It’s all over, bar the shouting: the no confidence motion against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was defeated with a convincing margin in Parliament on Wednesday night.
The margin of the vote - 122 votes to 76 - tells a story. Despite all the pre-vote propaganda dished out liberally by the Joint Opposition (JO) faction of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), it was not even a close contest.
For the vote to succeed and for Prime Minister Wickremesinghe to be ousted, two events had to occur: the entire United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance (UPFA), including those supporting President Maithripala Sirisena would have had to vote for the motion and at least a dozen or so parliamentarians from the United National Party (UNP) should have joined forces with them to support the motion.
None of that happened. Despite a resolution supporting the no-confidence motion being adopted at the parliamentary group of the SLFP, only 16 SLFP MPs voted for it. No one elected from the UNP voted for the motion: Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, Range Bandara and Wasantha Senanayake all voted against the motion while Athuraliye Rathana Thero abstained.
If anything, the vote of confidence in the Prime Minister has negated the gains made at the recent local government elections by the JO, which was the main architect of the motion. It laid bare the truth that for all its talk and hot air, most SLFPers were not willing to unite under the Rajapaksa banner, even for the sake of political expediency.
The JO believed they could oust Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and throw the government into disarray. There was even speculation of an SLFP Prime Minister being appointed with the JO’s support and several names were being bandied about as likely contenders. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men!
It was said that former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was initially not very keen to pursue the motion of no-confidence against the Prime Minister unless its success was assured. This was, after all, only the third motion of no-confidence against a Prime Minister of our country in seventy years of independence - and not, yet another minor protest such as a paada yathra or a jana gosha.
Obviously, someone did convince him that the motion would succeed, so Rajapaksa threw in his lot with it, even being present when it was handed over to Speaker Karu Jayasuriya. Once again - just as someone convinced him that early elections in 2015 was the best option - Rajapaksa had been sold a political ‘dead rope’.
If the JO had its euphoria over its recent election victory dulled by last Wednesday’s outcome, the plight of the faction of the SLFP ‘loyal’ to President Maithripala Sirisena was worse. It demonstrated, in no uncertain terms, that it is a party with no clear leadership or direction. Sixteen SLFP MPs loyal to the President voted for the motion while 26 MPs - including Nimal Siripala de Silva who has been mentioned as Prime Ministerial material - absented themselves.
Now, a question looms over some of them: the likes of Susil Premajayantha, S.B. Dissanayake, Dilan Perera, Dayasiri Jayasekera and Thilanga Sunathipala. If they have an ounce of integrity and self-respect, they should resign forthwith from the positions they hold because they voted for the motion. By what stretch of imagination can they serve in a government that has Ranil Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister after having voted for a motion of no confidence against him?
But of course, they have not resigned. Mavericks like Dilan Perera say they never will because they were appointed by President Sirisena. Ah, by the same token, former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran was also appointed by President Sirisena! When will these political opportunists, masquerading as patriots, ever learn?
President Sirisena himself didn’t emerge unscathed in this whole exercise. He hasn’t made any public comment about his stance on the motion of no-confidence against his own Prime Minister. Nevertheless, the public perception is that he tacitly supported the exercise, so he could gain the confidence of the Rajapaksas. As such, his reputation has also taken a big blow.
What of the UNP and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe? The Prime Minister has survived, once more. However, there is much more to be done.
We hope the Prime Minister and the UNP will have the courage to insist that the President now dismisses those SLFPers who voted for the motion of no-confidence. If the likes of Premajayantha, Dissanayake, Jayasekera and Perera continue to be in government, they will sabotage it at every turn and the UNP will then be accused of incompetency by the masses - which is what happened at the recent local government elections.
The UNP must seriously look at the option of forming a government in its own right, with support from the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) or the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). The argument for cohabiting with the SLFP was that it gave the government a two-thirds majority so it could bring in constitutional amendments. This is no longer valid because the UNP will now not be able to obtain that majority, with the SLFP pulling in several different directions.
The UNP must get rid of its own dubious characters. The likes of Ravi Karunanayake who may be technically presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law are best left in the back benches or somewhere hidden where the public are not reminded of the Central Bank Bond scam.
The UNP’s much hyped reforms must also see the light of day. Reforms have been the mantra of the UNP whenever there is a crisis. When the crisis is averted, reforms get forgotten and consigned into the limbo of forgotten things. If it has any intention of succeeding at the next national elections in 2020, the UNP should enact reforms right away, so that the masses are given the image of a new UNP with new policies and a new ethos, even if it is with the same leader.
Since the last vote has been counted and the motion of no-confidence has been done and dusted, shall we all – government and opposition- now get back to the business of running the nation? That is the question most voters ask, for their confidence in politicians is at an all time low!