Editorial

President Maithripala Sirisena’s ‘neutrality’ at the upcoming Presidential election has created a buzz of sorts in the country. What ought to have looked a noble, apolitical, and non-partisan act is enveloped in suspicion, intrigue and questions on motive.

Unfortunately for the incumbent President, his credibility as a leader is shaky, to say the least. His contradictions in both word and deed too numerous to mention, his political somersaults earning him many a sobriquet, the least offensive arguably being “Aiyo Sirisena”.

He began in January 2015 with a flourish. He had promised to end the Presidency by being a one-term President. One can say he kept to the latter part of that promise, but not the way he intended. Like many elected to the high post of Head of Government, high hopes led to high expectations. The rainbow coalition he led was meant to usher in a new era of bipartisan politics. It has ended in shambles, the President falling between two stools and spending his last few days in that exalted office planting trees for the future.

It was not just in hindsight, but even at the time President Sirisena took office, coming as he did as the ‘common candidate’ from the then Opposition, many felt and indeed requested the newly elected President to be ‘neutral’. They hoped he would reject the ‘thattu maaru’ system of partisan brinkmanship between the traditional foes, the UNP and the SLFP and usher in a brand new political culture. It was not to be.

Someone advised him, or he advised himself, that he must take over the chairmanship of the SLFP. He has only led the party to almost a point of no return, left himself stranded and his remaining MPs and supporters, in the lurch.

There distinctly was an anti-Rajapaksa element in the SLFP. Fuelled and fanned by the former President Chandrika Kumaratunga, the few embers of the SLFP still flicker. At Elpitiya last week, even though negligible, 12.7 per cent voted for the SLFP, not the Rajapaksa led SLPP.

But returning to the ‘neutrality’ of the President at the ongoing campaign for the Presidency, it was clear to political observers that His Excellency was trapped between a rock and a hard place. He was unsure whether to support the Rajapaksas, his bitter-sweet political colleagues of yesteryear, or was being pressured from ‘powers behind the throne’ to back a UNP candidate, but only if it was Sajith Premadasa.

His vacillation till the 11th hour was patently obvious. He said his political career is not yet over. It seems it is not yet the time to fulfil his pledge to a group of editors and publishers in 2015 that he would retire to his beloved Polonnaruwa and spend his time in blissful retirement by the bund of a tank. He has now got Cabinet approval for an official Colombo bungalow, which he is, of course, entitled to as a former President.

His neutrality, which should be otherwise welcomed as an act of principled politics, is tainted by his seeming ambition for a life after November 16, and by his hedging his bets on a place with whoever wins.

Cosmetic demands to please the Diaspora

If this week’s signing of a pact by Northern-based political parties, the discovery of old claymore mines in Jaffna and the raid on an LTTE den in Malaysia are read together, and they should be– the cry for ‘Eelam’ is not dead.

Typically, five parties in the North took advantage of the forthcoming presidential election to submit demands to the candidates. The dozen demands pedalled as ‘basic demands’, revolve around the concept of a Unitary State, security related matters, and issues incidental to the armed conflict that ended in 2009.

They have asked that all these demands be met by the victor within three months of assuming the presidency. It betrays if not their political naivety, the fact that they are puppets on a string, orchestrated by the Diaspora and dancing to their tune.

Whomsoever expects any of the frontline candidates scrambling for the Southern vote in the country, to yield to these demands, or implement them after victory is living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. It therefore appears that these are just cosmetic demands, merely to please the Diaspora, knowing only too well they are not realistic, or workable.

Even before the ink was dry at the signing ceremony in Jaffna, one of the major contenders for the presidency told a news conference in Colombo that, leave alone referring Sri Lanka to the International Court of Justice, or a specially created international war crimes tribunal, which is one of the demands, that his Government will pull out of the joint resolution Sri Lanka was signatory to at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva.

These ‘basic demands’ clearly want to internationalise what are strictly domestic issues of post-war reconciliation, and that’s where the sleight of hand of the Diaspora can be so patently seen. The Diaspora want a role in fingering affairs here, long distance. Their bleeding hearts do not extend to investing their time, energy or their money in the North.

The mindset of the Northern politicians is apparent from these ‘basic demands’. Hardly do these demands relate to the economic upliftment of the ordinary, war battered people of the North. There is no ‘basic demand’ for poverty alleviation, improvement of education or housing facilities, or to arrest the rising crime rate and issues that have wrecked the social fabric of the peninsula. There’s nothing in these ‘basic demands’ about the livelihoods of the people, in particular the fishermen whose incomes have been pick-pocketed by the weekly poaching of the marine resources of the area by invading armadas of Indian fishermen.

No wonder there is no longer a demand for greater devolution of power among the ‘basic demands’. The people of the North no longer agitate for greater devolution. It does not resonate any more. They have seen how the Provincial Council worked all these years, passing resolution after resolution aimed at Geneva, and not much more. Even in the bad old years of not so long ago, devolution was merely the demand of regional politicians, wanting power by spitting communal venom to garner votes.

Alas, the bargaining power of the Northern vote, which could be critical in a closely contested election in the country, has been frittered away by these five political parties making impossible demands. These ‘basic demands’ will be a mere scrap of paper, with no real seriousness attached to it to be even considered by any of the presidential contenders in the running.