by Kassapa
When Anura Kumara Dissanayake was elected President, many mocked him saying that he was the first ever President to be elected to office with a ‘minority’ of votes, not having secured 50 per cent of the ballots cast. Maybe they were hoping that the general elections that were to follow would deliver a ‘hung’ Parliament or at least one where the Jathika Jana Balavegaya (JJB) had a thin majority.
Voters responded to the ‘minority’ President insult with force: they elected a Parliament where the JJB had nine seats over a two-thirds majority. Armed with such power, one would have thought the government would have steamrolled its opponents, both inside and outside Parliament and got on with its agenda in a mighty hurry.
Two months after the general election, the opposite is proving to be the case. The government is taking very tentative baby steps- and then tripping over and falling again and again. Its main opponents come from their own ranks, shooting from their lips and landing Dissanayake and the government in hot water. Their only blessing ironically is an opposition which is fighting among itself and cannot get its act together.
Consider for instance, the saga over former Speaker Ashoka Ranwala. It was totally unnecessary and left the fledgling government with a lot of egg on its collective face. Dissanayake intervened to get Ranwala to resign but even then, his resignation letter said he was quitting only because he didn’t want to embarrass the government while he waited to prove his credentials. That was one month ago. We are still waiting for that evidence!
Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara made a beeline to the Criminal Investigations Department, no less, to complain that he was bestowed with a ‘Dr.’ title by parliamentary staff to embarrass him. Later, it turns out that a letter from the Office of the Leader of the House Bimal Rathnayake also refers to him with the same honorific!
Trade Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe has caused the most damage so far, making outlandish claims about how problems can be resolved and then offering bizarre explanations when it becomes apparent that this cannot be done. His most recent escapade was to suggest that the shortage of red rice, after a failed attempt to place a tender from India, was because the previous government distributed red rice in areas where “red rice is not consumed”! Samarasinghe appears to have the knack for making similar comments on a regular basis and seems to be hellbent on taking on the role of the court jester, making the government the laughingstock. With friends like these in the JJB, who needs enemies?
Health and Media Minister Nalinda Jayatissa who is also Cabinet spokesman and considered to be one of the better communicators in the JJB, also got his wires crossed. During the Ranwala saga he slipped up, being dismissive about it and saying the government “wouldn’t consider it above the knees”. More recently, he earned the wrath of philanthropists, saying his ministry does not welcome donations for ‘emotional reasons’, when most such donations to the Health sector are made only for that reason.
Even Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya has showed that she is capable of the odd blunder. At a function where she accepted a donation from China, she called it the Republic of China (or Taiwan, China’s sworn enemy) instead of the Peoples’ Republic of China. That was, of course, a slip of the tongue and could have happened to the best of politicians. Instead of offering an unqualified mea culpa, Amarasuriya offered a half-hearted apology and went on to blame the media which reported the incident, claiming there was a conspiracy to create a rift between Sri Land China. So, her defence was worse than the offence.
This list can go on if the noteworthy words and deeds of Nilanthi Kottahachchi, Nalin Hewage, Namal Karunaratne, Sunil Handuneththi et al are to be elaborated here. The underlying message is clear: if they were excellent at criticising governments while in the opposition, the JJB is equally incompetent in defending their role as a government. Only Dissanayake has so far emerged unscathed, largely due to his circumspect style of public speaking instead of throwing caution to the wind like his colleagues do.
This is why the stalwarts in the JJB have become their own enemy. It is their own comments, both in trying to showcase their own achievements and also in trying to defend some of the outrageous promises they made during elections campaigns, which have become their biggest liability attracting criticism and ridicule from the opposition.
Despite all this, the government has a silver lining, though. The United National Party (UNP), the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party are hardly represented in Parliament. The single largest opposition party, the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) is busy trying to get its own house in order instead of taking on the JJB.
A faction of the SJB is engaged in talks with the UNP following the appointment of ex-SJB stalwart Thalatha Atukorale as General Secretary of that party. Atukorale was a vocal advocate for a unification of the two main right-of-centre parties even when she was in the SJB. Now, she is in a unique position where she will be able to manoeuvre the cross-over of SJB members to the Grand Old Party.
The main reason for this is the growing perception within the SJB that it cannot win elections as long as Sajith Premadasa leads the party. Premadasa is copying Wickremesinghe’s Ranil Wickremesinghe’s style of governance in the SJB: “the leader is always right, I will always be the leader and I will only listen to my inner circle of friends in making decisions”. This is why SJB Chairman Imthiaz Bakeer Markar’s 12-point letter asking for party reforms has been met with deafening silence.
Little wonder then that Premadasa and the SJB have hardly any time to criticise the government meaningfully or project themselves as a viable alternative government. Thus, the JJB government gets some breathing space to survive and soldier on. This is the current political scenario: a government with its worst enemies in its own ranks and its best allies in the opposition!
