When Ranil Wickremesinghe led the United National Party (UNP) to victory at the August 17 general elections, it was not merely the end of a hectic 49-day campaign; it was also the culmination of a 40-year-long political career that had few triumphs and many disasters.
Wickremesinghe was sworn in as the country’s Prime Minister for a record fourth time in a simple fifteen minute ceremony four days later. It is a feat matched only by Dudley Senanayake. Senanayake was first appointed as Premier following the sudden death of his father D. S. Senanayake but was elected to office thrice later. Wickremesinghe who was first appointed as PM after the assassination of Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993 was elected as Prime Minister in 2001, appointed as Premier earlier this year and elected again last week.
Ranil Shriyan Wickremesinghe had a privileged entry to politics. His father Esmond Wickremesinghe had been at Lake House since 1950s — when it was later said that “what Lake House said today, the (UNP) Government did tomorrow” — until a few years before it was nationalised. He was a power broker in the UNP. By the mid-1970s, Ranil’s uncle J.R. Jayewardene was leading the UNP. Young Ranil must have imbibed heavily from the heady brew of politics at the dinner table in the Wickremesinghe household and would have found it difficult to say no to being appointed UNP organiser for the Kelaniya electorate, and later shifted to the newly carved neighbouring Biyagama electorate. He has said that he would have been a journalist if he had not entered politics.
The 1977 elections that swept Jayewardene into power thrust the unassuming 28-year old lawyer in to Parliament where he was Deputy Minister to the country’s frequent flier Foreign Minister A.C. S. (“All Countries Seen”) Hameed. His period as understudy was short lived however: Jayewardene, spearheading an unprecedented economic drive appointed Wickremesinghe as Minister of Youth Affairs and Employment a few months later. He was to remain a cabinet minister for the next seventeen years, holding the portfolios of Education under Jayewardene and Industries, Science and Technology and Leader of the House under President R. Premadasa.
During the massive split in the UNP camp during the Premadasa years, when some heavyweights broke rank, Wickremesinghe stood steadfast behind his leader and helped Premadasa ride the storm. His charmed life as a government minister all those years however came to an abrupt end on May Day, 1993 when a bomb at Armour Street in Colombo killed Premadasa. In the chaos that followed, Wickremesinghe was instrumental in restoring calm and having Prime Minister Dingiri Banda Wijetunga installed as President. Six days later, Wickremesinghe was sworn in as Prime Minister.
Rebellion in the UNP
The UNP was in upheaval at the time. Rebelling against Premadasa’s authoritarian style of leadership and angry at being marginalised, party stalwarts Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake had left to form the Democratic United National Front. They attempted to oust Premadasa from office by impeaching him but had failed. Athulathmudali had been assassinated a week before Premadasa.
Premadasa’s death and Wijetunga’s ascent to presidential office saw Dissanayake return to the UNP. Wijetunge called for general elections instead of presidential polls and the UNP’s seventeen year rule was getting stale and tottering: the newly formed Peoples’ Alliance, with Chandrika Kumaratunga at the helm, won 105 seats to the UNP’s 94 — almost an exact reversal of the outcome of the recent elections. Dissanayake was busy trying to convince Wijetunga that he could cobble together a coalition and form a UNP-led government. Wickremesinghe, the incumbent Prime Minister, however, packed his bags and left Temple Trees, much to Dissanayake’s chagrin. Kumaratunga was sworn in as Prime Minister.
Forced to occupy the opposition benches for the first time in his career, Wickremesinghe found Dissanayake challenging him for the Opposition Leader’s job. Seven years senior to him in Parliament and having had a higher profile as Mahaveli Minister, Dissanayake emerged the winner in a party room vote. It was to be a poisoned chalice: contesting the presidential elections in 1994 as the UNP candidate, Dissanayake was himself assassinated during a campaign rally at Grandpass in Colombo. When Wickremesinghe went to the Colombo General Hospital to see the body, Dissanayake’s supporters heckled him but once again, Wickremesinghe was thrust in to the UNP leadership at a time the party was in crisis.
Though Kumaratunga’s government was initially extremely popular, even in the North, it was returned to power with a lesser majority at the October 2000 general elections. By now, the public was growing tired of her tardy style of leadership, the inefficiency of her government and the loss of territory to the Tamil Tigers in the North and East, the latter being cleared under Wijetunga’s tenure.
Now as Leader of the UNP and the Opposition, Wickremesinghe bided his time through all this, at times evoking the wrath of his own party members who were impatient to return to power. Then, in October 2001, he masterminded a ‘coup’ of sorts, engineering a crossover of eight Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) parliamentarians of whom S.B. Dissanayake and G.L. Peiris are the only survivors in the political arena today. Faced with the prospect of losing a no-confidence motion, Kumaratunga dissolved Parliament and called elections which the UNP won, leading Wickremesinghe to his second stint as Prime Minister.
Fate seems to conspire — even now — that whenever he is PM, someone else is in charge. Being the progeny of families steeped in politics, the story is told of how Wickremesinghe and Kumaratunga attended the same dancing classes of Sri Jayana. Kumaratunga’s brother Anura was Wickremesinghe’s classmate at Royal College. Nevertheless, there was little love lost between the duo when they were President and Prime Minister and Kumaratunga resented having to dance to the tune of her former fellow student at dancing classes who was now the Prime Minister. Their difference escalated because of the hostility shown by some ministers towards Kumaratunga.
Wickremesinghe concluded the infamous Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) with the Tamil Tigers in February 2002 — and Kumaratunga, who was Head of State and the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces who were battling the Tigers on the ground, knew hardly anything about its modus operandi. It was to become Wickremesinghe’s signature achievement (or blunder, in the way one sees it) during his term of office. The CFA was widely welcomed at the time by a war weary public and Wickremesinghe was hailed as a statesman and a peacemaker. But the Tamil Tigers grew uneasy, and the peace talks led to the first crack of the monolith organisation, paving the way to its mortal split with a breakaway faction from its Eastern Command.
As the uneasy cohabitation continued in Colombo, the strain in relations between Kumaratunga and the UNP government was growing but Wickremesinghe resisted calls by some of his party members to impeach her, even if it was only to prevent her from dissolving Parliament.
Kumaratunga hit back in November 2003, while Wickremesinghe was away in Washington, suspending Parliament, dismissing three ministers and taking over their portfolios. Wickremesinghe returned to a heroes’ welcome at the Katunayake airport taking several hours to reach Colombo. At the President’s House a nervous Kumaratunga was ready to throw in the towel had the multitude of Wickremesinghe supporters marched into Fort but the end was nigh: For some reason, which Wickremesinghe later said was to avoid blood-letting by his supporters and Kumaratunga’s Presidential Guards, he called off the protest. Kumaratunga went for the jugular, dissolving Parliament in February 2004 despite a written promise to him she would not do that, and calling for elections in April at a time when the Tamil Tigers were dilly dallying about honouring the CFA.
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