The many challenges that await Sri Lanka's new president Ranil Wickeremesinghe

Jul 20, 2022 - 19:30

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The many challenges that await Sri Lanka's new president Ranil Wickeremesinghe

Six-time prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was elected as crisis-wracked Sri Lanka's new president in a parliamentary vote Wednesday with the backing of the disgraced former leader's party.

Official results gave the veteran politician 134 votes, an absolute majority in the 225-member parliament after Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country and resigned in the wake of protesters overrunning his palace.

"Our divisions are now over," Wickremesinghe said in a brief acceptance speech in parliament, urging his defeated rivals "to join me and work together to bring the country out of the crisis we are facing".

Wickremesinghe is elected for the balance of Rajapaksa's term, which runs until November 2024.

According to analysts he is likely to appoint his school-mate Dinesh Gunawardena, a strong ally of the once-powerful Rajapaksa clan, as prime minister.

Wickremesinghe takes charge of a bankrupt nation that is in bailout talks with the IMF, with its 22 million people enduring severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine.

Let's look at the challenges Wickremesinghe inherits the complicated, corrupt and often violent political system:

How bad are things in Sri Lanka?

Very bad.

A piece in the BBC said the turmoil is now so great that it is unclear what measures will be equal to the task, or even if Wickremesinghe is the man to do it.

People have been struggling with daily power cuts and shortages of basics such as fuel, food and medicines for months, as per the BBC.

This, as its foreign currency reserves have virtually run dry, meaning it doesn't have enough funds available to buy goods from other countries, as per the report.

Meanwhile, the UN has warned that Sri Lanka is heading for a humanitarian catastrophe.

More than five out of every six families are eating less food, according to the World Food Programme, while schools and non-essential government institutions are closed for weeks to reduce commuting and save fuel.

Motorists queue for hours on the rare occasion petrol or diesel are available, and the country is enduring lengthy power cuts as the government has no money to import oil for generators.

Even according to official figures, inflation has crossed 50 per cent.

More than half of the country's crops failed after Gotabaya Rajapaksa banned agrochemical imports last year. The ban was lifted after six months, but fertiliser is yet to return.

Sri Lanka declared itself bankrupt in mid-April when the government defaulted on its $51 billion foreign debt.

Wickremesinghe told the BBC in May that the economic crisis was "going to get worse before it gets better."

Getting bailouts from IMF, China

The pro-West Wickremesinghe has already begun talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and is banking on bilateral aid from Japan, China and India to tide over till a bailout is secured.

However, China may drag its feet.

Analysts told Al Jazeera China is upset over the cancellation of infrastructure projects by the Rajapaksa government cancelled infrastructure projects last year by Chinese companies.

However, Wickremesinghe denied any tension with Beijing.

“I have been talking to China ever since I took over. Contracts with Chinese companies were cancelled, but the previous government cancelled contracts with Japanese companies, MCC [Millennium Challenge Corporation] and contracts with India. So in a way, the former government has been even-handed,” Wickremesinghe said.

While an agreement with the IMF may be months away, Wickremesinghe has said he wants to unveil a new budget for 2022 in August as allocations made last year were totally out of whack.

"The data in the budget for 2022 by the previous government is not credible," Wickremesinghe told parliament earlier this month.

The debt statistics may also have been understated, he added, calling for urgent financial reforms.

He wants to sell off loss-making state enterprises such as the national carrier Sri Lankan Airlines -- which lost nearly $700 million in the first four months of this year alone and has accumulated debts of more than $2 billion.

What is the status of IMF talks?

Despite their differences, Sri Lanka's political parties are united in their support for ongoing talks with the IMF.

Wickremesinghe will appoint a new prime minister who is expected to follow his free-market economic policies and carry out painful reforms.

Some politicians have bitterly opposed harsh IMF prescriptions to cut subsidies and raise taxes, but main political leaders agree that Sri Lanka should bite the bullet and deal with the international lender.

The political crisis interrupted the negotiations, and the IMF said last week that it hoped the unrest would be resolved soon so they could resume.

But no political party in the current parliament has a clear majority.

Wickremesinghe he was backed by the Rajapaksas' SLPP party -- still the largest in parliament -- and is despised as a proxy for the former leader by the protesters who forced him from his palace after months of demonstrations over the unprecedented economic crisis.

Reviving tourism, shedding image of being Rajapaksas' man

The coronavirus pandemic devastated both tourism and overseas remittances, two of the country's economic mainstays, with problems exacerbated by policy blunders.

As per India Today, tourism provides jobs to nearly 3 million people and comprises over 5 per cent of Sri Lanka’s GDP.

“For a country that once thrived on tourism, Sri Lanka's dismal condition of the tourism sector, now battered by inflation and protests, failed to revive after the Covid-enforced travel restrictions,” India Today reported.

Wickremesinghe also appears to be indebted to the Rajapaksas, a clan of four brothers who have dominated Sri Lankan politics for much of the last two decades, for his victory.

File image of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. AFP

Gotabaya's departure wounded the group after two of his brothers also quit their posts as premier and finance minister earlier this year.

But former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, the deposed Gotabaya's elder brother and the head of the family, remained in the country, and party sources said he had pressed SLPP legislators to support the veteran operator.

While the government blamed the Covid and a series of bomb attacks in 2019 for the dwindling number of tourists, many experts and the public blame Gotabaya Rajapaksa's poor finance mismanagement for the crisis, India Today noted.

Wickremesinghe, a close aide of Rajapaksa, will have to shed this image and take strict measures to attract tourists again if he wants his country's economy to revive, the piece concluded.

Soothing protesters

Wickremesinghe’s appointment is set to continue to the conflict between Sri Lanka’s political establishment with protesters.

A piece in The Wire argued that Wickremesinghe’s appointment is yet another disappointment for the Sri Lankans demanding credible political leadership.

“Wickremesinghe prides himself on his neoliberal leanings and international connections. But Sri Lanka’s economy has collapsed so profoundly that only a government that can command the support of the people will have any hope of pulling the country out of the abyss,” the piece continued.

A man protests against Ranil Wickremesinghe as he waves the national flag near the Presidential secretariat in Colombo.

The appointment of Wickremesinghe as President by the Parliament would lead to a new round of conflict with the protestors, the piece warned.

“Sri Lankans continue to experience the effects of Wickremesinghe’s disastrous economic policies and his heavy-handed attempts to suppress the people’s movement. He has ordered the military to crack down on protestors in the name of “law and order.” The protestors, in his rhetoric, are “fascists” who must be put down. It is hard to see how this will lead to a constructive way forward,” the piece concluded.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, hundreds of heavily armed troops and police stood guard outside the parliament, but there were no signs of demonstrators.

On Wednesday, a court ordered the protesters to vacate their camp near the Presidential Secretariat and confine themselves only to an area designated as a protest site.

A top police official said anyone damaging state property would be dealt with severely. Protesters occupying a part of president's office have been ordered to leave by Wednesday evening or face eviction.

As acting president, Wickremesinghe extended a state of emergency that gives police and security forces sweeping powers.

"He came into power saying he was going to hold everyone accountable, the Rajapaksas even, but he did nothing," student Anjalee Wanduragala ahead of the parliamentary vote told BBC.

"It's absurd to think that people are going to trust him again."

Outside the presidential secretariat, where protesters camped for months to demand Rajapaksa step down, actress Damitha Abeyrathne, 45, said: "We lost. The whole country lost."

The struggle would continue, she told AFP.

"The politicians are fighting for their power. They are not fighting for the people. They have no feeling for people who are suffering."

One by one, the legislators entered ballot booths set up on the floor of the chamber to choose between the three candidates.

Previous elections have been marred by allegations of corruption and vote-buying, and mobile phones were banned to prevent anyone taking photos of the ballots.

Opposition MP Dharmalingam Sithadthan said ahead of the vote that Wickremesinghe's hardline stance against demonstrators had gone down well with MPs who had been at the receiving end of mob violence, describing him as the "law-and-order candidate".

Political analyst Kusal Perera said he had "regained the acceptance of the urban middle classes by restoring some of the supplies like gas".

Clearing government buildings of protesters also showed the 73-year-old's "firmness", Perera said.

Wickremesinghe's main opponent in the vote was SLPP dissident and former education minister Alahapperuma, 63, a former journalist who was supported by the opposition and received 82 votes.

The third candidate, leftist Anura Dissanayake, 53, was embarrassed when the final tally showed that the pile of rejected votes was one more than the three he polled.

But 72-year-old Zarook, a retired seaman who gave only one name and lives in Slave Island, an impoverished area of the capital, was indifferent to the result.