Speaking to The Indian Express, Wickremesinghe also said that to tide over the current food shortage, Sri Lanka must tap its friends in South Asia — India, Pakistan and Bangladesh — to “borrow” foodgrains that could be returned after two or three years.
AS SRI Lanka’s political vacuum extended into its tenth day, and protesters demanding the resignation of the Rajapaksa family pitched tents near the presidential office on the main seafront, the country’s former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe summed up the way forward in one line: President Gotabaya Rajapaksa must resign or explain to the people why he won’t.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Wickremesinghe also said that to tide over the current food shortage, Sri Lanka must tap its friends in South Asia — India, Pakistan and Bangladesh — to “borrow” foodgrains that could be returned after two or three years.
He also suggested that a consortium of India, Japan, China, South Korea and the EU could help Sri Lanka until negotiations with the IMF are concluded and the implementation of a bailout begins. He flagged that Indian credit lines for fuel and food would run out by May, and Sri Lanka had to take steps right now to prevent the crisis from overtaking the country.
“He (Gotabaya) has been elected by the people. Even the Parliament can’t force him to resign. So it’s up to him to decide. And he has told me he’s not resigning. In which case, I told him, you have to explain to the people what you’re willing to do and why you are not resigning,” Wickremesinghe, who was prime minister of Sri Lanka from 2015 to 2019, said.
“Either he has to step down or win back the confidence of the people,” he said, describing the protests as Sri Lanka’s “Arab Spring” moment, with the country’s youth becoming the symbol of discontent among a cross-section of people from farmers in rural areas to the elite in Colombo.
Responding to the fact that the Arab Spring did not end well in many of the countries that were swept by it, he said: “I do not think the military will come out here against the people, because they are affected by the same issues as the people. But we have to avoid an Arab Spring ending.”
At the moment, there is a political vacuum in Sri Lanka’s government. President Gotabaya has been attempting to stabilise his government since last week, when all his ministers handed in their resignations to give him a free hand to form a new Cabinet.
Gotabaya had hoped that this would placate the protesters. Three times last week, there were rumours that a new Cabinet would be sworn in. But it did not happen. It appears that few in the Rajapaksa camp want to be visible and tasked with resolving a difficult crisis. And the street seems to be in no mood to accept cosmetic changes. As one protest placard put it: “Resign, not reassign.”
Ali Sabri, who was appointed Finance Minister the day after he resigned as Justice Minister on April 4, put in his papers again, but the President did not accept the resignation. He remains the Finance Minister.
Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has a wafer thin majority in Parliament, issued a desperate appeal for the protesters to return home in an address to the nation on Monday. But while there has been talk of a no-confidence motion, the many parties and a set of MPs who have broken away, have not taken any concrete steps towards finalising their next steps.
Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/world/sri-lankas-former-pm-ranil-wickremesinghe-has-a-message-for-president-gotabaya-rajapaksa-quit-or-explain-why-you-wont-7865071/