The Rajapaksa family decided to give Ranil Wickremesinghe the post of Prime Minister for three reasons. The first reason is the belief that he will split the Samagi Jana Balavegaya. The second reason is Ranil’s promise to the Rajapakse family that he can bring 4 billion from Japan until the IMF aid is completed. The third reason is Ranil’s promise that he will be able to prevent the resolution against Sri Lanka at the UNHRC. The Rajapaksa family had great faith in Ranil’s international connections. Ranil showed the Rajapaksa family that he can suppress the struggle and that the international community will not oppose it when he suppresses the struggle.
As soon as Ranil became the Prime Minister, he brought the country’s leading ambassadors and showed their greetings to the country, to show the country that the international community is with him. After becoming Prime Minister, his first duty was to call for greetings from foreign heads of state. As soon as he became the Prime Minister, he said that he was looking forward to meeting Indian Prime Minister Modi. Also, when he went to the President’s House, he talked to the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson over the phone and gave it a huge publicity. As soon as he became the president, he wanted to receive the greetings of foreign heads of state.
Those greetings are still published by his media unit as the main news in the Sri Lankan media. Each of those greetings is edited by his media unit and the news is created that the President of those countries promised Ranil to support Sri Lanka. When he met the foreign minister of Japan, the Japanese embassy in this country announced a different announcement from the announcement issued by his media unit. They must have realised Ranil’s efforts of building international image. But Ranil is now eager to receive a greeting from the American President. For that, he had made a great effort through Samantha Power who came to Sri Lanka.
He is trying to show that the international community has no problem with the measures he is taking to suppress the struggle, and that international community is very willing to help Sri Lanka because he is in the presidency by supporting the suppression. As soon as he became president, he was expected to receive invitations from foreign countries for foreign tours.
His greed for foreign travel was evident during Maithripala’s presidency. Ranil was the Prime Minister during Maithree’s presidency. Mangala became Foreign Minister. When Maithree was the President, Japan invited Maithree for an official visit to the country. The invitations came to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ranil told Mangala that he wanted to go to Japan. Maithree did not know about the invitation to Japan. Mangala worked in such a manner that Ranil would Ran the invitation. Later, Maithree learned from the Japanese ambassador that the first invitation to Japan was sent to Maithree, not to Ranil.
As soon as Ranil became the president this year, he went to funerals in Britain and Japan to show the public about his international relations with these funeral diplomacy because he does not receive invitations for official visits.
But the Rajapaksa family understood Ranil’s international relations very well because he failed to get Japanese aid while he was the prime minister. But they believed that he would prevent the UNHRC’s resolution against Sri Lanka. But today Ranil has not been able to do that either. Looking at the UNHRC resolution and the countries voting in favor of it, it is clear that Ranil does not have international recognition. The UNHRC’s resolution against Sri Lanka will be voted on on 06 or 07 this week. Ranil is going to come to the Parliament and make a statement about his international relations on the 6th of this week, probably to cover up the shame caused by the UNHRC proposal.
Ranil had the ability to block the UNHRC proposal. If he had implemented the same policy regarding the 2015 UNHRC resolution, he would have been able to avoid or change this. He became president and abandoned that policy. But today he plays the role of Ranil vs Ranil in UNHRC.
By Upul Joseph Fernando