Saturday 12th October, 2024

The headline of today’s comment is a joke doing the rounds in political circles. Roughly rendered into English, it means that although Ranil is gone, his policies have remained intact under the new dispensation.

Sri Lanka’s economic recovery programme, which Ranil Wickremesinghe courageously implemented, has survived his defeat in the presidential race. In other words, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has chosen to continue with Wickremesinghe’s key economic policies; he has agreed to the IMF-stipulated Debt Sustainability Analysis in spite of his election promise to renegotiate it.

The sobering economic reality has had a mellowing effect on President Dissanayake’s thinking, and signs are that the NPP will stick to the IMF bailout package for want of a better alternative even if it succeeds in obtaining a parliamentary majority at the 14 Nov. general election.

Wickremesinghe, who is still reeling from the humiliating defeat in last month’s presidential election, is among the political leaders who have decided not to contest next month’s general election, others being former Presidents Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena. In fact, it was a huge mistake for Mahinda and Sirisena to enter Parliament after holding the executive presidency. They should have retired gracefully. However, Ranil has decided against contesting the next general election not because he considers it infra dig to do so as a former President; he knows that it will be an uphill task for him to win a parliamentary seat from the Colombo District.

Some of the SLPP dissident MPs who sided with President Wickremesinghe have also decided not to contest the upcoming general election. Prominent among them is former State Minister of Finance Shehan Semasinghe, who helped President Wickremesinghe make the IMF programme a reality and clear obstacles to its implementation. They have said they are not contesting as they are disappointed that the people rejected Wickremesinghe’s successful economic programme, which helped save the economy. Semasinghe said so in a television interview on Thursday night.

The argument that Wickremesinghe lost the presidential election because the people rejected his economic policies smacks of reductionism. Those who elected Dissanayake President obviously did not want him to abandon the IMF programme and upend the existing economic recovery programme. True, Dissanayake endeared himself to the public by making attractive promises such as pay hikes, subsidies, fuel price decreases, and tax reductions, but it is doubtful whether anyone with an iota of common sense wanted an end to the current IMF programme. A plausible explanation of why the people rejected Wickremesinghe in the presidential race may be that they did not want him to secure the presidency for some reasons his loyalists have chosen to ignore.

President Wickremesinghe lost mainly because of his wrongs on the political front and his callous disregard for public opinion. He defended the crooks in the SLPP parliamentary group unashamedly, undermined the judiciary and the legislature and suppressed democratic dissent. He also put off elections arbitrarily and abused the privileges of Parliament to launch scathing attacks on the judiciary and issue warnings to judges. He unflinchingly shielded the corrupt in the cricket administration and surrounded himself with a bunch of crooked misfits. If he had cared to concentrate on the economic front and refrain from committing political wrongs, which were legion, he would have been able to put up a close fight against Dissanayake in the presidential race and even score a win.

Wickremesinghe lost in the presidential contest because he ruined things for himself politically as he had done previously. The only consolation for him may be that his economic policies have outlived his defeat.