Sri Lankans are used to tyrants as presidents. Because the govt presidency was instituted because the centrepiece of the nation’s system of presidency in 1978 by JR Jayewardene, each single individual to carry that workplace has been a harmful autocrat in some kind. Even presidents elected on guarantees of liberal governance and peace have been accountable for horrendous atrocities.
Nonetheless, the presidency of Ranil Wickremesinghe, which started on July 21, 2022, has been a startling reign of terror. Wickremesinghe, by the way Jayewardene’s nephew, was elected by a vote in Parliament to switch Gotabaya Rajapaksa who resigned as president following the large rebellion of Sri Lankans in opposition to his rule.
Wickremesinghe is simply the second president of Sri Lanka to not be straight elected, and the primary to switch a resigning one.
Lower than a day had handed after his election by parliament earlier than Wickremesinghe despatched Sri Lanka’s armed forces to brutally assault protesters at a web site of steady anti-government protests (termed the “aragalaya” or wrestle in Sinhala) in central Colombo since mid-April.
Since then, Wickremesinghe has launched into a sustained and intensive crackdown, detaining protesters on spurious expenses beneath repressive frameworks. Initially, this was carried out by declaring a state of emergency, giving Wickremesinge sweeping powers.
This has now accelerated to apprehending protesters beneath the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), one other invention of Jayewardene that provides the state outsized powers to detain people with out urgent expenses and with few safeguards and judicial supervision. Its use for greater than 4 a long time by successive Sri Lankan governments has been synonymous with extended detention, torture and enforced disappearances, concentrating on explicit communities utilizing the state-crafted thought of “terrorism”. For the lengthy years of the civil conflict (and even afterwards), this was the Tamil neighborhood, and following the 2019 Easter Bombings, this has been the Muslim neighborhood.
The most recent targets of the PTA beneath Wickremesinghe are aragalaya protesters, foremost amongst them leaders of pupil and commerce unions who’ve been branded “terrorists”. This concentrating on comes on prime of widespread abuses, together with the kidnapping of suspects; makes an attempt to declare quite a few public locations in central Colombo “high-security zones” the place authorities have outsized powers to ban protests and arrest folks; and instituting “rehabilitation centres” the place members of undefined “violent extremist teams” could be mandatorily detained. The thought is easy – to make use of the specter of pressure to scare Sri Lankans into stopping all protest.
Illusions of Stability
Wickremesinghe’s tyranny brushes away any pretence of him being liberal and democratic-minded, a picture he rigorously cultivated for many years in Sri Lankan society and the worldwide neighborhood. It as an alternative connects him extra squarely together with his previous as somebody who has confronted lingering accusations of condoning and shielding autocrats.
He’s broadly seen as having offered cowl for the alleged corruption and crimes of the Rajapaksa brothers throughout his time period as prime minister from 2015 to 2019, regardless of being elected on a platform that promised to carry them accountable for his or her actions. As a member of Jayewardene’s cupboard within the Nineteen Eighties, Wickremesinghe was accused of hyperlinks to websites such because the notorious Batalanda torture centre.
Now, he’s engaged in a complete marketing campaign to downplay the continuing repression. Strikes resembling short-term will increase in gas provides and a discount in energy cuts are being utilized by Wickremesinghe to color the current actuality as one in every of stability.
A lot of Sri Lanka’s elite institution – many media retailers, economists, professionals and civil society actors – who have been rightly vocal about human rights violations beneath the Rajapaksas are actually both downplaying Wickremesinghe’s abuses of energy or staying silent.
Sri Lanka’s stark class variations have helped the president. Center-class – and even rich – Sri Lankans joined the aragalaya protests pushed by the shared distress of no gas and extended energy cuts. By marginally easing their ache on these counts, Wickremesinghe has made it simpler for them to purchase into his stability narrative. It’s no coincidence that many of the activists and college students being arrested are working class and poor Sri Lankans, who’re extra simply painted as violent and disorderly primarily based on longstanding tropes that assist to disclaim them solidarity from the remainder of society.
But, Wickremesinghe and his supporters are so insistent on this phantasm of stability exactly as a result of his rule is so unstable. Apart from its full lack of an electoral mandate, the federal government additionally capabilities on the opportunistic alliance between Wickremesinghe and the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), led by the Rajapaksas. Their union is based in mutual self-interest to stave off the prospect of early elections the place each would probably face rejection.
Nevertheless, Wickremesinghe’s obscene dependency on the SLPP and the considerably totally different electoral bases of the companions – the SLPP’s being suburban and rural Sinhalese and Wickremesinghe’s city and extra multi-ethnic – imply that the alliance is unsustainable in the long term.
The foreground to all that is the nation’s spiralling financial disaster, which Wickremesinghe has proven little means to resolve in a approach that protects essentially the most weak sections of Sri Lankan society. As a substitute, he’s embarking on an in depth austerity drive, lowering subsidies, privatising public property and deregulating labour, together with via the current settlement reached between the federal government and the Worldwide Financial Fund (IMF).
On this context, it is very important perceive his causes for concentrating on commerce unionists and pupil activists as brokers of instability, violence and now, “terrorism”. These actors all mobilised important numbers of individuals to overthrow the Rajapaksas and have the capability to do the identical in opposition to oncoming austerity measures. Wickremesinghe’s repression is a preemptive curbing of future dissent.
Abolish the manager presidency
Nonetheless, the horrifying farce beneath approach in Sri Lanka isn’t just about Wickremesinghe. It is usually in regards to the nation’s decrepit political order which so simply allows authorities repression. On the coronary heart of that is the 1978 Structure, and particularly, the workplace of the manager presidency which has lengthy served as a device to implement each Sinhala Buddhist nationalism and neoliberalism within the nation.
Wickremesinghe’s presidency is a extra concentrated model of this political order firmly rooted in continual tyranny.
His rule, nevertheless, is a direct repudiation of the unprecedented rebellion of the Sri Lankan folks and their calls for for a extra equitable and simply order. These calls for continuously included the abolition of the manager presidency. As a substitute, Wickremesinghe’s authorities has merely proposed a constitutional modification to shave a number of powers from the workplace whereas protecting it intact.
That is why, simply as Wickremesinghe must go, the manager presidency, too, must be abolished. Till then Sri Lanka is doomed to a repeating cycle of tyrant-presidents, who solely inflict compounding distress and ache on the folks.
For this, the phantasm of stability peddled by Wickremesinghe have to be shattered and his ongoing repression firmly uncovered and challenged. On this endeavour, the Sri Lankan folks, pushed to the sting and stored there mercilessly for thus lengthy, deserve the assist of the world.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.