President Ranil Wickremesinghe (*1949) appointed Dinesh Gunawardena (*1949) as the new Prime Minister of Sri Lanka and presented a new cabinet, which looks like a continuation of the old one. This is not a fresh start. President Ranil Wickremesinghe does not seem to understand that he has no mandate from Sri Lankans. He has not been elected by the people, but only by a parliament tainted by scandals of corruption and incompetence.
The new Prime Minister Dinesh Gunewardena has served as Home Minister under the previous President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who had been forced to flee the country after weeks of protests against the financial, economic, social and moral crisis which led to Sri Lanka’s first default since the country gained independence from the United Kingdom.
Extremely worrying is the fact that, in the night from July 21 to 22, military and police forces stormed the oppositional protest camp in Galle Face, in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo. Many protesters and at least two journalists were injured in the brutal attack; the BBC reported that a BBC video journalist had been beaten by the army, one soldier snatched his phone and deleted videos. Some protesters and lawyers were arrested. Saliya Pieris, President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, wrote on Facebook: “Unnecessary use of brute force will not help this country and its international image.”
One must fear that the new president, prime minister and government may think they can “resolve” this crisis with the help of the military and police. According to some reports, at least 50 demonstrators have been injured at Galle Face when the military and the police cleaned the area of protesters. The opposition leader Sajith Premadasa called it “a cowardly assault against peaceful protestors, who agreed to vacate the sites today”.
The new prime minister and his cabinet composed of 17 ministers do not represent a break with the past, with corruption, nepotism and incompentence which have ruined Sri Lanka. Prime Minister Dinesh is a close and longtime ally of the only partly ousted Rajapaksa clan. In addition, Gunewardena is a schoolmate of President Wickremesinghe. Some things never change in Sri Lanka.
But this time may be different. Many demonstrators had shouted “Ranil go home” after Ranil Wickremesinghe had been elected president by parliament. Shortages of food, fuel, gas and medicine have united Sri Lankans beyond party, ethnic, religious and social divisions. If the new president and government want to stay in place, they will probably be forced to use brutal force. Is Sri Lanka already on the way towards an authoritarian regime? President Wickremesinghe is in talks with the IMF for financial help. The international community must put maximum pressure on Sri Lanka to force political change in this bankrupt country.
Suggested book regarding the history of Sri Lanka by Razeen Sally: Return to Sri Lanka. Travels in a Paradoxical Island. Juggernaut, October 2019, 386 pages. Order the book from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.de. Our book review.
The photo showing Dinesh Gunawardena has been extracted from another file: Secretary Pompeo and Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Gunawardena Hold a Joint Press Conference in Colombo. Photography by the United States Department of State. Public domain. Via Wikipedia.
Article added on July 22, 2022 at 16:46 Swiss time.
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