Sri Lanka’s Political Intrigue Deepens

On October 26, 2018, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena abruptly fired Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replaced him with Mahinda Rajapaksa, a member of parliament and the former president. The move was unconstitutional and plunged Sri Lanka into unprecedented political turmoil.

The seven-week crisis paralyzed Sri Lanka’s government and weakened its economy. The ongoing geopolitical rivalries and big power contests for influence in the island were impacted as well. A year later, Sri Lanka continues to grapple with the ripple effects.

Upon being sacked, Wickremesinghe refused to resign on the grounds that the president had acted unconstitutionally. Wickremesinghe argued he still enjoyed the support of parliament. Thus, for a time, Sri Lanka was in the peculiar predicament of having two prime ministers concurrently.

In a bid to prevent Wickremesinghe from proving his majority on the floor of the House, Sirisena suspended parliament in late October and in November dissolved it. New elections were announced for early January. But, on December 13, the Supreme Court ruled that Sirisena’s dissolution of parliament was unconstitutional. Rajapaksa resigned and Wickremesinghe was reinstated as prime minister. The technical impasse came to an end, but its impact on Sri Lanka still lingers.

There were some positive outcomes. By upholding the constitution, Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court emerged taller from the crisis. The apex court “asserted itself against the arbitrary and capricious exercise of constitutional authority by the head of the executive and refused to be submissive to the executive. It also protected the institutional autonomy of the legislature and ensured the constitutional protection to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. In doing so, Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court ultimately proved itself to be a reliable arbiter of disputes,” noted political scientist Jayadeva Uyangoda in a December 2018 article in The Hindu.

The crisis also provided a shot in the arm to Sri Lankan civil society activists. Not only did Sirisena’s “act of stabbing democracy in the back” prompt public outrage, especially among young voters, Uyangoda wrote, but it also “led to a reactive regeneration and sudden burst of political activism, participation and resistance by citizens.”

Those positive corollaries asides, Sri Lanka was without an effective government for seven weeks. The island was in the grip of political instability and uncertainty, the worst Sri Lanka has witnessed since the end of the civil war in 2009. This had serious implications for the island’s economy. The value of its currency fell and depreciated further with foreign investors exiting the domestic securities market. Investor confidence dipped, as did Sri Lanka’s credit ratings. The crisis reportedly cost Sri Lanka $1 billion in reserves. Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange reserves, which stood at $7.9 billion on October 26 decreased to $6.9 billion when the stalemate ended, Wickremesinghe told parliament in January. With several countries issuing travel advisories during the crisis, tourist arrivals also fell.

The crisis was the culmination of a series of power struggles. President Sirisena, a Sinhalese nationalist, heads the center-left Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), while Prime Minister Wickremesinghe leads the center-right United National Party (UNP). The two parties have incompatible ideologies and economic policies. They have been bitter rivals for decades.

Still, in a bid to defeat President Rajapaksa in the January 2015 presidential election, the UNP supported Sirisena, who was health minister in the Rajapaksa government. Sirisena defeated Rajapaksa in a victory seen by many as an upset.

In parliamentary elections in August that year, the UNP emerged with the largest number of seats, but was short of a majority. With support from Sirisena loyalists in the SLFP, Wickremesinghe became prime minister and formed a UNP-led unity government.

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe bonhomie was short-lived and, before long, the two were at loggerheads on an array of issues from economic policy to accountability for wartime abuses, as well as curbing corruption and even the day-to-day administration of the government. At a cabinet meeting in mid-October 2018, Sirisena and Wickremesinghe were reportedly engaged in a heated discussion on the development of Colombo port.

Wickremesinghe was keen on India playing a major role in the project while Sirisena opposed the proposal. At the meeting, Sirisena reportedly alleged that Indian intelligence agents were involved in a plot to assassinate him. Subsequently, Sirisena accused Wickremesinghe of not adequately investigating the plot.

This was the prelude to Sirisena’s decision to sack Wickremesinghe and replace him with Rajapaksa. That gambit failed, as noted above, and Sirisena was all but forced to reappoint Wickremesinghe. Their relationship has not improved over the last year; indeed, new bones of contention have emerged. Security matters, in particular, have suffered the clear impact of this lingering political crisis.

On April 21, 2019, a string of coordinated suicide bombings targeting churches and luxury hotels in and around the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, resulted in around 259 deaths and more than 500 injuries. The attacks, which occured on Easter Sunday, were carried out by of the National Thowheeth Jama'ath (NTJ), an Islamist extremist group of Sri Lankan nationals that had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

Following the bombings it emerged that although foreign intelligence agencies had provided Sri Lanka with actionable intelligence on the attacks, those reports were not acted upon. Apparently, since the 2018 crisis, Wickremesinghe had not been invited to meetings of the National Security Council (NSC), which falls under the Ministry of Defense and is in Sirisena’s charge. The president’s reluctance to share information with the prime minister and his failure to act on the tip-offs he had received may have cost Sri Lanka dearly.

Sri Lanka, an island in the Indian ocean southeast off the tip of India, is strategically located near some of the world’s most critical shipping lanes. More than 60,000 ships, carrying two-thirds of the world’s oil and half of all container shipments, pass through the nearby East-West route. This shipping route is a veritable lifeline for the economies of countries like China, South Korea and Japan.

With that framing in mind, Sri Lanka has understandably drawn the attention of major powers, namely India and China. Joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the island has become a critical focal point for geopolitical competition. A mounting Chinese presence on the island, accompanied by investment, has drawn further attention and criticism.

After struggling with debt repayments following the construction of a massive new port complex at Hambantota (named officially after Rajapaksa, under whom the project commenced in 2008), in 2016 Sri Lanka made a deal with its Chinese creditors – effectively handing over majority control of the port to China for 99 years. With the Hambantota debacle, Sri Lanka became the poster child for what China’s critics deride as Beijing’s “debt-trap diplomacy.”

The big power battle for influence in Sri Lanka has largely been waged leader-to-leader. During his second term (2010-15) Rajapaksa drew closer to China and signed on to dozens of economic and military deals. His defeat in the 2015 presidential election was widely interpreted as a setback for China, providing India with an opening to play a larger role on the island. Allegedly India played a role in stitching together the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe alliance, which ultimately defeated Rajapaksa.

Thus, when Sirisena appointed Rajapaksa as prime minister in October last year, it was seen by some as a boost for China. China was among the few countries to congratulate Rajapaksa on his appointment; indeed, Beijing’s envoy to Sri Lanka met Rajapaksa to convey his government’s congratulatory message to him in person.

Throughout the crisis, Western diplomats in Colombo issued statements and weighed in on the crisis with concerns about the democratic process. The eventual reinstatement of Wickremesinghe, seen as pro-Western, was interpreted as a win for the West and India.

Although in the run-up to the 2015 presidential election Sirisena had promised to establish “equal relations” between China, India, Pakistan, and Japan and to pursue a more “balanced” foreign policy, his testy relations with Wickremesinghe, especially in the wake of the 2018 crisis, have seen Sirisena take on a decidedly anti-U.S. posture.

If Sirisena kept Wickremesinghe out of NSC meetings and avoided sharing information on internal security matters, the latter seems to have refrained from sharing the full content of controversial agreements he signed with the United States. Wickremesinghe and Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera pushed for the renewal of the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) with the United States, rushed it through parliament and past the president – Sirisena has alleged that he was not shown the full text of the agreement – to renew it on August 4, 2017.

With regard to the controversial Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) too, Wickremesinghe and Sirisena have taken opposing positions. Talks between the United States and Sri Lanka on SOFA have been suspended until at least after the presidential elections scheduled for later this year.

With presidential elections scheduled to be held sometime in November, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe quarrel can be expected to intensify. Although many of the political parties are yet to name their candidates, there is some indication of what lies ahead. The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), a breakaway from the SLFP and led by former President Rajapaksa, is fielding his brother and former secretary of defense, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa.

Especially after the Easter Sunday attacks, Sri Lankans are worried about security issues and may see in Gotabhaya a leader who will act decisively against rising Islamist extremism and local links with global jihadists. He is expected to attract the votes of those who believe that Sri Lanka needs strong leadership more than it needs democracy.

Wickremesinghe is keen to contest the presidential elections too, but there are other possible contenders for the UNP’s nomination, including Sajith Premadasa, deputy leader of the UNP, and Karu Jayasuriya, the current speaker.

Whether Sirisena will contest the presidential election or not is unclear at the moment. Even if he secures the SLFP nomination, he is unlikely to win. In his five years in office, Sirisena has not only overseen the unfurling Hambantota debacle, but headed a government that botched the handling of critical intelligence that could have headed off the Easter Sunday attacks. His triggering of the 2018 constitutional crisis did not go down well with a sizeable section of those who voted for him in 2015. His arbitrary sacking of Wickremesinghe, only to appoint Rajapaksa who he had defeated three years prior, has drawn the ire of Sri Lankan democrats.

Sirisena’s chances of re-election may be weak but he isn’t giving up. He is in talks with the SLPP for an alliance in the upcoming election. Simultaneously, he is seeking to woo the Premadasa faction of the UNP.

Less than a year after he removed Wickremesinghe to replace him with Rajapaksa, Sirisena is reported to have sought to oust Wickremesinghe again. According to reports in the Sri Lankan media, Sirisena recently encouraged Premadasa to rally his supporters in the UNP to form a new government after toppling Wickremesinghe. Unlike his ouster of Wickremesinghe last year, which was unconstitutional, Sirisena’s latest attempt to topple Wickremesinghe, which failed, is within the bounds of the constitution.

It’s dirty politics, but not unconstitutional to urge Wickremesinghe’s party to dump him. Sirisena’s plan it seems is to get the UNP to support him in the presidential election as it did in 2015. This would not be possible with a Wickremesinghe-led UNP. In return for a Premadasa-led UNP supporting Sirisena’s bid for a second term as president, Sirisena’s apparent plan is to find an opening to appoint Premadasa as prime minister as soon as possible.

A year after the 2018 constitutional crisis, the political intrigue in Sri Lanka has only deepened.