Political Column - President pushes for dialogue with LTTE

A rather outspoken western diplomat was addressing the Sinhala Businessmen's Association in Colombo last week; he said that a friend of his had sent him a photograph of Opposition UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe at a World Cup football match in Berlin. He said that Wickremesinghe looked a bit bored in that picture e-mailed to him, but also looked the part of a football enthusiast by wearing an appropriate cap.

Then, the diplomat could not resist a wise-crack. He said he wondered if Wickremesinghe was any good at "passing the ball". There were mild chuckles among the businessmen, but at 'Siri Kotha', the headquarters of the UNP on Tuesday, there was nothing to laugh about. Speaker after speaker at the party's Political Affairs Committee was demanding from Wickremesinghe that he pass-the-ball, shedding some of the authoritarian powers that have for long been vested with the Party Leader.

Led by the one-time SLFP General Secretary, S.B. Dissanayake, these speakers were demanding to know from Wickremesinghe what had happened to the 'reforms' agreed to in the aftermath of his presidential defeat in November last year. There were to be a party chairman; new secretaries who were active in politics; various committees, all of which had been left unfilled.

Wickremesinghe instead argued that the party needed 'reforms' not on personalities, but on its total organisation. He presented a document that had gone into the party's successes and failures since 1977. The breakdown of party branches; the repercussions of proportional representation on district organisers etc. He said these were matters that had to be gone into for a total reform of the party.

Arraigned against Wickremesinghe were the likes of Drs. Rajitha Senaratne and G.L. Peiris, who like Dissanayake were those who abandoned their respective parties to join the UNP. They insisted on the appointment of persons to posts -- Deputy Leader Karu Jayasuriya to be made the Executive Chairman, someone to take over the secretaryship, electoral organisers, to legal committees etc. They said seven months had now gone since the decisions were taken to fill these posts, and they slammed the party chairman Malik Samarawickrama in the process for hanging on to a post he was once reported to have quit, but in fact doesn't seem to have, in the wake of Wickremesinghe's defeat.

Clearly, it was a renewed campaign by this cabal to shove Wickremesinghe aside and take over the party under the leadership of Karu Jayasuriya.

Their impatience was understandable. Since the party's defeat last November, very probably due to an enforced boycott of Tamil voters in the north and east, the party first got entangled in an understandable in-house debate over the continuance of Wickremesinghe as the party leader; and then, in a sordid Ripley's like episode in having their Colombo Municipal list rejected.

The back-stabbing; the intrigue; the parachuting and long-jumping to the government benches in search of ministerial office and the perks that go with it; and all the hallmarks of an opposition party in Sri Lankan politics were taking place while Wickremesinghe opted to stay aloof, first taking wing to Harvard University, and then anywhere but going to 'Siri Kotha' to take control of a party gone mad.

The party was left to making the odd noise from time to time via its assistant secretary, and the conflicting voices of party members airing their own ad-hoc views on national issues.

But the biggest crisis to hit the UNP during this period was none other than the faux pas that saw its entire list for the crucial Colombo Municipal Council election being rejected because there was a mistake in the filing of the names of candidates.

Immediately the list was rejected it became clear that there was a mafia that had hi-jacked the party in the vacuum created by a wounded Wickremesinghe staying out of the fray in the United States, S.B. Dissanayake still languishing in jail, and a new acting leader Karu Jayasuriya unable to take control of the situation. Young bucks were running amok, carrying a senior partyman Sirisena Cooray on their shoulders to what they thought was the Mayoralty. Eventually, they tripped and fell -- and the party ended with egg all over its face.

This became the subject of a party inquiry, the report being handed over to the party leader a fortnight back. It was deliberately delayed because its findings could have been detrimental to the party while court was going into the matter of the rejection of its list.

The report was submitted to the party's Working Committee last week, but Wickremesinghe did not permit members to have copies. The reason; that it would have leaked to the press.

Pressed by members to have a peek at it, he allowed them to read and return with the original being kept with the party secretary. Naturally, this begged the question why Wickremesinghe wanted this kept Top Secret. After all, it was an internal party inquiry and the party had to decide on its findings.

Initially, it seemed that the two-member committee comprising lawyer Mahinda Haradasa and ex-treasurer Milroy Perera had been given the wrong mandate i.e. to ascertain whether there was a conspiracy to have the UNP's CMC list rejected. It was known by then that the conspiracy was not to have the list rejected, but whether there was a conspiracy to have the names of certain candidates agreed by the party deleted and their places interpolated by political acolytes of certain individual UNP MPs in the Colombo District viz., Mohamed Maharoof (Colombo Central) and Milinda Moragoda (Colombo East).

To bring readers up to date with what happened, the UNP hierarchy had agreed to have ex-Mayor Sirisena Cooray as the Mayoral candidate, and all sitting MMCs re-contest. But when the list was handed over, one of the very senior sitting MMCs viz., T.M. Sanghadasa's name had been omitted, his name interpolated with that of another, and separately the name of a candidate who was under age had been included. It was on the second issue that the list was rejected, but it was on the first that the party saw the hidden-hand of a clique surreptitiously at work.

UNP Working Committee members were only able to keep the findings of the Haradasa-Perera report retained in their memory. Prof. G.L. Peiris would have been the best trained to do this. And it was he, mainly, who raised the matter at the Political Affairs Committee this week. Not even attempting to hide his animosity towards his one-time chief negotiator with the LTTE partner Milinda Moragoda, he demanded equal treatment for all party members.

Firstly, he blamed Wickremesinghe for calling Moragoda for lunch with the visiting Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran at his 5th Lane residence - and inviting him (Peiris) only for coffee after the lunch. Then, he said that a disciplinary inquiry should be held into the findings of the Haradasa-Perera report.

So what did the Haradasa-Perera report find? That there was a prima facie case for further investigation.

It seemed that the mandate they had been given was not comprehensive enough for them to proceed beyond a point. But there were some interesting findings. They have been able to put their finger on the point at which the UNP's CMC candidate list was tampered with - the point at which names were tippexed and other names interpolated. They have found out who was in custody of this list at that given time.

The report seems to ask whether the party officials who were in charge of the list at that given time lost control of the list deliberately or by negligence (because it was not lost by forcibly being removed from their possession). In that case, what liability do they carry?

There's more to the point. Subsequent events! When the UNP list was rejected, they came out publicly and said that they will support the list of candidates who had the 'spectacle' symbol. They asked the voters of Colombo city to vote for the 'spectacle', and numbers were officially allocated to UNP candidates (who were now rejected) to 'adopt' candidates on the 'spectacle' list.

Having got its list rejected, the UNP tried to rectify the situation by ensuring the CMC did not go to the People's Alliance by supporting an Independent list and adopting its candidates. In this process, however, they did not rectify the injustice done to Sanghadasa. Even at this subsequent stage, Sanghadasa - who was selected by the party high command to contest, was not allocated a number from the 'spectacle' list. And instead, the name of the man whose name was substituted in place of him - Wijepala, a co-ordinating secretary Mohamed Maharoof was allocated a number.

Then, in an advertisement placed in the Lankadeepa of 18 May, 2006 there is depicted what is called " The Colombo South XI ", and photographs of eleven UNP candidates - and it is the name of one of the candidates whose name was never agreed in the first place by the party hierarchy - Erik Chandrasena - to represent the Bambalapitiya Ward. His name was never nominated by the UNP nomination board, but was subsequently included by having Vijitha Kathiragonna's name deleted by the 'conspirators'. And whose website is displayed in that advertisement - Milinda Moragoda's.

So, it was clear that all this fixing was not an accident but a deliberate act. The Haradasa-Perera report apparently has gone into this aspect by asking senior partymen, including Karu Jayasuriya, Sirisena Cooray, P. Dayaratne who was the Chairman of the Local Government Elections Committee, party secretary W. Weragoda, assistant secretary Tissa Attanayake - none of them knows how this happened, and why this happened. Who then, was running the party?

All this ignorance - feigning or otherwise - made a mockery of the investigation - and the party. This is the party that prides itself as the darling of the private sector, that it can manage the country better than any other party because it has top-class technocrats.

The UNP Working Committee issued a bland statement last week. It had two relevant paragraphs referring to the Haradasa-Perera report. One para said that the committee found no conspiracy to have the party list rejected. Of course, not. The second para said that "however, there was evidence to go further into the tampering of the party list and that a disciplinary committee will look into the matter, and those found guilty will be dealt with".

Many newspapers highlighted only the first part of that statement. Soon thereafter came in the press a letter sent by Milinda Moragoda to his party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. Moragoda had told his leader that he will be sending him a letter, but when his leader asked him why he had to write to him, that he could tell him what he wanted, Moragoda did not heed the request. The next thing Wickremesinghe knew was that the letter was addressed to him but was aimed for public consumption in the local dailies.

What was the gist of Moragoda's letter? It was a homily on what he expected of the party - " honour, public service, humility, honesty and personal leadership".

As if that is not enough to make one cry, he goes on to say that he has "always acted in the best interest of his party".

But there is a trace of trepidation in that letter. He refers to the Haradasa-Perera inquiry report and calls it a waste of time. Does he know that the hounds are after him in the party, and that the Haradasa-Perera report does hint that there is some culpability on the part of those in whose custody the list was on that fateful day when it was tampered with, and eventually rejected resulting in the UNP not having its Mayor in the chair, and instead of having to play shadow politics with pretenders to the Throne at Town Hall. Awkwardly he asks, whether this inquiry helped to stop the bombings and the economic disruption within the country.

Having had his say, he quickly took wing to Singapore, but he will join Ranil Wickremesinghe on a visit to India very soon, together with John Amaratunga, but Prof. G.L. Peiris has opted out of the trip despite Wickremesinghe's invitation to him. He has said he is "very busy".

What he is busy with nobody really knows, but speculation was rife in political circles this week that another crop of UNPers were preparing to do the hop-step-and jump to the Mahinda Rajapaksa camp, hot on the heels of the Susantha Punchinilame cross-over last Thursday.

Ranil Wickremesinghe was justifiably miffed by what Rajapaksa did to him. Just half an hour before meeting him, with a request for the Opposition's support for his peace initiative on the back of the Shyam Saran visit, the President had sworn in UNP's Punchinilame as a Deputy Minister - and did not tell Wickremesinghe about it when they met. That was not a done thing even in Sri Lankan politics.

It was not surprising that the Indian High Commissioner Nirupama Rao received a call later that Thursday evening from Wickremesinghe who was en-route to a farewell dinner for the departing Swiss Ambassador, to be told that this was no way for the President to treat the Leader of the Opposition.

The next day, there was a general announcement that no more cross-overs will be entertained, at least not for the moment. State television crews were asked to disband.

That western diplomat who referred to Wickremesinghe's inability to "pass the ball", said something further to those Sinhala businessmen. He said that the government was very good. Except that it could do better with a little more brain than brawn.

For the UNP leader in the meantime, he will need to look for new frontiers - to 'leap-frog' over the issues that seem to be gripping a section of the party hierarchy - many of them having joined the party just the other day - but who are making a claim for the leadership. Issues such as whether someone was not invited for lunch, but only for coffee, should surely not be the issues the country's main opposition party should be grappling with today.

Unable to cope with the rising cost-of-living; and bogged down with the peace process, the government is in some difficulty, but the UNP is unable to take any political advantage because of its own internal squabbles. The party has a load of work to do in rebuilding credibility with the electorate, both due to their policies and their personalities. Most of the party hierarchy are Colombo-centric politicians with no common-touch, while those with the common-touch seem to be bathed in mud.

The UNP has plans to launch some campaigns in connection with the party's 60th anniversary and its late leader former President J.R. Jayewardene's 100th birth anniversary, later this year. If they can take a leaf from the JRJ campaigns while in Opposition in the early 1970s, that just might be the best start for a brighter future for a party that seems to have lost its way in recent years.

The party's strength remains scattered throughout the country. Its Colombo centric leadership has ignored those of its supporters in the countryside. It lost the last Presidential election by a little less than 200,000 votes, and the 'southern' vote by 500,000 votes. Had the LTTE allowed the Tamils in the north and east a free vote today it would have been a President Ranil Wickremesinghe at the helm of the affairs of this country. It was not to be.

At Friday's meeting between the real President, Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Marxist-Nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), from all accounts, things did not go too well. The JVP has opted to disagree with the political agenda of the new President its supported into power and place. The JVP believe that the President, having obtained its support to win, has now done an about-turn on his strategy to deal with the LTTE.

The report Ranil Wickremesinghe gave his Political Affairs Committee refers to the fact that the UNP has always had to go it alone, and it has won when the other parties are not in a grand coalition. It is almost a UNP vs. The Rest situation. Now, with the LTTE insisting that the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) be its sole representatives in Parliament, the UNP has had to do without much of the Tamil vote which was largely its for the picking.

The Muslim vote being split among the sectarian Muslim parties and the main parties, and the plantation CWC vote breaking up, the UNP will have to rely on winning back the 'southern vote' which it lost to the PA and the JVP, and to some extent in 2004 to the JHU, if it is to win a future election.