Kalinga Seneviratne

Asian Angle | Sri Lanka’s Ranil Wickremesinghe is a schemer and the West’s stooge. Not the man to lead it out of crisis

Ranil Wickremesinghe, a five-time PM who has never completed a full term in office, only gained the presidency via horse-trading and with Western help

He claims he can schmooze the IMF, but Sri Lanka would be better served if India and China stepped up and worked with Russia to craft a BRICS bailout

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Sri Lanka’s newly elected president Ranil Wickremesinghe addresses the media in Colombo on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

Kalinga Seneviratne

Published: 9:00am, 24 Jul 2022

Ranil Wickremesinghe is widely distrusted in Sri Lanka and has little hope of uniting the country behind him to guide it out of its current economic mess.

The five-time prime minister – who has never completed a full term in office – is seen as a smart schemer and political survivor, not a unifying force. As a member of Colombo’s English-speaking elite, he’s more at ease connecting with Westerners than he is with the country’s grass roots.

Indeed, Wednesday’s parliamentary vote that brought Wickremesinghe the presidency could be seen as the second time Western powers – with a little help from India – have succeeded in putting their puppet on the throne.

A protester sits holding the Sri Lankan flag outside the presidential secretariat in Colombo the day after Wickremesinghe was elected president. Photo: AP

The first was a regime change in January 2015, when Wickremesinghe began his third turn as prime minister and quickly moved to grab most of the executive powers from the office of the president. In the run-up to those polls, Western-funded NGOs had painted then-President Mahinda Rajapaksa as corrupt and a violator of human rights.

The Aragalaya (struggle) protest movement that brought down Mahinda’s brother earlier this month is the focus of similar allegations, with claims that its leaders’ bank accounts are now flush with funds from “foreign sources”.

When he was last in power as prime minister, Wickremasinghe was accused of secretly negotiating with Washington for a US$500 million grant through its Millennium Challenge Corporation to create a land register, and for a status of forces agreement to make it easier for US troops to be based in or transit through Sri Lanka – both major factors behind his rejection by the electorate in 2020 and the national backlash that returned the Rajapaksas to power.

Wickremesinghe not only lost his own seat in those elections, but his United National Party (UNP) – the country’s oldest – was nearly wiped out, retaining just one seat in parliament.