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Blue, blue my world is blue: End of CBK presidency
The “pahalaenopsis” orchid, advises the Royal Horticultural Society of Britain, “should not be allowed to dry out for long periods as they don’t need a period of winter rest” and it was a variety of this orchid that was named after President Chandrika Kumaratunga at a brief ceremony at the Peradeniya botanical gardens earlier this week.

With just eighteen days to go for the presidential elections, and a few days longer before her own presidency ends, it is not clear whether President Kumaratunga has plans for a period of ‘winter rest’ or whether her busy schedule will continue after the presidential election. But right now, she has a few outstanding issues to attend to although elevating her own party candidate Mahinda Rajapakse to the presidency seems to be quite low down in her list of priorities.

Perhaps, of more importance was the creation of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources Development of which she appointed herself the Minister, although her term of office ends in about a month from now. This followed the findings of TSG NOPEC, a Norwegian company prompting some to remark that Kumaratunga appears to need Norwegian intervention in whatever she does!
But then, Chandrika Kumaratunga had a reputation of being late throughout her presidency and once earned a public reprimand from her mother Sirima Bandaranaike for being late for a ceremony at her Alma Mater, St. Bridgets’ Convent. But Chandrika Kumaratunga also always thought that better late than never.

Therefore, she is now participating in the Mahinda Rajapakse campaign belatedly, if not reluctantly, although Rajapakse himself may not relish the prospect after her performances at Ratnapura and Getambe last week. Kumaratunga did ask voters to vote for Rajapakse, for the record, but that appears to be the only concession she allows. The rest is a tirade against the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) whom she does not name but calls the “extremists in the South”, lumping them together with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the North. And the theme running through is a call to ‘save’ the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and its policies.

This angst to save the SLFP has spread among the Bandaranaike brethren this week with younger brother Anura writing to the President lambasting cabinet colleague Jeyaraj Fernandopulle and claiming there was a conspiracy to oust him from the premiership in the event of a Rajapakse victory — quite apart from the Foreign Ministry he wants under a Ranil Wickremesinghe presidency.This is political irony at its best — or worst, if you happen to be an SLFPer — because both Anura Bandaranaike and Chandrika Kumaratunga are guilty of transgressions that cost the SLFP dearly. Bandaranaike was the first offender, falling into the trap set by the local Machiaveli of yesteryear, J.R. Jayewardene following the deprivation of Sirima Bandaranaike’s civic rights by forming the breakaway SLFP (M) led by Maithripala Senanayake. Later, after falling out with sister Chandrika over the succession for the SLFP leadership, he was to join the United National Party becoming its Minister of Higher Education under the D,B. Wijetunge presidency.

Three-party politics
Kumaratunga was no less disloyal, parting company with the SLFP under her own mother’s leadership to first form the Sri Lanka Mahajana Pakshaya (SLMP) with husband Vijaya and then forming the Bahujana Nidahas Peramuna (BNP) on her own, after Vijaya’s demise. And because of this, Rajapakse loyalists would be arguing that although being the natural heirs of the Bandaranaike dynasty, Anura and Chandrika should be the last persons to be leading the call to protect the SLFP.

Kumaratunga loyalists — or the few of them left — will argue that the issue now is different. In more than fifty years of post-independence politics, Sri Lanka is now seeing the emergence of three party politics in the ‘south’: the UNP, the SLFP and the JVP. The emergence of the TULF (a combination of the Federal Party and the Tamil Congress) in the north was a different equation.
The closest this country came to three party politics in the ‘south’ was first in the early fifties with the formation of the SLFP ending the traditional left vs. right contest between the UNP and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP). But with the exit of the LSSP with the 1977 political cyclone, it was in the eighties that we saw a third force with the SLMP led by Vijaya Kumaratunga and then in the early nineties with the Democratic United National Front (DUNF) led by Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake. But both these parties were based on the charisma of their leaders and their exits saw the collapse of their parties as viable entities.

The same cannot be said about the JVP and Rohana Wijeweera’s passing. To its credit, the party has regrouped and resurrected, both as a party and as an organization that it is able to capture the imagination of the public by a combination of racy rhetoric, an excellent grassroots organization and sound tactical maneuvering in the political arena.

Credit for the latter should perhaps go to the much maligned Somawansa Amerasinghe. He shrewdly formed the United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance (UPFA) in 2004 and in contesting in tandem with the SLFP, named only a few nominees for each of the electoral districts. As a result of this, all the party’s preference votes accumulated to the few nominees with 37 of the 39 contestants being elected to Parliament. The JVP now has a total of 39 MPs, with its National List allocation, as against 66 SLFP MPs although its contribution to the 4.3 million votes polled by the UPFA was probably a quarter of that — about a million votes!

It is also no secret that it is the JVP which is shouldering the burden of the Rajapakse campaign. And they are doing a good job of it too bereft as they are of SLFP heavyweights and estranged as they are from the minorities. They have to play the Sinhala nationalist card and so far, they have done extremely well not only in projecting Rajapakse as ‘our man’ (“apey kenek”) but also cleverly inculcating in the minds of the majority the fear of a division of the country, if Ranil Wickremesinghe were to be voted in to office.

Thus there is trepidation in the SLFP camp that the JVP will demand their pound of flesh for running the Rajapakse campaign when governments are formed and general elections are eventually called. And if Rajapakse is then at the helm of the party he will have little choice, but to oblige. The demand will be for three nominees for each electoral district list of the UPFA with four JVP nominees in the larger districts such as Colombo and Gampaha.

If the math is right, the JVP could end with more than 50 MPs and could possibly be the second largest party in Parliament. Some of the smaller districts such as Matale, Moneragala and Polonnaruwa have only five MPs each and even if the UPFA wins three seats there is every possibility that the preferences will coalesce towards the JVP nominees resulting in no SLFP MPs for these districts!

Of course, like Oliver Twist, the JVP will be asking for more in the form of cabinet portfolios; they are said to be eyeing the media and industries ministries though shying away from portfolios such as health and education which suffer from a large trade union influence which the party controls anyway.

This, coupled with the fact that the SLFP has always formed governments in partnership with other parties and has never ruled on its own has raised fears in the Kumaratunga-Bandaranaike camp that the party is now in real danger of being surpassed as the alternative to the UNP. Hence Kumaratunga’s outbursts against the JVP on the Rajapakse campaign platform.

Premiership stakes
There is also the always thorny issue of the premiership over which Bandaranaike took umbrage last week. His contention was that the SLFP Central Committee endorsed his nomination but the avid student of politics that he is, he knows well that this is not worth the paper it is written on and that the constitution provides for Rajapakse —if he is elected President — to do as he pleases. One cannot imagine the JVP nodding its approval for Anura Bandaranaike to be their PM even though he claimed to be the ‘Niyamuwa’, or creator of the UPFA in 2003 and said he was prepared to give his life for that coalition. The ‘wansas’, Wimal Weerawansa’s and Somawansa Amerasinghe’s names are already being bandied about, not for nothing, and that is not a healthy sign for the SLFP.

Faced with such circumstances, one does not envy President Kumaratunga’s lot. One day, she is busy giving out State lands to her cronies, and finalizing details for the Norochcholai power plant with the Chinese where the local agent is none other than the ubiquitous Harry Stassen Jayewardene, a personal friend of hers, who is himself embroiled in controversy over plans to take over the Commercial Bank. The next day, she has to find a house to move from the Janaadhipathi mandiraya (“gedara yanawa eth yanna gedarak nehe” — I am going home but I have no home to go to,” she said at Ratnapura and privately dismissed moving in to ‘Visumpaya’, the former Ackland House where brother Anura now resides, describing it as an ‘apaaya’!)

Others close to the President suggest that Kumaratunga may seek a posting either at the United Nations in New York or at UNESCO in her favourite city of Paris away from the prying eyes of the Sri Lankan media but all that is based on the premise that Rajapakse would win the upcoming poll.

Should he lose, and should Ranil Wickremesinghe win, the latter has already said he would seek Kumaratunga’s co-operation to resolve the ethnic question. And, there would be the not so simple task of weaning away the SLFP from the clutches of the JVP. So, a stint as party leader may still be a temptation too hard to resist. Although President Kumaratunga has now repeatedly said that she is retiring to ‘go home’, she may well think again. After all, a lady is entitled to change her mind!

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