Countdown

Can the battle be between gentlemen?

By: H. Chanda Dhamma

So, the countdown has really begun and there are fifty-one days more for the general election that will elect the eleventh Parliament of Sri Lanka.

We all knew that the election would be held by November but even then its timing took most by surprise. The tenth of October was a little too early for many and gave the Government the advantage of catching the opposition off guard. And that decision was a blend of both astrology and politics, we are told for soothsayers also matter in these affairs of state.

And the man behind many of these calculations was none other than the cherubic Minister of Sports S. B. Dissanayake for whom the week that just ended was a terrific one indeed.

The emerging 'star' from Hanguranketha was appointed General Secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party to fill the vacancy created by the death of former Tourism Minister Dharmasiri Senanayake in a closely fought and disputed election by a majority of four votes.

Then, in the nick of time before Parliament was dissolved his Samurdhi Ministry was voted many millions in funds without so much as a whimper, ostensibly to bolster the poverty alleviation programme of the government. Certainly these are no mean achievements for a man who only the other day was warned and discharged by the Supreme Court for contempt!

But then, S. B. Dissanayake is an honourable man who clearly wears his heart on his sleeve. Speaking to the media after his election as general secretary he made it clear that he was very unhappy about Mahaveli Minister Maithripala Sirisena's decision to contest him. He also derided the present administrators of the SLFP saying the party was inefficient and was threatened with disintegration. He would usher in an efficient SLFP, S. B. Dissanayake said.

Of course, SLFP insiders claim Maithripala Sirisena was assured there would be no contest for the general secretary post and that therefore there was no need to canvass 'votes' from central committee members. Ten members of the committee allegedly stayed away from the crucial meeting because they did not expect a contest but when it was meeting time lo and behold, S. B. Dissanayake decides to contest and wins!

Some party members stared in disbelief but others merely said that the Cricket Board election tactics were being re-played once again. Others saw the lighter side of it all and observed that if this was the trend, it augured well for the SLFP- at least it would be assured of victory at the general elections!

Now, why we cannot dismiss these events lightly is because S. B. Dissanayake is one man who has said that the presently abandoned constitutional reforms can be passed without a two-thirds majority in Parliament if the people vote for the PA again.

This theory goes against the grain of all logic and Minister Mahinda Rajapakse bluntly said he couldn't fathom how it could be done. But then, it has been endorsed by no less than the President herself who says that any mandate at the polls- or 'janawarama' as she likes to call it- empowers her to tinker with the constitution as she sees fit!

The theory is that the general election will be a mandate for all the clauses of the draft constitutional reform bill- and those clauses that will be subsequently introduced at the third reading- and that if necessary, a constitutional council will be called upon to ratify it at most.

The natural consequence of this extra-legal argument is that even a referendum will then not be necessary. If, after all, the mandate at the forthcoming parliamentary elections for the PA is interpreted as a mandate for the new constitution why bother testing this mandate at a referendum?

Of course, one could counter argue that the President is trying to honour only the mandates which are in her favour. What happened to the mandate which was given to her to abolish the executive presidency? And, by the same token, what would the Government say if the United National Party suggests that a victory for the UNP at the elections will be interpreted as a mandate to abolish the Presidency and then they proceed to do just that, throwing the President out of office?

So, behind all these fervent pledges, the thinking in the higher echelons of the ruling party is clear as clear can be. "Transparency", the catchword of the PA has given way to political nakedness. The SLFP has appointed S. B. Dissanayake, the mastermind of the Wayamba and Presidential election victories of the PA, as their general secretary. Monies have been generously allocated for the troops of Commander (or should we say General?) SB.

The PA will undoubtedly try a 'repeat' of the Wayamba and presidential elections, come the tenth of October. Of course, election monitors will make their adverse statements if necessary but the ground reality is what matters. And, even if legal action is taken by the opposition, the laws' delays will ensure a favourable outcome for the PA with its lawyers always ready to find some preliminary objection or other. If there are any doubts about that one only has to consider the fate of the Wayamba election petition.

And, even if that is not enough to ensure a PA victory, it is also now 'transparently' clear that the PA is gearing up for a mud-slinging campaign against UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe over the alleged atrocities committed at the Batalanda housing scheme. This propaganda campaign spearheaded by the state run print and electronic media attempts to also remind the public of the UNP's reign of terror in the late eighties. Of course, one has to excuse the PA for using this strategy, for it only shows that the PA has nothing to show on the credit side of their own track record.

Some of the advertisements run by state television to remind the masses of those dark days wouldn't have passed muster at the Public Performances Board (PPB) for they feature naked young girls hanging from their feet- and this from a Government which once instructed the media not to carry stories on suicide for the fear of increasing the suicide rate in the country!

But of course, there will be more and more of that in the coming weeks with Batalanda taking centre-stage. Even if someone's name has been mentioned in the affidavit of Superintendent of Police Douglas Peiris, he makes headlines on the first page as a suspect for torture and murder- such is the level of sensationalism that is being resorted to.

What is the honourable Leader of the Opposition's response to all this, we may well ask? His strategy appears to be to maintain a deafening silence- except to make a statement in Parliament that received hardly any publicity- and as the countdown begins in earnest this week the PA propagandists will undoubtedly get to work on him as well.

But what it has also done for the UNP organisers at electoral level is to make them wary of their leader. They suspect that anything incriminating the leader might hurt their own prospects, so many of them want to go it alone targeting the PA's inaptitude and inefficiency as the key to the electoral victories they hope to achieve.

The stage then is set for an absorbing battle in the weeks ahead. On the one hand, the PA with the state machinery at its command, with ' General SB' in charge of 'operation election' but with a plethora of broken promises, a war still un-won, the rising cost of living and an abandoned constitution behind them.

On the other hand, the combined opposition spearheaded by the UNP which has been lethargic until recently but came back strongly to sabotage the PA's reform package only weeks ago but threatened with propaganda from the state media about which it can do little.

Gone are the days when politics was decent and the battle was between gentlemen. Now, it is a new political culture, where vote rigging is the rule rather than the exception and the bombs and guns also have their say.

Nevertheless, it might be pertinent for both the PA and the UNP to note that even in 1994 at the height of an anti-UNP tidal wave, the UNP won 94 seats and the PA, 105 seats- a mere eleven seat difference that was later magnified when the Muslim Congress with seven seats decided to support the PA.

So, common sense dictates that Sri Lanka might be heading for its first ever hung Parliament. But then, who said that the average Sri Lankan voter votes with common sense? And it is the fact that they vote with their hearts rather than their heads, as it happened in December 1999, that makes the outcome of the polls so difficult to predict -and allows the soothsayers to have the final word!

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