UNP rolls like a barrel

By Our Political Editor

Another year gets completed today, with Sri Lanka no closer to being home and dry from the ravages of a separatist struggle that was launched 30 years ago with the Vaddukottai Resolution -- under the banner of the then minority Tamil political leadership comprising the Tamil United Liberation Front.

That whole exercise engulfed even the TULF, and the liberation movement has now turned into a violent, virulent, armed secessionist struggle directed, produced and orchestrated by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In its wake, a trail of destruction has been left behind -- the dead and the maimed, destruction of property, countless thousands displaced from their homes, forcible conscription of children for war purposes, and a people generally caught in the cross-fire. The economy has been savaged for good measure.

The Northern insurgency remains priority number one for any leader to sort out, if the nation is to get out of the rut it has got into as a result of the insurgency, throwing up a variety of new issues that a sovereign state has had to contend with -- not least the over indulgence by the neo-colonialists of the modern day -- the International Non-Government Organisations (INGOs).
Tomorrow, the political leaders of the 'south' will be heralding the New Year in different ways, and in different parts of the world. President Mahinda Rajapaksa will be invoking the blessings of the Kataragama Gods near his native Beliatte, in southern Sri Lanka, while Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe will be watching elephants in southern Africa.

It is the role of the Opposition United National Party (UNP) that has been the subject of much discussion in the recent past. The fact that Rajapaksa has to contend with a nagging insurgency in the north and east, and political intrigue in the south is a fact of life; so too is the known role of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) of supporting Rajapaksa because it hates the UNP, but opposing Rajapaksa because it hates the LTTE; a case of running with Rajapaksa and hunting against Rajapaksa.

But the role of the UNP is what has kept popping up in for quite some time now. The entire year has been spent in in-fighting among its leadership. Ever since the defeat of its Leader Wickremesinghe, a group within the party hierarchy has ganged up to 'clip his wings.

The reason for this move sounds reasonable. For one thing, Wickremesinghe has surrounded himself with some thoroughly undesirable hangers-on, who profit by their proximity to him in many ways. They are the one's who are his eyes and ears, often providing him with 'dead ropes' on ground realities and personalities. This has resulted in Wickremesinghe's growing number of opponents.

But the intention of this group was not necessarily altruistic. It was not entirely aimed at 'democratising' the party. They liked to call themselves, The Reformists, but all some of them wanted were Cabinet posts in the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration.

Spearheaded by two one-time arch enemies, bonded by a common cause, G.L. Peiris and Milinda Moragoda, they met Government leaders and mapped out a strategy by which the UNP would sign a pact with the Rajapaksa Government, and offer its support in return for political office. They used the party's then Deputy Leader Karu Jayasuriya as the 'human face' in the exercise, and roped in others like S.B. Dissanayake, Gamini Lokuge, Dharmadasa Banda, M.H. Mohamed to give it a flavour that it had the backing of a wide cross-section of the party.

In truth, this was only a show of strength by a group that felt that Wickremesinghe was an unwinnable leader, and their chances of ever regaining political office were as remote as the chances of a snowball in hell. And the party workers in the remote outbacks of Sri Lanka would only grin and bear at the theatrics at the party's apex.

The modus operandi to creep into the ranks of the Government, without actually crossing-over a la Rohitha Bogollagama, Mahinda Samarasinghe or Keheliya Rambukwella before them, was to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which would enable them to sit in the Opposition and in the Cabinet at the same time. This was not unprecedented -- for nothing now seems to be unprecedented in Sri Lankan politics -- because Saumyamoorthy Thondaman did this first in President Chandrika Kumaratunga's cabinet.

That draft of Peiris was shot down by Wickremesinghe who deftly grabbed the note from his former law lecturer and then went to argue his case with Rajapaksa on a different basis. The final MoU was to have none of that business of sitting in Opposition and in Cabinet at the same time, and all of a sudden Peiris & Co., lost all interest in supporting the Government.

The MoU though, is now the subject of critical assessment in political and wider circles. Initially, welcomed as the end to confrontational politics, it had clear political meaning for both Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe. For Rajapaksa it meant a small sacrifice as far as the JVP was concerned for the greater backing of the UNP, especially with the Budget around the corner. The JVP would, in any case, never back the UNP. For Wickremesinghe it was to put a plug on the imminent cross-overs he was going to face, not least from the Reformists.

What the MoU has done for now has two serious consequences. The first we have already seen. In these columns we saw the sheer collapse of any opposition to the Rajapaksa Budget, not so much the Budget proposals proper, but the Committee stage of the debate when the different Ministries are being discussed.

The entire UNP leadership enmeshed as they were in the in-fighting over so-called party reforms, completely abandoned their role as elected representatives of the people, sent to Parliament to speak. We gave some of the statistics in these columns previously, Ranil Wickremesinghe and Moragoda never spoke during the entire debate. Is this what the MoU has done to the opposition? Karu Jayasuriya and G.L. Peiris spoke once each and Rajitha Senaratne twice, with Ravi Karunanayake sounding excellent by comparison speaking just thrice on the record number of Ministries this country has.

Then, is it not correct to say that the UNP has abandoned its role in Parliament; and should not one ask whether it deserves to keep the Opposition leadership? And to what extent has it taken upon the plight of the ordinary people of the country outside Parliament?

These will be serious questions the UNP will be asked in the coming year. Wickremesinghe has already re-assured Rajapaksa that the UNP will provide the support that is needed in pushing Constitutional reforms vis-à-vis the peace process, were the JVP to withdraw its support. This is unconditional support ahead of any reforms much the way he gave Rajapaksa unconditional support for the Budget without even knowing what the Budget was going to be.

The Reformists in the UNP have never made that an issue. None has questioned whether Wickremesinghe is entitled to make such a promise without knowing what's on offer. Karu Jayasuriya and S.B. Dissanayake who are projecting themselves as the saviours of the Sinhala-Buddhist inheritance of the UNP, quite apart from its strong rural vote-base, have been mute on the subject, though they have been vociferously demanding that the party's working committee be increased from 85 to 110.

Wickremesinghe is clearly using the MoU drafted by his detractors to his maximum advantage, to shield himself from predators. Smugly he will tell others, "what can I do, this MoU was drafted by other party leaders, and now I have to live with it". Those who drafted are too embarassed to disown it so soon.

But the fact of the matter is that the UNP is an opposition party in a multi-party system, and must play the role of the opposition without leaving it to others, like the media, to play that role for them. They too can't be running with Rajapaksa and hunting with Rajapaksa.

Insiders in the UNP say that Wickremesinghe is aware of this fact and that an opposition party always has elements eager to jump sides in search of perks and privileges associated with Ministerial posts; and the MoU is a 'necessary evil' at this stage of time. Internal party re-organisation work is in the pipeline, and that the New Year will see these being implemented.

The Colombo district is the start of this re-organisation. Already, Moragoda, the erstwhile protégé of Wickremesinghe is being axed for his insurgency starting from the disastrous calamity that befell this once great party in getting their list of candidates knocked out from the Colombo Municipal Council elections. His courtship with Rajapaksa, the last time without the knowledge of his party leader, is not a simple dalliance, but smacks involvement of business interests.

The UNP leadership has already decided to call for applications for a Colombo West organiser. That means, the party organisation of Colombo West and Colombo East that was earlier separate, and then merged for the benefit of Moragoda, will be bi-furcated once again. De-merger seems to be the fashion today.

Many applicants have thrown their hats in, and an offer to former High Commissioner to Malaysia Rosy Senanayake has been turned down on the basis that the electorate is too small for her. Moragoda's grip on Colombo East may also be soon over, with speculation that the party's former chairman Malik Samarawickrama, whose uncle Edmund Samarawickrama who once held the seat for the UNP might be a front-runner.

Colombo, though, is not the be-all-and-end-all, of the UNP. The entire party machinery from its headquarters at Siri Kotha to the grassroots levels has sagged and virtually collapsed. No new members are being enrolled and the old ones are drifting away. The party has, one should say, an elephantine-task to revive it -- first to be a proper opposition party, and then to offer itself as an alternative to the Rajapaksa Presidency.

The next scheduled date for a General Election is early 2010, and a Presidential election is not due till late 2011. But, a President can always call for an early, snap election for at any time he chooses. He can catch the opposition napping.