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Suddenly it seems the SLFP’s Rajapaksa rebels have awoken to their own crass stupidity and realised to their dismay that they have been scoring scores of own goals, much to the jollity and cheer of their arch foe the UNP.

No international conspiracy can be held responsible for their internecine war. The tragedy that has befallen this once great national party is of its own making. It cannot be laid at another’s door. It’s SLFP’s own wages of sin.

Now a lone voice from the rebel camp has at long last emerged over the cacophonic din of the ‘Bring back Mahinda’ chorus; and, though he himself is not entirely without blame for his own misplaced contribution to plunging the party’s fortunes to this ignominious nadir, he has had the frankness to shout out aloud that the die is cast for the SLFP if things are permitted to carry on in this same outlandish manner.

On Monday senior SLFP member, former cabinet minister MP John Seneviratne stated that the SLFP was facing a severe crisis due to the prevailing disunity in the ranks. “Unless we take urgent action to remedy the situation, the situation is sure to take a turn for the worse. If the party leaders and members continue to pull in different directions, the future of the party will be in jeopardy,” he declared.

How true, even though belated. And who’s to blame? And what’s the root of the evil that has wrapped its tentacles around the SLFP and rendered it moribund when the party had all the potential to outsoar the political pines?

Ever since the Presidential election in Januaray when Maithripala Sirisena emerged victorious, the SLFP had the enviable opportunity to make up lost ground — an opportunity that was denied to the UNP when it lost the presidential election in 1994. As a result, bereft of government patronage, it was sentenced to 20 years in the wilderness.

Not so for the SLFP. Though its own candidate and party leader Rajapaksa had lost the people’s trust and confidence, the party secretary Sirisena had convincingly won it and had assumed the reins of presidential power. It was nothing more than a change of the guard, the same uniform, the same colour and the same fruit and flower of the party’s original ideological tree.

But what did the parliamentary SLFP members do? Though good fortune continued to smile upon the party with the general secretary’s victory, they spurned it. It was pearls before swine. Even after its then leader and president of the party, Mahinda Rajapaksa had, one week after his election defeat, grudgingly passed the symbolic staff of the party’s leadership to the new president of the nation, did the SLFP parliamentary flock rally behind the new shepherd? Nay, they turned their back on their new party leader, the man whom the people had voted to be the country’s new President.

Throwing the gains consolidated by successive electoral successes to the winds, they became the senseless spendthrifts of the party’s good fortune and instead, with reckless disregard to their party’s welfare, squandered it by hitching their Monteros to the Rajapaksa star that had lost its twinkle.

FEUD AT THE TABLE: Maithripala Sirisena and Mahinda Rajapaksa in the 'face to face' meeting held at the President's Office in the Parliament Complex earlier this month

The SLFP groupies, the UPFA hangouts namely Wimal, Dinesh and Vasu, turned orphans overnight, could do naught but howl all night for a miracle resurrection of their fallen saviour. With a voter base that could be counted on the fingers of one hand, these parasitical hangers-on had depended on the Rajapaksa-led SLFP for sheer survival and it was only the SLFP canopy in the UPFA umbrella that covered their nakedness, warts and all. Considering the wretched state to which they have fallen, one can understand and even forgive their desperate lamentations on paid platforms wailing ‘bring back our dearly beloved Mahinda’. They have lost their leader and it is their privilege to mourn his demise.

What this gang of three does is nobody’s business but their own. Insignificant leaders of still more insignificant parties, their antics do not touch the nation; nor have any effect on the country’s body politic. The SLFP’s position is, however, entirely different. Ever since its founding father SWRD Bandaranaike broke away from the UNP and formed his own party, he established the two party system of Government, indispensable to the proper functioning of democracy. Without the SLFP’s existence in any credible form, Lanka will be in danger of becoming a one party state, even as she was when the UNP appeared to be comatose a few years ago. Hence the health of the SLFP is a matter of vital concern for the entire country irrespective of partisan politics. Without either party, there will be a constitutional dictatorship. Thus the SLFP membership has a special duty towards the people to protect the party they serve in the greater interest of democracy in Lanka.

That is why no forgiveness can be extended when SLFP members climb aboard the same Wimal, Dinesh, Vasu platforms and give public expressions to their private fears and grief spawned no doubt by their own individual needs to defer the approach of nemesis to their door. It is a nauseating and humiliating public spectacle of politicians, who had vowed to serve the people, brazenly and shamelessly putting themselves before both party and country.

Unlike Wimal, Dinesh and Vasu, these SLFP politicians have a new leader anointed by the party. But instead of accepting his leadership and following the party line as party protocol and party discipline dictate, they have opted to be billed with other performing fleas at travelling circuses and even staged high jinks in the Well of Parliament itself with midnight feasts in the name of hunger fasts.

In blatant defiance of party commands that would have tested the patience of a sage or Maithripala’s maithree to the utmost limits, they have demonstrated on countless occasions they owe their allegiance to their old godfather who protected them from all storms. Adding the necessary spark to promote this division in the party is the former president himself through his well rehearsed comments given impromptu to the waiting media after making his prison tours and hospital rounds paying calls on remanded Rajapaksa political cronies like a defeated general visiting his wounded troops to boost flagging morale.

This is apart from the prepared speeches read out by some loyalist mouthspeak at the Gang of Three meetings, where he regrets his inability to attend the meetings, but appreciates the people’s demand for him to return to the centre stage of politics. At the last meeting held in Kurunegala which was attended by 49 rebel MPs flouting party orders, he even threatened to make a grand appearance when the people decide upon an auspicious date. In his customary address to the assembled crowds, he declared, that the UNP-led government could not stop the on-going campaign to safeguard the rights of 5.8 million people who voted for him at the presidential election vis-a-vis baseless allegations and repressive measures. “I will be back on the UPFA stage soon, but it is the people who will decide when I should do so,” he said.

To create some sort of justification to return to power by hook or by crook after the people had packed him off home on January 8, he and his coterie have conjured up this mirage that the 5.7m votes he managed to garner five months ago which wasn’t sufficient to win him the presidency, somehow still exist in toto; and will continue to exist as a never diminishing vote bundle in perpetuity.

Furthermore, on the basis of this Rajapaksa asserts that he thus has a duty to represent their interest. In his and in his supporters’ eyes and in their conduct it seems to be the case that there are two presidents in Lanka, namely, President Rajapaksa representing 5,768,090Lankans and President Sirisena representing 6,217,162 Lankans.

If this lopsided view that has been conveniently adopted to mislead the public with claims to legitimacy, is taken to its logical conclusion, wonder what Field Marshal, or using the same Rajapaksa yardstick, should we say the former Lankan President from 2010 to 2015, Sarath Fonseka has to say about the duties imposed upon him by defeat to still represent the 4,173,185 people who voted for him compared to the 6,015, 934 Mahinda Rajapaksa got in 2010 election? Nothing much, probably. After he lost the election to Rajapaksa, albeit with a large vote base, he was forced to spend the greater part of his tenure as the ‘other’ president of Lanka languishing in jail; and, except for the wretched prison conditions he had to endure, made more painful by his war wounds, he would not have had much to write home about.

Hardly conducive to fostering party unity, is it, when the defeated candidate conveniently ignores the time honoured principle that once a person is elected president, he represents all Lankans and not only those who voted for him; and instead claims that he, though the loser, is still entitled to hold himself out as the elected leader of the smaller number of people who voted for him, and thus demands the right to even use Temple Trees as his prime ministerial residence.

Wherever that idea came from, it is certainly not in the constitution or in any other known manual on the workings of democracy. The nearest thing perhaps is the leader of the opposition. There is no other special role carved out for the defeated as a sort of a consolation prize for coming second. It is a winner takes all situation.

It is clear that this state of affairs can no longer be tolerated. The nation cannot be held to ransom and its progress stifled through a Rajapaksa dominated intransigent SLFP parliament attempting to sabotage the proper workings of government to further the ambitions of a man obsessed with returning to power. It is welcome that the President has announced plans to hold elections with a new parliament in September. But elections alone will not be the panacea.

The challenge for President Sirisena will be to clear the nomination slate clean and introduce new faces untainted with the corruption ridden Rajapaksa regime. The old Rajapaksa guard must go. Those who fear the crackdown on corruption, those who dread that the new shepherd will identify, as he has sworn he would do, the wolf in sheep fleece in the SLFP herd and root them out have no place in the emerging new order. Maithripala Sirisena was elected President mainly for this reason. It was his clarion call to dawn real change, His solemn oath of office to end the corruption and to bring the guilty before the bar of justice.

Today to resolve national issues which have plagued the nation for far too long, the Tamil parties, the Muslim parties, the JVP, the JHU and the mammoth UNP are with Maithripala Sirisena.

At such an auspicious hour when the nation stands united as never before, determined to will a new sun to rise and see the dawn of a prosperous Lanka upon all her peoples, it will be a tragedy if a few rotten rebels in the split SLFP are allowed to crush hope’s bloom and blossom.