Politics is more than chess. It’s teamwork like cricket, It’s a hard game like rugger and it’s a blood sport like boxing, Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe had once said. As of now, Wickremesinghe is handling the most difficult gamble of his almost 50-year political career.
After former President and Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) supremo Mahinda Rajapaksa refused to back his candidature in the September 21 Presidential election, Wickremesinghe has managed to split the Rajapaksa party, by getting around 60 SLPP MPs on his side. A ruthless, practical leader, Wickremesinghe can play both chess and boxing depending on the situation. He can play cricket and rugger in politics! He is now playing all four games to retain the Presidency.
This Presidential election is being described as the most complex and toughest in the history of Sri Lanka. So far, a fringe Marxist party Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) led by Anura Kumara Dissanayaka is leading in the race to the President’s House, followed by opposition leader and founder of Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) Sajith Premadasa.
Incumbent Wickremesinghe is not the elected President of Sri Lanka. He became the President two years ago under strange circumstances. Mahinda Rajapaksa made him the President through a Parliament vote after his younger brother and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country under the cover of darkness. Wickremesinghe is now on his own. If he wins the Presidential battle, it will be the biggest achievement of his life as the odds are against him.
‘THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD’
Wickremesinghe has nine lives like a cat. In Sri Lanka, they call him the “eighth wonder of the world”. Every time his followers and opponents think he os finished, he manages to surprise them by staging a comeback.
The President of the nation in turmoil always wanted the post. In the past, he lost a Presidential election, but has been successful in occupying the chair of Prime Minister five times.
The head of the United National Party or UNP, Sri Lanka’s oldest political party, is the second most senior leader active today in the country after Mahinda Rajapaksa.
But they are cut from different cloths. Wickremesinghe is a Colombo elite. Mahinda is from the rural South. People accuse them of secretly joining hands to protect each other. The SLPP’s latest decision not to back him is also being interpreted in many ways.
Ranil Wickremesinghe, the son of Sri Lanka’s media baron Esmond Wickremesinghe is the nephew of Junius Jayawardene or JR, considered the most powerful Sri Lankan President to date. It was JR’s decision to abolish the Westminster system to embrace the Gaullist system of France in which the executive president is the most powerful man in the country that has led to today’s chaotic situation in Sri Lanka.
An alumnus of the Royal College of Colombo, Sri Lanka’s most prestigious educational institution, Wickremesinghe won his first parliamentary election in 1977. After serving as an important minister in his uncle JR and his successor Ranasinghe Premadasa’s Cabinet for long, in a quirk of fate, he became the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka after the assassination of President Premadasa in 1993.
He lost that post to SLFP leader Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga who rode to power in a popular vote in 1994. Wickremesinghe had to cool his heels in the opposition for the next five years.
But luck always played a huge role in Wickremesinghe getting top posts both in the government and party.
Assassinations of four top UNP stalwarts – Ranjan Wijeratne, Lalith Athuladmudali, President Ranasinghe Premadasa and Gamini Dissanayake – in a span of just four years, created a vacuum in the UNP and Wickremesinghe was the only leader who was left to fill it.
In 2000, his party UNP managed to form the government and he became the PM under Chandrika. The uneasy relationship between the two led to the dismissal of his government when he was in a meeting with US President George W Bush at the White House in 2003.
After that, Mahinda Rajapaksa became President in 2005 and his victory over the dreaded terrorist organisation LTTE in 2009 almost sealed the fate of Wickremesinghe. Both his admirers and critics wrote his political obituary suggesting he would never be able to unseat Rajapaksa and come back to power. They were wrong.
THE HIGHS AND LOWS
Towards the end of 2014, something unthinkable happened. Wickremesinghe secretly joined hands with his rival Chandrika to oust Rajapaksa. Their joint candidate Maithripala Sirisena shocked the Rajapaksa camp by defeating the all-powerful Mahinda in the Presidential elections. It was a high point in Ranil’s long political journey. He became the Prime Minister, promising to abolish the executive presidency, which he could not do.
In an evening coup in the winter of 2018, Sirisena shocked Wickremesinghe by dismissing him and installing Mahinda as the PM. After two months of political uncertainty and backroom negotiations, Mahinda lost the trust vote and Ranil returned as the PM again.
The year 2020 was the lowest point for Wickremesinghe as he not only lost the Parliament election for the first time since his debut in 1977, but his party was also routed at the hands of Mahinda Rajapaksa, by failing to secure even one of the 225 seats. Before the elections, his party’s deputy leader Sajith Premadasa had walked out to form his own party, SJB, to become the leader of the opposition, depleting the UNP cadre.
That drubbing was so humiliating, that Wickremesinghe did not even come out of his house for a few days after the rout. Everyone in Sri Lanka thought it was the end and his own party demanded he should step aside to hand over the baton to someone younger.
Wickremesinghe deftly handled the rebellion, refusing to step down, even earning the title “power hungry”.
After refusing to nominate anyone to one seat in the Parliament under the national list to which the UNP was entitled, Wickremesinghe managed to nominate himself to that post in 2021.
After the 2022 Summer uprising, Mahinda Rajapaksa quit as the PM in May and Wickremesinghe became the PM again, with no MPs except himself in the Parliament.
Wickremesinghe was respected and considered honest (not personally corrupt) till that day. He walked into Rajapaksa’s trap by accepting the Prime Ministership in May 2022. It was a huge blunder. Accusing him of protecting the Rajapaksa clan, an angry mob torched his stately manor in Colombo, burning rare books and paintings, forcing him to go into hiding.
To his credit, Wickremesinghe has stabilised the bankrupt economy of Sri Lanka in just two years and restored law and order across the Indian Ocean island nation.
Sri Lanka has missed so many opportunities in the past. But her leaders don’t miss any opportunity to perpetuate power. Ranil Wickremesinghe leads the pack.
Will he stage yet another comeback? After all, Ranil Wickremesinghe has nine lives! May be 10!
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