Sunday Times 2
SLFP at 65: The crisis of Lanka’s political party system
View(s):By Pradeep Peiris PhD
The Sri Lanka Freedom Party’s 65th anniversary hit news headlines this time mainly due to the party’s current internal power struggle. Since January 2015, the SLFP has been embroiled in a bitter internal power struggle between its current leader Maithripala Sirisena and his predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The SLFP founded by S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike (centre) evolved under the leadership of his widow Sirima Bandaranaike, daughter Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, Mahinda Rajapaksa and now President Sirisena
After losing the Presidential election and having handed over the SLFP leadership, Rajapaksa started a new battle to regain power. His first priority seems to be to capture power within the party, despite the hullaballoo about a new party under his leadership. To counter the Rajapaksa-threat, Sirisena has not only had to secure his leadership within the party but also work to prevent the party’s ground level leadership joining Rajapaksa in his endeavor to form a new party. So, undoubtedly, the SLFP is experiencing an unprecedented internal crisis at the time it celebrates its 65th anniversary.
Among political circles, there is a great deal of curiosity as to whether Rajapaksa will/can form a new political party that would deal a fatal blow to the SLFP and effectively end the six decades old two-party hegemony in the country’s electoral politics. I do not think Rajapaksa and his clique can form a new party that could decimate the SLFP and alter the current two-party system. For me, such a new party would end up being another ephemeral party – a party that will last until its leaders find a permanent party.
The current crisis in the SLFP is more to do with the peculiar nature in the functioning of the country’s political party system than a power struggle between two leaders. The post-independent electoral politics, during the past six decades, has produced a particular kind of party system in the country. Especially, the two main parties — the UNP and the SLFP — have become institutionally weak and ideologically ambiguous entities that are more or less hostages of their leaders. Therefore, internal crisis is almost unavoidable at times when a party — especially one of these two main parties — is experiencing a transition of its leadership. For me, the SLFP’s crisis alludes to the true nature of the functioning of political parties and electoral efficacy in Sri Lanka.
From parties of ideas to parties for material benefits
The SLFP was formed to provide a voice for the long neglected grievances of the rural Sinhala Buddhist community in the country. Of course, the political ambitions of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and the internecine struggle among the UNP leadership at that time could have also paved the way for the emergence of the SLFP. However, the SLFP under Bandaranaike who clearly appealed to the Sinhala Buddhist countryside could not identify itself either with the right wing ideas of the UNP or extreme Marxist ideas. Owing to its poly-ethnic and classist outlook, the UNP too did not show much interest in representing the interests of Sinhala Buddhist nationalists, which, at that time, was thought to be sectarian politics. On the other hand, the Marxist parties, the then main opposition to the UNP, also insisted on maintaining their secularism to focus on the economic and social problems of the day. Therefore, at the outset, the SLFP was a party of ideas and values and was formed with the intention of tapping into the Sinhala Buddhist rural electorate.
Owing to this history, the SLFP has been widely perceived as a party of the Sinhalese Buddhists and marginalised social and economic classes in rural Sri Lanka. However, the SLFP has never been exclusively a party of Buddhists or the poor. The two-party electoral competition that came to govern the electoral politics in the country since 1956 not only changed the dynamics of the electorates, but also subjected both the SLFP and its rival UNP to continuous transformation. Following the strategy of the UNP, every time when it was voted out of office, the SLFP also exhibited a great deal of willingness to relax its ideological commitments for the sake of widening its voter bases to regain power.
Also in their quest for power, both the UNP and the SLFP paid more attention to the distribution of patronage. Therefore, once elected, both these parties relied chiefly on the distribution of patronage to retain power. In this context, especially after 1994, the SLFP did not bother to maintain a consistent and distinct ideological position on many vital issues. These electoral practices of the two main parties, over the past six decades, have contributed towards weakening the effect of traditional cleavages such as caste, class and religion among factions of the Sinhalese society. Instead, such politics has contributed to the emergence of a new political cleavage based on the voters’ party-identity.
Leader is ‘the institution’
During the initial phase of the formation of Sri Lankan political parties, political elites were more prominent than party institutions. Therefore, Calvin Woodward referred to the then party system as ‘parties of notables’. Although both main parties made successful attempts at building formal party organisational structures, during the period from 1960s to 1970s, they still failed to end the dominance of families in electoral politics.
Particularly with the introduction of the Executive Presidency, parties increasingly became servants of their leaders and their coterie of close confidants, who control the policies and strategies of the party. As a result, the same party would, under different leadership, often subscribe to different ideological and policy programmes. For example, the SLFP stood for slightly different or sometimes contradictory ideological and policy programmes under the leadership of Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena.
The Proportional Representation system influenced the SLFP to broaden its electoral coalition. Thus, Kumaratunga, reached out to minority ethnic parties, in addition to its traditional Leftist partners, to form the People’s Alliance regime. Later, her successor, Mahinda Rajapaksa further increased the number of constituent partners in his regime by inviting the Sinhalese Nationalist parties too. He also incited crossovers from many smaller parties across a wide ideological spectrum to strengthen his position within Parliament. The alliances that the SLFP formed with various parties and individuals, during the past decades, were actually personal initiations of the incumbent leader of the party, dictated by electoral calculations. As noted previously, this situation intensified with the introduction of the Executive Presidency which was more about the individual leader than the party as a whole.
Therefore, the phenomenon of the party leader having an independent organisational structure parallel to the formal party structure has become increasingly visible. These informal and parallel party structures are extremely helpful for the leader to consolidate and expand his powers within the party. When the party is in power, it is easy for the leader to replace the party institution with his/her own personal network of cronies. Therefore, as a result, once out of power, both these main parties — the UNP and the SLFP — struggle with a series of internal crises, and threats of disintegration and defections.
Today, what the SLFP is experiencing is simply a bitter consequence of the peculiar nature of the country’s electoral politics which, one must remember, is not a fate that is exclusive to the SLFP.
(Dr Pradeep Peiris is a Director at Social Scientists Association, Colombo and teaches at the Dept of Political Science, Colombo, Sri Lanka. He can be contacted on pnpeiris@gmail.com)