After the mass protests in Sri Lanka forced Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign from the post of president on July 14, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was appointed prime minister in early May, became the target of the protesters who aspired to completely overhaul the political establishment in the country.
However, when the Sri Lankan parliament elected Wickremesinghe to be the new president on Wednesday, the protesters seem to be facing one more uphill battle in taking down another powerful politician.
Wickremesinghe vowed to crack down on the protesters who try to topple the government and occupy the offices of the president and the prime minister on Thursday, after he was sworn in as the new president.
The new president said that he would deal with the protesters in accordance with the law and would not tolerate violence during the protests, while affirming the aspirations of the silent majority who demanded political change in the country.
Legal Support
Although the hardline position of the new president brought fears of heavy-handed military crackdowns on the activists, a young organizer of recent protests shared with Sputnik his personal encounter with the legal system that allowed him to be confident about the future of the movement.
After protesters clashed with the police in an attempt to storm in the president’s private residence on March 31, Sri Lankan police officers began to try to track down the organizers of the protests.
"I was at home and they came to my house at around 11:30 p.m. And they took me to the Modara police station, which was like 120 kilometers [about 75 miles] away. They took me to that police station just to arrest me," Anuruddha Bandara, who had been organizing and coordinating the protests through a social media group, said.
According to the activist, the police told him that he was under arrest because of a poster with the slogan "Gota Go Home", which was calling on people to protest against the president. The officers confiscated his passport and electronic devices.
Thanks to the wide support for the protest movement, groups of lawyers rushed to offer legal assistance to Bandara immediately after his arrest on April 1.
"I was there for like 24 hours. They [the lawyers] appeared on behalf of me for free. I have to mention that the lawyers and the legal community did support us throughout the protests. I think they played a major role in making sure the protests were nonviolent and constitutional," Bandara, 28, said.
The activist believed that the lawyers or even the judges supported the protests because they were suffering from the same economic crisis that brought the demonstrators into the streets.
"You know, the lawyers, or even the judges. They do suffer just like people in every profession. They were looking out for such an uprising. They were fed up with the government and the economy. They were fed up with the system. When the first case was reported by the media, about 200 lawyers came for free. Even for my case, there were around 150 lawyers," he said.
Thanks to the efforts from his lawyers through six-seven public hearings, the case against Bandara for causing public disturbance through social media was dismissed by the court on June 21 over the lack of evidence.
After winning his case, Bandara and his lawyers even filed a case against the officials and police officers over his arrest.
When he was protesting outside the president’s residence on June 20, Bandara was arrested once again while he was live broadcasting from the scene on social media. Similarly, he was released shortly after and started to fight the case over his second arrest in court.
Unlike other more repressive countries where protesters rarely had a chance to win their court cases following their arrests, Bandara’s victory in court gave him hope that they could avoid a harsh military crackdown in Sri Lanka.
"That’s the thing. As long as we stick with the law and the constitution, the military can’t get involved. We’re trying to remain peaceful as much as we can. I don’t think the military will intervene. I don’t think they have a right to intervene either. The legal system has won the heart of the people. If the legal system was on the other side, the people would have no one else to turn to for help," he said.
On a number of occasions, various courts in Sri Lanka refused requests from the police to declare the protests to be illegal.
People's Consent
When the protesters released a list of detailed demands in early July, their ultimate goal was to introduce constitutional reforms that would reduce the powers of the executive presidency in Sri Lanka.
The removal of top officials such as Rajapaksa and his ally Wickremesinghe was only part of the process for the systematic changes, Bandara pointed out.
"We consider him [Wickremesinghe] as another friend of the existing regime or as a product of it. What we basically need is the constitutional reforms, which we have already asked for. We highly believe that while the existing regime is in power or while Ranil is in power, we’ll never be able to get that. That’s why we’ll continue to pressure the parliament members to give us the constitutional reforms," he said.
Compared to his predecessor, Wickremesinghe is definitely weaker, the activist added.
"The previous president was much stronger, because he was actually elected through a general election. But this guy [Wickremesinghe] doesn’t have such power, because he was elected with the votes from the parliament. He doesn’t have people’s power or people’s consent to be acting as the president," he said.
Bandara noted that Wickremesinghe winning the vote in the parliament was just the results of party politics.
"We're protesting against the Rajapaksa regime. But as you already know, two thirds of the parliament do represent them. It was an almost impossible task for the representatives of the regime to be defeated within the parliament. So as expected, he [Wickremesinghe] got elected," he said.
Nevertheless, the protesters will continue their efforts in bringing constitutional reforms and they are prepared for the long battle ahead, the activist stressed.