, then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa invited ‘applications’ from suitable candidates for the post. In practical terms and in keeping with democratic tradition, the job should have been the Opposition Leader’s to take, but he insisted on a caveat to taking up the job – that the then President should bow to the will of the people and resign first.
This is when things began to get murky and before anyone could say Jack, a power play that was obviously in the works thrust Wickremesinghe, whose party had one seat in Parliament, into the hot seat. Unlike Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa, Wickremesinghe had no stipulations demanding Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation, but instead, he did something else. He urged the protesters at the Presidential Secretariat to continue their protests and even proceeded to appoint a special committee that also included the Mayor of Colombo to look into the welfare of the protesters.
Obviously enamoured by the new Prime Minister’s blessings for the protest movement, it snowballed into something that ultimately became big enough for the then President to run for his life. However, having got what he wanted, the new President didn’t waste a minute in ordering an end to the protests. The rest is now history.
Having ascended to the premiership in the most unusual yet somewhat similar circumstances to the very first time he landed the job, this time around – 30 years later – it took him just two more months to get to the top.
A couple of months before the historic events of May last year when Wickremesinghe was asked during a media interview as to how he was spending his time at home after voters demoted him from Prime Minister to an ordinary Member of Parliament, his candid response was that he was spending his time watching Netflix.
While we have no clue as to what Wickremesinghe was binge watching at the time by his own admission, there is a slim chance that he may have had occasion to come across a popular political drama series titled ‘Designated Survivor,’ first introduced in the US in 2016, which rather interestingly offers some unmistakable if not startling parallels between two leaders who land their presidential roles quite by accident.
In the television series, Thomas Kirkman played by actor Kiefer Sutherland, a lowly Cabinet Minister, is forced to assume the presidency as the Designated Survivor, when a mysterious attack kills the President and everyone else in the line of succession. The drama then revolves around how Kirkman defies all odds to remain in office and even face an election.
Having been thrust into the role of Prime Minister of Sri Lanka for the first time in 1993 in similar circumstances and then to the leadership of the UNP in 1994 also in identical fashion, it has been quite a roller coaster ride for Sri Lanka’s very own Designated Survivor just as it has been for Tom Kirkman, who both weather storm after storm, only to rise stronger after each one.
But the similarities appear to end there. While Wickremesinghe’s endurance and never-say-die attitude is to be appreciated, what has always let him down is his staying power while in office. His legacy of never having completed any one of the five previous terms as PM precedes him and it is only a matter of time whether that tough luck will follow him to the presidency as well.
Since anniversaries are all about reflection, if one were to analyse the cause for this lack of staying power, the one and probably the only reason that stares one in the face is the stark deficit between promises and delivery. It will be recalled that the last time Wickremesinghe was elected to office in 2015, his and his party’s primary election pledge was to ensure good governance by first holding to account those who were responsible for numerous crimes in the preceding period. None of that ever happened over the next four years and the people did not hide their disappointment at the next election that followed with the United National Party wiped out of the electoral map.
While landing the role yet again for a sixth time through unprecedented circumstances last May, he as the Designated Survivor has been presented yet another opportunity to rectify ways and redeem himself and his party. It is a historic opportunity that fate or destiny will not present again. To assume that restoration of the economy alone will deliver the goods is optimistic at best because that is what leaders and governments are supposed to do anyway. The outcome of the last election in 2020 when the economy was certainly on a solid footing is testament to the fact that even though politicians don’t hold each other to account for their actions, people do.
Our political establishment must come to terms with the reality that the Sri Lankan electorate has matured and finally come of age. Post the events of last May, promises alone will never be enough again unless they are kept at least this time around. The wider the deficit between promises and action, the lesser the probability of re-election. In that sense, it would be pertinent for the President to recall the promises he made to the people at Galle Face when he became Prime Minister and Designated Survivor by default in May last year.
The people who protested in their millions for three months at a stretch were given certain assurances that system change will be on the political reform agenda, that corruption will be eliminated, and that those already tainted with allegations will be removed forthwith, among other such assurances. One year down the line the score card remains zero while corruption is thriving as before, those who were rejected by the people are back in action, and political reforms to change the corrupt system are nowhere in sight.
Therefore, at the end of the day, it will all boil down to a question of survival – whether it will be the will of the people, as demonstrated exactly one year ago, or the continuing resistance to it.