The cat is finally out of the bag. The motion of no-confidence against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has been submitted to Speaker Karu Jayasuriya and will be taken up for debate on April 4.
Reportedly, 55 parliamentarians have signed the motion. These include four members of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). The vast majority of the signatories are from the Joint Opposition (JO) faction of the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA).
The trigger for this motion of no confidence was the recently concluded local government elections won by the newly formed Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). The SLPP is controlled by the JO where former President Mahinda Rajapaksa is the de facto leader. That itself is ironical. The SLPP emerged winners at the poll. They polled 40 per cent of the vote. The United National Party (UNP) of which Prime Minister Wickremesinghe is the leader came second, polling 29 percent of the vote. The SLFP, of which President Maithripala Sirisena is the leader came a very distant third, polling a mere 13 percent of the vote.
The argument for submitting the motion of no-confidence is that the Prime Minister and the UNP, by virtue of the local government election results, have lost the mandate to govern the country. Really, if that conclusion is arrived at because the UNP came second and polled 29 per cent of the vote, what of President Sirisena and the SLFP? Haven’t they lost the mandate, lock, stock and barrel because the SLFP was reduced to an ‘also ran’ in most local councils? They also polled less than half the votes of what the UNP polled! Then, it gets more curious. The content of the motion of no confidence is based not on the local government election results but on the Central Bank bond scam.
The signatories hold the Prime Minister responsible. Now, a Presidential Commission of Inquiry no less probed this matter. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe appeared and testified before the Commission. In their findings, the Commission didn’t find the Prime Minister guilty of any wrongdoing but noted that he had erred in his judgment in placing his trust in former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran. Certainly, the Prime Minister doesn’t cover himself with glory in this entire Central Bank bond saga. He is guilty not only of trusting Mahendran - and for that matter, former Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake - but also for not taking remedial measures when details of the bond scam first emerged.
The Central Bank bond scam is not a recent development. It happened in the first few months of the National Unity Government. There was rumour and speculation surrounding this scandal even at the time of the General Election in August 2015. It was estimated that those reports - unconfirmed at that time - had cost the UNP at least half a million votes at the election. Had the UNP secured those votes, they would have had a simple majority in Parliament today. Then they could have run their own government and if they were still in coalition with President Sirisena’s faction of the SLFP, it would have been on their own terms, instead of the tail wagging the dog, as it is happening now. Had Prime Minister Wickremesinghe acted decisively, even after the General Election, he wouldn’t be where he finds himself today.
Despite many misgivings, Arjuna Mahendran was allowed to complete his tenure as Governor. In fact, he was in line for an extension and only a desperate intervention by President Sirisena saw him replaced by Dr. Indrajith Coomaraswamy, a gentleman in the true sense of the word and a man with proven integrity. The Prime Minister was also slow in acting against former Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake. When the propriety of Karunanayake performing the role of Finance Minister was questioned, the ‘solution’- if it can be called that- was for the Finance Minister and Foreign Minister to swap portfolios.
It took a witness testifying before the Presidential Commission to relate the story of how Arjuna Aloysius - Mahendran’s son-in-law and the key ‘person of interest’ in the bond scam - paid the rent for the apartment Karunanayake lived in.
That was when Karunanayake was virtually arm-twisted into resigning. Even now, Karunanayake remains a UNP stalwart.
He has been asked to refrain from attending to duties as the party’s ‘assistant leader’ but he has never formally resigned from this post. Still, it is intriguing that the motion of no confidence against Prime Minister Wickremesinghe is being sponsored mainly by the JO.
The ranks of the JO are where we find the rogues gallery of the past regime. Its stalwarts are accused of many a deal tainted with corruption and kickbacks. Some of their parliamentarians have become millionaires seemingly on their measly salaries as Ministers! So, there is a sense of absurdity in the JO accusing the Prime Minister of complicity in the Central Bank bond scam! The vote in Parliament on the motion of no-confidence will be interesting, not least because it will test the strength of the respective parties. Yes, the UNP has more parliamentarians than both factions of the UPFA combined, but will they stick together or will they betray their leader? It will also be fascinating to see how some parliamentarians vote. What will Wijedasa Rajapakshe, Athuraliye Rathana thero - both still technically MPs elected on the UNP ticket- do? How will Range Bandara vote? Will Wasantha Senanayake have the courage to walk the talk? And, on the other side, will Mahinda Rajapaksa, the man behind the puppet strings, actually vote against Wickremesinghe or resort to his famous tactic of being absent from Parliament at voting time? Motions of no confidence are a necessary evil in a democracy. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, the most experienced Parliamentarian in the current legislature, is surely aware of that.
From current indications, he is likely to survive this vote. We hope though that it will chastise him enough so that he acknowledges his past mistakes and makes an effort to learn from them.