UNP Chairman Vajira Abeywardena made a statement saying that three presidents of other countries had enquired him about the arrest of former President Ranil. Pro-Ranil media and Ranil’s social media are spreading the news that India has also expressed its regret over Ranil’s arrest. They are citing the statement made by Congress party politician Shashi Tharoor’s condemning Ranil’s arrest. Not only Shashi Tharoor but also former Norwegian Minister Erik Solheim and former Maldivian President Nasheed had expressed their displeasure over Ranil’s arrest.
UNP representatives and former Minister G.L. Peiris also met with the Chinese, Indian and US ambassadors in Sri Lanka and informed them about the threats to democracy posed by Ranil’s arrest.
Despite what the pro-UNP media and social media say, sources in the Presidential Secretariat say that no foreign leader has spoken to the President over the phone about Ranil’s arrest.
Ranil is the first to point out that it was inappropriate for a country to criticize actions taken by a government against an opposition leader. This was when he was serving as the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 1980, when J.R.’s government decided to deprive Mrs. Bandaranaike of her civic rights, the then Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, criticised the move. Below is the account mentioned in J.R.’s biography regarding this matter.
“Mrs Gandh’s intervention in this dispute came as a surprise to J.R. and the government. While it was well known that she had a close personal relationship with Mrs, Bandaranayeke, the general feeling was that this would not stand in the way of a calculatedly cool, and diplomatically correct response. When the contents of the report of the Presidential Commission became known in Colomo, Mrs Gandhi had telephoned Mrs Bandaranaike in Colombo and consoled her, a fact to which the SLFP gave publicity. It was then that Anura Bandaranaike announced that he would be meeting Mrs Gandhi in New Delhi to discuss this issue. There were raised eyebrows in Colombo at this. J.R. and his cabinet colleagues were astonished when the Indian Prime Minister actually agreed to give him an audience.
This calculated intervention in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs was bad enough, but it was raised a notch higher when, in the aftermath of Mrs Bandarakaike’s expulsion from Parliament, Mrs Gandhi, at a press conference in New Delhi, expressed her distress at Mrs Bandarakaike’s expulsion and the deprivation of civic rights imposed on her. She went on to add that Mrs Bandaranaike’s family was being harassed; she repeated both charges subsequently. J.R. regarded her response as an emotional reaction reflecting her own experiences at the hands of the Janatha government. Almost immediately afterwards, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, in an obvious attempt to repair the damage to official relations with the Sri Lankan government, explained that Mrs Gandhi was merely expressing her personal views, not those of the Indian government. This was in response to criticism raised in India itself at what she had said. At a time when India’s relations with its South Asian neighbors were bad or indifferent, Mrs Gandhi‘s action could only be described as unbelievably short–sighted and ill-considered. For, by her action, she put good relations with the only country still friendly towards India and South Asia in jeopardy.
The Sri Lankan Government’s official reaction was as formally correct as it could be, given the circumstances. It was decided that neither J.R. nor the Prime Minister would make any official response. That was to be left to Ranil Wickramasinghe, the youngest member of the cabinet, who rebutted Mrs Gandhi’s charges and showed how grossly misinformed Mrs Gandhi was about the allegation of harassment of Mrs Bandaranaike’s family. After all, her brother, a judge of the Appeal Court, had been elevated to the rank of Appeal Court President almost at this time.
The result of Mrs Gandhi’s tactless instruction was that J.R.’s desire for closer relations between Sri Lanka and ASEAN wAppeal Court as strengthened, and moves already initiated towards a formal association with that group were accelerated. Within the government, only Foreign Minister Hameed, reflecting the views of the Foreign Ministry, continued to warn that Sri Lanka’s close ties with ASEAN would give offence to India; J.R. was veering very much in the direction of seeking formal association with ASEAN”.
The relationship between J.R. and Indira Gandhi was damaged by Indira Gandhi’s statement regarding the revocation of Mrs. Bandaranaike’s civic rights and the J.R. government’s disregard for that statement. With this experience, India has been careful not to issue statements about Sri Lanka’s internal politics ever since.
