Ranil Wickremesinghe, the selfless

leader of Sri Lanka

A review of Dinesh Weerakkodys book on the Prime Minister

Saturday, 6 May 2017

Dinesh Weerakkody recently launched a

biography of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe among a
distinguished gathering. The keynote speech was delivered by
Sashi Tharoor, Indian politician and former Under Secretary
General of United Nations.
He is the current Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing
Committee on External Affairs. Minister Rajitha Senarathne
delivered a speech and mentioned the leftist background of the
PMs father. He said that Wickremesinghe kept his multi-ethnic
and multi-religious Royal College heritage right along so that he is
more equipped to give a lasting solution to the ethnic problem of
the country.

The book is a political biography of a leader who has been

engaged in politics for 40 years so that the book eventually deals
with the 40 years of political history of the country. After briefly
describing Wickremesinghes political history in one chapter, the
author describes the PMs involvement in various important areas
of Sri Lankan political history. This was an interesting approach
against narrating the events in a chronological order.

Another praiseworthy aspect was that the author being a close

associate of the PM was never hesitant to criticise the main
character of his book where necessary. Therefore the book was
never a mere admiration.

Turbulent career

Out of the Sri Lankan leaders Ranil has gone through the
most turbulent career in politics. Greatness was thrust upon some
of them and the others had to wait for a longer time till they got
the baton. During his long and uninterrupted spell in Parliament
Ranil had his ups and downs. As Weerakkody pointed out, he was
given additional and responsible portfolios by President
Jayewardene due to his ability and capacity to work.

President Premadasa appointed D.B. Wijethunga as Prime Minister

and Ranil Wickremesinghe as Leader of the house ahead of Lalith
Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake, his leadership
contestants. After Wijethunga he lost the leadership to Gamini
Dissanayake. Following the assassination of Dissanayake he
became the Leader of the party and the Opposition. He became
the Prime Minister for a short spell where the President was from
the Opposition party. He lost presidential elections twice, once
after the assassination attempt by LTTE on the incumbent
President and then after the LTTE ordered Tamils not to vote at the
election.

He faced several challenges to his party leadership and however

managed to survive. He had to hand over the Opposition
nominations to two common candidates, one lost and the other
won. In Ranils words, The important thing is never give up and
standby what you believe in, JR did that and Premadasa followed.
Page 148

Ethnic conflict

In 2002, with no end in sight to the ferocious war that was

raging, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe signed the Ceasefire
Agreement that brought the war to an end. The signing of that
agreement was the act of a statesman who put country before
self and the Right to Life above all others When he said that he
would negotiate a ceasefire and an interim administration with
the LTTE, he stuck to this platform although defeat after defeat
followed him. Page 150

It is seldom that ethnic and religious minorities can determine

governments. But despite losing ethnic majority support, and
losing elections as a result, Ranil Wickremesinghe stayed steady
to his course. Page 148

This was an attribute of a selfless leader. A not-so-close parallel

would be Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi conducted his last hunger
strike on two demands that Indian Government should pay 350
million to the Pakistan Government and the Hindu refugees who
came from Pakistan should release the properties they forcibly
acquired from Indian Muslims. The Indian people and Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru conceded in three days.

In this line the PM met his counterpart in the President who fought
hard to reduce his own powers which is a rare phenomenon in
world politics.

Inaction of PM

It may therefore be better if Ranil puts his resources to full use

now in fighting corruption and taking the country on the
development road. This is what the public and Maithri (the
President) want from him. Page 116

In Annexure 1, Weerakkody has given his own article published in

Daily FT titled Ranil must rise to the challenge and deliver before
its too late, where he blames that so many people are slowly
getting disillusioned with Ranils style of governance.

This is the common consciousness of majority of the people who

are used to being under near dictators. There are two issues at
hand, one is political reforms and the other is economic reforms.
Under political reforms we need to have a new constitution and a
mechanism of power sharing.

Previous governments tried both these without the support of the

Opposition or the Opposition deliberately did not support since
they have put their own objectives ahead of the national
objectives. However ours is a democracy and not a government
like that of Lee Kuan Yew. Therefore we need the consensus of all
the intellects, idiots and foxes. Presently we are passing that lull
period.

When Gandhi stared the hunger strike, the people understood the
justice in three days. Our people need much more time. The Sub
Committee of Centre-Periphery Relationships of the Steering
Committee of the Constitutional Assembly published its report
where Chief Ministers of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party
recommended that the powers of the Governors should be
curtailed drastically which needs a referendum although the SLFP
officially rejected a referendum.

Several members of the Joint Opposition actively participated this

sub committees. The debate is going on. Ranil does not want to
take this to the people and get ownership of it but he facilitates
the exercise. This is everybodys baby. If no one is wearing that
hat, civil society should do so. The country needs all the corrupt
and un-corrupt politicians in this process so that the Government
is not in a position to pursue anti-corruption campaign at this
moment. That is the crux of it.

On the economic front successive governments maintained deficit

budgets for popular reasons. Deficits were supported by loans. In
the past we got grants since we were a low income country. Now
the situation is different and we get commercial loans instead of
grants. As a result of deficit budgeting, interest rates and inflation
rates have gone up with the arbitrary holding of the exchange
rate by the successive governments. Hence governments
facilitated an anti-export policy, resulting in balance of payment
issues.

The previous Government took massive loans and invested in

uneconomical projects at least in the short run. Government
revenue and export earnings have dropped drastically. Now we
are stuck and cannot invest in development projects.
Opening of the economy in 1977 was the first economic
revolution. At that time as a country we were stuck. There was a
lot of opposition to the open economy and some of the businesses
which were under State protection went out of the scene.
Successive SLFP governments also followed the same policies.

Now we want the second economic revolution. That is Free Trade

Agreements. Ranil plans to extend the existing one with India, to
have new agreements with China and with Singapore. Ranil
launched a plan to reform State-Owned Enterprises, enter into
trade agreements with India and China, to increase market access
and restructure the key investment promotion agency to become
even more appealing to foreign investors. Page 183

As happened in 1977 some of the businesses will have to be

closed. Our businessmen should take up the challenge to take on
the markets of those big countries. Or else foreign investors
should come to take those opportunities. The majority of the
country including the businessmen and professionals are in the
defensive mode. They may be thinking that it is wiser to
safeguard present pennies rather than going for future pounds.

Politicians like to keep loss-making government institutions, to

exercise their power and to appoint their henchmen to vacancies
(or otherwise) in reciprocal favours. They make propaganda that
selling those institutes is a loss to the country. In fact, the loss is
to maintain those institutes with taxpayers money. People do not
understand this and vote against selling those assets affiliated
with a false sense of nationalism. So the hard pills have to be
taken just for survival. It might take some time to get the
mindsets changed since we are a democracy.

I suppose those are the reasons of visible inaction of the PM who

was very active in 2001.
Social market economy

Social market economy combines free market economic policies

and characteristics of a welfare state. This was initially introduced
in Germany in 1949 by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

Ironically Ranil addressing a World Bank sponsored summit which

was held in the Colombo suburbs (early 2016) said that his
Government wants to consciously reduce indirect taxation. The
Premier said that currently 80% of tax revenue comprised indirect
taxes, while only 20% came from direct taxes. He said that this
was wrong, considering the fact that 80% of the countrys wealth
was held by 20% of the population. Ranil further said that we
want to reduce indirect taxation to 60%, while at the same time
enhancing direct taxed to 40%, comparable to global standards.
Page 128

Figures of India or Singapore are very much closer to the standard

the PM mentioned. The PMs vision appears to be that to take the
country from crony capitalism sponsored by successive
governments to social market economy.

Personal attributes

His tendency to gather around him his close friends of years

gone by, who have done very little to help him when he was in
the political wilderness, but flock around him when he is in power,
has been one of his outstanding weaknesses, which has drawn
justified criticism from many quarters. Page 181

In the Preface Weerakkody said: Ranil is surprisingly a very

simple man who never throws his weight around. He is only
interested in getting a job done well.
His seeming reluctance to mix freely with friends, and more so
with the common man, made it difficult even for those who
admired him, and wanted to enthusiastically support him. This
flowed more than an innate shyness than from a seemingly
feeling of superiority, but the result was the same. Page 180

Recently when the Meethotamulla garbage dump collapsed, the

PM was in Japan. He cut short his next visit to Vietnam and rushed
back. Thereafter he has visited the site although several other
members of the Government did not visit the place and those who
were visited were booted out by the people. However he was with
a facemask when all the people accompanied him were without
facemasks. This is Ranil and I think the people of this country
should learn how to live with this character for the benefit of
them, their children and their country.
Posted by Thavam