 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Sri Lanka has been witnessing some dramatic developments in its power structures. The president, Sirisena, has sacked the Prime Minister, Vikram Singh and appointed in his place the former president, Rajapaksha, instead. And the country has been a state of turmoil and confusion since then, and the parliament has also been suspended. So we have with us today Professor Sasanka Parera, who is the vice president of South Asian University and an expert on Sri Lankan affairs to talk about these developments. Welcome, Mr. Parera. So we know that Sirisena and Vikram Singh had been at odds with each other since the beginning of their term in 2015. They had their differences in the past as well. But what was the immediate provocation for this sacking on Friday? What were the developments in the past few weeks which led to this? I think the immediate provocation was probably Mr. Vikram Singh has visited to India and in which he met the Indian Prime Minister and issued a statement soon after. Maul is blaming the president for the non-happening of Indian funded projects in Sri Lanka, which is a fact. But then it is not also smart politics. You don't come to a neighboring country, meet its prime minister and then issue a statement critiquing your own president. Simply bad politics. But to me this is something that was bound to happen because in the case of these two individuals, ideology is not the only problem, which is simply one of the many. It is also a matter of class. It is also a matter of ways in which you look at the world and these people are polar opposites. So this is why when the president spoke to the nation on Sunday, he actually said that he gave a whole list of things that Mr. Vikram Singh is supposed to have done and one of them is that his lack of collegiality with the president plus the fact that he does not really understand the pulse of the people. It is a kind of a class critic in that sense. But see the point, you can look at it in a number of ways. One is to see whether it is legal or constitutional and the second is to say see whether it is ethical or moral. Now constitutionally these two people when they came to power in 2015, one of the things they did was to add an amendment to the Constitution, the 19th amendment and it was supposed to curtail the power of the executive presidency, a president to arbitrarily remove the prime minister which has been done before and so under those circumstances the prime minister can only be removed if he resigns, if he dies or if he ceases to be a member of parliament. Alternatively, if his government loses the budget or if he loses a no confidence motion then that too would mark the end of the prime minister but none of these things happen. So to me the more legitimate way to do this would have been on the 5th of November the budget was supposed to be presented. That would have been the date on which to challenge the prime minister and see whether he had the numbers. If he did not have it he would have lost and whoever who had the numbers could have been appointed the prime minister. That would have been the more legitimate way of doing it. But we know that Vikram Singh is saying that he does have the numbers which is why he wanted to call the parliament in session have an emergency vote but the parliament was suspended. It was. It has been suspended until the 16th and I think that is why what makes it moral because you make this decision without the form of whatever I think Sri Lanka now has two prime ministers effectively one who has been legitimately elected and the other nobody really knows the status of it has two cabinets effectively. So it is in a I mean it is this is the kind of situation this country has not been in before so nobody really knows but to me the more dangerous thing is this that in the streets but there is not much concern and to me that is far more dangerous than anything else and that I to me the way I look at it is there is too much fatigue and generally what people will say at least the people I have spoken to what difference does it make as you have one crook you you he leaves and another crook comes over what is the difference it does not touch us you know that kind of attitude. But the Rajapaksha has had I mean during his tenure of course the the war ended the civil war ended and there were a lot of human rights violations. So he had a lot of opposition from the millions. So what would his return mean are these the millions not opposing him? No they see not only Tamilians even in the singular polity quite a few people do oppose him too I mean he lost the election after all the last election but the see to me it is this is where this is also moral problem you know because of those human rights issues because of massive corruption and so on and so forth with the president has been critiquing until maybe a week ago I mean to to hand over the prime ministership to such a person when all those things remained unresolved is unfathomable right. So obviously sorry an average regular Tamil citizen will not find this very comforting not only that a regular citizen of any ethnicity who who is interested in things like freedom of expression and so on and so forth will also be uncomfortable. But he does have a lot of support too. So you talked about you said this was in a way inevitable you expected this to happen because they've had differences can you tell us more about the sort of differences between Vikram Singh and Sri Sena. See I think one of the biggest problems was that Vikram Singh was more keen to hand over the parts of the country's economic assets to foreign entities including China and India these are the two main contenders but also privatization of state-owned property in general sorry within the country as well. But citizen has generally been not particularly fond of this but then you also have to ask the question where did this whole thing begin. The present wave of privatization and you know selling of public assets has actually started in the time of Mr. Rajapaks in the sense that the kinds of programs he started like this harbor in the south, airport also in the south which now here has been taken over by some Indian company. These kinds of things were so expensive that the loans could not really be paid so then it means that number of other things have to be I suppose divested so that I mean this was the prime minister's approach. So the other is I think Mr. Sri Sena's the president's power base was really not that strong so how do you create some kind of power base for yourself and I think nationalism like all of our leaders do in this part of the world was I mean I think that was his choice because this is why Rajapaks himself was very powerful because he did play his nationalist and Buddhist card fairly strongly. So in a sense I think Sri Sena was trying to play that too whereas Brannil Vikram Singh as track record was such that he really could not play that kind of card. They also made certain promises when they came into power when they formed this coalition that of course the main reason was to get Rajapaks out because there was so much opposition against him but there were also a lot of big promises they made that they will reduce the president's power the power will be more decentralized and the millions will get more relief so what do you feel about these promises how they fared on these? See 19th amendment which has slightly reduced the power of the president to sack the prime minister was the first step in that direction of abolishing the executive presidency that was the promise but once in power it was very clear that the president was not particularly keen to go in that direction that is one. Second in the case of promises given to the Tamil population the main promise was to hand over the land that was taken over from them for military purposes and also to release political prisoners so in by and large most political prisoners I think have been released and quite a bit of land has also been handed over from the military to the original owners but still when it comes to the land around the northern airport in Palali that much of it still remains under the control of the military so I doubt whether there will be complete return to the situation prior to war when it comes to these kinds of issues the other promise was the other major promise that both of these individuals gave the polity in their campaign was about ending corruption now that obviously hasn't happened either because many of the people who accused including Mr. Adipak sir no serious investigation has ever taken place and certainly no serious cases of punishment have also been meted out to anybody so it is in this sense that this present scenario becomes far more problematic because here is a situation where people two individuals led a campaign against corruption and ending political violence and so on and so forth and at one point they break up and the main culprit which both of them have pointed their finger at is given a very important job that of the prime minister so that to me the lack of morality and ethics is the main problem I mean I will leave the decision on whether this appointment is legal or not to the supreme court if it ever goes to the supreme court or to constitutional experts to me the problem is that it is so bad because of the longer term negative impacts on Sri Lanka already fragile democracy and you do feel this was just a way to secure Rajapaksha's voter base or support base not only that I think Rajapaksha looks at it slightly differently voter base I don't think really eroded that much I mean he did get quite a bit of votes in the last election too he did have that base didn't really change that much the main thing for him by coming back to power is to ensure that the kinds of allegations that have been brought against him his family and his colleagues will probably never be investigated so to do that it's about self preservation too and in the case of Sri Lankan it is obviously about survival and then he obviously has an interest also to be re-appointed as I mean to be elected as president again even though he has been saying that this is his first and last attempt but whether that happens or not remains to be seen Thank you Mr. Pereira for joining us today Thank you for watching this clip