Of that presidential monkey wrench

Thursday 7th July, 2022

The Opposition has, after weeks of dillydallying, agreed to form an all-party caretaker government. The JVP remains noncommittal but it will have to make common cause with other Opposition parties if it is not to be branded a spoiler. The SLPP, however, has not taken kindly to the Opposition’s move; it is seeking to have one of its MPs appointed Prime Minister.

Some Opposition parties have claimed that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is against the proposed all-party interim government. If so, he is asking for more trouble. It was to oust him that the people took to the streets, first. Their main slogan was ‘Gota Go Home!’, but the President managed to deflect them from their purpose and save his skin by throwing others including his elder brother, Mahinda, to the wolves. First, he got the entire Cabinet except Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to resign, but as pressure continued to mount, he had Mahinda resign and appointed a new Cabinet with Ranil Wickremesinghe as the Prime Minister. Those measures have not helped contain the crisis and grant relief to the public, and it is only natural that the people’s anger is rising. If the President tries to prevent an all-party interim government from being formed, the people, and the Opposition will go all out to oust him. He will be without any defence.

President Rajapaksa has failed; he has made colossal blunders on his own admission, and they have inflicted irreparable damage on the country. The current economic crisis would not have come about if assistance had been sought from the IMF about two years ago, and the rupee floated much earlier without being defended at the expense of the country’s scarce foreign reserves. Ill-advised, politically-motivated tax cuts led to the prevailing rupee crisis and excessive money printing, which has led to hyperinflation, and the rupee devaluation. The President’s disastrous experiment with organic farming has taken a heavy toll on the agricultural sector. That is why the people launched the ‘Gota Go Home’ campaign. Wickremesinghe became the Prime Minister, undertaking to play a messianic role, and the UNP made him out to be a miracle-man capable of attracting billions of dollars in next to no time because he was in the good books of the developed world. But the crisis has taken a turn for the worse since his appointment as the PM. It has now been revealed that an amendment to the Exchange Control Act in 2017, when he was the Prime Minister, stood forex racketeers in good stead and paved the way for the present dollar crisis. Newly-appointed Minister Dhammika Perera, who was brought in as a National List MP to promote foreign investment, has declared that PM Wickremesinghe is obstructing the country’s efforts to bring in foreign exchange, which is the be-all and end-all of any economic recovery programme. He has called for the latter’s resignation as the Finance Minister. Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera does not seem to know whether he is coming or going. The only thing he does efficiently is to increase the prices of fuel, which is in short supply.

The incumbent government has manifestly failed and is not capable of resolving the crisis. There is a massive build-up of public anger in the polity, which is a simmering volcano. The Opposition is planning to go on protesting until the President steps down, and such a course of action will plunge the country into anarchy, and let the genie out of the bottle. The only way to defuse tension, and foreclose protests that are bound to debilitate the economy further is to form a multi-party interim government so that the Opposition will have to stop protesting and put its shoulder to the wheel to help turn around the economy and ameliorate people’s suffering. The formation of a national unity government will also go a long way towards regaining the confidence of foreign investors, lenders and well-wishers. It will be plain political suicide for President Rajapaksa to try to throw a monkey wrench in the works.