Political Column

Political Column

Balance of power - SLFP-JVP and the Interim proposals
By Our Political Editor
While the rest of us sleep, the LTTE ponders over the proposals for an Interim Administration in the North and the East. That was what the news sources were able to tell us this week.

They were able to say that what has been offered by the government was strictly within the constitution, and that it is essentially a rehash of a provincial devolution mechanism. But, a "provincial'' devolution mechanism offers a good deal of power to the periphery, and therefore, there was a good deal of speculation that the LTTE will seriously consider these proposals.

One of the key sideline players in this whole developing scenario was the czar that represents the World Bank on our soil -- Mr Peter Harrolds. Mr Harrolds spoke as if he was sure that the Interim Administration proposals are a fait accompli. He said that there has been extremely efficient administration in the North and the East. He congratulated the Sri Lankan government, and had effusive praise for the LTTE, which was thanked for the 'cooperation extended for the development of the North and the East.''

It looked as if the Interim administration proposals were being pushed by the international players -- particularly after Thamilselvan was quoted as saying that the LTTE will rather talk to the international community and not to the Sri Lankan government about the Interim Administrative set up.

The Interim administration proposals have been intensely discussed by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and Professor G. L. Peiris, who took time off to discuss the issue when they were in Kandy last week to pay a courtesy call on the Mahanayake of the Malwatte Chapter. The discussions were at Malik Samarawickreme, the UNP Chairman's residence.

Politics is not the sole prerogative of personalities, but the two personalities who figure in the Interim administrative proposals and the push towards an Interim Administration were Professor G. L. Peiris and the Wold Bank's Peter Harrold.

Professor Peiris figured not just in the issue of the Interim Administrative proposals, but he also figured prominently in what is seen as a push for a better relationship with the Opposition. In what is seen as a revival of the committee system, he proposed the establishment of 14 parliamentary committees headed by the Opposition for the perusal of various key issues.

Both G.L. Peiris and Peter Harrold, however, have come in for flak from an Opposition that is simply not buying their logic. The PA blasted Peter Harrolds and said that "all the money that is being given to the country is going into World Bank consultants' pockets.''

Even so, that is the state of play. As much as people do not seem to be aware how the Interim Administration proposals will work out, they do not also seem to know how the opposition will turn out to be in the near future.

The true character of the Opposition with regard to the resolution of the North East conflict is yet not known. This is primarily because of the fact that the Opposition is still not clear whether it is going to be in the form of a JVP-SLFP opposition, or a plain old PA opposition as it is now.

The President was in a particularly irritated mood last week. She had good reason to be, if things were to be looked at on their merits. She asked a very close confidant to fire off a letter to the press saying that JVP-SLFP politics is another matter -- but her children should not be dragged into it. That was a sequel to newspapers (not this one) mentioning that her son was against the JVP-SLFP combine in the offing.

By the end of the week her irritation was at a peak. She instructed Janadasa Peiris, another close faithful, to fire off a letter to the press on a Lake House matter. So the power balance between the SLFP, the JVP and the UNF government was anything but stable and there wasn't even a faint sense of certainty about what was going to happen in the near future.

From all indications, there is a good deal of internal dialogue and uncertainty over the so called JVP and SLFP alliance, and the story is, this even spilled over to a birthday party that was hosted by a key PA man, Berty Premalal Dissanayake, the NCP Chief Minister. The birthday party, though a full house that catered to almost a thousand people and attended by Mangala Samaraweera and other PA big guns, in the end, turned out to be an event that was largely dominated with talk of the SLFP-JVP alliance.

It is even rumoured that the talk at one point bordered on the ugly, but what can be said definitely is that the entire bash became politicised. It was devoted to the political dimensions of the issue, whether there are people who are hell-bent on the alliance between the SLFP and the JVP and whether there are others who are equally hell-bent on ensuring that the alliance will not emerge.

Other reports say that the President is taking a more balanced and circumspect view of the entire matter. She said that she will deal with the JVP matter as her top political priority in the future, and that the others need not get too agitated about which shape this alliance will take in the future.

There were also other confirmed reports that the President is not blindly enthusiastic about the JVP-SLFP alliance. This is not only due to her views on the North East conflict, which in her mind, has always been one that can be solved by political means, by devolving a greater degree of power. It is also due to her view that the people might not take all that kindly to the SLFP if it is eaten-up, kind of subsumed, in a JVP-SLFP Alliance in which the JVP might pose off as the dominant partner.

Shades of fears of the probationary government, for instance, may also still linger in peoples' minds when they entertain such thoughts about a JVP dominated alliance.
Therefore the power balance between the JVP, the PA and the UNF, though upset due to continued irritants such as cohabitation issue, is also affected by other variables.

All this of course impacts on the Interim Administration proposals also and therefore, by extension, impacts on the entire country. The Interim Administration proposals may be heavily opposed if there is a real JVP-SLFP alliance that materialises -- but otherwise, there maybe a chance that the Interim Administration proposals might ride without a major opposition.

Under these conditions, there seems to be uncertainty but the plus side of it was that this uncertainty means that there are opportunities. The situation is fluid, and therefore it is possible that a happy outcome might result in the end if the political chips, as it were, somehow fall into place in the right manner….

The JVP is totally intolerant of the LTTE, and the SLFP led by Kumaratunga is also now almost totally intolerant of the LTTE. But the difference is that in the JVP this intolerance translates as not giving-up or not giving anything -- no political packages, no support for regional councils or substantial devolution whatsoever. This certainly is not Kumaratnga's stand because she rationalises that even if the LTTE were not tolerable, the Tamil people need some political redress. Whether she can ever reconcile her political position with the JVP on this matter is now coming into question, even though earlier it appeared that she would be ready for anything in the name of political expediency.

The JVP's position, as a counter to this is, that both entities, the JVP and the SLFP agree that the UNP is on a course to divide the country. The JVP position is that whatever their differences, the parties can come together on the issue of countering this politics of division practised by the UNP.

But though that rationalisation looks good on the face of it and even though it looks good on paper, the fact is that if the UNF was offering some measure of devolution, it will be hard for the SLFP, which also supported devolution to oppose such a move.
Also, more than that, it will be strategically very difficult to survive in an alliance, which on the crucial and key national issue has a fundamental difference in its members' ideas of how a solution to it can be worked out.

Though on the surface the JVP-SLFP differences seem to be political differences of a very superficial kind, in fact these differences are not so superficial. This is why the President seems to have taken the matter of the Alliance into her own hands.

Two out from the cold…
While Presidential disagreements with government and vice versa were becoming more like routine, such as disagreements in Cabinet, last week also saw the emergence of other personalities that might at least have some impact on these disagreements.

Ex-Minister Anudruddha Ratwatte was finally bailed out along with his two sons, and this was in time for the Minister's birthday which was an occasion for some sort of party reconciliation -- even though it was all in private. One more interesting personality was to emerge from the cold storage of politics, and this was actor Sanath Gunatilleke who visited the President, and referred to her as Madam very politely, causing some kind of mirth among some of the Presidential staff at least.

Apparently Mr Gunatilleke, a former right-hand man of the President, had discussions with her for over an hour, and this, taken together with the fact that Gunatillaka was close to UNP heavyweights such as S.B. Dissanayake at least, was the cause of some raised eyebrows. This was coupled with the fact that Minister S.B. Dissanayake was still expressing dissatisfaction even though his problem with the Treasury officials had been ironed out with the intervention of the Prime Minister last week.

There was speculation that Dissanayake's move against the Treasury officials was not just a move against the bureaucracy per se, but that it was also a push for some kind of other challenge against the government. Apparently Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was amused when he was told by some other top UNPers that this was all a move for S.B. Dissanayake to move to centre stage, and get some more political attention -- if not political power - for himself.

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