Prime Ministerial hopefuls
Posted on October 31st, 2019

Editorial Courtesy The Island

Friday 1st November, 2019

No sooner had Minister Navin Dissanayake said the next Prime Minister should be from the hill country than Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe declared, on Wednesday, that he would be the PM if Sajith Premadasa won the presidency. The UNP like any other political party is full of ambitious men and women, and the PM may have thought others would also try to take the bread out of his mouth if he remained silent. It will be interesting to know what Sajith thinks; which part of the country would he like to have his PM from—the hills or the coastal plain?

Governments suffer serious setbacks when their seniors jostle for the post of Prime Minister. President J. R. Jayewardene craftily let his parliamentary group select the PM. Sajith’s late father got the post much to the consternation of other ambitious UNP heavyweights. President Kumaratunga acted prudently to preserve the unity of the SLFP by appointing Mahinda Rajapaksa the PM in 2004. She was under tremendous pressure from her coalition ally, the JVP, to deny him that post. Perhaps, the Rajapaksa administration would not have collapsed, in 2015, if Maithripala Sirisena had been able to realise his prime ministerial dream. The UPFA would have been able to form a government again in August 2015 if President Sirisena had not gone all out to queer the pitch for Mahinda, who was trying to make a comeback as the PM. President Sirisena was eyeing the premiership in a future SLPP-SLFP government, but he lacked bargaining power to bend the Rajapaksas to his will.

The SLPP has already made it known that Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapaksa will be the PM if Gotabaya Rajapaska secures the presidency. Thus, the presidential election has also become a contest between Ranil and Mahinda. A vote for Sajith will be a vote for Ranil. A vote for Gotabaya will be a vote for Mahinda.

The Prime Minister has emerged very powerful owing to the 19th Amendment so much so that he can even tame the President, as we saw during last year’s abortive constitutional coup. A similar situation could arise even if both the President and the PM happen to come from the same party. It is also on the advice of the Prime Minister that the next President will have to appoint Cabinet ministers. Some transitional provisions in the 19th Amendment have stood President Maithripala Sirisena in good stead, but his successor won’t benefit therefrom.

Sajith has said that, if elected, he will not appoint anyone under a cloud to his Cabinet. In fact, that is what his supporters and well-wishers want him to do. But he will have to act on the advice of the PM in making ministerial appointments. There’s the rub. Tainted ministers in the present Cabinet are in the good books of the current PM, who is beholden to them for having rallied behind him last year following his unlawful ouster. One of them even got back into the Cabinet by throwing his weight behind the beleaguered PM. Sajith, no doubt, is desirous of making some of them walk the plank, if he becomes the president, but the question is whether he will be able to do so without the PM’s consent.

Similarly, Gotabaya is also promising a professionally run, clean government, but he, too, will have to act on the advice of the PM in making Cabinet appointments. All the rogues responsible for the downfall of President Rajapaksa’s government are prominent members of the SLPP. If Gotabaya wins with the SLPP forming the next government, those elements will ride high again and start making up for lost time.

Will the two longstanding leaders vying for the post of Prime Minister, in the next government, help improve the chances of the presidential candidates of their parties? Or, will it be the other way around? The people will provide the answer on Nov. 16.

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