The February 14 provincial polls ended as expected with significant victories to the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA).
Even more significant, as one poll gives way to another, are the unexpected realities that have dawned. They give a new face to politics in an embattled nation and portend to change the course of contemporary history.
The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), the predominant component of the UPFA, has changed from the days of its founding father, the late S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike. In a sense, it was the rural-based Sinhala nationalist forces of the Pancha Maha Balawegaya - the five great forces of the Buddhist clergy, the workers, the ayurvedic physicians, the teachers, and the farmers -- who were in the vanguard of the party's historic victory back in 1956. But Bandaranaike expected the party to be a Centrist, secular political party. Half a century down the road, the party has once again relied heavily on that element that ushered the party into power and place then, transforming itself into a Sinhala voter-based nationalist one. Becoming the sheet anchor for such a rapidly changing trend is the military campaign against Tiger guerrillas, now in its penultimate stages.
If the late Bandaranaike ushered in a social revolution in the mid-1950s for the common person, in the new millennium, President Mahinda Rajapaksa went beyond to win for his Government and his political party a new Sinhala nationalist identity. The endorsement came from the voters at the elections to the Central and North Western Provincial Councils. That it would continue at the upcoming elections to the Western Provincial Council is not in doubt. But what must be a worrying factor would be that the UPFA was unable to have a single member of the minority elected from either of the two Provinces.
 |
| People voting at yesterday's reelection for Nayakkarchenai area. Pic by Hiran Priyankara Jayasinghe |
On the other hand, the United National Party (UNP), the successor to the Ceylon National Congress and being in the forefront of the country's Independence movement, was a magnet for the minorities. That was besides the substantial vote base it has among the Sinhala voters countrywide. Today, the party is floundering, its rural vote-base gradually evaporating in the face of the UPFA's chest-beating nationalism, and organisational neglect. As results of one poll after another show, an increasingly grimmer picture of the UNP, the country's main opposition party, emerges.
In the Central Provincial Council (CPC) the UNP fared worse than in 2004 when it held 26 seats. It won only 22 seats polling 422,125 votes. In marked contrast, the UPFA which held 30 seats (two of them bonus) increased it to 36 (also with two bonus seats) at last Saturday's polls. Official results for the North Western Provincial Council (NWPC) are yet to be declared. A re-poll took place yesterday at Nayakkachenai in the Puttalam district after the February 14 vote was annulled due to irregularities. Last night, the official results for the Puttalam District were announced, giving the UPFA a two-thirds majority inthe North Western Council.
But the UNP got only 18 per cent of the vote in a Sinhala electorate like Anamaduwa, which surely must be the lowest-ever polled by the UNP in a constituency. True enough, the party's chief organiser Asoka Wadigamangawa crossed over at the last minute to the UPFA, but even then, for the party to get just 18 per cent of the vote (UPFA obtained 79 per cent) shows a massive disparity between the two parties. The total polled though was a relatively low 56 per cent, which the UNPers might wish to think was a case where their voters refrained from voting.
The UPFA's PC polls victories surpassed expectations. In the two provinces, it won all the five districts. It lost only a mere two of the 40 polling divisions - the Nuwara Eliya and Kandy electorates, which have substantial minority votes.
The UPFA's loss in Nuwara Eliya was indeed a big jolt for its constituent partner, the Ceylon Workers Congress led by Arumugam Thondaman. The grandson of the legendary plantation sector trade unionist Savumyamoorthy Thondaman, it became clear, had lost his as well as his party's power in the plantations, which the elder Thondaman firmly controlled. Issues apart, in the past, plantation workers stood en bloc with the CWC. In the PC polls in 2004, Velusamy Radhakrishnan from the CWC (who contested under the UNP ticket) won 44,525 votes and was placed number one on the list. This time he secured only 18,513 votes and came eighth on the list. In marked contrast, the rival Up Country People's Front candidate, Palani Alagan Chithambaram polled 45,229 votes. He was number one on the UNP list. In the PC polls in 2004, he had only polled 18,387 votes.
In the Kandy (Mahanuwara) electorate, the UNP polled 12,146 votes as against UPFA's 10,243. Both in Nuwara Eliya as well as in Kandy, the polling made clear that Tamil voters, particularly those in the plantation sector, did not endorse the Government's 'war on terror' campaign despite two of its leaders, Thondaman and P. Chandrasekeran sitting in the Rajapaksa cabinet. Only three CWC candidates got elected. In contrast, eight Muslim candidates were elected on the UNP ticket in the two councils.
Both the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and its breakaway faction, the National Freedom Front (NFF) were casualties. As a constituent partner of the UPFA, the JVP held 17 seats in the two provincial councils after the 2004 elections. This time, the JVP won one solitary seat in the Kurunegala district. The NFF led by Wimal Weerawansa fielded ten candidates on the UPFA ticket. Only one candidate in the Nuwara Eliya district was returned. He had to plead with the UPFA leadership and obtain one of the two bonus seats for his party.
In October 2006, President Rajapaksa signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. But hardly three months later, Rajapaksa cleverly manoeuvred a rift in the UNP and welcomed 17 defectors to the Government fold. Barring Karu Jayasuriya, who has returned to the UNP and become deputy leader, all others remain. For a one time major political party, the UNP has been suffering a string of defeats since 1994.
After the two recent provincial polls where it suffered ignominious defeats, the subject was the matter of discussion at a meeting of the Working Committee, the party's highest policy-making body on Tuesday. It naturally turned around to the main cause for the defeat - the repeated military successes by the Government which has brought the Tiger guerrillas to their knees. This is by re-capturing the vast swathe of territory the rebels once dominated. They are now confined to a smaller area in the Mullaitivu District and the military hopes to evict them within weeks.
Some members of the UNP, particularly Rukman Senanayake and Lakshman Seneviratne publicly backed the Government's military campaign. Party Leader Wickremesinghe was often caught flat-footed making the wrong comment at the wrong time about military successes. In regular news conferences, however, UNP spokesman Lakshman Kiriella, more often than not, poked fun. In one instance, he declared that any fool could wage war. If that showed that the UNP had no clear policy on any issue, there was also a paradox. Here, was a section of the UNP that wholeheartedly supported the ruling part in the main plank of their campaign - the conduct of the 'war on terror', and another section ridiculing it.
The contradictions in the statements by various UNP leaders underscore a reality - that they have no studied approach or a policy on the main issue in the country - the northern insurgency. They keep changing from time to time. There were UNP leaders who waxed eloquent on mounting corruption in military procurements and on the subject of politicising the military. No one thought it fit at the PC polls campaign to say they supported the troops wholeheartedly but disagree with some aspects, like for example, the issues they had raised on political platforms only some months ago.
Wickremesinghe opened the Working Committee meeting with remarks that many party voters either did not go to vote or went to the polls and voted for the UPFA. This was a damning admission that even the party faithful did not vote for the party.
Assistant Leader Rukman Senanayake fired an early salvo. He referred to the Dedigama by-election in 1973 shortly after the death of his uncle and sitting MP, and former Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake. He said that that was the first time that the State's machinery was put into operation on the side of the incumbent government in the conduct of an election. He then related how he and then Youth League secretary Karunasena Kodituwakku (later Minister of Education) were wiping themselves after a bath early one morning at a village spout in the midst of the campaign. A jeep had pulled up, and there alighted Junius Richard Jayewardene - the party leader himself in a remote area of the electorate. Jayewardene spoke to the two of them, asking about the previous day's meeting, about attendance, about the campaign etc., and left. He said that they lived with the people, not in hotels, and worked alongside them, and that was the kind of inspirational leadership that saw the party win that by-election.
He took what looked like further 'side-shots' at the party's hierarchy when he referred to the merciless attacks he received at the hands of certain pro-UNP Sunday newspapers, in both Sinhala and English. "I wonder why they attacked me", he asked. Following up was advertising guru Irvin Weerackody. He said that this was the worst performance by the UNP in any national or local level poll since 1956. He said that in 1956, and even in 1970, though the party lost, its vote-based remained somewhat intact.
He said that the most important reason for the debacle was not the might of the Mahinda Rajapaksa state machinery, or the State media propaganda against the UNP, nor even for that matter, the military victories, but the one million mouths of the party faithful who keep saying every day that the party has no future, that they cant win an election, that they themselves have no future in the party. He referred to some foolish remarks made by some of the party leaders who have contributed to this sorry mess, and related what is undoubtedly a sad story, as far as the party is concerned.
On February 14, the polls day, he had cast his vote and was walking past an Army camp at Kundasale. A few soldiers who identified him had greeted him and a conversation ensued. Soon more soldiers from the camp were attracted to the conversation on politics. A soldier was holding sway about UNP's attitude towards the war.
That soldier had told Weerackody of some remarks made by UNP Kotte parliamentarian Ravi Karunanayake. The UNP frontliner had remarked after troops had re-captured Elephant Pass (Alimankada in Sinhala) that it was as good as "troops re-capturing Pamankade (in the southern suburb of Colombo). The rhetoric rhymed well in Sinhala, but it was not the wisest of things to say in public. The soldier had said that his was a UNP family. His father had got a job from UNP Minister Chandra Bandara in Anuradhapura. But when a leading UNP MP runs down the Army (hamudawa haallu karanakota), how can they continue to support such a party, he had asked. When Weerackody related this episode at the meeting, Karunanayake listened intently, but remained silent.
The fact that the UNP is now on the wrong-side of the national issue is a matter the party will need to do some serious soul-searching if it is to come out of the hole it has dug for itself.
What is most unfortunate is, when one looked at the Independence Day parade earlier this month, and men of the elite Special Forces, the Army's Commando Regiment, the Police Special task Force, various other regiments that have been in the forefront of the war against the LTTE. Who formed these regiments ? They were formed by successive UNP governments. They are the men who led the infantry and fought behind enemy lines,
Take the case of Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Karuna. He has admitted himself that it was during the peace talks in which he participated (during Ranil Wickremesinghe's tenure as Prime Minister) that he realised that fighting for a separate state was futile. His breakaway from the LTTE was arguably the single largest military setback for the LTTE at the time, splitting the guerrilla movement in two and weakening its fighting capabilities immeasurably. Again, the UNP was unable to claim the credit for this. On the other hand, the incumbent government has been quick to take advantage of Karuna's defection, both militarily, and politically.
Most of the Working Committee members from the two provinces were silent. All of them had lost their own seats in last week's election. One of those who spoke up was Dayasiri Jayasekera MP from the Kurunegala District. He said the party had no clear-cut policies, and asked, for instance, what was the party's policy on the Executive Presidency.
Rukman Senanayake said that any suggestion to the effect that the UNP was trying to clip the wings of the Executive President
would also be misunderstood at this stage which could only lead to accusations from the incumbent President and the government saying that now the UNP was trying to weaken the President who as Commander-in-Chief is winning the war against the LTTE. "Onna yuddaya dinna - janadipathi-ge balathala kappadu karanna hadanawa".
The fact that the party did not have definitive positions on the 'war', on the post-'war' national question, on the Executive Presidency, would surely be a worrying factor for the party rank-and-file. Its leaders have been besotted in recent years in Opposition by fighting for power and place within the party, and to hell with measured policies that would not only convince and convert but attract an army of new voters which the government is remarkably able to win with its macho image.
Wickremesinghe was to ask what was it he had said to demoralise the Armed Forces. He told them that he said the minimum as possible about the conduct of the war. He pointed out that the postal votes (government servants) were submitted six to seven days after the Army re-captured Mullaitivu, and that President Rajapaksa had used the elections to these two provinces as a National campaign. He was of the view that whatever are the party's policies, unless the electoral organisers are able to muster the grass-roots support of the party, little gain could be expected.
He said often candidates go after the manapey (preferential vote) and that the party had passed a resolution at the last Convention to oppose terrorism but question the conduct of the war, especially the bribery and corruption aspect of it. He was to say that these issues were never maximised during the campaigns.
At the conclusion of the meeting, the party decided on its ever so familiar remedy - to appoint two committees to go into matters raised. The party has been inundated with committees that no one there knows how many committees are in existence. The N.G.P. Panditharatne report by a one-time Chairman of the party on why the UNP suffered some of its earliest defeats under the new dispensation has gone into the limbo of forgotten things.
The party has an uphill task in the few months it seems to have before parliamentary elections are to be held. Soon after last week's defeat, Kiriella, who spearheaded the Central Province campaign was quick to offer the UNP's support to the government should it require a two-third majority to amend or introduce a new Constitution. Again, there was no inner party discussion on this matter, and Kiriella got a rebuff in double quick time by the government. To add insult to injury, the rebuff came from one of the 17 UNP MPs who defected to the government in 2007.
With Western Province elections due next, the Rajapaksa administration is adamant to rub further the UNP - and the JVP noses into the ground. Its aim is clear. De-moralise them and exhaust them of their human and financial resources before the parliamentary elections. After the elections, win over some with offers of ministerial office and form a strong government.
The UPFA government is so cock-a-hoop these days that it is already talking of not just two-thirds majorities, but five-sixth majorities a la J.R. Jayewardene's tenure from 1977-89. It seems that Rajapaksa is preparing to use a remark from Jayewardene himself (quoting Napoleon, one of his favourite historical figures) "roll up the electoral map".
|
E-mail