Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa has been the real driving force behind the SLPP. It was his popularity and charisma that enabled those who were opposed to the Yahapalana government to gain political traction following the change of government in 2015, and turn the tables on the SLFP and the UNP subsequently. The Mahinda Chinthana (MC) is the core ideology that underpins the policies of the SLPP, including the Vistas of Prosperity and Splendor, the election manifesto of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. It is diametrically opposed to the policies of the UNP.
Political vicissitudes, especially those arising from the unprecedented economic crisis, have compelled the SLPP to practice exactly the opposite of the MC and adopt the policies of the UNP. For instance, the MC is against the divestiture of state ventures, but the SLPP has undertaken to privatize several key state institutions including Sri Lanka Telecom and Sri Lanka Insurance on the pretext of restructuring them. The Ceylon Petroleum Corporation and the Ceylon Electricity Board are expected to face a similar fate, and trade unions are up in arms against what they call a government move to privatize them.
The SLPP is under pressure from the IMF to divest some profitable state-owned enterprises in return for economic assistance.
Has the SLPP deep-sixed the MC? This is the question one asks oneself on seeing the sea changes that the SLPP policies have undergone over the past several months. The answer is in the affirmative. The SLPP leaders and their UNP counterparts have demonstrated that they do not scruple to compromise their principles if they consider it expedient to do so.
Politics has much more to do with expedience than principles, as is public knowledge. It is more so where Sri Lanka is concerned. Hence many about-turns in politics and politicians’ efforts to justify them in keeping with the Machiavellian contentions, the main being that ‘the promise given was a necessity of the past; the word broken is a necessity of the present’.
The Rajapaksas have done exactly what they condemned President Maithripala Sirisena for, before and after the 2015 regime change—closing ranks with the UNP for self-advancement. Opposing the alliance between the UNP and the SLFP, they formed the Joint Opposition and called it the real SLFP. They and their loyalists sat separately in the parliament and even staked claims for the post of the Opposition Leader, but in vain. Later, they formed the SLPP as an alternative to both the UNP and the SLFP, and scored impressive electoral victories in 2018, 2019 and 2020. But having mismanaged their electoral fortunes and the economy, they have joined forces with the UNP despite protests from a section of the SLPP.
SLPP Chairman Prof. G. L. Peiris, who is one of the dissident SLPP MPs sitting as an independent group in the parliament, told the media on Sunday that he still stood by the original policies of the SLPP and those of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, but SLPP General Secretary Sagara Kariyawasam and others had abandoned them by joining hands with the UNP. This has been the position of all SLPP dissidents opposed to the SLPP-UNP tie-up.
Minister Bandula Gunawardena has confirmed at the weekly post-Cabinet press briefing that the SLPP and the UNP will contest the upcoming elections together, and modalities are under discussion.
How will the electorate respond to the political marriage in the offing between the SLPP and the UNP? Not all members of the two parties are well-disposed to the proposed alliance, but they have had to collaborate willy-nilly, for they are without an alternative. They are politically weak, and their joint effort to contain the economic crisis and ameliorate the suffering of the public have not yielded the desired results. The only hope for them is that the IMF bailout package will be delivered soon and the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel will appear in time for the Local Government (LG) polls. But there is no guarantee that the resentful public will appreciate such a positive outcome in terms of votes, for they are aware that both parties are responsible for the present crisis.
The 2018 LG polls proved to be the undoing of the UNP-SLFP coalition. The two parties had to contest separately and their uneasy unity did not survive the elections; the SLFP pulled out of the joint administration a few months later. President Sirisena even sacked Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and appointed Mahinda to that post, but had to wipe the egg off his face owing to a Supreme Court ruling that thwarted his attempt to dissolve the parliament.
It may be a gnawing fear of a similar fate befalling the current SLPP-UNP alliance that prompted the SLPP and the UNP to decide to contest the LG polls jointly. But whether they will be able to prevent a huge electoral defeat remains to be seen. The SLPP’s popularity has manifestly plummeted, and it is highly unlikely that the UNP will be able to turn itself around anytime soon simply because its leader Ranil Wickremesinghe has secured the executive presidency.
There have been instances where the UNP and the SLFP lost elections under the leadership of even popularly elected Presidents. The UNP lost the 1994 general election, on President D. B. Wijetunga’s watch. An SLFP-led government fell two years after the re-election of President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, and lost the 2001 parliamentary election. President Mahinda Rajapaksa failed to secure a third term, and the UPFA government, which had a two-thirds majority in the parliament, collapsed, in 2015.
Bad news has already come for the SLPP from Mahinda’s stronghold. It lost the budget vote in the Kurunegala Municipal Council, on Tuesday. It could obtain only seven votes but its rivals mustered 14. This humiliating defeat presages trouble for the SLPP as well as the UNP, which has decided to coalesce with it.
The distribution of seats among political parties in the Kurunegala MC, in 2018, was as follows:
SLPP — 08
UNP — 08
UPFA — 03
JVP — 01
ACMC — 01
The UNP members are currently divided between the UNP and the SJB, and the UPFA has fallen out with the SLPP. The SJB and the SLPP dissidents will contest the next LG polls and eat into the vote banks of the UNP and the SLPP, respectively; the JVP is expected to better its performance and obtain more seats. Therefore, the odds are that the SLPP-UNP alliance may not be able to control the Kurunegala MC. It can be assumed that the situation is not different in other parts of the country as well. SLPP National Organizer Basil Rajapaksa said in a recent interview with Derana TV that the SLPP might not be able to retain the same numbers of seats in the LG institutions, but it would win the polls. He cannot be expected to tell the truth about the strength of his party at this juncture.
The biggest challenge before the SLPP at the upcoming polls will be selling an election manifesto antithetical to Mahinda Chinthana and the Vistas of Prosperity and Splendor.
