Sri Lanka president reinstates Wickremesinghe to end crisis

Bloomberg

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena caved in to mounting pressure and reinstated Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister, ending nearly two months of a protracted leadership crisis that prompted Moody’s, S&P and Fitch to downgrade the island’s credit rating.
Sirisena on Sunday swore in Wickremesinghe, who he had abruptly fired on October 26 and replaced with former strongman president Mahinda Rajapaksa, despite having said he wouldn’t reappoint his former prime minister even if all 225 members of Sri Lanka’s parliament endorsed it.
“In the last few weeks economic progress in the country has halted due to the crisis,” Wickremesinghe said. “We have to bring the normalcy back the country first.”
Sirisena said that contrasting leadership styles and Wickremesinghe’s habit of unilateral decision-making made it impossible to work towards improving the economy.
Wickremesinghe has a neo-liberal economic view that Sirisena didn’t agree with, the president said.
“We will have a common programme for one year, pre-agreed upfront. We will have to put mechanisms in place to discuss policy issues with the president,” said Eran Wickramaratne, a state minister of finance under Wickremesinghe. “We want to have policy coherence and focus on delivery.”
There is a chance that Wickremesinghe and the president could get along despite the acrimony of the past months, said Manoj Joshi, a distinguished fellow at the New Delhi-based think tank, Observer Research Foundation. “Both Wickremesinghe and Sirisena may have learnt their lesson and could work out some form of co-existence going into the future, since the political crisis has had a negative effect on the country’s finances and international standing,” Joshi said.
Sirisena originally suspended parliament, then tried to dissolve the legislature entirely for fresh elections — a move that was blocked by the Supreme Court to decide on its legality.
His actions have been criticised by countries including the US, while the political crisis led to Moody’s, Fitch and S&P downgrading its credit rating.
Sirisena’s change of heart towards Wickremesinghe came after the Supreme Court on December 13 ruled against his plan to dissolve the island nation’s parliament and call a new national vote.
The top court ruled as unconstitutional a presidential notice to dissolve parliament before a period of four-and-a-half years from its first sitting unless the move was endorsed by a two-thirds majority of parliament.
On December 12, 117 lawmakers voted in favour of Wickremesinghe to pass a resolution showing that he commanded the confidence of parliament to function as prime minister.