What’s up Ranil’s sleeve?

Wednesday 9th June, 2021

Glorious uncertainties are not confined to cricket alone; nothing is so certain as the unexpected in politics as well. Whoever would have thought that the mighty Rajapaksa government would collapse, in 2015, like a house of cards? Likewise, not many expected the Rajapaksas to make a comeback so soon, following such a disastrous defeat, much less recapture power after five years. Similarly, it was widely thought that the UNP’s ignominious defeat in 2020 would spell curtains for former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who even failed to retain his parliamentary seat, and that the UNP’s whitewash would ensure plain sailing for the SJB and its leader Sajith Premadasa, who became the Opposition Leader. But less than one year on, Premadasa now sees his bête noire, Wickremesinghe, in the rearview mirror.

Wickremesinghe has proved once again that he cannot be written off. Those who left him for politically dead last year have made a mistake.

The SJB sought to pooh-pooh reports that some of its MPs were likely to rally around Wickremesinghe in case of his appointment to Parliament as the UNP’s National List MP. But its parliamentary group held what looked like an emergency meeting, on Monday, to discuss the issue, and claimed in a media statement that all its MPs had reaffirmed their allegiance to Premadasa. But one doubts that everything is rosy in the garden for the SJB, which is experiencing dissension in the ranks. Wickremesinghe, being the shrewd politician that he is, must be planning to cash in on this situation.

There are said to be neither permanent enemies nor permanent friends in politics, which is full of strange bedfellows. Wickremesinghe will be more than happy to be sworn in as an MP with a couple of SJB members on his side; he is adept at clawing his way up the treacherous political cliff face. He did so in 2001, when he toppled the Kumaratunga government to become the Prime Minister; in 2005, he came close to beating Mahinda Rajapaksa in the presidential race, and 10 years later, he engineered the downfall of the Rajapaksa government, which did not know what hit it. This time around there is a difference, though; he has become a threat not to the government in power as such but to the main Opposition party.

What basically facilitated Wickremesinghe’s political rebound was the government’s bungled pandemic control effort. Carpenter turned quack Dhammika Bandara’s herbal syrup widely touted as a cure for Covid-19 may not have worked for the hapless pandemic victims, but it did work for Wickremesinghe, a victim of the 2015 political tsunami. It provided him with the much-needed opportunity to come in from the cold and make a hard-hitting statement, ridiculing the government, which in its wisdom, chose to promote the untested concoction. In his inimitable style, he urged the people not to swallow ‘engine oil’ (read Dhammika peniya). His statement went down well, and began to receive media attention, again.

The SLPP MPs were in seventh heaven yesterday in Parliament, deriving as they did a perverse pleasure from the SJB’s trouble. They seem to be labouring under the delusion that the Opposition’s woes will help them deflect people’s attention from their failure, shore up the government’s crumbling image and win future elections. But the SLPP has its share of internal problems with even some ministers joining the ginger group in the government, and several of its constituents are expressing dissent openly. Those who are in power today should recall that they won the presidential election and the parliamentary polls very impressively in 2010, and even mustered a two-thirds majority in Parliament; the Opposition was in totally disarray. But they lost power after five years because they became too cocky and did not care two hoots about public opinion. They do not seem to care to learn from history.