Editorial
There are political jokes that need no comedian. Sri Lanka has just produced one with a red carpet, distinguished guests and a ceremonial title: “President of the Happiest Era”. Former President Maithripala Sirisena has been honoured with that remarkable designation at a ceremony at Temple Trees, apparently in recognition of his presidential tenure and contribution. One can only admire the confidence with which history has been rewritten in a country that has never suffered from a shortage of political irony.
The question is not whether Maithripala Sirisena deserves recognition for anything accomplished during his presidency. He does. His election in January 2015 represented a significant political rupture, and his administration backed the 19th Amendment, which sought to restore constitutional checks on presidential authority. The Yahapalana project was born out of a genuine public demand for institutional reform after a decade of increasingly centralised rule. Yet the significance of an administration cannot be measured by the intentions with which it begins. Political legitimacy is ultimately tested by what governments do when institutions are under pressure and citizens are most vulnerable.
That is where the title becomes difficult to comprehend. In October 2018, Sirisena removed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and appointed Mahinda Rajapaksa in his place, triggering a constitutional confrontation that paralysed the country’s political system. Parliament was suspended and subsequently dissolved, despite the continuing dispute over who possessed the constitutional authority to govern. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that the dissolution was unconstitutional and declared it null and void. The episode was not simply another quarrel between Sri Lankan politicians. It was a direct test of the limits of presidential power, and the judiciary had to remind the executive that even an elected President remains subject to the Constitution.
Yet the constitutional crisis, serious as it was, was not the darkest chapter of those years. On 21 April 2019, Easter Sunday became one of the bloodiest days in Sri Lanka’s recent history. Suicide bombers attacked churches and hotels, killing 269 people and injuring hundreds more. The tragedy exposed failures not only of intelligence coordination but of the state’s ability to convert warnings into preventive action. The most disturbing aspect was that warnings about a possible attack had existed before the bombings. The question was therefore not simply whether the state possessed information, but why that information did not produce the action necessary to protect the public.
The Supreme Court’s judgement of January 2023 gave that question a constitutional dimension. The Court found Sirisena and several senior officials responsible for violating the fundamental rights of the petitioners through failures to act on available intelligence. Sirisena was ordered to pay Rs.100 million from his personal funds. This was not an accusation made in the heat of an election campaign, nor an allegation circulated by political opponents. It was a finding of Sri Lanka’s highest court concerning the responsibilities of a President who was also Defence Minister and Commander-in-Chief at the time. The distinction is fundamental: political failure can be debated; a judicial finding of a fundamental-rights violation belongs to the country’s constitutional record.
This is why the new title is more than an amusing curiosity. It raises a serious question about how Sri Lanka remembers political power. The country has a peculiar habit of turning complicated political careers into comforting narratives once the immediate controversies have faded. Reformers become statesmen, political survivors become elder statesmen, and painful episodes are gradually separated from the people who exercised authority when those episodes occurred. Time can soften reputations, but it cannot alter judicial findings or restore those who were killed.
There is, moreover, something almost surreal about describing an entire presidential period as the “happiest era” without any explanation of what happiness means. Was it measured against economic performance, democratic freedoms, public security, social confidence or some recognised index of national wellbeing? If not, the phrase is not an assessment of national happiness. It is an honorary label. There is nothing wrong with an awards organisation giving an honorary title to a former president, but there is something deeply questionable about allowing ceremonial praise to acquire the appearance of historical truth.
Nor is it necessary to claim that the organisers deliberately intended to mock Sri Lanka. There is no evidence to establish such an intention. The irony is created by the record itself. A president associated with constitutional controversy and one of the country’s gravest security failures can, years later, be presented with a title suggesting that his was the happiest period in the nation’s modern history. The contrast is so stark that satire almost writes itself.
And perhaps this is the most revealing part of the episode. Sirisena was known for his ability to smile. Even during periods when the country was confronting profound political turmoil and, later, mourning the dead of Easter Sunday, his public demeanour could appear remarkably composed. A smile, of course, is not evidence of guilt or innocence, competence or incompetence. But political symbolism matters. Leaders communicate not only through decisions and speeches but through the manner in which they inhabit moments of national crisis. For many Sri Lankans, those images remain part of the memory of an era in which the country was repeatedly asked to endure political uncertainty, constitutional confrontation and ultimately mass violence.
So perhaps Sri Lanka has finally found its “Happiest Era” and, with it, the president who supposedly led it. The curious thing is that many of us seem never to have known that we were living through it. Because nations do not become healthier by forgetting their darkest moments. They become healthier by refusing to decorate them.
