Rajpal's Column

23rd April 2000

Leadership lessons: if there is a vacuum, fill it!

By Rajpal Abeynayake

A "headless defense" said our sister paper, the Daily Mirror in its lead story. However, the appointment of Ratnasiri Wickremanayake as the temporary Cabinet chairperson, to some extent gave the indication that utter and absolute headlessness was not in vogue.

This was a step forward and will be interpreted in several ways by commentators. Is Mr. Wickremanayake the contingency plan of this administration, or not?

It's not academic, this question. One Dingiri Banda Wijetunge will vouch for that. If Mr. Wickremanayake is the contingency option, the question "will the centre hold'' has to inevitably follow.

If the centre held with Mr. Wijetunge doing the honours then most anybody can do it. But the question here is not who is going to be the stop-gap choice. The real question is which direction the PA will take and who will be the country's next real leader? (Considering that Wijetunge's and Wickremanayake's are all good men, but with W's in their names, essentially men of various transitions.)

Several tantalizing possibilities exist, and when one considers that fact is stranger than fiction, its mind boggling as to who might take over the affairs of state after the dust settles on any transitional leadership. The People's Alliance, led by a party with tried and tested family inclinations, might invite Anura Bandaranaike to step into the void. Yes, it's farfetched. It's as unlikely as Sirimavo Bandaranaike being expected to lead the nation after S.W.R.D, had the leadership question been pondered in, say, 1957.

For the PA, Anura Bandarnaike will be the choice that will allow for the least internal hemorrhage, which is an important consideration. For instance, Mahinda Rajapakse is the anointed leader among a certain phalanx of the Buddhist leadership. But, all that this petty putsch has created is a certain resentment for Mr. Rajapakse and his perceived leadership bid. Mr. Rajapakse is being compared in some quarters to the Sapumal Kumaraya, whose rising star was abruptly and memorably shot down mid-flight. Mr. Rajapakse may be anathema to various powerful power blocks within the ruling party — groups with names of various fruits and nuts, for example. But, a Bandaranaike will generally be acceptable to the whole orchard. The less high-profile the Bandaranaike-in-waiting is, the better, as the cases of Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga have shown in the recorded past. That way, Anura Bandaranaike is eminently qualifying himself at the moment. .

But, if the SLFP takes a more UNP trajectory in the leadership stakes, the question should be asked as to who is the latent J R Jayewardene in the ruling cabal. Answer — patently, there isn't anyone. But, this is when any futurist would think that Mr. Rajapakse will not be a bad candidate, come to think of it.

No insult meant to Mr. Jayewardene, but Mr. Rajapakse is young, has a constituency, and is at least the twentieth carbon copy of Mr. Jayewardene in terms of statesmanship, whereas a lot of others in the ruling dispensation are as old as J.R. was — with all similarities definitely ending there. However, Mr. Rajapakse's bid for national stature, or the bid by others on his behalf, has so far lacked heavily in the inspiration department.

Men with ambitions — and monumentally large ones at that — such as R. Premadasa and Lalith Athulathmudali, counted on real projects on which to build their images. There is no route to people's hearts except through their stomachs, any Premadasa or Dudley Senanayake would have told you that. Yet, Mr. Rajapakse's backers insist on building their man's image on bubbles. True, public relations men and spin doctors make Presidents — but that's in the United States. Here, they make Sapumal Kumarayas.

Then, there are the dark horses. At the moment, they are so dark and this is the darkest night in which none can be visually discerned.

But dark horses are supposed to be dark horses. Maybe Karu Jayasuriya is a dark horse, but then he has been running for quite sometime now. In the era of putative national governments and all party conclaves, a man from the UNP is as great a possibility as a man from the SLFP is, to succeed to real national leadership. But, as Disraeli and the Buddha are both supposed to have said, what's expected rarely happens. Prabhakaran? Wickremesinghe? Who says these chaps are always elected?

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