More cunning than the ‘old fox’

New Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe's election yesterday is the fulfilment of a lifetime's ambition for a veteran political operator who is the nephew of one of his predecessors.

Wickremesinghe, a six-time former prime minister, was backed by the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party of ousted leader Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled abroad and then resigned last week after protesters overran his palace.

The pro-Western Wickremesinghe has sought the top position for decades.

A few families have long played outsized political roles in the Indian Ocean island nation, and Wickremesinghe's uncle Junius Jayewardene was one of its longest-serving leaders -- in power for 12 years until stepping down in 1989.

Dubbed the "old fox", Jayewardene was renowned for his cunning, but his nephew is regarded as an even shrewder navigator of the country's internecine power networks.

It was Jayewardene who brought him into politics by making him a deputy foreign affairs minister in 1977. Commentators joked the initials of their United National Party (UNP) actually stood for Uncle and Nephew.

Family members say that Jayewardene, who died in 1996, had wanted to ensure that Wickremesinghe becomes president "even for one day".

Gotabaya appointed Wickremesinghe, 73, as prime minister in May, after the leader's elder brother Mahinda resigned in the face of widespread protests against the rule of the Rajapaksas, who have dominated Sri Lankan politics for much of the last two decades.

Wickremesinghe ran for the presidency twice before -- in 1999 and 2005 -- losing both elections, and the UNP was annihilated in a parliamentary election in 2020, leaving the silver-haired veteran as its only MP.

Wickremesinghe is married to Maithree, an English lecturer. They do not have children and have bequeathed their assets to his old school and their universities.

Born into a wealthy and politically connected family rooted in publishing and plantations, Wickremesinghe started work as a rookie reporter at one of the family newspapers.

His first appointment as prime minister was as a result of the May 1993 assassination of president Ranasinghe Premadasa by a suicide bomber.

The then-premier Dingiri Banda Wijetunga was elevated to the presidency, and picked Wickremesinghe -- then Industry, Science and Technology minister -- to replace him.

A similar attack arguably denied him the presidency six years later: his main election rival Chandrika Kumaratunga was wounded by a suicide bomber just three days before the polls.

She brought the nation to tears in a television appearance with a patch over the right eye she had lost and received a significant sympathy vote, with Wickremesinghe losing an election many thought he would win.

Wickremesinghe has been accused of protecting members of the Rajapaksa clan who have been accused of graft, kickbacks, siphoning off public finances and murder.

His status as a pro-Western, free-market reformist could smooth bailout negotiations with the International Monetary Fund and foreign creditors, but he has already warned there will be no quick fix to the nation's unprecedented economic woes.