Sri Lanka: Ranil is the best man for the tough job

India and its Quad partners helped get Ranil elected to ensure the economic revival and checkmate Chinese designs on the island nation

Six-time Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has finally realised his long-cherished dream of making it to the presidential throne, winning 134 votes in the 225-member Parliament in what could be described as the most manipulated regime change in strife-ridden Sri Lanka. The 73-year-old veteran is the lone MP of his United National Party (UNP). His victory was made possible by the support of the deposed Rajapaksas' ruling SLPP (Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, which means Sri Lanka People's Front). In the three-cornered contest, Dullas Alahapperuma, an ex-SLPPian but now independent, won 82 votes, while the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna's Anura Kumara Dissanayake got all the three JVP votes.

Ranil's chair has more nails than cushions. He must quickly bring the anti-Rajapaksas street stir under control, devise a roadmap for pulling Sri Lanka out of its worst-ever economic crisis, and create a conducive political environment with inclusivity, if not consensus, as its central theme.

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Informed sources insist that India and its western allies, particularly the Quad partners, played a crucial role in getting Ranil elected to ensure economic revival with help from the IMF and other international funding agencies while checkmating the Chinese designs to gobble up the little island through its debt trap. Keeping Colombo under its protective umbrella is vital for India to secure its own southern borders from ending up as yet another PLA battlefront.

The immediate response from the 'Janata Aragalaya' (People's Struggle) protesters when Ranil was declared elected as President was to step up their shrill decibel for his scalp as they had already dubbed him as a Rajapaksa prop hoisted into the prime minister's seat when incumbent Mahinda took a tactical decision to step down in the hope of deflecting the public anger away from brother Gotabaya. The stir only turned scorching hot, and Gota needed the cover of darkness to flee the island by an air force craft. He sent in his resignation as the President from his temporary shelter, Singapore, but only after ensuring that all the members of his family were safely out of Sri Lanka and, more importantly, upon realising that none among even his closest allies in the military was willing to back a horse that has broken his leg in a reckless gallop.

India's regime-change plan must have begun during that 'reckless gallop' of the Rajapaksas down the cushioned turf laid out by the Chinese. Food shortages, fuel queues, power outages, crippled public transport, emptied hospitals, and finally, the 'Galle Revolution' in early April helped Delhi to shift gears and move towards securing 'workable' alternatives to the Rajapaksa family.

It must have taken little time and thought for the foreign ministry in Delhi—headed by seasoned diplomat S Jaishankar and guided by the shrewd NSA Ajit Doval—to identify Ranil as the best alternative. With his lone-man strength in Parliament, the UNP chief was at his lowest political stock, but then, he was the best suited to carry out the economic revival of his country, having been its finance minister and prime minister; besides, he is pro-India and pro-west and had openly opposed compromising the island's sovereignty and economic interests by the Chinese loans and had even sought review of some of the major Chinese projects during his tenure as the prime minister. Some of my friends in Colombo strongly believe that his party's dismal performance and the SLPP's huge victory in the 2020 Parliament poll had the Dragon's footprint.

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Initially, there were four contenders in the July 20 presidential poll in Parliament and the main challenger, Sajith Premadasa, heading the opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), had even on the night of July 15 made clear he was a serious candidate despite the ruling SLPP coalition dominating the numbers. "Even though it is an uphill struggle, I am convinced that truth will prevail," Sajith had tweeted. But on the morning of July 19, barely 24 hours before the MPs go for their secret ballot to choose the next president, Sajith announced he was withdrawing his candidacy "for the greater good of my country that I love and the people I cherish". He appealed to the opposition partners to work for Dullas' victory.

At the end of hard manoeuvres and manipulations, it became clear to Sajith and his team that Ranil will make it, despite his SLPP support base shrinking by earlier desertions and he in need of at least another 40-plus vote from the rival camp. Sources tell me that Ranil's aides made phone calls and personal visits to "every potential friend in the enemy camp" to engineer cross-voting; and that "India too helped in changing a few minds in favour of Ranil". Obviously, Delhi diagnosed, correctly, that Ranil would be a far better, safer and more mature ally than Sajith while playing out the future plans for Sri Lanka.

Informed sources also tell me that though the Tamil National Alliance (TNA, 10 MPs) officially announced support for Dullas, "more than half of them voted for Ranil as they have no faith in Sajith". It being a secret ballot, there is no way of officially verifying the cross-voting, but the end result of 134-82 amply demonstrates it took place.

I must mention here an interesting anecdote relating to the TNA's session in leader R Sampanthan's Colombo house on the evening of July 19 to decide on who to vote the following day—don't ask me why they had to wait till that eleventh hour to discuss such an important issue, just shows the deep divisions within the Tamil alliance. A few of the TNA seniors who had attended that meeting told me that Sumanthiran (a leader of the Tamil Arasu Katchi, TAK, a constituent of the TNA) dialled a number and put the call on speaker, claiming it was a senior official of the Indian High Commission at the other end telling the TNA that India wanted the Tamil MPs to support Sajith in the presidential poll. Shortly afterwards, Sajith arrived there with his prime ministerial candidate Dullas Allahapperuma and former foreign minister G L Peiris to seal the support pact with the TNA by promising to fulfil the Tamils' demands, such as freeing all political prisoners and releasing private lands taken over by the military and also the archaeological sites in the north and the east—the two Rajapaksa regimes have been demolishing Hindu temples under the pretext that excavations there yielded Buddhist monuments. When a section of the local Tamil media came out with Sumanthiran's 'alleged' phone call to the Indian diplomat the next morning, he tweeted a denial. The Indian High Commission, too, issued a denial clarifying that India would never interfere in any election in Sri Lanka. I cannot part with this episode without mentioning that Sumanthiran has been 'famously' anti-India.

When it became evident that Ranil had Delhi's blessings in getting elected as the president, Sajith took to Twitter to appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, besides all the political parties and the people in India, "to keep helping mother Lanka and its people to come out of this disaster". In yet another positive measure, he has also reached out to Ranil with a promise to cooperate in all his positive measures to solve the economic crisis.

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Hoisted thus firmly in the presidential seat, Ranil now has his work cut out; particularly the task of stepping up the fuel supplies, resuming negotiations with the IMF and other international funders and planning prudent internal monetary mechanisms that might seem tough and unreasonable to the masses initially; and, to ensure that the street protesters return home. "Already, the police have started cracking the whip. A few of the ringleaders have been summoned by the courts to appear in connection with protest demonstrations they had figured in over a year ago," said a Colombo friend, adding, "The government will unfold a carrot and stick policy; make conciliatory political moves in the Parliament and outside, take transparent measures to bring down people's misery even while going after the trouble-makers trying to keep the protest fire raging."

Ranil has now chosen his Royal College mate and SLPP senior, Dinesh Gunawardena, a highly respected former leader of the house in Parliament, to be his prime minister. The new Cabinet is being sworn in on Friday. Nothing better can happen on the troubled island; it may be too early to announce the emergence of the new dawn, but I can safely say people there can prepare by turning eastwards for the sunrise.

(R Bhagwan Singh is a senior journalist based in Chennai, writing on Sri Lanka since the 1980s)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.