Noble effort, and roadblocks

Monday 8th August, 2022

The past few days have seen a surge in efforts to form an all-party government. President Ranil Wickremesinghe has so far held a spate of meetings with other political leaders and civil society activists on the matter, but nothing definitive has come of them. They are not likely to reach a consensus any time soon.

Almost all stakeholders have so far met the President, who has given them a patient hearing and agreed to take their views on board. They have spoken well of the proposed national government and said they are sanguine about the prospects of it becoming a reality. But politicians are those who do not mean what they say and vice versa, and their minds are too elusive for anyone to get inside. All of them have expressed willingness to form a unity government because the people are asking them to make a concerted effort to save the economy, but what they have up their sleeves is anyone’s guess.

The task of roping in politicians to do anything good for the public is more difficult than that of keeping frogs in a lidless container, as they say. If an all-party administration is to be set up to restore politico-social stability and help repair the economy, every stakeholder will have to make a genuine effort. But as for collective action, our political leaders only pay lip service to the national interest; they do just as the seven proverbial wayfarers who agreed to put a fistful of rice each into a pot to make some porridge, but cheated and had to settle for hot water for dinner.

President Wickremesinghe has evinced a keen interest in making all parties represented in Parliament partners in governance, and his efforts are to be commended. But the ground reality is such that the task of forming an all-party administration is beyond the President’s power, for he has only a single MP on his side. Therefore, even if the SJB, the SLFP, the TNA, the SLPP dissidents, etc., are genuinely desirous of forming a national government, they and the President will have a massive hurdle to clear in their path; the SLPP leadership is not well-disposed towards the idea of all-party government because such an arrangement will lead to the loosening of its grip on power.

The SLPP is trying every trick in the book to cling on to power, recover lost ground and be fighting fit politically in time for the next election. It is obviously ready to go to any extent to safeguard its interests. The Rajapaksas have demonstrated that they know more than one way to shoe a horse. The Aragalaya succeeded in ousting President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and pressuring Mahinda Rajapaksa to step down as the Prime Minister, but it has been swings and roundabouts for the anti-government protesters; the Rajapaksa family continues to control the government.

A few moons ago, the Basil Rajapaksa faction of the SLPP was accused of scuttling the then President Rajapaksa’s efforts to set up an all-party government. It serves the interests of the Rajapaksa family to have two persons heavily dependent on the SLPP for their political survival as the President and the Prime Minister, besides a Cabinet consisting of SLPP members and some crossovers.

Powerful as President Wickremesinghe is constitutionally, the fact remains that in reality he is only a big fish in Basil’s pond. The same goes for Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena. He who controls the party that has a majority in Parliament is more powerful than both the President and the Prime Minister. Basil can pull the rug out from under both the President and the Prime Minister, at will. So, it is highly unlikely that they will resort to anything that is not to Basil’s liking. It will be interesting to see the effect of ongoing efforts to form an all-party government on the SLPP’s group dynamics.

Meanwhile, what the country needs is an interim, all-party government with a timeframe for an early general election, and not the continuation of the current dispensation with the participation of some more parties.