The Elephant in the Room

The Aragalaya is the name taken to define this movement of struggle that seeks to return to some sense of equilibrium; to reassert the principles of democracy; this may seem vague and superficial to those wrestling with material issues such as paying bills, making mortgage payments and tuition fees or funding fuel to meet the week’s requirements

At an economics seminar, President Ranil Wickremesinghe suggested that  the IMF bailout will require a restructuring of domestic debt, referring  to Treasury Bonds and US Dollar-denominated Sri Lanka Development Bonds  (SLDBs)

 In 2015, the broad UNP base were disillusioned by the state of the  party; little had changed since 2009. Whatever anti-Rajapaksa/  pro-governance wave that swept Yahapalanaya to power, would quickly  dissipate

The familiar narrative was that the UNP and its Leader had always been  shortchanged, both by the electorate and by circumstance

Two  consecutive terms under CBK’s SLFP, with Sri Lanka having recorded its  first ever post-independence economic contraction in 2001, had left  Ranil Wickremesinghe in pole position to claim victory in 2005

During a recent speech to the audience at an economics seminar, President Ranil Wickremesinghe suggested that the IMF bailout will require a restructuring of domestic debt, referring to Treasury Bonds and US Dollar-denominated Sri Lanka Development Bonds (SLDBs). This may have been a poorly worded throw-away during wide-ranging remarks on politics and the economy. On the other hand, it is quite disconcerting that the President would choose that moment and audience to make a vague statement that could have far-reaching implications for Sri Lanka’s economic stability.   

Mr. Wickremesinghe should have been more precise given that we are in negotiations with lenders and creditors; the markets are always listening. At any rate, should the President that holds the Finance Ministry be contradicting the statements of the CBSL Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe, who stated a matter of weeks prior that local debt restructuring was not on the cards? SJB MP Eran Wickramaratne, perhaps in a show of  ‘unity,’ was kind enough to walk back the President’s comments for the sake of stability of the financial sector.   

Mr. Dimantha Mathew of First Capital Research noted that any restructuring of local debt that requires a ‘haircut’ or write-off, risks the stability of the banking sector, noting specifically its impact on capital adequacy. He further warned that pension funds have also been invested in Treasury Bonds, putting at further risk the working people of Sri Lanka.   

The United Nationalist Podujana Peramuma
“What we need is a leadership that has the blessings of Mahinda Rajapaksa and is linked with Buddhism, the Buddhist Order and the Sinhalese” stated Ven. Vendaruwe Upali Thero, revealing further the ethno-majoritarian and ultra-nationalist core of the Sri Lanka Podujana Party (SLPP). There were even calls for Gotabaya Rajapaksa to be more like “a Hitler”.   

From the Muslim burial rights issue and Bodu Bala Sena to the Presidential pardons of Staff Sergeant Sunil Ratnayake and Mr. Duminda Silva, Gotabaya and the SLPP seemed to be systematically dismantling the Rajapaksa brand. From standing with and fighting for farming communities across Sri Lanka, from being revered by the peasantry and the working classes, the Rajapaksa’s are now widely cursed among their own.   

The Rajapaksa brand is now at its lowest ebb in perhaps half a century, under such circumstances, as a former UNPer, it was the ultimate betrayal to witness Ranil Wickremesinghe insert the UNP into the national conversation through the discredited SLPP. A once progressive party would align itself with perhaps the most ultra-nationalist version of a Sri Lankan political party in recent memory.   

My late mother’s family had been active in local politics in Kirulapone and she always considered SWRD Bandaranaike’s ‘Sinhala Only’ policy to be a great betrayal, not just of Sri Lanka’s minorities, but of the Sri Lankan project.   

I inherited this personal distaste for the SLFP from my “kapuwath kola” mother, who came from a generation that believed in the inherent characteristics and values that were supposed to define a political party. The UNP meant something to many like her, it was part of Sri Lanka’s social fabric, an immutable component of our struggle from colony to Republic. My mother represented perhaps the last generation of Sri Lankans that felt genuine emotion towards their party, they held on to romantic notions of principles. She was always clear that Mr. Wickremesinghe, while possessing certain qualities, would be unable to win the trust of the wider Sri Lankan public. She noticed the aristocratic attitude of the UNP Leadership and how this person would stick out like a sore thumb amongst patriotic chest-thumpers.   

While we today perceive the UNP as an urban and cosmopolitan party, she remembered a UNP that was once the party of the people, of all people, able to attract voters from varying backgrounds, she had seen this first hand throughout her life. In some ways, the UNP would reflect the changes in the values of the US Democrats, a party that had always enjoyed the support of the working class. Somewhere along the way, as decades of polling suggests, the Democrats became the party of the corporate sector, of the urbanized middle-classes, forsaking its own traditional base of support.   

The Southern alienation
Many colleagues, friends and family have been long-term voters for Mr. Wickremesinghe and the UNP. My mother’s advice was to always ensure that the Party Leader would receive a strong preferential vote total, this was necessary for the stability of the Party, she would say. Thereby, in August 2015, I would give Ranil Wickremesinghe yet another one of my preferential votes in the Colombo District, as I had always done, as a loyal UNPer.   

Voting for Mr. Wickremesinghe in 2015, against my best judgement, certainly now, writing in 2022, leaves a bitter taste; not the support for the Yahapalanaya project itself, but the naivety of believing, even slightly, that things would be different this time around. At the very outset, Yahapalanaya would lose the moral high-ground with Mr. Wickremesinghe’s handpicked confidant allegedly involved in a stunning case of ‘insider trading’, dubbed the “Bond Scam”.   

Throughout the late 2000s, as senior members of the financial sector, my father had warned the public, in print, that the CBSL had become dangerously politicised in a manner he had not yet witnessed in his 40-year banking career. He noted that CBSL Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal was making highly “subjective inferences on data” and that CBSL presentations seemed to purposefully present a “misleading picture” (May 2009). Note that Sri Lanka is caught in an economic spiral mainly due to the politicisation of the CBSL and Monetary Board as well as the manipulation of monetary policy without adequate deliberation.  

The familiar narrative was that the UNP and its Leader had always been shortchanged, both by the electorate and by circumstance. Two consecutive terms under CBK’s SLFP, with Sri Lanka having recorded its first ever post-independence economic contraction in 2001, had left Ranil Wickremesinghe in pole position to claim victory in 2005. It’s worth noting that one of CBK’s major first-term controversies was the Government Privatisation Plan.   
Two successful and profitable State-owned Enterprises were privatised; the Distilleries Company of Ceylon (DCSL) and the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation (SLIC).   

SLIC was handed back to the GoSL in 2009, after the Supreme Court, with a Bench headed by Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva, ruled the sale of shares to a private consortium in 2003 was “illegal, null and void” with the report in the Sunday Times noting that “The Court stated that its conscience has been shocked by the behaviour of senior public officials. Those mentioned in the petition include former Treasury Secretary P.B. Jayasundera, former Treasury Secretary Charitha Ratwatte, Former Minister of Economic Reform Milinda Moragoda” amongst others. Despite the failures of the CBK administration, Mr. Wickremesinghe’s lack of national popularity meant that 2005 became a close contest and whatever the conspiracy theories surrounding LTTE-led suppression of voting in the Northern Province, it would prove pivotal in deciding the election in Mahinda Rajapaksa’s favour by 150k votes.   

While UNPer’s such as myself blamed Prabhakaran’s intervention for the UNPs defeat, there were other factors that we simply ignored. Ranil Wickremesinghe championed the Ceasefire Agreement of 2002 (CFA) a necessary evil that would lead to the Oslo Declaration: “both parties have decided to explore a political solution founded on internal self-determination based on a federal structure within a united Sri Lanka”. Prabhakaran introduced his Interim Self-Governing Authority (ISGA), a supposed compromise of the hardline independent Eelam position, replaced by the call for “regional autonomy”. The ISGA was an affront to the Southern Nationalists; calling for an amalgamation of the North and Eastern Province and for an LTTE controlled, quasi-administrative body that would collect taxes and generate funding abroad.   

Mr. Wickremesinghe’s early 2000s dalliance with the ‘Karuna Faction’, federalism, the CFA and the ISGA would doom the UNP for a decade in the context of the ‘Mahinda Rajapaksa-led’ defeat of the LTTE in 2009.   

Ranil Rajapaksa
In 2015, the broad UNP base were disillusioned by the state of the party; little had changed since 2009. Whatever anti-Rajapaksa/ pro-governance wave that swept Yahapalanaya to power, would quickly dissipate; in five years the Wickremesinghe/ Sirisena axis failed to prosecute a single member of the Rajapaksa family for anything like the mass corruption that was alleged by our current President in 2015. This is in fact, where the ‘Ranil Rajapaksa’ narrative was born and why it persists.  

Throughout the Yahapalanaya regime, it seemed that Mr. Wickremesinghe would prefer to utilise the potential prosecution of these cases against the Rajapaksa’s in a ‘carrot and stick’ manner to suit his own political moves.   
In the final throes of Yahapalanaya, during a brief period between the October 2018 constitutional crisis and the April 2019 Easter Attack, Ranil Wickremesinghe would once again enjoy the support of the Colombo liberals, when it seemed that the forces of the Rajapaksa establishment might retake the throne.   

However, as soon as the National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) made its mark on Sri Lanka’s long history of terrorism, support for Mr. Wickremesinghe would collapse, as evidence of intelligence failures were exposed.   

Instead of self-reflection and unity, the Leadership failed to throw its weight behind Mr. Sajith Premadasa, a natural heir to the UNP leadership. In the week prior to the election, the universally unpopular Ranil Wickremesinghe stated that in the event of a Premadasa victory, he would retain the Prime Minister’s post. This was a warning to the electorate that a Premadasa presidency would extend the extremely unpopular Wickremesinghe Premiership under the 19th Amendment.   

Dreams from my father 
My father would vote for CBK in 1994, he viewed her as a cosmopolitan antidote to the SLFP’s insularity. He seemed to regret this decision soon after: regularly joining the chorus of CBK critics in the media.   

There was always an impatience about my father whenever he discussed the country’s politics and policies, there was a sense of urgency that I only now truly understand. Being born in the colonial era, in 1939, my father’s generation perhaps best understood the potential Sri Lanka had; his travels abroad had exposed him to the pace at which other nations would develop, he wanted the same for Sri Lanka. I imagine the promise of our island at the time of its independence was palpable to those like my father.   

My mother would lose a battle with Covid in March 2021, she never lived to see the UNP of her parent’s generation disintegrate into a proxy Pohottuwa puppet, she was spared this final betrayal of the party by Ranilism. Her sentiments are mirrored by many UNPers in all four corners of Sri Lanka. Ranil Wickremesinghe’s breach of trust of the people that cared for the party and stood by it for decades, was stunning.  

The truth is that these political parties, especially the UNP, have never really taken the emotions and sentiments of their voters seriously, treating them as subjects; subjects that will always remain loyal and subjugated. The UNP/ SLPP adventure might provide the GOP a lifeline, yet it might also further endanger the Party of the elephant, leaving behind a shell of familial dynasty, bringing ideological symmetry with the SLPP in another irony of history.   
The UNP was supposed to be an inclusive party, but with its leadership decidedly ‘exclusive’ this became near impossible; the party had come to reflect a Lalith Athulathmudali quote from a 1992 interview with the Los Angeles Times: “You simply can’t buck the established order. The masses want people like us because the common man wants to be led by an uncommon man”. It was this culture of elitism that would dissolve away the UNP’s populist streak. The party would become a reflection of its leadership.   

The radicalisation of youth
Mr. Wickremesinghe will utilise the Rajapaksa power centre to sustain a set of established elites loyal to himself, rather than take the chance of being expelled from his own party by a new establishment. Until and unless a General Election is called to reconstitute the legislature, there is only one singular threat to Mr. Wickremesinghe completing the remainder of the ‘Gota’ term: the Aragalaya. This explains the explicit threats against Aragalaya activists; their persecution and suppression is specifically aimed at weakening the movement.   

Mr. Wickremesinghe is aware that Aragalaya 2.0 would pale in comparison to the intensity of Aragalaya 3.0, as Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka and others have called it, in reference to the potential mass movements against upcoming austerity. Every nation that has seen its economy collapse so dramatically has also had to contend with concerted public pressure in the form of ‘occupy’ action and protest marches. Mr. Wickremesinghe is taking all necessary measures to ensure that such public sentiment is confined to private conversation and does not permeate the national mood on ‘mainstreet’.   

In many ways, this might already be too late. The arrest of Dhaniz Ali whilst waiting onboard an aircraft set to depart, triggered his fellow passengers to momentarily resist the arrest. On private videos, passengers can be heard requesting authorities to furnish documentation, demanding that he not be arrested, reminding authorities that these youth are fighting for the same nation those officers were bound to serve.   

This is the public consciousness that the suppression of the Aragalaya will strengthen; the resolve in the hearts of many Sri Lankans will only further solidify; far from weakening the resistance, Mr. Wickremesinghe’s tactics will further embolden and radicalize activists. When austerity strikes, the intensity of the protests will be beyond anything witnessed on the 9th of July or even the 9th of May 2022, it may even eclipse the 1953 Ceylon Hartal, the 69th anniversary of which fell on the 12th of August. The 1953 Hartal saw the resignation of Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake who was, like Ranil Wickremesinghe, a scion of the UNP establishment.   

Regulating class conflict
In a piece by Asiri Fernando from 31st July, Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka notes that a revolution must be judged not just by dramatic events but also by the process of the agitation. The American war of independence, the American “Revolution” was fought to gain independence from a Monarchy to create a new system through self-determination. It was an uncomplicated narrative: revolt against an established hierarchy, the sort of story you read about throughout history. In any such revolt, success necessarily legitimizes a new power centre within the hierarchy, a new set of elites. This cycle only abates when a set of elites builds a consensus or finds an equilibrium with the wider population and its various stakeholders; when it generates adequate prosperity for its ‘subjects’, enough to quell dissent and stave off disillusionment. Governing then is a moderation of conflict within and beyond a hierarchy.   

The Aragalaya is the name taken to define this movement of struggle that seeks to return to some sense of equilibrium; to reassert the principles of democracy; this may seem vague and superficial to those wrestling with material issues such as paying bills, making mortgage payments and tuition fees or funding fuel to meet the week’s requirements. To understand why these sometimes abstract notions of democracy are important, we have to notice how our systems of democracy evolved and where they developed from.   

Democracy as we know it today, evolved from the Magna Carta, which was itself a representation of the fight for the rights of the nobility against the Monarchy. The Aragalaya was waged by diverse groups, against the virtual Monarchy of the Rajapaksa’s and many from the ‘nobility’ were well represented within the struggle.  

Now, with a new President from the established order, someone from within and thus familiar to the ranks of the nobility, we see the struggle dissipate. The President’s party, the UNP is merely a shell of its former glory, a Kingdom whose internal subjects rebelled against the ruling Monarchy, only to be exiled.  

The current Sri Lankan political equation thus resembles two separate sets of entrenched establishment ruling elites who have come together to sustain and protect each other’s positions within the hierarchy. Together, they have closed, locked and completely jammed the door to the vital and necessary movement for reform. The Greek Economist Yanis Varoufakis has referred to the modern state as a “mechanism for regulating class conflict…” and this is what Mr. Wickremesinghe has become, an instrument through which the SLPP regulates the various groups of citizens that might have notions of independence, of rejecting their narrative.   

A failed and discredited political party has utilised a historically unpopular politician from the established aristocracy to neutralise discontent within elite circles and re-establish their dominance over the Government. This state of affairs proves that the Aragalaya’s call for “system change” has never been more relevant.