Former President, current Leader of the Opposition and leader of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) Mahinda Rajapaksa is renowned for his ‘common touch’, his ability to read the pulse of the people and for being the quintessential politician, able to talk to you when he meets you for the first time as though he has known you for years.
That is a trait that has served him well and propelled him to the Presidency not once, but twice. Being in Parliament since 1970- albeit with absences from 1977 to 1989 after being washed away in the United National Party (UNP) landslide victory of 1977 and from 2005 to 2015 when he was President - he is as mature a politician as you can get from among the current crop of parliamentarians.
Rajapaksa then is no political spring chicken and should know what he is talking about. Therefore, when he says that he is the next Prime Ministerial candidate, eyebrows must be raised. Rajapaksa is obviously talking about a government where his brother Gotabaya is President and he is Prime Minister.
Mahinda Rajapaksa told a Jaffna-based newspaper prior to announcing that Gotabaya Rajapaksa would be the SLPP Presidential candidate that he was the party’s Prime Ministerial candidate. Asked about minorities’ discomfort about a potential Gotabaya Rajapaksa presidency, the older Rajapaksa is reported to have said: “I don’t think there is truth in that. In reality, further to the constitutional amendment, the Prime Minister has more powers. I am the Prime Ministerial candidate, so we have to work together”.
Those comments are interesting for several reasons. Mahinda Rajapaksa has unilaterally and arbitrarily chosen himself as his party’s Prime Ministerial candidate and unofficial running mate for the Presidential candidate and announced it at a newspaper interview. That is hardly surprising for someone who was given a blank cheque by the party to choose the Presidential candidate.
It is confirmation that governments and political parties run by Mahinda Rajapaksa have been a ‘one man show’ when he was in charge and that nothing has changed, even after a humiliating defeat in 2015. Those aspiring politicians singing his praises in the SLPP should take note: they will be used as Ministers but they should not covet anything more in the ‘pohottuwa’ party; those positions of greatest power are reserved for the Rajapaksas and no one else.
Mahinda Rajapaksa is also hopeful of ‘working together’ with himself as Prime Minister and his brother Gotabaya as President. That is all well and good. We are at present witnessing a tragicomedy of errors in the Government because the President and the Prime Minister do not see eye to eye on many issues, the most glaring examples being the constitutional crisis in October last year (of which Rajapaksa was a willing participant) and the Easter bomb attacks, the latter costing over 250 lives.
However, in working with his potential President, Rajapaksa also says he has ‘more powers’ following the enactment of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. That the 19th Amendment castrated the political potency of the President is very true, as President Maithripala Sirisena learnt the hard way during the constitutional crisis. Yet, we now know that it has created a President who is still powerful in some respects and a Prime Minister and Parliament powerful in other respects, with no one having the upper hand.
That is why President Sirisena could not sack his Prime Minister in October last year. That is also why Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was unable to compel his President to swear in Sarath Fonseka as Minister of Law and Order after the Easter Sunday bombings. So, Mahinda Rajapaksa is right when he says that he, as a potential Prime Minister, has to work with his brother as a potential President. Yet, he is wrong when he says that ‘the Prime Minister has more powers’.
There is also another little detail that Mahinda Rajapaksa is forgetting. In his eagerness to return to power, he is already dreaming of working with brother Gotabaya as his Prime Minister. Even if that scenario were to eventuate, it wouldn’t happen overnight.
Again, that is because of the 19th Amendment. Remember all that hullabaloo when President Sirisena tried to dissolve Parliament when the Prime Minister he appointed- yes, the same Mahinda Rajapaksa - repeatedly failed to muster the support of a majority in Parliament. He couldn’t do that because the Supreme Court upheld the Constitution, ruling that the President cannot dissolve Parliament until after four years and six months have elapsed in the term of the current Parliament, unless of course, Parliament resolves to dissolve itself.
As such, even if Mahinda Rajapaksa is enthusiastic about becoming Prime Minister again, he would have to wait until March 1, 2020 for Parliament to be dissolved. Then, general elections would have to be called, the SLPP would have to win that election and only then can he be Prime Minister!
We do however know that Rajapaksa is an old man in a hurry. For him the best way is ‘whichever way that is possible’. Therefore, Mahinda Rajapaksa might again try what he tried in October 2018: to lure some UNP parliamentarians, so he could become Prime Minister sooner.
Remember that infamous telephone call from S.B. Dissanayake to UNP parliamentarian Range Bandara? And remember the admission from no less a person than President Maithripala Sirisena himself that the constitutional coup of 2018 failed only because the ‘price’ for a parliamentarian’s vote rose to 500 million rupees?
If it was lower, the President said, Mahinda Rajapaksa could have formed a government! This then is a glimpse of what it would be like if Gotabaya Rajapaksa wins the presidential election and Mahinda Rajapaksa wants to become Prime Minister thereafter.
In that context, we would have a word of advice for Mahinda Rajapaksa, even if he is the most seasoned campaigner around: complacency cost you your re-election in 2015. That can happen to anyone once, but it looks like you are being complacent again. If it happens twice, you will look very foolish!