| Political Column | ||||||
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| Polemics
of poll dates But it was good enough a message to prompt the ruling Freedom Party (SLFP) to come out with a strong statement on Friday criticising the Commissioner an daccusing him of taking the UNP's position on the matter very well argued -- and articulated, at the culmination of the UNP's successful JBM (Jana Bala Meheyuma or Peoples' Power Rally) last month by its leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. At the root of the SLFP's ire is the fact that President Kumaratunga was banking on yet another year at the helm of this country. Never mind the fact that she does not even have a working majority in Parliament, her position is that she will move out of the heavily fortified President's House only in 2006, having completed her legitimate two six-year terms as President. In a sense, the SLFP has a point. They want to know why the Commissioner gave that interview, when his duty was only to fix a date for the election. That was also the point mooted by Wickremesinghe, that the Commissioner has only to fix the date for election. And
yet, we for one, think that the Commissioner had a duty to make
a public statement. Here was an unusual situation where the Government
of the day was saying elections will be held in 2006 and the Opposition
was saying it should be in 2005. People were in a state of genuine
confusion. However, there must have been an early signal conveyed to the President's House. Almost coinciding (but a few days before the interview actually hit the streets), a mad rush took place within the SLFP camp triggering an urgent need to have a Presidential candidate appointed. And so, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse became the obvious choice, while Anura Bandaranaike by virtue of his proprietary rights of the party, became his 'Running Mate'.And a quick decision to release Vimukthi Kumaratunga, a young Vijaya lookalike, into the public domain, though in fairness it would appear that his maiden appearance was the work of the Animal Welfare Trust and the Tsunami Welfare Association workers who dragged the son to their campaign for a 'no kill policy for animals' to get political mileage from the mother's Government. Not all in the SLFP camp seemed too unhappy about a Presidential elections in 2005. Clearly, Friday's statement issued by the party secretary echoed the sentiments of President's House -- not Temple Trees, where the contender resides. Premier Rajapakse's camp believes that 2006 will only make matters worse for an increasingly un-popular Government. Just this week, even the price of local arrack was jacked up, and you can’t blame the world market for this. The Prime Minister told foreign diplomats this week that Presidential elections will be held in 2005. He was more categorical than the Elections Commissioner was. This statement by the SLFP's Presidential candidate had reached the ears of the incumbent in the fortified Colombo Fort, and she was not amused. She was to remark that the Prime Minister had promised to stick to the undertaking that elections should be in 2006, but he is now behaving differently. Mahinda Rajapakse is no longer bothered about those niceties. He needs to galvanise all forces. Given the late start off the starters block, the keen athlete has many hurdles to clear. One is to win the support of the minorities. So he started with the plantation workers’ not undisputed leader Arumugam Thondaman of the CWC. Journeying to Kotagala, Rajapakse wooed Thondaman. But the courtship turned sour even before Rajapakse returned to Colombo. Having broken bread with Thodaman, he made the fatal mistake of making a call on S. Sathasivam, leader of the Sri Lanka United Democratic Front, a one-time CWC follower of the Thondamans, but now heading a breakaway fringe group solidly with the SLFP. Sathasivam is recuperating from a road accident.Thondaman now was unhappy with Rajapakse for his double-game. Rajapakse was to make amends by saying he was only on a humanitarian mission, but Thondaman was not amused either. He came down to Colombo and met Kumaratunga on Tuesday, and then Wickremesinghe later that day. Talk of double-games. Kumaratunga's rearguard action to postpone the Presidential polls for 2006 comes in her long-expected move to consult the Chief Justice for a constitutional opinion on the matter. Unfortuately, Chief Justice Sarath Silva is himself in the eye of the storm, because he has himself being quoted in the local press as saying that it was he who administered a second oath to her some eleven months after she took her first oath in the immediate aftermath of her election to a second term in December 1999. Principles of Natural Justice usually deprive one of being a judge in one's own cause. The Government's arguments, however, have now veered from this second oath-taking ceremony, to one of strict interpretation of the Constitution, especially the Third Amendment which deals with these matters relating to the dates on which a second-term President assumes office. The Supreme Court ruling will be a non-binding purely advisory opinion. But the fact that the Buddhist monks of the JHU, which won a decisive victory from the Chief Justice in the P-TOMS case have gone before the same Chief Justice asking for a determination makes the matter more significant than the President asking for an opinion. On the face of its petition, the JHU is asking for a Presidential poll in 2005. The UNP did not want to take the matter before the Supreme Court fearing an adverse determination. Neither has the Elections Commissioner asked the Attorney General for an opinion. The Chief Justice sits on the JHU matter as well, having already given a patient hearing to it and proceeded to grant leave to hold a full inquiry into its petition. The question then is what if the Chief Justice and the Supreme Court hold against the JHU? This verdict would then be binding on the Commissioner, and would prevent any other citizen from probably exercising his fundamental rights vis-a-vis the Supreme Court. In the meantime, Rajapakse proceeds on the basis that elections will be this year. He has engaged the services of his one-time political bete-noire Mangala Samaraweera for the common cause. 'My enemy’s enemy is my friend '. Rajapakse has told Samaraweera that the cooperation of battered and somewhat bruised but yet formidable JVP, was "essential". Samaraweera got down to contacting JVP heavyweights Nandana Gunathillake, Wimal Weerawansa and Anura Dissanayake on the telephone, asking for a date to discuss a new Alliance. Yet another one Sandanaya, a P-COMS (Post-Chandrika Operations Management Structure), one might call it.The JVP trio put the matter before the party's politburo, and as customary, a lenghty debate ensued on Wednesday. Pros and cons were flying across the floor of the house, with many speakers saying that such a new alliance would only seem in the public eye as a mere anti-UNP posture. The majority were of the view that the time was ripe for the JVP to field its own candidate. There is this theory that the JVP should field a candidate, spoil any one candidate getting a 50 per cent plus one vote majority, and then bargaining with a candidate like Rajapakse for the second preference vote of the JVP candidate to go to him, so that he can defeat Wickremesinghe in the second count. Party patriarch Somawansa Amarasinghe, now at the receiving end of a vituperative onslaught by the state media under Kumaratunga, was still coy about fielding their own candidate - who might have to be him! He reminded the younger members of the politburo, that the decision should be left to the party's Central Committee. The JVP's decision was put on hold for a fortnight, but the Gunathillake-Weerawansa-Dissanayake trinity was told to proceed with the Rajaakse-Samaraweera negotiations in the meantime. During these discussions, the JVP will be asking the Presidential nominee of the SLFP what his position is on a number of issues, on which his position is yet un-known. His answers will be crucial to the JVP's determination on what they do - the options being to field a candidate of their own, or back Rajapakse. The one common thread they would have with a Rajapakse tie-up is the twin objective of eliminating both Kumaratunga and Wickremesinghe from the political arena. Suddenly, Kumaratunga has realised that her days in office may run out before she expected it to. It seems a Supreme Court decision is now her only hope to get an extension in office -- which is normally given to public officers by her own cabinet. A once thought of constitutional amendment to bring her into Parliament as an Executive Prime Minister is now passe'. She is slowly, but surely accepting fate, and looking to the past for a place in the future. But even that has into a disastrous mess. Ports Minister Mangala Samaraweera's birthday present of a Rs. 20 million rupee book 'CBK' funded by public monies to glorify her has been dubbed another 'Andare kathawa', a Sri Lankan folk tale where a court-jester humours the King with superlative tales about the King. Needless to say, Andare' gets many favours from the King in return for all his efforts. President J.R. Jayewardene also gave his approval for an authorised biography during his time as President at the tail-end of his first term (1982), but his was a long political career of more than fifty years from the pre-Independence era, and he commissioned two seasoned historians of world-repute: Prof. K.M. de Silva Professor of History whom he knew for more than 35 years and ex-US Ambassador Howard Wriggins whom he knew for 25 years. The book took 15 years of research and writing. It was funded partly by the J.R. Jayewardene Foundation and partly by the publishers Anthony Blond/Quartet and Leo Cooper, London), not by the Sri Lankan tax-payers. No doubt, a lady shipping magnate and a man who owns many business empires, and still growing, made contributions for this publication to an unknown Scottish writer Graeme Wilson, but the book has turned out to be an utter embarrassment replete with howlers and bloomers that hardly had those recovered from the champagne launch of the book, the President's Office issued a statement saying that this was not the official biography of the President, which some reports now say has been commissioned to an Australian national Mark Hilsop. Obviously, 'CBK' is not to be content with the writings of our own Yakkos like Janadasa Peiris who published his own eulogy of the President in Sinhala. After even 50 years of Independence, we need a 'foreigner' to praise us, even if we are to pay him to do so. The UNP committed the same mistake when in office commissioning the likes of Earl Gray (no, he was no aristocrat Earl, just a card-carrying member of the Conservative Party , who was paid close to a Rs. 1 million a month through some World Bank grant to work for then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. He was Wickremesinghe's political consultant, speech-writer, campaign manager, peace secretariat consultant and head of the UNP media unit. He would spend three weeks in Colombo and one in London each month. Gray, together with two other foreign nationals Jim Robertson and Ashley were his assistants, managing the Rs. 800 million advertising budget and even tasked with drafting the UNP manifesto. So, now we know why the UNP lost. There were no biographies at the time, but even foreign advertising agencies like Bateys was commissioned to promote Sri Lanka tourism - ask any travel agency what work they did at the rate of US $ 2 million per year. Like in quickly having her memoirs out in book form, the President is in a hurry to wrap up some deals as well -- of course, all this is for the country. Later this month she goes to China on an official visit where a US $ 300 million soft-loan awaits her to be spent on a project of her own choice. And the project seems to be to wrap up a power deal at Noraichcholi where the local agent will be one of those who funded her book 'CBK', and generally funds all her political campaigns while ensuring the bread is buttered on both sides. Whatever has happened to the Bishops and Catholic padres in the area who were protesting over the environmental hazards involved has gone into a mysterious silence as the Brotherhood endures. In the meantime, manifestos are being drafted. The UNP's by UNPers (not this time by Earl Gray & Co., whom Milinda Moragoda is still keen on, but party Chairman Malick Samarawickrama is dead against), and the SLFP's also by UNPers. A one-time UNP provincial councillor - Ajit Nivard Cabral has confirmed that he is in the process of what he calls collecting "new ideas" - for Mahinda Rajapakse - for his Presidential manifesto. Cabral, a chartered accountant with political ambitions contested the Colombo West seat from the UNP but couldn't make it to Parliament. Now he seems to want to come on the National List and the Rajapakse camp says that he will be ear-marked as a potential future Finance Minister under a Rajapakse Presidency. Everyone knows that the incumbent Sarath Amunugama was not his hot favourite. And the feelings are mutual.Talk of new alliances. |
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