Rajpal's Column

Unravelling the absurd theatre of the ballot

The UNP, that anemic giant, cannot hide behind a fig leaf either. It's identification with the LTTE at the last election was complete. (Ranil Wickremesinghe just stopped short of announcing "Prabhakaran for President.") But, having said that, the UNP now seems to be getting molested by the LTTE with increasing ferocity and with increasing regularity. The LTTE leader has taken a vow to defeat the Kumaratunga led People's Alliance at the elections, and that particular strategy translates in reality as an LTTE - PA alliance by default.

The Medawachchiya and Muttur bombs though not as symbolically powerful as the attack on the President on the eve of the Presidential election in 99, will spike any of the UNP's chances at the October 10 polls. The new Premier, who is on a garrulous roll, has made sure that the LTTE attacks are identified firmly with the UNP. Timing and the way events have come together would normally from a rational view - point make the PA suspect of conniving with the LTTE to defeat the UNP at the polls. In this way, the Sri Lankan election has turned out to be enacted right out from the theatre of the absurd. The genre is absurdity in the tragic comic. The players are puny, and they are punier from far, by all accounts. ( The perception of the Sri Lankan election, abroad, or from any of the wire reports, is that the Sri Lankan nation is progressively coming unhinged. That may not be correct. Only Sri Lankans know the measure of resilience of the country and the sanguine-ness of the Sri Lankan psyche. But, even so, this election has certainly driven Sri Lanka closer in the perception of outsiders to being a land of consistent anarchy.)

But, for the political players in this drama, this theatre is becoming part of their lives. Which is why one has to wonder whether the UNP really may be having a connection with the LTTE at these polls.

The UNP played the reluctant bedfellow at the Presidential polls. It was a passive partner, that had been wooed, but was being coquettish, and was not telling the outside world the real state of the relationship.

But, the UNP leadership is not that moronic that it could not have learnt in hindsight. The oblique association of the UNP with the LTTE at the last election, probably cost the UNP candidate the Presidency at the poll.

Will the UNP do it again?

It's on the other hand, not just the UNP that wants to defeat the PA at the October 10 elections. Most progressive forces in the media, and many of the country's powerful lobby groups such as the business cartels or the religious lobbies have got all their forces arraigned against the ruling party.

Does it mean that all these forces are by default allying themselves with the LTTE, which seems to have the most rabid interest in seeing the PA out of power?

Obviously, it's only the UNP that has got into this tangle of being appended with the devil, and that's as a result of a past karma that was committed not too far back — last December or thereabouts to be precise.

The most unreal paradox that results from the situation is the fact that it is the PA that is now making use of the LTTE. To look at the equation of this skewed reality, look at the three possibilities.

One, the LTTE can be supposed to be using the UNP to drive the PA out of power. Or the UNP can be supposed to be using the LTTE to drive the PA out of power. But, the most uncanny possibility is that the PA can be the craftiest of the brood by using the LTTE to keep themselves in power, thereby killing any of the UNP's chances. And in this election, that seems to at least one close approximation to the truth, granting that the LTTE is of course determined to drive the UNP out of power even by the most obnoxious methods.

If the LTTE and the UNP are conniving, dunce caps for both players for not realising that they will be the best allies of the PA's quest in staying in power. But, also some dunce caps to be ordered for the PA, in being self defeatist, in using the LTTE card to win the elections.

This course of action is not going to endear the PA to a support group that has been most hit by the LTTE's mayhem. But, with all of that, the PA, if and when it clings to power at this election, would have to deal with it's biggest spook, Prabhakaran, to whom a great deal will be owed by the party in terms of securing a second chance at governance.

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