Sirisena’s revolution

Wednesday 23rd December, 2020

Former President Maithripala Sirisena maintains a very low profile, but he is in the news again. He has waxed eloquent, at a recent virtual symposium under the theme, Shared values and Democracy in Asia’, on what he considers his contribution to the strengthening of democracy in Sri Lanka on his watch as the President. Some of his claims have attracted heavy criticism in social media.

Sirisena never misses an opportunity to claim that it was his desire to bring about good governance that made him break ranks with the Rajapaksa government in 2014, beat then President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the presidential race the following year and help install the UNP-led yahapalana administration after bringing down the UPFA government. This claim, not to put too fine a point on it, is a mistruth. He is on record as having said that when he was a minister in the UPFA government, he did his best to dissuade President Rajapaksa from advancing the presidential election, which was due in 2016. He has also claimed that he left the Rajapaksa regime to save democracy. How can he reconcile these two contradictory statements? If Sirisena had succeeded in persuading President Rajapaksa to complete his second term without opting for a snap presidential election, the Rajapaksa government would have lasted another year or so; Sirisena would not have had any qualms about being in that administration, which he later condemned as a repressive regime. One may recall that Sirisena voted for the 18th Amendment, which vested unbridled powers in the executive presidency, did away with the presidential term limit, and enabled President Rajapaksa to bulldoze his way through during his second term.

What really drove Sirisena to break ranks with the Rajapaksa government, in 2014, was not any desire to protect democracy but his frustration; he had been eyeing the premiership. There were others with prime ministerial ambitions, and he was convinced that he would not be able to achieve his goal. Had he been appointed the Prime Minister, he would not have left the UPFA government in 2014.

Sirisena was lucky to win the presidency, but he did not whittle down powers in that position of his own volition. The 19th Amendment came into being because the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe wanted to consolidate his power in the yahapalana government; he was instrumental in having the executive presidency stripped of vital powers and the presidential term reduced to five years. Sirisena only consented to the UNP’s project for want of a better alternative. He was too dependent on the UNP for his political survival to offer resistance. In 2018, he made a mockery of his commitment to upholding democracy by joining forces with the very Rajapaksas, whom he had condemned as a bunch of self-seeking politicians ruining democratic institutions, to topple the yahapalana government. His plan to win over the SLFP dissidents in the Joint Opposition/SLPP and run for President (in 2019) fell through owing to the collapse of the hurriedly formed government, which lasted only 52 days. The Easter Sunday terror strikes, etc., ruined his chances of seeking a second term. Ironically, Mahinda, who as the President did not appoint Sirisena the PM, had to serve as the PM under the latter albeit for a few weeks!

Sirisena, who deserted the Rajapaksas while being a Cabinet minister as he was unable to achieve his prime ministerial goal, won the presidency, went all out to destroy the Rajapaksas politically, is now back in a Rajapaksa government as an ordinary MP. Worse, his party, the SLFP, voted with the SLPP to do away with the 19th Amendment, which he used to flaunt as his biggest achievement in politics. He and his betes noires have proved that they have no sense of shame, and act out of expediency rather than principle.