Wednesday, 20 July marked the culmination of simmering economic and political unrest in Sri Lanka, as Sri Lankan parliamentarians cast their secret ballots for the next president of Sri Lanka in favour of Ranil Wickremesinghe. After months of Janatha Aragalaya protests against former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his policies, the parliament’s selection of Wickremesinghe — previously appointed as Rajapaksa’s prime minister in May — seemed to blatantly disregard widespread public sentiment against the previous government. Less than two weeks before the vote, protestors broke into Wickremesinghe’s house and set it ablaze. For a population that is justifiably angry about months of waiting in fuel queues, enduring multi-hour power cuts, and struggling to afford basic food and medicines, Wickremesinghe’s presidential victory appeared to be yet another obstacle in bringing Sri Lanka out of its current crisis.

Supporters of the six-time prime minister and some analysts have welcomed Ranil Wickremesinghe’s election as an opportunity to regain economic and political stability in Sri Lanka. However, what does that ‘stability’ entail? For many in Sri Lanka, it is becoming increasingly clear that the new government cannot simply engage with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and external creditors to improve the island’s financial situation. ‘Stability’ for Sri Lanka has long come at the cost of corruption by political elites, consolidation of power at the executive level, and the failure to prosecute war crimes from the government and military — all of which contributed to the policy decisions liable for the Sri Lankan economy’s collapse. Ranil Wickremesinghe, a seasoned political veteran and active participant in Sri Lanka’s ‘oppressive stability’, seems unlikely to implement the structural political change needed to address the country’s original governance failures responsible for the crisis in the first place.

Wickremesinghe and Sri Lanka’s oppressive stability

Though Wickremesinghe’s urban, elite, and Western-oriented outlook is in sharp contrast to the Rajapaksas’ brazen embrace of traditional Sinhala Buddhist nationalism, he has also participated in Sri Lanka’s cycles of illiberal politics. During his previous stints as prime minister, he — like the Rajapaksas — has also been accused of ordering the detention and torture of political opponents and of failing to follow through with transitional justice measures against those accused of war crimes during Sri Lanka’s twenty-six-year civil war. Even Wickremesinghe’s clean economic record remains in question after his alleged 2015 involvement in an insider trading scam at the Sri Lankan Central Bank, which ultimately indicted his childhood friend, former Central Bank Governor Arjun Mahendran. While Wickremesinghe has come into power on successive promises of reform and good governance, he has failed to ever champion any real change to the Sri Lankan political system, ultimately setting Sri Lanka up for the Rajapaksas’ governance failures.

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