"Ranil go home!": Sri Lanka's new president is anything but

Submitted by AWL on 21 July, 2022 - 5:47 Author: Sacha Ismail
Protesters with forearms saying "Ranil go home"

Shortly after Sri Lanka’s authoritarian right-wing president Gotabaya Rajapaksa was overthrown (9 July) and fled the island (probably 13 July), Sri Lankan socialist feminist Niyanthini Kadirgamar told us:

“On the 15th, the day Gotabaya Rajapaksa's resignation was finally announced, [Ranil] Wickremesinghe was sworn in as acting president until a parliamentary vote next week. If he is elected president then, it might well lead to further turmoil and protests.”

As acting president, Wickremesinghe took to TV to call the protest movement in whose absence he would not have taken office a “fascist threat to democracy”. He made clear he had told the army and the police to do whatever it takes to "restore order".

Immediately after his election as full president, a court issue prohibited anyone from gathering within fifty meteres of a central point in Galle Face in the capital Colombo, the site of the main protest occupation camp. People are defying the order.

Moreover protesters are now raising the slogan “Ranil go home” – replacing “Gota go home”.

Before he became president, Wickremesinghe was appointed prime minister by Gotabaya Rajapaksa after the latter’s brother, Mahinda, resigned the post. But before that he was previously prime minister five times, the first time in 1993-4, aggressively driving forward anti-working class economic reforms in Sri Lanka.

Niyanthini Kadirgamar described him as “an ardent neoliberal who was squarely rejected by voters in the last general election”. In the 2020 parliamentary election, which saw a right-wing nationalist sweep, his conservative the United National Party, previously one of the two major parties of Sri Lanka, won only one seat. (In 2020 most of the UNP’s previous support transferred to the more liberal and less Sinhalese nationalist Samagi Jana Balawegaya / United Peoples Power party. Despite many defections and shifts, the Rajapaksas' right-wing nationalist Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, Sri Lanka National Front, still has a majority.)

Wickremesinghe has also been implicated in major financial corruption scandals – a fact highlighted by the protesters demanding his resignation.

Still, Gotabaya Rajapaksa hoped he would provide just enough of an air of technocracy and independence from the regime to seem like a fresh pair of hands. Hopefully, and it seems to be the case, this was a severe miscalculation.

Wickremesinghe is set to continue in office till November 2024, and has said he has no plans to call elections before then, no doubt hoping that the protest movement will dissipate, voices challenging neoliberalism fade, and anything beyond minimal political changes avoided. In terms of democracy, seems unlikely to support the democracy’s movements constitutional demands, first and foremost abolition of the executive presidency, which is strongly associated with Sinhala nationalist militarism and neoliberalism. He also seems unlikely to pursue bringing his friends in the Rajapaksa family to justice.

Sri Lanka’s democracy movement, particularly its labour movement, needs international solidarity to overthrow Wickremesinghe and force the adoption of serious democratic reforms. It needs solidarity to build pressure for economic policies to address the country’s deep economic crisis in the interests of its working people, against the Sri Lankan ruling class and international creditors.

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