Electing Sirisena As The President: Have We Made The Correct Choice?

By DNR Samaranayaka –January 4, 2017

DNR Samaranayaka

The expectations about the changes that could occur as a result of President Sirisena’s victory had led many people to believe that Sri Lanka will enter into a new phase under the Sirisena administration. Most people expected a change in the political culture that plagued the country with rising corruption and falling law and order. Since Sirisena was known to be a simple person with no direct links to political corruption or any other anti-social activities, he began to receive a wider support as the nominee for the presidency. This support would not have been possible if Ranil Wickremesinghe was the candidate opposing Mahinda Rajapaksa. He would have certainly added another loss to his long list of failures since the early 1990’s.

Although Maithripala Sirisena was in politics for nearly 50 years, he was not known to be a dynamic politician who has achieved anything of significance. He started as a ‘Gramaniladhari’, which is the administrative tier at the lowest level in the public service. After a few years, he joined SLFP to pursue a full time career in politics. In 1989, he contested on SLFP ticket and became a member of parliament. He rose from an ordinary member of the party to be the Secretary of SLFP—the most influential position within the party. He has been a minister since 2004; at the time he left the part to accept the coalition nominee for the presidency, he was the Minister of Health. His main interests, as the Health Minister, were the reduction of tobacco and liquor consumption in Sri Lanka. For this effort, he received two awards from the Harvard University and World Health Organization (WHO).

After nearly two years at the helm, it is beginning to cast doubts as to whether the people have made the correct choice of electing Sirisena as the President and allowing him to enjoy executive powers with a lavish life style at the tax payer’s expense. Although he frequently makes statements highlighting his achievements, it is difficult to find any evidence to support these claims. As briefly discussed below, his claims of achievements only show his attempts to seek cheap publicity.

I restored democracy after 2015: Sirisena, The Hindu, Nov. 11, 2016

In a recent interview with The Hindu newspaper, Sirisena said, “Those who have been in power and have lost power are trying to sabotage all these activities”……”They are abusing and misusing the democratic freedom that I have restored in this country.” He further said, “When the people made me the President, they did not ask me for food, water or clothes. They wanted a society where they could live freely and happily. I have given that to the people.”

The President Sirisena has a very short memory. The freedom that people began to enjoy after the election is not the making of President Sirisena. The country had already moved in this direction even before the election was held. The 2015 election was one of the cleanest elections that the country had seen for a long time under any government. Most elections in the past were marred by riots and vote rigging, but none of these was seen in the 2015 election. There were no evidence of intimidation, abductions of opposition candidates, violence aimed at the opposition, or any other form of threat to peace during the election. There was no stuffing of marked ballet papers in sealed boxes, and even the police were acting much more responsibly compared to other elections in recent times. The election commissioner and even the foreign observers gave a clean report on this election.

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