Colombo:WION India’s first and only international news channel, spoke exclusively to Sri Lankan Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe as part of the channel’s flagship Global Leadership Series hosted by Palki Sharma Upadhyay, Managing Editor of WION.
Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said that he is certain President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will back the 21st Amendment that reduces the power of the President’s office.
Speaking exclusively to WION’s Managing Editor Palki Sharma Upadhyay, Wickremesinghe said ‘we had two rounds of discussions with the party leaders, and there was an agreement, and this was sent to cabinet…It will be taken up at (sic) the next meeting, and thereafter, the 21st Amendment will be presented to the party leaders…there were earlier disagreements [on the 21st amendment] within the ruling party, but this [agreement] was finally brought in.. so far there has been no adverse reaction’. Asked whether he thinks the President will be on board, Wickremesinghe said ‘certainly… it was still to his advantage, not to his disadvantage‘.
Calling the economic crisis man-made, the Lankan Prime Minister said ‘he [Gotabaya Rajapaksa] has publicly taken the blame, not once but twice… he’s not leaving office, you can’t throw him out of office…under the proposals put by the bi-association, there is no need for him to leave office’. Asked about his equation with the President, the Prime Minister said, ‘I am not a CEO [appointed by the Rajapaksas]; I am a Prime Minister… I am an Independent Prime Minister… There is no interference [from Gotabaya Rajapaksa], if there are any differences, we have to sort it out in the cabinet’, Wickremesinghe said, adding that indeed ‘there are differences of opinion…’.
The six-time Prime Minister said that his current stint is ‘the most-challenging job I’ve ever had… someone had to take up the challenge to put the country’s economy into order’. Wickremesinghe was first elected to office in 1994, he’s currently 73.
‘What’s wrong with 73?’, the veteran leader asked, ‘After I took it [job] over, someone sent me a note and they said that Deng Xiaoping also started at 73, I am not the Deng Xiaoping of Sri Lanka’.
The Sri Lankan Prime Minister said, ‘stabilisation and recovery will take about 18 months’, adding that the road ahead will include consensus-driven economic proposals, and 21st Amendment.
Speaking about China, Wickremesinghe said the country has not shifted its focus to Southeast Asia. ‘China has a lot of interest in the region, and you [India] will know better than us with the Himalayan border… I don’t think they have lifted their interest in (sic) South Asia, in Sri Lanka, in the Islands, in the Maldives, Seychelles, I think the interest is still there, otherwise, you [India] would not be moving troops around in Ladakh ‘.
Insisting that China has not abandoned Sri Lanka, Wickremesinghe said ‘we focused on India [for initial assistance], I don’t think we could get much from China or Japan… we decided we will go along with India because India came up with the money first, it’s a question of who had less red tape’, adding that he will call Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to thank him for assistance.
