Why Ranil Wickremesinghe is Sri Lanka’s Best Choice for the Economy
By Adolf
Sitting in Europe, I have followed Sri Lankan social media closely and enthusiastically—without bias. The narrative is clear: AKD is losing his pants. The opposition, backed by self-interested businesses and a divided Ranil-Sajith vote, handed AKD 43% in the presidential election. Months later, he secured a 2/3 parliamentary majority. That is given. But let us not forget—when Gotabaya ran away, he too had a 2/3 majority. Popularity in a vacuum is not governance. If AKD truly wishes to test his popularity, let him face the Provincial Council elections. A united opposition would wipe him out.
AKD and RW in good times
To his credit, AKD has driven fear into the hearts of the corrupt. But whilst he targets the opposition, critics rightly point out that he ignores his own corrupt ministers and business cronies. Retribution will come to him double and treble if he loses the next election. The better strategy is to deal with corruption with an even hand, bring down the cost of living, and build a credible administration.
Now, let us speak plainly about Ranil Wickremesinghe. He has his fair share of criticism—no one denies that. However, in the tumultuous aftermath of Sri Lanka’s 2022 economic implosion—when foreign reserves hit zero, inflation soared past 70%, and public rage toppled a presidency—the nation stood on the brink of a failed state. Into this maelstrom stepped Ranil Wickremesinghe. While his tenure was marked by severe public hardship and political unpopularity, a sober assessment reveals a stark reality: at that precise moment of existential threat, Wickremesinghe was not merely a viable option; he was the indispensable, singular figure capable of preventing total economic disintegration. And he did it whilst AKD watched in silence.
Achievements
The primary argument for Wickremesinghe’s unique value lies not in his popularity, but in his unparalleled crisis management pedigree. This was not his first rodeo. He had previously navigated the 2001 economic crisis, demonstrating a technical fluency in fiscal policy that his contemporaries lacked. When he assumed the presidency in July 2022, Sri Lanka was paralysed; international creditors were unresponsive, and domestic political factions offered only populist quick-fixes that would have accelerated default. Wickremesinghe, however, possessed the bureaucratic memory and international relationships necessary to immediately restart dialogue with multilateral institutions. His credibility with the IMF, built over decades, proved to be Sri Lanka’s most critical asset.
This credibility bore its most significant fruit: the securing of the $2.9 billion IMF bailout. This agreement was the lifeblood that stanched the country’s fiscal hemorrhage. Achieving this required the implementation of a deeply unpopular, yet medically necessary, austerity regimen. Wickremesinghe pushed through drastic tax hikes, slashed energy subsidies, and raised utility tariffs—measures that were politically suicidal but fiscally indispensable. Without these conditional reforms, the IMF program would have failed, and the country would have faced sovereign default with no recovery path. He provided the legislative backbone for stabilization, notably through the Central Bank Act, which curbed monetary financing of government debt—a reform that structurally prevents the very printing of money that caused the initial hyperinflation.
Recognized Results
The results, though hard-won, were objectively measurable and confirmed by international observers. Within two years, headline inflation plummeted from a crippling 70% to under 6%. The rupee stabilized against the dollar, and foreign investor confidence began to trickle back. Most critically, Sri Lanka exited the contractionary spiral; after four consecutive quarters of GDP decline, the economy recorded its first growth in 2024. This technical recovery was the direct consequence of a targeted, orthodox economic strategy that only Wickremesinghe had the nerve and will to execute. Even political adversaries, including figures from the Marxist JVP, conceded privately—and occasionally publicly—that no other active politician possessed his specific skill set to manage the collapse. His success lay in doing the “unpopular right thing” rather than the “popular wrong thing.”
The Way Forward for Sri Lanka
Let us face the truth. AKD is good at speaking and frightening the opposition. But Ranil Wickremesinghe is the best choice—not because he is a great leader in the conventional sense, but because he is the ultimate crisis technician. He is the surgeon willing to perform a painful amputation to save the patient’s life. His electoral defeats underscore the profound disconnect between the technical requirements of stabilization and the public’s tolerance for pain. Yet historians of the 2022 economic crisis will remember Wickremesinghe’s role as the grim, necessary stopgap that pulled Sri Lanka back from the edge of the abyss—a task that, at that perilous hour, no one else was equipped to undertake.
Today, AKD attempts to put him in jail for 16 million Rupees whilst enjoying government privileges—a move that shows how low they have stooped. President Trump’s birthday bash on the White House lawns is a stark reminder that separating the private and public life of a president is exceedingly difficult. AKD and his team worked under Wickremesinghe’s guidance at Temple Trees in 2015–17, prosecuting the Rajapaksa family for bribery and corruption—yet continued with no apparent tangible results. A better attempt would be to stop the witch hunt and ensure Bribery of that scale never happens again. The country is losing valuable recovery time on an unproductive agenda . The laws were toughened during the crisis not by president AKD . Sri Lanka can no longer afford to look backward while the future burns.
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