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What
will she do before saying ‘Au Revoir’? The reference was to Chirac’s intention to seek a third term of office in 2007, when he would be 75 years of age. President Kumaratunga must surely have been annoyed that at sixty, she is being asked to “retire” one year earlier than she had planned. The annoyance would have been compounded by her belief that this was exactly what her Prime Minister and party presidential candidate Mahinda Rajapakse wanted. That President Kumaratunga is in an aggrieved state of mind these days is an understatement. She finds that with less than six weeks to go in her term of office, her loyalists are fast dwindling in numbers as they race to hitch their political wagons to Rajapakse’s road show. And in so doing they appear to be blindly compromising the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP)’s position as a major political force in the country. So, at every public opportunity President Kumaratunga gets, she now lashes out at those she sees as the villains, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) which is cleverly maneuvering itself into a potent and indispensable third force in what has essentially been a two-party democracy for over fifty years. Prime Minister Rajapakse probably sees the entire issue differently. Comparison has already been made between Rajapakse’ bid and the SLFP hierarchy’s indifference to their one-time Agriculture and Lands Minister Hector Kobbekaduwa in the latter’s presidential campaign in 1982. Ironically, Chandrika Kumaratunga and her husband then spearheaded the Kobbekaduwa campaign while Rajapakse remained loyal to Sirima Bandaranaike. Yet, the comparison must end there, because Kobbekaduwa was essentially a compromise candidate, in the fray only because Ms. Bandaranaike was disenfranchised by a still popular J.R. Jayewardene against whom he had no realistic chance of winning. Premier Rajapakse’s bid is more like that of Ranasinghe Premadasa’s in 1989: the incumbent Premier of a not very popular government in its twelfth year, but little more than a “peon”, an outsider trying to break the mould for the party leadership, a grassroots populist man aiming to oust the elite. But unlike in the case of Premadasa, Rajapakse feels that he has right to make a claim – after all his father and the Rajapakse clan from Beliatte have been SLFP loyalists ever since the party was formed back in 1954. To
his credit, President Jayewardene, whatever his private thoughts
were about handing Prime Minister Premadasa the candidacy, gracefully
exited the political arena giving Premadasa not only the Presidential
nomination but the party leadership as well to handle the election
which he won, thanks to the then prevailing conditions and an indefatigable
Sirisena Cooray as his campaign manager. And, Premadasa merely improvised
rather than compromised his party’s policies to do so with
his ‘me kawda mokada karanne’ campaign. And with the JVP and even the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) adroitly exploiting the not-so-cordial relationship between the President and the Prime Minister during the best of times, the Rajapakse campaign has taken a decidedly nationalist flavour. Support from the likes of Rauff Hakeem and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and Arumugam Thondaman and the Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC) were forfeited as a result but the Rajapakse camp would have done its arithmetic and calculated that it was a worthwhile price to pay vis-à-vis higher returns from the Sinhalese South. And there was little choice to take that road to the Presidency. The arithmetic itself is somewhat intangible at present. The UNP will count on the ‘hardcore’ UNP votes, Tamil votes, SLMC and the plantation votes and some floating votes especially in urban areas. The Alliance will hope for ‘hardcore’ SLFP votes, perhaps a slightly reduced number of JVP votes, an almost certainly reduced number of JHU votes, some votes from the Karuna faction in Batticaloa and Ferial Ashraff’s National Unity Alliance votes in the East, and most floating votes in the South, especially in rural areas. As a result the eventual outcome will depend on many variables such as the voter turnout in the North, the extent of the decline in support for the JVP and the JHU and the increase in the CWC vote owing to more persons being granted citizenship and voting for the first time at this election. It is also expected that Prime Minister Rajapakse’s dalliance with the JVP will alienate some SLFP voters, especially the minorities, while Opposition Leader Wickremesinghe’s promise of a federal solution to the national conflict will alienate those who would have otherwise voted for the UNP. The net result of these abandoned loyalties is anybody’s guess at present. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that the Prime Minister’s campaign not only still survives but thrives as well. Consider the drawbacks: the party leader (and President of the country) is openly questioning the candidate’s policies; Anura Bandaranaike, the Prime Ministerial candidate, has made a special effort to be overseas (not that any special effort is needed, really), and away from the campaign; minority parties have pledged their loyalties elsewhere, the government itself is unpopular due to a host of issues after a decade in power and no manifesto has yet been released. In theory, it should be a cake walk for Ranil Wickremesinghe But the Rajapakse campaign is very much alive and is a nose ahead in some areas, especially in the rural heartlands. That must say something about the UNP and Ranil Wickremesinghe’s efforts. It may be that the electorate at large is not buying Wickremesinghe’s promise of peace opting instead to believe the opposite — that he would divide the country. His message of 'bedumwadayata parajaya' or Defeat to Separatism, nor his pledge to allow the people to vote at a referendum ultimately for any deal he does with the LTTE has got nowhere. And it may be that Mahinda Rajapakse’s sarong and kurakkan-coloured shawl and his press-the-flesh; Mahinda-ayya style strikes a chord much more than denim jeans, and Nike tennis shoes do. Whatever the reasons, the Opposition UNP leader must realize -- and realise soon -- that eleven years in the opposition and a government in a mess doesn’t guarantee a return to power especially when your opponent is a different leader with a radically different agenda. In fact, President Kumaratunga has inadvertently helped her Prime Minister by disassociating him with her (unpopular) policies. A presidential election is about personalities as much as they are about policies and, both personalities and policies must be marketed cleverly because as some would say, winning a presidential poll is like selling toothpaste -- the consumer has to pick one product over the other and he will pick one which he thinks will put a bigger smile on his face. Nevertheless, the 2005 presidential election will, at the end of it all, decide future policy directions for the nation at least for the next six years and will therefore be crucial for the country. The major contenders propose very different visions for Sri Lanka, much more diverse than previous contenders ever were. And that is where we must return to the role of President Chandrika Kumaratunga in all this. It is perhaps now safe to say that her legacy to Sri Lankan politics would be the transformation of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party from a rural-based nationalistic entity conceptualised by her father in post-Independence years, to a modern political machine attractive to all communities alike. The
SLFP under Chandrika Kumaratunga became the People’s Alliance
and the likes of Lakshman Kadirgamar, President's Counsel and G.L.
Peiris, Professor of Law rubbed shoulders with Mangala Pinsiri Samaraweera,
fashion designer and Sumanaweera Banda Dissanayake, grassroots politician
from Hanguranketha. Today, Kadirgamar is dead, Peiris is in the UNP, Dissanayake is in jail and Samaraweera is the sticky glue that holds together the Rajapakse-JVP-JHU combine having burnt his boats with his one-time mentor. Chandrika Kumaratunga is ferocious, fuming and all but forgotten. In his quest for power, Mahinda Rajapakse is being arm-twisted into turning back the clock and revert to Sinhala nationalism, kurakkan coloured shawl and all. His allies, the JVP and the JHU will beat the nationalist drums with more fervour than the SLFP or S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike ever did. An SLFP think tank had analysed the folloiwng fall-out from a Rajapakse presidency. That the premiership would go to the JVP, and that the latter will make even more strident demands in their next electoral agreement with the SLFP with the objective of holding over 50 seats in a future Parliament, thus becoming the largest stakeholder in the governing party. If the JVP forwards such demands, the JHU is unlikely to stay idle and will ask for its pound of flesh-metaphorically speaking of course. On the other side of the divide, Ranil Wickremesinghe stands accused of just the opposite: pussy-footing when dealing with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and conceding the nation on a platter to a bunch of murderous terrorists. If these positions leave the two candidates irreconcilably polarized but on level pegging in terms of votes at the starting line, then the deciding factor may well be the economy but that must await the Rajapakse manifesto. Decidedly though, the advantag on that score is with Wickremesinghe who has a proven track record of better and more acclaimed economic management whereas Rajapakse lays himself open to the charge of merely making promises, promises and more promises. But lest the nation forgets, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga is still the Executive President of Sri Lanka. She may yet feel that she should do a little bit more to prevent what she perceives to be the beginning of the end of the SLFP. Or at least make it look so to cover up for her own melancholy at having to leave the plums of office. Until now, President Kumaratunga, despite her many outbursts in private, has resisted the temptation to actively undermine the Rajapakse campaign. She realizes that a loss to Rajapakse at the election will ruin him politically, and probably believes that would automatically elevate her brother Anura Bandaranaike as the heir apparent to the party leadership which she still holds. She is also acutely aware that the enormous powers bestowed on her by the executive presidency are at her disposal for only a few more weeks. These are factors which will provide a politically starved Kumaratunga with some food for thought. Chandrika Kumaratunga, the daughter of two Prime Ministers would have known the political coup d’etat to be a regular topic at her breakfast table at Tintagel in Rosmead Place. She herself revealed her panache for it in the manner in which she dismissed the Wickremesinghe government in 2004. The question now is will she do it again by embarrassing Premier Rajapakse’s campaign in an attempt to bring about his downfall? Maybe, but perhaps wiser counsel will prevail not to. Whatever. There is certain to be many a twist and turn in this presidential election before we can say, in her favourite French, ‘Au Revoir ' to Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, and her presidency. |
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