AA Edit | Power strife adds to Lanka woes

The last thing Sri Lanka needs during a crisis that has been exacerbated by the first death at the hands of the police controlling demonstrators is a power struggle. But that is precisely what seems to be happening among the only two Rajapaksas retaining power after sacking others of their clan who were also members of Parliament.

It was predictable that the elder brother Mahinda, who could not become President in 2019 because of a term restriction on the island’s top post, would attempt to take over the task of addressing the economic problem in a visible way as the strongman who had ended the insurrection by LTTE’s Tamil militants under Velupillai Prabhakaran that had festered for close to four decades.

Mahinda is only Prime Minister now, his role reduced by his brother Gotabaya, with his military past, introducing an amendment in 2020 after the 2019 polls that reduced the PM to a ceremonial figure. While the opposite would be true in most nations that vest all executive powers in a Prime Minister working nominally under a ceremonial President, Sri Lanka’s history has been pockmarked by personality clashes between those in the highest seats of power.

In the time when Maithripala Sirisena was President with Ranil Wickermasinghe as his Prime Minister the PM’s powers were expanded and Mr Sirisena magnanimously accepted lesser powers. Of course, the current power struggle in which Mahinda will be approaching Parliament to revert to an empowered PM can only be termed as either a diversionary tactic or an egotistical Mahinda move to be seen taking the reins as the island’s saviour who once saved it from militancy and who can also tackle this grave economic meltdown.

The public angst, meanwhile, has been stoked by the use of policing powers to control the rising demonstrativeness against the Rajapaksas who are seen as the prime cause of the crisis though it should, in all fairness, be said that a concatenation of circumstances, from the Easter blasts of 2019 to the Covid pandemic of the next two years, flattened the global economy itself and not just that of Sri Lanka.

The prominent Rajapaksa siblings should sort the executive powers issue between themselves and get down to addressing the problem of the economic crisis and the pending $7 billion payments this year alone on Sri Lanka’s national debt. Otherwise, they will be in danger of worsening the situation.