-By A LeN Political Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -29.April.2025, 11.40 PM) If there’s one thing former President Ranil Wickremesinghe has never lacked, it’s confidence—often misplaced, frequently unshaken by facts, and almost always delivered with a smirk. This week, the silver-haired statesman once again graced the national stage with a proposal so spectacularly off-kilter that it sent diplomatic observers diving for their coffee mugs in stunned silence.
Addressing a gathering in Colombo, Wickremesinghe declared that Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya should have arranged a sit-down with U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance—while he was in India, mind you—to hash out trade tariffs recently imposed by President Donald Trump. One would be forgiven for thinking Wickremesinghe had wandered into an episode of The West Wing sometime in 2005 and hadn’t quite caught up.
For the record, and for the benefit of Mr. Wickremesinghe’s apparently dormant foreign policy compass, the Vice President of the United States has as much control over international tariffs as a Buckingham Palace corgi has over British monetary policy. It’s ceremonial, dear Ranil. Decorative. Much like the sixth term of your premiership.
His statement, however, had a certain vintage Ranilian flavour: lofty, vaguely technocratic, and wholly disconnected from diplomatic reality. “The Prime Minister should have used India’s influence to get a one-hour meeting with Vance,” he insisted, as if Prime Minister Modi runs a hotel concierge service for visiting global dignitaries.
And yet, the punchline writes itself. Imagine poor Dr. Amarasuriya cornering Vice President Vance over samosas at a Delhi reception, begging for tariff relief like a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Trade Partner?—all while Vance, whose remit doesn’t include international trade, nervously checks his watch and politely redirects her to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office.
Still, Wickremesinghe was undeterred. He assured his audience that Trump’s tariffs would wreak havoc on Sri Lankan companies and that the government must act swiftly. That part, at least, was based in reality. But the remedy? Less so. It’s as if the man genuinely believes that diplomacy is just a matter of dialing up whomever happens to be in town and hoping for the best.
He even reminded everyone—lest we forget—that President Trump once called him after the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, as if his hotline to Washington is still active and just gathering dust.
The bigger concern here isn’t that Ranil has misread the hierarchy of U.S. governance—it’s that he keeps offering policy prescriptions that suggest he’s still trying to figure out who does what in the White House. This is the man who served as Prime Minister six times. One might expect at least a working knowledge of global trade architecture, or at the very least, a passing acquaintance with the U.S. Constitution.
Dr. Amarasuriya, meanwhile, has wisely kept quiet. Perhaps she recognises the wisdom of not engaging in foreign policy cosplay with a man who still thinks the Vice President signs off on tariff schedules.
In the end, one could argue Ranil Wickremesinghe’s intervention is nothing more than an elderly politician’s longing for relevance in a world that has, inconveniently, moved on. His latest gaffe offers both comedy and tragedy—a microcosm of Sri Lanka’s political theatre, where the ghosts of old cabinets still rattle their sabres, oblivious to the rewiring of the global order.
In the words of one Colombo diplomat: “If Ranil wants to save the economy, he might start by saving himself from further embarrassment.”
-By A LeN Political Correspondent
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by (2025-04-29 18:26:06)
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