Sri Lankan president launches attack on reinstated premier

Sri Lanka’s president yesterday launched a scathing verbal attack at his reappointed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, accusing his leadership of being corrupt and anti-national, casting doubt on any immediate end to the country’s restive politics.

Maithripala Sirisena administered the oath to Wickremesinghe nearly two months after firing him and setting off a long political stalemate in the South Asian island nation. But soon after the ceremony, he made a speech in which he said he doubted if the two leaders will be able to work together for long.

“With the issues we have I am not sure what guarantees we have that we could go on this journey together,” Sirisena told Wickremesinghe and a group of his lawmakers. He said he can’t find people of honesty and integrity to help him take the country forward.

The swearing-in took place privately, with only a few lawmakers in attendance and media were not permitted. It initially indicated an end to nearly two months of political impasse but Sirisena’s speech is a sign that relations between the two leaders could be acrimonious, possibly leading to early parliamentary elections.

A new Cabinet is expected to be sworn in soon.

Sirisena in his televised speech listed reasons that led him to sack Wickremesinghe. He said Wickremesinghe did not show interest in assisting investigations into an alleged insider trade during a bond issue, in which a former central bank governor who is a close friend of Wickremesinghe is implicated.

He said Wickremesinghe’s ministers were responsible for alienating the country’s powerful Buddhist monks from the government by having them arrested for holding in their temples unlicensed captive elephants.

Sri Lanka is a predominantly Buddhist nation with an influential clergy.

Sirisena was also critical of Wickremesinghe undertaking to investigate alleged abuses during the country’s long civil war, which ended in 2009. Amid calls for an international trial, Sri Lanka’s government in 2015 undertook at the United Nations Human Rights Council to conduct independent trials of its own with international support on allegations against government troops and the now-defeated Tamil Tiger rebels.

Wickremesinghe made a separate statement at his official residence.

“Now I will assume duties of the office of prime minister,” Wickremesinghe told his cheering supporters.

“Unfortunately, during the past few weeks, the progress of this country and the development programmes that we undertook were stalled,” he added.