R Hariharan |South Asia| Print| Times of India, July 14, 2022
With President Gotabaya Rajapaksa reportedly having
emailed his resignation to the Parliament speaker, the GoGotaGo protestors
appear to have achieved their first aim. But it must be underlined that if this
procedural hurdle is overcome, the path of choosing his successor will be far
from smooth.
Of course, earlier hopes of Sri Lanka
getting out of its political logjam with Gotabaya fleeing the country was
belied, when he did not resign on July 13, as Gotapromised.
Instead,
the 73-year old President fled to Maldives in the early hours of the day in an
air force plane without submitting his resignation
letter to the Speaker.
It
then appeared he would not be submitting his resignation letter until he found
a safe haven. More so, after Maldivians and Sri Lankan expatriates there started protesting
against his stay. He was afterwards report to have taken a Saudi Airlines
flight to Singapore and to have plans to go onwards to Saudi Arabia.
Gotabaya
created new problems even as he fled: The constitutional nicety of
Gotabaya’s resignation letter was then overtaken by other developments, as he
appointed PM Ranil Wickremesinghe as acting president in his absence from the
country. PM Wickremesinghe had promised
that he would resign too, when a new government took over. That he has instead been installed as the acting president
has further infuriated the
protestors.
After
the news of Gotabaya fleeing the country reached the protestors, a section of
them, unmindful of tear gas bursts, broke the
security cordon to forcibly occupy the
PM's office on July 13. A large number of protestors have
continued to occupy the president’s
house and secretariat and the PM’s residence, which
they took over on July 9.
Wickremesinghe’s
office compromised: Acting president and PM Wickremesinghe thereafter
imposed a curfew in Western Province and declared a state of emergency,
ostensibly because the President was out of the country. When angry protestors
forced their way to the PM’s office, he asked the security forces to round up
those involved and impound their vehicles.
In a
televised address, he said intelligence reports indicated the
protestors were attempting to capture power and storm the Parliament. He
asserted that he would “do away with this threat of fascism. We have to protect
the homes of the average citizens”.
Meanwhile,
the speaker has announced the Parliament will meet on July 20, to elect a new
president, who will serve the rest of the term of Gotabaya which ends in
November 2024.
Once
the new president is elected the plan is to form an all-party government, as
agreed by most of the parties, except the
Jathiya Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). There are hectic parleys underway for the
political parties to decide upon the presidential candidate.
List of potential replacements is
unsatisfactory: Other
than PM Wickremesinghe, opposition leader Sajith
Premadasa and Dallas Alahapperuma of SLPP figure in the list of potential
candidates for presidency.
Though
Wickremesinghe is the most experienced and politically savvy among them, there
is strong political and public sentiment against him for his role in the Rajapaksa misgovernance. This is likely to work against him.
The
other two candidates do not have proven leadership experience at the
national level. The moot point is whether either of them can lead the all-party
government through a difficult period of economic reconstruction?
The
new President will have to successfully manage the Aragalaya protesters. The
Action Plan that protesters issued on July 5 includes
six demands. Their key demands include the formation of a People's Council from
among them to oversee the political transition of the country.
The
protesters want something else altogether: They do not want an all-party
government; instead, they want an interim government for one year.Within that
period a new constitution endorsing people’s sovereignty will have to
be established through a referendum. The new president
and his team will have the testing job of reconciling these demands
with political and economic priorities.
Considering
this complex scene, the new president will
require a lot support from the people and civil society. Of course, political parties will have to prioritise national recovery over party
interest. And international community will have to extend all the help to Sri Lanka to
cruise through the choppy waters of economic recovery.
This
journey may take a whole year. Among South Asian countries, Sri Lanka with strong democratic roots is perhaps best equipped
to take this challenge. I hope India as a well-wisher of Sri Lanka will go all
out to boost its confidence and emerge successful.
Col R
Hariharan served as Head of Intelligence, Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri
Lanka, and is associated with the Chennai Centre for China Studies.
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