Mahinda’s comeback

Monday 10th August, 2020

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was sworn in as the Prime Minister again, yesterday. Mahinda’s dramatic comeback, five years after his downfall, reminds us of the Oscar-winning, Hollywood super flick, The Revenant. In January 2015, he was left for politically dead upon being beaten by a dark horse in the presidential race. His rivals celebrated his defenestration, as it were, bragging that they had hung (not hanged) him on a window of his Tangalle residence, where he climbed to a windowsill to address a crowd of supporters after his defeat. Many of his trusted lieutenants deserted him and joined the yahapalana government for political expediency and/or for fear of being arrested for their past misdeeds. Mahinda was determined to make a comeback.

Mahinda’s political journey full of twists and turns and trials and tribulations has been a fascinating one. He first became an MP in 1970 and lost his seat in 1977. He re-entered Parliament in 1989 and went on to become the Opposition Leader in 2001 and Prime Minister in 2004 before being elected the President in 2005. After his defeat in 2015, he became an MP again and subsequently the Opposition Leader and the Prime Minister in quick succession.

The 19th Amendment was introduced to curtail the executive powers of President Maithripala Sirisena and strengthen the position of the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. It has, in fact, put the Executive President in a constitutional straitjacket; he cannot even hold a ministerial post despite being the head of the Cabinet and the government. Ironically, Wickremesinghe, who became the de facto head of state through constitutional manipulations, has lost his parliamentary seat, and PM Rajapaksa, whom the architects of the 19th Amendment sought to banish from politics by introducing a presidential term limit, is today more powerful than the President to all intents and purposes.

Having defeated Mahinda in the presidential race with the help of the UNP, President Sirisena queered the pitch for him when he tried to enter Parliament as the Prime Minister in 2015. Sirisena also prevented Mahinda from becoming the Opposition Leader, initially. The former, however, began playing his cards well after mid-2018; he pulled out of the UNP-led government and sided with Mahinda. Today, Sirisena is under Mahinda again!

What really worked for the SLPP was the Mahinda-Gotabaya combination. They, however, would not have been able to turn the tables on their political opponents without the backing of their young brother Basil, who was instrumental in founding the SLPP, of which he is the chief strategist.

It was the Treasury bond scams in 2015 and 2016 that sealed the fate of the UNP-led yahapalana government and made Mahinda’s rise in politics easy. The Committee on Public Enterprises, headed by JVP MP Sunil Handunnetti went out of its way to omit the name of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe from its report, and the presidential bond probe commission did likewise. But we argued, in this space, that the case against those responsible for the biggest ever financial crime in the country would be heard in the people’s court, and the public would punish the perpetrators. Most of those who tried to cover up the bond scams and defended former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran have been rejected by the people at the recently-concluded general election. Ranil, Ravi Karunanayake, Ajith P. Perera, Akila Viraj Kariyawasam and Sujeewa Senasinghe are among them. The JVP, which was seen to be cohabiting with the UNP, has lost three out of its six seats in the last Parliament.

It is being argued in some quarters that the UNP’s split made the general election a walk in the park for the SLPP. But one may argue that if Sajith Premadasa and his followers had contested on the UNP ticket under Wickremesinghe’s leadership, they would not have been able to obtain 55 seats; the Sajith faction managed to secure those seats because it had left the UNP, which is having the millstone of bond scams around its neck. The Easter Sunday carnage came as a double whammy for the UNP. President Sirisena was also blamed for neglecting national security and ignoring intelligence warnings of the terror attacks, but he avoided defeat by throwing in his lot with the SLPP.

The new government is not without contradictions. Gotabaya does not suffer fools gladly; Mahinda does. The former stands for a radical change, but most members of the SLPP parliamentary group headed by the PM do not. Those who ruined the previous Rajapaksa government have crawled out of the woodwork. Above all, coalition politics are always problematic. This time around, the Rajapaksa government will not be able to give ministerial posts to all ambitious elements within its ranks to appease them.

Had any other party captured power in Parliament, we would have had the President and the Prime Minister fighting and conspiring to bring down each other. A similar situation would have arisen even if anyone other than a member of the Rajapaksa family had become the Prime Minister from the SLPP. One can only hope that the two brothers will cooperate without succumbing to pressure from the competing power centres within the government camp.