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Mahinda succeeded, but failed the succession plan 

27 Dec 2021

Gayantha Karunatilaka, a former Yahapalana-era minister, had recently issued a soundbite of a rather peremptory nature, offering his opinion that the current foreign currency and economy related crisis in the country could be traced to the beginning of the 2005 Mahinda Rajapaksa administration. This is farcical, especially coming from someone who was a frontline figure in the Yahapalana administration, because it’s going smack against the reality of the numbers. At the end of the Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR) era, growth had reached record levels, and by all yardsticks, the Sri Lankan economy was performing exceptionally well. The debt-to-GDP ratio was also far healthier than it became under the subsequent Yahapalana regime. So in short, the finger-pointing directed towards the MR regime seems to be a hit job, and Karunatilaka is of course not the only individual in the Opposition that’s keen on blaming the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration for the current difficulties faced by the economy. There is Champika Ranawaka who is doing it, and the JVP of course has been indulging in this pastime of MR-bashing for a very long time indeed. This Mahinda-envy among Opposition types is rather telling, because when they could find enough failings in the current regime, they insist on harking back to the MR era, as if blaming this regime is to make a pointlessly obvious assertion whereas destroying the former MR regime’s image in fact achieves something tangible. Of course, President Rajapaksa lost in 2015, but that was due to voter fatigue and the idea that three terms was one too many.  It seems now that the MR administration of that time had one real failing. The numbers from that period were never duplicated, either by the Yahapalana regime or the current one, so there is no point really arguing over the obvious fact that MR rule was relatively successful. But yet the one major failing in the political project of the consummate political player of that time, Mahinda Rajapaksa, was that he failed to ensure a viable succession plan. Even a losing politician needs to have a succession plan, and then of course when it became apparent that the former president had a massive following despite his sudden almost unexpected loss at the 2015 polls, a succession plan became an imperative. But he had none. Eventually succession was a project that was left to the party cadre. Members of the fledgling party (SLPP) and the various ideologues had the idea that Gotabaya Rajapaksa was the best bet as a successor, but that was their choice. A successful leader must ensure his own succession, and other than the fact that Mahinda Rajapaksa followed his own party faithfuls’ preference, there seems to be no real initiative that he took to anoint a true successor. The sceptical may assume that, well, he would have been behind the choice of his brother because that is an obvious choice, as it keeps power within the family. There is no doubt that MR backed the choice of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as the SLPP Presidential candidate.  The party had made the decision for him anyway. Certainly he didn’t see anything objectionable in the choice of his brother at the moment some candidate had to be put forward, as constitutionally, he was prevented from contesting. But this was candidature and succession by default, and that’s not exactly a succession plan, it’s a succession pantomime. MR spent the better part of his 2005-2015 stint as President entertaining the fond wish that his son Namal would be his successor, and thereby, he forfeited the chance to have a proper viable succession plan in place. When it became all too obvious that there was no chance that the relatively inexperienced Namal could succeed by any stretch of the imagination in 2019, MR had absolutely no option but to back the choice made by the party ideologues. That was leaving things to chance, and politicians interested in the long term do not leave anything to chance. Take Vladimir Putin for example. He ensured that there is a neutral personality in Medvedev to sort of stand in for him when he needed to take a necessary break as leader. The issues are too complex to go into here, but suffice to say that when Putin was forced to relinquish leadership after his first tenure as President, he made sure there was a successor that would do the honours. He did not wait for the party ideologues or the hangers-on to go on and make a choice for him that he would ratify. This sort of planning was absent as far as Mahinda Rajapaksa and the succession stakes were concerned. MR as President was torn between keeping succession within the family and ensuring a succession plan that would have political credibility.  Even though this confusion was not visible on the outside, this seemed to have led to the indecision that resulted in nobody having his nod to become a successor. The current President only received his nod after he had been chosen by the party cadre, and that’s not a proper nod, it’s only approval as formality. Today, this cardinal mistake of not having a proper and workable succession plan seems to have come to bite back MR and derail his plans for a smooth “second term” in power, albeit not as President. The candidate pushed by the party ideologues has time and again shown a political callowness that’s in certain ways to be expected from an unseasoned politician. Sometimes it seems as if the current President is asking his brother plaintively “why did you do this to me?”. When the party ideologues asked for Gotabaya Rajapaksa as President, perhaps the former President should have declined the request and suggested a viable alternate succession plan of his own – except that he did not have one. Maybe he should have taken one look at how Putin did it so brilliantly and taken a leaf from his book. Putin was not anointing a son or a family member – in fact, most people, including this writer, are not aware that he has any family at all, even though it’s known he has been married. So family succession was not in the Putin copybook. But he was not paranoid about a successor who does not have close blood ties. He chose someone who was so mild and malleable and docile that it seemed Medvedev, the man chosen to be his puppet, was more mere stand-in than puppet, more monkey so obviously in thrall to the organ grinder. But he was not totally ineffective and was not some kind of experimental person who was on a mission to reinvent the wheel, as Gotabaya Rajapaksa seems so hell-bent on doing. Medvedev minded the shop while Putin was preparing for his second innings, but as a leader, he was capable of being almost as ruthlessly efficient as Putin was, even though his manner was very understated and he did not have any political ambitions.  What a perfect choice, and what a perfect succession plan. Putin cannot stay on forever and this writer is betting that he must be having a succession plan when he relinquishes power for a last time as well. It’s not his son or his brother etc., and yes, even though Lee Kuan Yew’s son succeeded Lee as the premier of Singapore, the younger Lee came to power on his own merit and had to stave off powerful challenges from opponents. However, the elder Lee may have had a succession plan involving a suitable individual to follow as PM after him. Even if he had his son in mind, the succession stakes were well handled. The successor knew his brief, and that was that. (The writer is a former Editor-in-Chief of three national English language publications and a practicing Attorney-at-Law. He is an Editors’ Guild award-winning columnist, and contributing writer and columnist for the Nikkei Asian Review and South China Morning Post, while his editorials have been published in The Australian) The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.


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