Too many irons in presidential fire as frustration explodes on German television

by Rajan Philips

The stress of presidential caretaking is showing. That is the only explanation that I can think of and that is also what I have heard from others who saw President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s interview this week, with Martin Gak of the German state-owned television Deutsche Welle (DW). Mr. Wickremesinghe uncharacteristically turned truculent when Mr. Gak started pressing him on the question of international investigation of the 2018 Easter Sunday bombings. The interview was going well up to that point with the focus on economic matters, and the President who was in Berlin to attend the inaugural summit of the Berlin Global Dialogue, seemed pleased to recount the progress he has been making in Europe.

The President said that he was getting Europe to better understand the Sri Lankan situation. He specifically mentioned Germany and France. Germany, where he was attending the Global Dialogue and was also able to meet with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and some of his Ministers. He was in France in June to attend the global debt summit convened by French President Emmanuel Macron. On his way to the debt summit in Paris, the President had stopped over in London to attend the 40th anniversary gathering of the International Democratic Union (IDU), the mutual admiration society of the global right. We have gone over this before.

In Germany now and at the Deutsche Welle interview, what seemed to get the goat of the President was Mr. Gak’s mentioning ‘the Cardinal,’ and the call(s) for international investigation of the Easter Bombings. Out of the blues, the President went on the attack and asked Mr. Gak if he knew or had spoken to the Bishops Conference in Sri Lanka. The President was obviously alluding to the Church hierarchy in Sri Lanka (or any other country outside the Vatican) with the Bishops Conference taking precedence over individual cardinal or cardinals.

In Sri Lanka, there is the added peculiarity given the known differences between the Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith and the Bishops Conference, not on spiritual questions but on matters temporal, especially involving the Rajapaksas. The old wisecrack – MR 1 (Mahinda Rajapaksa) and MR 2 (Malcolm Ranjith) – is now all forgotten and buried in the Easter debris. There is only one MR of consequence left, anyway, and the one whom the current President will do anything to avoid.

As for the poor Martin Gak of the German TV, he seemed well prepared for the interview, but he was quite stumped by the President’s reference to the Cardinal and the Bishops. It was not a googly that was thrown by the President at someone with no cricket background, but an underarm no ball. The main takeaway from the President’s outburst, however, is the categorical rejection of any international investigation into the Easter bombings.

If there was any implication that this sudden rejection by the President may have had some understanding with the Catholic Bishops of Sri Lanka minus the Cardinal, that notion was put to rest quite swiftly by the President of the Bishops’ Conference in Sri Lanka, Bishop Harold Anthony Perera.

In a statement to the media issued by the Church, Bishop Perera is quoted as saying that “the President has made an effort to show that there is a division between Cardinal Ranjith and the Bishops’ Conference,” after asserting that “the Cardinal and the Bishops hold the same view that an impartial local probe could be conducted into the Easter Sunday bomb attacks with the presence of foreign observers.”

A second takeaway from the Deutsche Welle interview is the President’s quite unexpected assertion that his government (not just the Rajapaksa government) also rejects the conclusions of the UNHRC in Geneva. That is a total about-turn from the positions Mr. Wickremesinghe took as Prime Minister in the yahapalanaya government, a gross insult to the memory of Mangala Samaraweera, and an unfitting follow-up to the photo opportunity that the President had with Samantha Power in September, at the UN, in New York.

The President did not need new controversies after returning home from his many ports of call. His categorical rejections in Germany are not going to close the books on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka, or UNHRC in Geneva. They will remain among many other continuing political fires that the President will have to deal with even as he continues to grapple with all the economic problems.

Whether it is too many irons in the fire, or too many nagging fires, the President has taken almost all of them on his shoulders with very little sharing of responsibilities in the cabinet. That is why even his well-wishers are saying that the presidential stress is showing, while it took a professional German TV interviewer to take the brunt of Mr. Wickremesinghe’s unnecessary outburst.

Too many irons, too many fires

If it can be said that President Wickremesinghe’s economic problems are mostly inherited, by the same token it must be said that his political problems are mostly self-created. As I have been arguing recently, the prospects for political reforms under Mr. Wickremesinghe’s caretaker presidency that were pretty bright at the start are now totally dead.

The villain of the piece is of course Mr. Wickremesinghe’s ambition to become an elected president. The moves that he has been making to that end have veered from being banal to becoming quite tedious.

The latest of the maneuvers is said to be Basil Rajapaksa offering Ranil Wickremesinghe full (SLPP) support for the latter to be a candidate at the next presidential election, provided Mr. Wickremesinghe stops poaching SLPPers through two-timers bypassing the Rajapaksas. That is quite a Catch-22 between onetime allies.

The banality of this politics is disgusting, but what is really disturbing is the diversion it causes from what should be total commitment by the President and his administration to dealing solely with the economic problems.

On the economic front, an IMF Mission to conduct the First Review of the program under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangement has come and gone. The September review was about the country’s performance after the start of EFF arrangement in March based on a USD 2.9 billion bailout package and a first tranche payment of USD 330 million. The September visit was expected to result in the release of the second tranche of the same amount. But the second payment is being delayed because of snags facing the country’s external debt restructuring process.

The departing statement of the IMF Mission said all the nice things about the people of Sri Lanka and their resilience but stopped short of recommending the second payment until there is some conclusion about debt restructuring. In addition to the First Review and statement, the IMF has also released its report on the Governance Diagnostic Assessment (GDA) of Sri Lanka that the IMF had conducted in March this year. Sri Lanka apparently is the first Asian country to undergo a governance assessment as part of the IMF’s lending programs.

The report highlights all the key, but not unknown, problems ranging from corruption, weakness of government, failing state owned enterprises, compromised taxation and revenue system, flawed procurement processes, and a weak legal framework and enforcement mechanisms.

The report pointedly notes that despite last year’s protests, the government is still beholden to the same powers and their beneficiaries who were dislodged by the protesters. The GDA report also recommends 16 priority actions to address widespread corruption and weaknesses in government.

The IMF’s Review Mission, withholding of the second payment, and instructions on 16 action items have rekindled the political debate over IMF. Participating at the Berlin Global Dialogue, the President spoke of the difficulties that indebted countries like Sri Lanka with multiple creditors have to go through to reach agreements on debt restructuring. There is the Paris Club of creditors, and then there are India and China who are not part of the club but are becoming strong creditors on their own terms.

“There is no mechanism,” the President said, “to co-ordinate between the creditors and debtor country.” He also noted at the gathering in Berlin, somewhat echoing the criticisms he gets at home, “there’s a point beyond which you can’t burden these people. Now we are going beyond that point.” He went on, “You have to work on the basis of a solution which also ensures stability. Some of the proposals put forward do not enforce stability.”

He was candid enough to admit, unlike some of his critics at home, that it was fundamentally Sri Lanka’s fault to have incurred a mountain of debt that ultimately drove the country to bankruptcy. Fundamentally, as well, it is Sri Lanka’s responsibility to find is own way out its debts and difficulties. There are no convincing signs that the caretaker government of President Wickremesinghe is doing the best it could under the circumstances.