High on rhetoric, low on delivery

Ranil Wickremesinghe is a man of ideas. Many of his ideas have in fact been quite brilliant and visionary. During his many tenures as Prime Minister he had articulated several visionary ideas in both the political and economic spheres. Despite these great ideas the current President has a very poor record on transforming his vision into reality. His recent proclamation of finding a lasting solution to the Tamil national problem by the 75th anniversary of independence is his latest challenge.

During his two-year premiership between 2001 and 2003 he entered into a peace process with the LTTE. At that time there was much hope he would be able to negotiate a settlement to the prolonged conflict through peaceful means. Unlike in previous attempts to negotiate with the LTTE, in 2001 there was overwhelming international support for the Government which was backed by billions of dollars in pledges for economic recovery. Yet, after two years dragging negotiations all that Wickremesinghe achieved was alienating all sides of the conflict and ensuring the dissolution of parliament by the then president and defeat to Wickremesinghe’s party at the next general election.   

Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s performance in delivering transitional justice and reconciliation during the 2015-19 period was even worse. Having been given a once in a generation mandate to change the whole political culture of the country and to deliver a constitutional change that would address the grievances of the minority communities, Wickremesinghe squandered that opportunity by playing petty politics. By appointing individuals such as Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe as Justice Minister and Ravi Karunanayake as Finance Minister, Wickremesinghe undermined his own Government’s efforts. Rajapakshe was one of the most prominent opponents of the transitional justice process, undermining the efforts of the government at every step. Through all these deliberate and irrational decisions, Wickremesinghe undermined his own Government and purported policies towards reconciliation, transitional justice, good governance and addressing corruption.

The people of the country delivered their verdict on Wickremesinghe at the last general election when they relegated him and his party into oblivion. Not only did Wickremesinghe lose his seat in parliament, but the United National Party was decimated electorally. It only secured a single seat through the national list. Today, Wickremesinghe is holding the office of president due to the outer failure of the previous president and not due to any merit of his own.

Expecting Ranil Wickremesinghe to deliver on anything today when he has no popular mandate, or a political leverage appears unrealistic when he had continuously failed to deliver on anything substantial when he did have overwhelming mandates from the electorate and a political capital in parliament.

4 February and the 75th anniversary of independence has come and gone while there is no sign of any substantial proposal to address the ethnic problem. In the wake of expected protests from the racist segments of the Sinhala-Buddhist electorate including a majority of the monks Wickremesinghe could be under pressure to abandon further pursuance of this subject. If his record is anything to go by, the challenge before President Wickremesinghe is to ensure he does the right thing in this latest opportunity whilst pursuing his own vision for Sri Lanka which he elucidates so well.