Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has ruled out ever reinstating deposed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, even if the latter is able to prove he has majority support in parliament.

Speaking to reporters from foreign media outlets on Sunday, the president accused his former ally, who he abruptly sacked last month and replaced with former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, of being “highly corrupt”.

“Even if the UNP has the majority, I told them not to bring Ranil Wickremesinghe before me, I will not make him prime minister … not in my lifetime,” Sirisena said, referring to talks with members of the deposed leader’s United National Party.

“He is corrupt. His economic policies are not good for local industries. He pursued an extremely liberal form of government that is not compatible with our culture.”

Accusations, investigations

The allegations marked the latest escalation in the dramatic falling out between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe.

The two men had joined forces before presidential elections in 2015 to defeat Rajapaksa, a controversial figure regarded as a hero by the ethnic Sinhalese majority for ending Sri Lanka‘s civil war by crushing ethnic Tamil separatists, but who has also faced allegations of wartime atrocities and corruption.

But after their election victory, Sirisena and Wickremesinghe saw their relations turning south amid disagreements over government administration, economic reforms and an alleged assassination plot against the president.

The tensions boiled over on October 26 with Wickremesinghe’s firing – a move widely denounced as unconstitutional.

Subsequent attempts by Sirisena to dissolve parliament altogether and order elections for early next year temporarily have been blocked by the country’s Supreme Court. The court is expected to deliver a verdict on the president’s moves on December 7.

Speaking to the foreign media correspondents, Sirisena also said he planned to appoint a commission to investigate corruption and malpractice “under Wickremesinghe’s government”.

The UNP was quick to hit back at the president’s comments.

“He [Sirisena] can choose any superintendent for his private coconut estate, but in government, he must recognise the leader of the largest single party in parliament,” party spokesperson Harsha de Silva told the AFP news agency on Sunday.

De Silva added that the UNP, which holds 106 seats in the 225-member legislature, welcomed any corruption investigation, but insisted that existing inquiries into several high-profile murder cases and corruption scandals allegedly linked to Rajapaksa should also be pursued with vigour.

Earlier, Sirisena had told the foreign media correspondents that ongoing investigations into abductions, killings of journalists and other crimes allegedly committed by those linked to Rajapaksa and his cabinet would not be interfered with.

“With a political change of this nature, there could be different thoughts, but my policy is that they should not change,” Sirisena said when asked about the fate of the investigations with Rajapaksa now in control of the government.

“No one can interfere” with the police and courts, he added.

Failed crisis talks

Almost a month into Sri Lanka’s power struggle, both Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa have separately continued to lay claim to being the country’s legitimate prime minister, an office subordinate to the presidency. 

Wickremesinghe has remained holed up in the prime minister’s residence, while Rajapaksa has control of the post’s official offices.

The two rivals and Sirisena held direct talks last week aimed at ending the protracted crisis, but the summit failed to produce a breakthrough with neither side shifting their stance following two preceding no-confidence votes against Rajapaksa in parliament.

Both Sirisena and Rajapaksa have rejected the outcome of the November 14 and 18 votes, both of which saw a majority of parliamentarians reject the latter’s leadership, claiming the chamber’s speaker had failed to follow appropriate procedures in the holding of the ballots.

The ongoing turmoil has heightened international fears about the stability of Sri Lanka, a country with outstanding foreign debt repayments of more than $50bn.

The country’s parliament is due to convene this week, on Tuesday and Thursday, to discuss a UNP-proposed motion to cut off government spending.

If the UNP wins the vote, it could force Rajapaksa to withdraw his claim to the leadership, and pressure Sirisena into naming a prime minister from the party.

Shahidul Alam, the internationally recognised photographer who was detained by the Bangladeshi authorities in August after making allegedly “provocative” statements in an interview with Al Jazeera, has recently been released on bail after spending over 100 days in prison. 

Following his detention, the award-winning photojournalist immediately became a poster child for free-speech advocacy around the globe. #Freeshahidul became a popular hashtag on Twitter, as Nobel laureates signed petitions, prominent newspapers published numerous op-eds, and diplomats from major nations engaged in overt and back-channel negotiations with Bangladeshi authorities to secure Alam’s release.

The outburst from the international community surprised the Bangladeshi government, given the country’s long and habitually dismal record on human rights. In the eyes of the authorities, Alam was perhaps just another journalist to be thrown into jail, like the many before him, and the more soon to follow. Luckily for Alam, the protestations from the international community eventually became too overbearing for the Bangladeshi authorities to handle. 

Prior to Alam’s eventual release, the penultimate flurry of activities from the international community included a full-fledged resolution on the human rights situation in Bangladesh adopted by the European Parliament, in which a special section was dedicated to Shahidul Alam.

Concurrent to the European Parliament’s resolution, but perhaps coincidentally, renowned Indian writer Arundhati Roy published an open letter on Shahidul Alam, drawing parallels between the assaults on free speech in India and Bangladesh. India wields significant psychological and literal sway over affairs in Bangladesh, and Arundhati’s letter was clearly trying to make an emotional appeal to Bangladesh-watchers within India.

Although it is hard to establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship, it is noteworthy that within just 48 hours of the European Parliament resolution and Arundhati’s letter, Shahidul Alam was granted bail by the same Bangladeshi judicial system, which only days earlier had refused petitions for his bail four times, as some judges felt “embarrassed” to hear his case. 

Although Bangladeshi authorities expressed their willingness to pursue an appeal against Alam’s bail, for the time being, he appears to be free and talking publicly.

Freedom of expression still under threat

The international community played an extraordinary role in securing Shahidul Alam’s release and in keeping his case alive in the realm of global conscience. However, much work still needs to be done as freedom of expression, particularly when it touches politics, remains as perilous as ever in Bangladesh – a country that is becoming increasingly authoritarian.

Take for example the case of Maidul Islam, an associate professor of Sociology at Chittagong University, one of the largest public educational institutions in Bangladesh. Just weeks after Shahidul Alam’s arrest, Maidul was detained and jailed for making “derogatory” remarks about Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Facebook. Maidul’s state-run employer chose to quickly suspend him, rather than attempt to protect the freedom of expression of one of its faculty members.

Maidul was victim of the infamous section 57 of the country’s controversial Information Communication and Technology Act (ICT Act), which allows non-bailable arrest of anyone the police considers to have engaged in defamation of the prime minister or her father – the founding president of Bangladesh, also known as the “Father of the Nation” as per the current constitution of Bangladesh.

One intriguing aspect of Maidul Islam’s case is that none of the numerous news stories on his arrest spells out the exact phrases he used in his Facebook post to “defame the prime minister”. This is reminiscent of news reports on blasphemy coming from illiberal societies, where the news media often refrains from quoting the blasphemous words of the accused, due to the fear of themselves being accused of committing blasphemy.

And Islam’s is not an isolated case, as the jailing of academics, teachers and other ordinary citizens for allegedly defaming authority figures is quite common in Bangladesh.

Earlier in April, the Dhaka University, Bangladesh’s premium academic institution, suspended Professor Morshed Hasan Khan for criticising the Prime Minister Hasina’s father in a newspaper article. In August last year, 13 high-school teachers were arrested on sedition charges for allegedly making derogatory remarks about the “Father of the Nation”.

According to statistics from Human Rights Watch, during the first quarter of 2018 alone, Bangladeshi police filed 282 charge sheets accusing people of criticising the government, defamation, or offending religious sentiments. There are instances where people went to jail, not for authoring, but simply liking, sharing or commenting on Facebook content that the government found offensive.

Witnessing the rising tide of intolerance towards political dissent, Bangladeshi civil society, which was once known for raucous political debates, has now grown accustomed to exchanging political messages in guarded whispers.

Silencing the opposition

Amid the backdrop of increasing censorship, Bangladesh is nearing the December 30 parliamentary elections. The country’s beleaguered opposition is already feeling the heat of the government’s increasing crackdown on freedom of expression.

Bangladeshi opposition parties have formed an alliance to electorally challenge the well-oiled political machine of Prime Minister Hasina – flush with cash and aided by the ever-oppressive state apparatus hell-bent on perpetuating the status-quo. 

As part of the alliance’s candidate selection process, Tarique Rahman, the exiled heir-apparent of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) – the country’s main opposition party – was conducting interviews with prospective candidates via Skype from London.

Realising Rahman was using Skype to communicate with aspiring MPs from his own party, the Bangladeshi authorities blocked access to the communication platform across the country. All internet-based communication services were temporarily shut down by authorities around the office of BNP Chief Khaleda Zia.

Following the detentions of Shahidul Alam, Maidul Islam and Morshed Hasan Khan, among many others, it is already a well-established fact that the authorities in Bangladesh do not respond well to public criticism of their policies and conduct.

However, on top of silencing and even jailing everyone who publicly criticises the government, the authorities are now trying to prevent opposition figures from even talking privately among themselves. This is an extraordinary development even given Bangladesh’s abysmal standards and is likely a sign that further violations of free speech are down the road.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.