Why Ranil Wickremesinghe's arrest may energise Sri Lankan Opposition parties to unite

“I thank all those who stood by me, including those online, during my arrest. I intend to meet all of you on a future date. Thank you again,” said the visibly-tired looking former President. It was Wickremesinghe’s first message to supporters since his release from hospital on August 29. This statement was given after his lawyers had successfully argued for their client to be given bail on medical grounds.

Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP), which he has led since 1994, had earlier released a photograph of him leaving hospital. The photograph showed a smiling Wickremesinghe, who, true to his reputation as an avid reader, was leaving the hospital with a book in his hand.

Unifying Opposition

The book was Unleashed, the memoir of former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. With rumours already swirling of Wickremesinghe potentially making a comeback to Parliament in the coming months, some speculated the book’s title carried a not-so-subtle message to the ruling National People’s Power (NPP) government led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

Also read: Former Sri Lanka President Wickremesinghe hospitalised after arrest in graft case

The arrest of Wickremesinghe on August 22 by the country’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on charges of misusing public funds amounting to more than Sri Lankan Rupees (LKR) 16 million to undertake a private visit to the UK when he was President, seemed to have had the unintended consequence of energising the hitherto fragmented and lethargic Opposition.

Most of the Opposition political parties immediately condemned what they claimed was a politically motivated arrest. Two days after the arrest, leaders and senior representatives of these Opposition parties held a joint press conference under the slogan “Let’s defeat the constitutional dictatorship”.

Many of those who spoke made it clear that while they have political differences with Wickremesinghe, they viewed his arrest on these particular charges as a politically motivated act of revenge.

The charges

The charges under which he was arrested stem from a two-day stopover in the UK that the then President Wickremesinghe undertook in September 2023, on his way home from attending the UN General Assembly in New York. That UK stopover was to attend the graduation ceremony at the University of Wolverhampton where his wife, Prof Maithree Wickremesinghe, was accorded an honorary professorship.

Ten persons had been part of the UK visit in question. In addition to Mr and Mrs Wickremesinghe, the others were two officials from the foreign ministry, Wickremesinghe’s private secretary, his personal physician, and four members of his security detail.

The report filed by the police in court reveals that the complaint, which prompted the CID probe regarding the UK visit came from an official from President Dissanayake’s office, based on the contents of a letter and an investigation report forwarded to that official by the President’s secretary, Dr NS Kumanayake.

That investigation report was an internal audit at the Presidential Secretariat where officials are said to have uncovered how the UK visit, initially described as a “private visit” had subsequently been changed into an “official visit” to get funding allocated from the President’s office.

Also read: Former Sri Lanka President Wickremesinghe arrested for alleged state fund misuse

Yet, there are no records of Wickremesinghe attending any other engagements during his stopover in the UK other than the graduation ceremony at the University of Wolverhampton and a subsequent luncheon for invitees. As such, the complaint accuses Wickremesinghe of undertaking a private visit misusing public funds.

The former president’s lawyers have pushed back strongly against the accusations, noting that Wickremesinghe had received a formal invitation from the University’s Vice-Chancellor to attend the event, in which his wife was being accorded an honourary professorship. They have also rejected the distinction made between a private and an official visit, arguing that a president continues to remain in office at all times throughout his term, necessitating him to be accorded the protection and privileges the office provides irrespective of wherever he might be.

Though he has now been released on bail and back home from hospital, the former President’s office said he will be resting at home under strict medical supervision for the time being.

All eyes on UNP Convention

Wickremesinghe is due to make his first public appearance since his release at the UNP’s 79th Anniversary Convention. He is also set to deliver a special statement at the event. The convention was initially scheduled for September 6, but the party released a statement on September 2 saying that the event has been postponed for a later date in September, owing to advice from Wickremesinghe’s doctors. The exact date will be announced soon, the party said.

In a sign that Wickremesinghe and the UNP wish to build on the new-found unity among Opposition parties seen in the days following his arrest, leaders of all major Opposition parties are to be invited to the UNP convention. They include former Presidents Maithripala Sirisena and Mahinda Rajapaksa, as well as Sajith Premadasa, leader of the main Opposition party, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB).

Reunification talks

Meanwhile, talks among Opposition parties are continuing on two fronts. On one side, the UNP and the SJB representatives are discussing a possible reunification between the two parties. Sajith Premadasa and his supporters broke away from the UNP and formed the SJB in 2020, after a bitter dispute with Wickremesinghe over his refusal to step down as party leader.

Premadasa took most of the UNPs supporters and prominent politicians with him and the grand old party has been a shadow of its former self since.

Also read: Sri Lanka: Wickremesinghe bids emotional farewell, hands over charge to Dissanayake

In the midst of UNP-SJB reunification talks, there are also discussions among some Opposition parties on the possibility of working together to form a united anti-government front. However, not all the parties that came together to oppose Wickremesinghe’s arrest have joined these talks, with the Rajapaksa-led Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) being the most prominent among them.

SLPP general secretary Sagara Kariyawasam has publicly stated his party has no interest in joining any electoral alliance with the SJB and UNP since most of the SLPP’s policies are starkly different from those two parties.

Why target Wickremesinghe?

The big question surrounding the entire saga is why Wickremesinghe is being targeted at this specific moment.

He finished a distant third at last year’s presidential election and did not contest the parliamentary election that came soon afterwards. He did not keep a low profile though, addressing various forums and events, both locally and internationally, campaigning for UNP candidates during May’s local council elections and releasing statements criticising the NPP government’s policies from time to time.

But he never amounted to a serious threat to the NPP government, which enjoys the powers of an executive presidency and a 2/3rd parliamentary majority.

Link to torture chambers?

Wickremesinghe has a complicated relationship with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the main party in the NPP. The JVP has long linked him to the notorious unlawful detention and torture chambers established at a government housing scheme in Batalanda, near Colombo during the JVP’s second insurgency from 1987 to 1990.

A presidential commission, established by former President Chandrika Kumaratunga government in the 1990s found Wickremesinghe “indirectly responsible” for maintaining places of unlawful detention and torture chambers. But no evidence was found directly linking him to the torture.

The NPP government tabled the report in Parliament in April this year after Wickremesinghe, confronted about it during an interview on Al-Jazeera, claimed the report was never formally tabled. Despite a subsequent parliamentary debate on the report’s contents, when NPP ministers loudly proclaimed the government would conduct all possible investigations to bring those responsible for the detention and torture chambers to justice, nothing of note has happened since.

Wickremesinghe reiterated his innocence and rejected the report’s findings after it was tabled in Parliament.

More serious crimes

In the aftermath of his arrest last month, some in the NPP government have claimed that Wickremesinghe really should have been arrested long ago for far more serious crimes.

Commenting on the arrest to journalists, transport minister Bimal Rathnayake, one of the most senior figures in the NPP/JVP, who also holds the powerful post of Leader of the House in Parliament, said that Wickremesinghe should have been arrested over post-election violence that the then UNP government had unleashed on opponents in 1977.

He added that Wickremesinghe, as a cabinet minister in the UNP government, should also have been held accountable for major government-sanctioned violent incidents that took place in the 1980s, including the burning of the Jaffna Library in 1981 and the anti-Tamil riots of July, 1983.

“A government Wickremesinghe was part of killed 60, 000 people between 1987 and 1990. He is also facing allegations related to the Batalanda torture chambers and investigations into those allegations are ongoing through the Attorney General. He should have been arrested for this as well, though no arrest was made,” said the minister.

He further noted that Wickremesinghe also faced serious allegations of corruption, including the Central Bank bond scam of 2015 when he was Prime Minister.

“So, a person who should have been brought to justice for more serious charges 40 years ago is only now being investigated under our government because investigators can carry out their duties independently and without any hindrance,” Rathnayake said.

Challenge to JVP

Wickremesinghe however, also worked with JVP elements, including Dissanayake, when the latter was an Opposition MP and Wickremesinghe was the Prime Minister of the Maithripala Sirisena government that came to power in 2015, after the defeat of Mahinda Rajapaksa at that year’s presidential election.

This was through an Anti-Corruption Committee set up to oversee investigations against members of the Rajapaksa government. Dissanayake was a member of that committee, while current public security minister Ananda Wijepala, who oversees the police, was the director of the Committee’s secretariat.

The JVP has blamed both then President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe for the failure of the Anti-Corruption Committee, due to alleged interference by the two leaders in investigations to protect those facing allegations.

UNP Chairman Wajira Abeywardana however, believed Wickremesinghe’s arrest occurred because, as a former President widely credited with guiding Sri Lanka out of its worst financial crisis since Independence, he has the capability to unite Opposition parties.

“He is a challenge to them, so, they are trying to see how they can control him, how they can suppress him. We have had leaders either assassinated or persecuted in this manner before and after Independence. Our common goal should be to defeat such attempts,” Abeywardana told The Federal. He insisted that the law enforcement authorities have no case against Wickremesinghe for misusing public funds and predicted he will eventually be cleared by the courts of wrongdoing.

Abeywardana also made it clear that the UNP would like to see their leader back in Parliament, saying Wickremesinghe, who has repeatedly insisted he has no interest to return to Parliament, cannot disregard the wishes of his party and the public.

“That decision (returning to Parliament) is not really up to him. As a leader, he must listen to the heartbeat of the society. If society wants him to return to Parliament to save this country, then he must heed those calls.”

The UNP-led New Democratic Front (NDF) has five seats in the current Parliament, including two appointed via the National List, which are seats allocated to parties based on the total number of votes they obtain. Wickremesinghe can enter Parliament if one of those two MPs were to step down.

Weakening Opposition

The SJB too believed Wickremesinghe’s arrest is politically motivated.

“We believe 100 per cent that the arrest is politically motivated because they (government) are trying to silence the Opposition in whatever way they can,” said SJB Parliamentarian Harshana Rajakaruna.

“By arresting Mr Wickremesinghe, they want to give a signal to the Opposition that if they can arrest Ranil Wickremesinghe, a former president, the others are immaterial,” he claimed, adding that the NPP government would do “whatever it takes to weaken the Opposition.”

Unexpectedly, the arrest has created an opportunity for Opposition parties to unite for a common cause since this arrest appears to be a clear attempt to suppress the Opposition in general, the SJB MP observed. While this does not mean all Opposition parties are going to form a broad alliance to contest elections together, there might be an opportunity for the UNP and SJB to unite in a future election, he pointed out.

“But what we need at the moment is for all Opposition parties and civil society organisations that believe in democracy to get together to fight this dictatorship,” Rajakaruna claimed.

Equal before the law

For President Dissanayake, who will complete one year in office on September 23, the arrest is a testament of his pledge to build a country where everyone is equal before the law.

Addressing a public event on the day Wickremesinghe was released on bail, he said the government was not prepared to back down in its quest to apply the law equally to everyone irrespective of who they are.

“Wealth, power, position…none of these things are relevant. Everyone is equal before the law,” Dissanayake told the gathering.

He insisted that what was happening was neither an act of revenge nor a witch-hunt.

"Why have they all become so frantic when the law is being applied equally to all? It’s because they know in their conscience that they are guilty,” he said, referring to Opposition parties uniting to condemn Wickremesinghe’s arrest.

Dissanayake is also under increasing pressure to follow through on promises he had made about holding those who had been considered to be above the law to account. Several former government ministers have been arrested on corruption charges in the days following Wickremesinghe’s arrest.

More arrests are expected in the coming days as the Dissanayake presidency is all set to complete its first year.