Ranil Wickremesinghe did not blink. Despite Opposition braggadocio, devious manoeuvres within the ruling coalition, and media melodrama, the Prime Minister met the Joint Opposition group’s ‘No Confidence Motion’ head-on in Parliament and won. Having demonstrated adeptness in navigating complex parliamentary politics, Mr. Wickremesinghe must now forge ahead with his Government’s many pronged strategy for building the nation.
Thanks to a liberalized news media, the citizenry watched last week’s political antics virtually every minute of the way to Wednesday’s parliamentary anti-climax with the Joint Opposition group’s dismal failure to substantively threaten the National Unity Alliance’s hold on power. That the conditions for media freedom are not so liberal became clear, however, after Wednesday night’s single incident of ugly political intimidation by an unruly mob at the gates of a major TV and web news station.
Ensuring that the perpetrators of that shameful anti-media incident are swiftly dealt with is but a minor task for the Prime Minister and his team amid the plethora of tasks that this government must accomplish. Having convincingly met the immediate challenge of the No Confidence Motion, the PM must quickly return to the much bigger challenges that his government has taken on: economic and political reform, re-building of harmonious nationhood and fighting corruption and lawlessness.
The biggest victory in the No-Faith tussle in the House must not accrue to individual politicians, or to political parties, or political blocs. The biggest victory must accrue to the nation’s trust in governmental stability, continuity and managerial capacity. Equally importantly, the confidence of the global community has also been restored.
That the loss of the ruling coalition’s dominance at the local government level is not reflected at national level was made very clear in last week’s parliamentary showdown. With 122 MPs voting against the No-Faith Motion, while the proponents could only muster 76, the Government clearly demonstrated its parliamentary strength. The majority of even those who threatened to jump political sides finally backed down. A few cast their vote for the Motion while most of ruling coalition dissenters absented themselves from the House.
That absenteeism sent an important signal: those dissenters within the ruling coalition clearly preferred to carry out their dissent within the coalition itself rather than allow internal wrangling to affect larger governmental stability and credibility. Hopefully, inner party dissent and coalition factionalism will now be properly managed with creative internal mechanisms and processes. This is a challenge to build inner party democracy – something almost non-existent in the Sri Lankan political party system.
The most crucial outcome of the No-Faith face-off is the demonstration of governmental strength – legitimately and democratically, through the Parliament.
Now the nation and the world wait impatiently for the Government to proceed with governing; taking forward its agenda, and fulfilling political mandates.
For the first time, after a decade of misgovernance during the previous regime, this country has an intelligently devised set of policies and plans to tackle multiple ills and challenges simultaneously.
Unlike the previous regime that failed to mobilize the energies of all interest groups, the National Unity coalition has already comprehensively engaged with a multitude of the national intelligentsia of all sectors to envisage the country’s way forward. There is a clear-cut agenda to address a range of critical problems: from the ethnic political crisis to the repair of judicial and administrative structures, the reform of the economy and, redressing the mountain of injustice and corruption left behind by the previous regime.
But, with over half of the Government’s term now behind it, it is time that the political leadership not be delayed by either recriminations or back-patting. Implementation must be the name of the new game. The economy, social needs, ethnic community issues and, ecological challenges, must be – once again – the priorities. And the pursuit of past large scale crimes and corruption must be taken up forthwith if the public is to remain convinced of the enormity of the damage wreaked by the Rajapaksa regime.
If there is a newfound maturity in political management, then that must be sustained with a firm focus on practical and strategic governance and a refusal to be distracted by opposition feints or by the miasma of aggrandizement.