Rajpal's Column

13th June 999

Analysing the post election angst

By Rajpal Abeynayake

So near but yet so far. That risque and racy cliche would suit the angst of most ardent UNPers in this post election greyness. In the South, where the spirit of demolition is usually at its greatest, the voter demolished the myth that the Jantha Vimukthi Peramuna is a reviled relic from the past.

The voter also very nearly demolished the People's Alliance. Definitely not from the south a victory for the PA that is glittering and unequivocal, an overall majority as in the North Central province. .

Instead, the South returns to power an emasculated People's Alliance, which can only form a provincial government which will forever be under the cloud of being in the opposition, if the JVP and the UNP coalesce.

So the UNP is within a whisker of upsetting the electoral predominance of the People's Alliance in the last six years.

But yet, the UNP is so far from realizing the goal of forming a national government, which is the only achievement that the UNP would really be able to call a victory. The UNP has on successive occasions not been able to tilt the balance, though it doesn't seem to require an epic effort now to tilt that balance.

In the melee, President Kumaratunga seems to give the indication that her first choice is a Presidential election.

A Presidential election is a canny way of reducing or narrowing down most of the issues. Foul mouthed dentists and Sports Ministers in love will not exactly be the issues at a Presidential contest .

The UNP's chances of tilting that vital balance, therefore, seem to be even dimmer at a Presidential face off, wherefore it seems to be correct to say that the UNP is so near yet so far in this business of national politics.

But, to rivet back to the South, which typically returned its own slap in the face of the establishment verdict, it's the JVP's performance that seems to create the most novelty out of what's reflected in the results.

Political analysts who were suggesting three days before the elections that the JVP will not get more than five per cent of the vote, were in a state of shock, and had to amend their predictions to claim that what they actually said was that the JVP will get five seats. Five seats! The JVP got seven, but that doesn't quite reflect the fact that the JVP secured 12 per cent of the vote, upping double figures — something that most Sri Lankan batsmen including those from the South couldn't do at the World Cup.

Tilvin's JVP which was waiting till the winning streak surfaced, may have hit the winning equation.

But, Tilvin may have to wait till he repeats this kind of performance in other areas of the national electorate before he would run away with the idea that the JVP is formidably a national third force.

But this wouldn't still detract from the power and the clout of the JVP's Southern performance. It is slap on the PA more than the UNP, and the government in the face of the clear verdict against the 12 per cent for the South's radicals has to concede the fact that it is losing its grip on the nations left of centre vote banks.

The leftist pose of a party with a Fannonite leader who has traversed various left leaning parties in her path to power, has with its first nod at power lost any of it's worker party credentials. Athauda Senaviratnes and Batty Weerakoons have transmogrified themselves from leftist symbols to nothing.

Fire breathing leftists outside the PA who had some hope for empathy from the working class from a leader who had been associated with T B Illangaratne and the likes, saw with some chagrin that there was crypto capitalism in this alliance.

So it has to be the Southern disaffected radical segment of youth that had to first substantially call off the PA's left of center bluff. By giving the JVP a whopping 12 per cent, the South has by parallel process stamped the PA as capitalist establishment anathema, and that would be a condition that the PA will have to live with.

END PIECE: That is the end of that, but a small tempest in a teacup is taking place in the United National Party which is seeking a platform a vision and a platter all at once — the platter for sakes of placing their amorphous but beguiling electoral gains in some sort of perspective.

Beguiling is the word that analysts have been looking for a week to describe the UNPs current situation. The UNPs movers and shakers, the younger phalanx that is rearing to go, knows that power lies for them somewhere in the intangible vastness of the future. They know the election results reveal that all is not lost for a party that is groping for vision and some teeth.

But perhaps the UNP should unravel itself and go through a catharsis. But this is not to be expected from gentlemen whose idea of politics is to get on the idiot box and prattle to kingdom come.

The technocratic safari suited UNP wallah is basically a political follower-all the leaders died in the Premadasa era, barring Ranil Wickremesinghe who has to be a leader being the party leader . But the toothlessness of the UNP's second rank and the UNP's leadership elite is something that has been lost on the public who have been quick to pounce on Ranil wickremesinghe . The lacklustre support that Ranil Wickremesinghe receives from his pack certainly doesn't help his cause either but that's another story of its own.

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