Avert bloodbath

Tuesday 12th July, 2022

Sri Lanka found itself on the verge of a bloodbath on 09 May in the aftermath of a savage goon attack the loyalists of Mahinda Rajapaksa carried out on the Galle Face protesters. The spate of counter-violence fizzled out after a day or two although it was expected to last longer. But what was feared then will play out soon unless the appointment of the Acting President is handled carefully in case President Gotabaya Rajapaksa tenders his resignation tomorrow.

There is a long line of presidential hopefuls, we are told, but anyone who has incurred the wrath of the people must not be allowed to become the Acting President. It was not to make Ranil Wickremesinghe the Acting President that the people took to the streets on Saturday, and risked life and limb to force Gotabaya to resign. When they got rid of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, in May, Ranil became the PM. They resumed their protest campaign, seeking the ouster of both Gotabaya and Ranil, and, therefore, they certainly do not want Ranil to gain from their pain again.

The Acting President will have to be an elected MP. It will be antithetical to democracy for anyone who failed to get elected to Parliament to succeed President Rajapaksa, who is planning to resign despite having secured as many as 6.9 million votes. Gotabaya’s successor must not be a member of the Rajapaksas’ inner circle responsible for the people’s current predicament. The Acting President should be above suspicion and independent of the Rajapaksa family. Otherwise, there will be a tsunami of public protests, which will make Saturday’s uprising look a mere ripple.

The least President Rajapaksa could do by way of making amends for having plunged the country into unprecedented chaos and inflicted so much suffering on the people who reposed trust in him is to appoint a new Prime Minister in consultation with the party leaders before he resigns so that the appointment of the Acting President will not provoke the public into pouring out onto the streets again. Or, both the President and the Prime Minister must resign together so that the Speaker will be able to act in the office of the President pending the election by Parliament of the interim President. It is incumbent upon the party leaders, the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, other professional associations, religious leaders, civil society activists and others to make the President and the PM do so. There is no other way to prevent another mass uprising, which is likely to lead to a bloodbath.

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Let sanity prevail!

Sri Lanka is full of bogus messiahs who take the masses for a ride, savour power, amass wealth and lead the life of Riley. The Rajapaksas ruined the country by taking the credit for saving it from the LTTE. What they did has been likened to a person raping a damsel in distress after rescuing her. They exploited the war victory to the fullest to further their interests; they flaunted it to win elections and enrich themselves. Finally, the people woke up to the realisation that the Rajapaksa family had to be ousted. They took to the streets in their thousands, and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has agreed to quit.

Likewise, those who take the credit for having extricated the country from the clutches of the Rajapaksas could become a huge problem if they are allowed to have their own way, given their violent past; they made themselves out to be messiahs and used the blood of the youth to fuel their politico-military projects.

The Rajapaksas’ exit, which has warmed the cockles of millions of hearts, must not be allowed to be an opportunity for other self-proclaimed messiahs to advance their hidden agendas. Otherwise, this country will become ungovernable, and no government will be able to restore the socio-political order, much less develop the economy.

Some ex-members of death-dealing sparrow units that roamed the country in the late 1980s have crawled out of the woodwork since Saturday’s uprising. They are all out to usurp the powers of Parliament, and if their demand for the establishment of a council above the legislature is granted, they will be able to manipulate it to run a parallel government. It is high time the democratic Opposition sat up and took notice of the dangerous trend; it has to take control of the situation instead of making all the noise in the world and doing precious little to help bring order out of chaos.

There is no gainsaying that most of the current MPs are total misfits, and some of them should be behind bars, but that does not mean Parliament, as an institution, is worthless and should be stripped of its powers. The solution to the problem of undesirables entering Parliament is to ensure that only good men and women are elected to it. Now that the people have almost succeeded in chasing the Rajapaksas out, it is incumbent upon them not to vote for other undesirables at future elections, parliamentary or otherwise; they ought to bring pressure to bear on political party leaders to nominate only decent candidates to contest elections.