Veteran politician Dinesh Gunawardena was on Friday sworn in as the prime minister of Sri Lanka by President Ranil Wickremesinghe. Gunawardena, a stalwart in Sri Lankan politics was the foreign affairs and education minister in the previous Gotabaya and Mahinda Rajapaksa government. He served as the home minister in Gotabaya’s cabinet for a brief stint since April this year, when the then president went for a cabinet reshuffle.
73-year-old Gunawardena, a close confidant of the ousted prime minister, was the joint opposition leader during the Maithripala Sirisena government, between 2015 and 2019. Known to be a Wickremesinghe opponent who fought him for decades during his political career, Gunawardena was the prime minister pick by the president himself, sources say. Known for his plain speaking, he has a clean image among the people of Sri Lanka. He was also a trade union leader and now part of Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP)
Son of Philip Gunawardena and Kusumasiri, Dinesh had his early education in Colombo and then went to Netherlands to get his diploma in business management. He then went on to do his higher studies at the University of Oregon in the United States, where he got involved in student activism and took part in anti-Vietnam war protests. His father was a fierce freedom fighter and once both his parents sneaked into India during the second world war and joined the underground activists to fight for freedom. Gunawardena, after his father’s death, returned to Sri Lanka and got into politics in 1973 and was elected as MP at least eight times since then.
For Sri Lanka which has been witnessing a political turmoil since the stepping down of Mahinda Rajapaksa on May 9, a stable administration and a strong political leadership will open the path for economic revival. The new president and the government have a huge responsibility to lead the country to recovery path. While Wickremesinghe is being criticised by the people for the military crackdown on the protesters at Galle Face Green, he is expected to play a crucial role in taking forward the IMF negotiations.
Incidentally, the prime minister is expected to be a negotiator and a skilled intermediary between the executive and the legislature, as there will be several opinions and suggestions within the cabinet. He will be part of an all-party government. And Gunawardena, who is a stalwart of Sri Lankan politics and one among the senior politicians, is expected to play the role of the negotiator.
Though Wickremesinghe is not an MP of the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party of the Rajapaksas, he was elected as president with the support of over 90 SLPP MPs who are considered Rajapaksa loyalists. And he is believed to be a friend of the Rajapaksas, which he denied as soon as he took oath.
