Can Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe contain the third revolutionary uprising?

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is unlikely to succeed in reviving the economy not because he doesn’t have the intrinsic ability or is incapable of tapping external support to do so, but because of objective conditions

Without a functioning political party, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe has no cadre to manage the apparatus of government, deliver the goods and persuade the people all at the same time. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has, but it is barely functional and can hardly operate on the ground. Only Dullas Alahapperuma (and Charitha Herath) can lead an SLPP revival someday

Prime Minister Wickremesinghe can hold the line only so long and can deliver only so much. That’s because he is on very thin ice, in terms of both power and popular support. 

He lacks a mass base or any kind of political base whatsoever. He cannot rely on his present patron President Gotabaya, because it is doubtful GR has anything more than single-digit popularity, and his family’s party the SLPP (Pohottuwa) would be lucky to make it into double-digits. 

If the crisis were only an economic one Ranil would have a decent chance, but in reality it is a complex, compound crisis: political and socioeconomic. 

Such a crisis is bound to widen the grassroots revolt, detonating as in Spain’s ‘Indignado’ (“indignant”) rebellion 2011-2013, the revolt of the educated professional middle-classes hit by austerity. 

Neither Ranil nor Gotabaya nor yet the combination, can restore the stability needed for any reform-and-recovery package to take hold. 

Without a functioning political party, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe has no cadre to manage the apparatus of government, deliver the goods and persuade the people all at the same time. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has, but it is barely functional and can hardly operate on the ground. Only Dullas Alahapperuma (and Charitha Herath) can lead an SLPP revival someday.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is unlikely to succeed in reviving the economy not because he doesn’t have the intrinsic ability or is incapable of tapping external support to do so, but because of objective conditions. 

Crisis matrix

What are these objective realities? Can they be transformed? 

There are specific realities of the Sri Lankan crisis which cannot be attributed to a COVID-19 related general downturn. This can be established by the comparative economic performance of the rest of South Asia and IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva’s attribution of the Sri Lankan crisis to mismanagement. 

The Aragalaya came into being because of those specific realities. It has now taken a hit because of its own political and ethical deficits and blunders, but it will make a comeback because it stands to benefit not only from the specificities of the Sri Lankan crisis but also the general characteristics it shares with worldwide uprisings of the recent decades.  

Sri Lanka stands at the intersection of two different types of protests/revolts: political and socioeconomic. Revolts that become revolutions are those that combine both these types. Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya does, and will do so more manifestly in the coming months. 

The political revolutions are the anti-dictatorship uprisings of the mid-1970s-1990s, the anti-communist ones of the 1980s and 1990s, and the Arab Spring of the 21st century. They succeeded in toppling the incumbent regimes and in some cases, democratising the state. 

Insofar as the Gotabaya Rajapaksa presidency is autocratic, due to the hyper-centralising 20th Amendment, and the main slogan remains Gota Go Home, Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya is a democratising political revolution. 

In recent decades there have been two sub-types of significant socioeconomic protest movements. 

The first sub-type consists of protest campaigns against economic downturns, deep recessions (e.g., 2008), most of which have been perceived as the result of a specific economic model i.e., neoliberalism/neoliberal globalisation. Examples range from the Zapatista uprising against NAFTA to Occupy Wall Street. 

The second sub-type is classifiable as “Anti-Austerity” riots/revolts. These range from the Spanish Revolt (dubbed ‘Revolution’) 2011-2013 to the Argentinian, Chilean and Colombian uprisings. As Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to France in 2011-2013 I was accredited to Spain and Portugal and able to scrutinise the tent city communities in Madrid at first hand. The target/slogan I saw everywhere was ‘System Error’ (not ‘overthrow’ as in Sri Lanka). The Left party Podemos led by Pablo Iglesias was born from the Revolt, ran for office in 2014, established a footprint, and won in 2019.

In Sri Lanka, the economic contraction-generated revolt is already underway, but the ‘anti-austerity’ type of socio-economic revolt is yet to come because the austerity package is yet to hit. Gota’s unique gift of an acute agricultural crisis scheduled to spike in August-October, and probably coincide with an austerity package of cuts in State expenditure targeting universal subsidies and State sector enterprises.   

The fusion of the two broad types of revolt—political (anti-autocracy) and socioeconomic—as well of the two subtypes of socioeconomic revolt—anti-recession and anti-austerity—will create a crisis pregnant with revolutionary possibilities. 

All this renders dubious the prospects of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s success. 

World opinion wants him gone and will not allow their respective countries, institutions and the global economic system to save Sri Lanka because they suspect it will mean subsidising Rajapaksa rule. Of the reviled Rajapaksas, Gota is the most reviled internationally. Thanks to him Sri Lanka has lost the goodwill it enjoyed globally (as manifest after the tsunami). The only soft power Sri Lanka has left is the Aragalaya, and only when the world sees its main goal—Gota Go Home— as having won through, will this country be able to surf the feelgood factor and tap into the global support we need. The world community would rally to support a victory against autocracy responsible for economic catastrophe

The profile is the precondition 

There are two interlinked reasons President Gotabaya Rajapaksa must go if the economic crisis – not just the political—is to be successfully addressed. 

Firstly, spiralling instability as the food shortfall caused entirely by GR’s irresponsibility hits in the 3rd and 4th quarters. A renewed campaign for his removal will be charged with irresistible moral velocity. 

Secondly, democratic legislatures and global institutions cannot be convinced to grant us support on the scale we need, or cut us the slack we require, so long as the source of the economic problem as well as of chronic instability, the autocratic ruler, remains. 

Mark Malloch-Brown, distinguished British diplomat and former Minister of State has a recent piece on Sri Lanka in Foreign Policy, the second most influential journal on international politics in the USA. 

“…Under the Rajapaksa family’s rule, Sri Lanka has incurred a string of Chinese debts, including for white elephant projects that have yielded little to no income—one such project close to the Rajapaksas’ hometown was dubbed “The World’s Emptiest International Airport” by Forbes. When COVID-19 struck, they ploughed on with sweeping tax cuts as tourism collapsed—wiping out state revenue and personal incomes. 

…Despite ample warning and mounting protests, the government held out for too long before approaching the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and none of the structural and governance reforms are in place that might allow an IMF program a realistic chance of success. Instead, the government continues to struggle under a caretaker setup that lacks a clear public mandate.” (Sri Lanka’s Economic Crisis and How to Halt a Global Economic Unwinding (foreignpolicy.com).

That’s at the high-end. A tabloid with a million British readers, the Daily Mail of 24 May 2022 had a multi-decker headline on Sri Lanka: ‘How the world’s first all-organic farming nation has led to hunger, riots and economic ruin in Sri Lanka...The consequences have been nothing short of catastrophic, writes Tom Leonard’. It says:

“…Rajapaksa’s commitment to producing 100 per cent of Sri Lanka’s food organically within a decade was accompanied by a ban on the use of all chemical fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides.

The consequences have been nothing short of catastrophic. Going organic… has triggered the devastation of Sri Lanka’s economy, plunging much of its 22 million-strong population into desperate straits.

The chaos that has engulfed the country — including growing poverty, long queues for essentials, lethal street battles and attacks on the homes of government leaders — is a direct result of this one decision.

…Ironically, Sri Lanka had one of the strongest performing economies in Asia. In 2019, the World Bank upgraded its status to that of an upper middle-income country — only to reverse its decision just months after Rajapaksa was elected.

…Sri Lanka is heavily dependent on rice to feed itself and on tea to export. Forcing the producers of both crops to go entirely organic, warned experts, would drastically lower their yields — by 35 per cent and 50 per cent respectively. Rice is a nitrogen-intensive crop and is therefore tricky and expensive to grow without chemical fertilisers.

But Rajapaksa and his government wouldn’t listen to the warnings…Shunning conventional food production experts, the Rajapaksas have taken guidance from a cranky ‘civil society movement’ called Viyathmaga, which sums up its values as ‘Spiritual inside, Technocrat outside’.

… Sri Lanka’s balance-of-payments deficit soared as crop production tumbled, and the price of vegetables, rice and sugar rocketed. Sri Lanka failed to get hold of much organic fertiliser, leaving many farmers with no fertiliser of any sort.

…Many farmers, despairing of ever making a profit, gave up, accelerating the food shortages.

The loss of revenue from tea and other export crops vastly outstripped any savings from no longer importing fertiliser. In a final humiliation, Sri Lanka — a country until recently self-sufficient in rice — had to spend $450 million importing vast amounts of it, which the government then had to subsidise.

By October last year, it was desperately back-pedalling, relaxing the fertiliser ban for crucial export crops including tea, rubber and coconut. That humiliating U-turn didn’t stop President Rajapaksa boasting of his organic credentials a month later at Glasgow’s UN Climate Change Summit.

The climbdown came too late to avert economic meltdown. Annual food price inflation is currently running at 50 per cent, with vegetables such as carrots and tomatoes up to five times more expensive than they were last year…”

(How the world’s first organic farm nation has led to hunger and economic ruin, writes Tom Leonard | Daily Mail Online)

World opinion wants him gone and will not allow their respective countries, institutions and the global economic system to save Sri Lanka because they suspect it will mean subsidising Rajapaksa rule. Of the reviled Rajapaksas, Gota is the most reviled internationally. Thanks to him Sri Lanka has lost the goodwill it enjoyed globally (as manifest after the tsunami). 

The only soft power Sri Lanka has left is the Aragalaya, and only when the world sees its main goal—Gota Go Home— as having won through, will this country be able to surf the feelgood factor and tap into the global support we need. The world community would rally to support a victory against autocracy responsible for economic catastrophe.

For a complete catharsis, snap parliamentary elections must be twinned with presidential elections, or as the JVP suggests, a referendum on the abolition of the executive presidency.  If there is no 21st Amendment and no snap election, there will be violent revolution against the backdrop of food riots, with the ghastly night of 9 May repeated on a broader, nationwide canvas and open-endedly

Executive Presidency 101 

Conceptual confusion and unreason reign in Opposition and civil society discourse. Sri Lanka’s autocratic executive presidency is conflated with the executive presidential system as such. Therefore, abolition is seen as the remedy, rather than structural reform bringing Sri Lanka’s executive presidency in line with global democratic and republican presidential norms (USA, France, South Korea, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, etc.). 

Perceiving the Rajapaksa phenomenon as possible only due to the executive presidency overlooks the Sirimavo Bandaranaike ‘seven-year curse’ and ‘the family tree’ under the Westminster model; a harsh matriarchal despotism captured cinematically by Gamini Fonseka’s Sagarayak Meda.

The triadic model of the directly, nationally elected presidency, the electoral system of proportional representation and the Open Economy, incubated within and emerged from the biggest democratic upsurge (1973-1977) against a closed economic and state system (1970-77) we have experienced. 

If the argument is ‘no executive presidency, no Gotabaya’, then, logically, no executive presidency, no JR Jayewardene and Premadasa presidencies with their landmark developmental successes either, and no Mahinda Rajapaksa first term with its victorious ending of a 30 years war. 

The parallel argument can be made that ‘no Westminster model, no Sinhala Only’. 

Spoilers hit the 21A?

Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe’s 21st Amendment makes the system less unipolar by reducing presidential power through diffusion. 

Abolition of the executive presidency requires a two-thirds majority in Parliament plus a referendum. You can get to the referendum only with/through a two-thirds in the House.

A parliamentary two-thirds majority is within reach for the 21st Amendment, but not for one which calls for abolition. 

If the SJB’s and JVP’s valuable proposals for 21A are moved as amendments but not deal-breakers; if the approach is incremental-gradualist and consensual, the needle could be shifted away from the over-centralised executive presidency within days. 

Nothing prevents the Opposition, which will be the governing side in a new parliament from driving through more robust legislation (“19Plus”) or outright abolition, with a fresh mandate. 

The issue of the 21st Amendment leaves no room for neutrality or confusion. Voting against it or abstaining, will in effect entrench the 20th Amendment and the retention of quasi-dictatorial powers. 

Third revolutionary uprising

Those who obstruct reform—and reform is by definition, partial and limited – make violent revolution and counterrevolution inevitable. They must shoulder the moral and ethical cost of inaction, which is an active choice.  

The hardliners in the Pohottuwa who think that they can defend Gotabaya and/or Basil by blocking the 21st Amendment, will be no more effective than the pro-Mahinda hardliners who went to Temple Trees on 9 May to defend him. They doomed Mahinda and almost caused him to be “hacked to pieces” (as Harin Fernando recognises in an interview) by the mob that night. 

The first revolutionary uprising was in 1971. The second in 1986-1989. Both were armed. The second was barbaric. Both were defeated. The third one, the Aragalaya, is unarmed and isn’t monopolised by one organisation though it is increasingly dominated by two of shared parentage. It has a truly mass, social and legitimate character. It should not and arguably cannot be defeated by armed repression. It has many positive energies as well as a dark underside. It contains the best and worst of what we are and can be. 

The best is a rainbow of solidarity and creativity, the worst is the moral inability to say ‘not in our name’ about killing (9 dead) and maiming (Kumar Welgama, the pioneering anti-Gota MP). 

That inability springs from the same ethos that refuses to condemn and eschew coercively abusive, sadistically violent, occasionally lethal ‘ragging’ (‘hazing’) in the universities, and mounts campaigns in defence of those punished for such deeds. 

If these are the behavioural values and norms, one can envision through extrapolation, the social order that will be imposed in an economy of scarcity compounded by an anti-open economy, centralised ‘national-statist’ model, were this revolution to succeed. 

Can the third revolutionary uprising be countervailed, contained, and its energies channelled constructively? Can that be done by a bankrupt, almost broken system?

Conflict prevention

The appointment of a new Army chief, also from Gota’s beloved Gajaba Regiment can’t be counted on to hold the line, because the ruination of the peasantry and the spread of hunger could neutralise or radicalise the lower and perhaps middle ranks of the military.  

Snap elections would achieve decompression. If the election is purely parliamentary, then Gotabaya remains in office, but if the 21st Amendment is in place it wouldn’t be quite so offensive, and a new energised parliament could propel the political transition to its completion. 

For a complete catharsis, snap parliamentary elections must be twinned with presidential elections, or as the JVP suggests, a referendum on the abolition of the executive presidency. 

If there is no 21st Amendment and no snap election, there will be violent revolution against the backdrop of food riots, with the ghastly night of 9 May repeated on a broader, nationwide canvas and open-endedly.  

Prime Minister Wickremesinghe will recall that in the late 1980s when the System was hanging by a thread, it took a populist Premadasa to save it, as Ranjan Wijeratne had discerned and J.R. Jayewardene had acknowledged. Premadasa also revived a badly damaged economy while narrowing the chasm between haves and have-nots. The only available approximation is the sole formula that may save the System today.