by Vishvanath
Oppositional forces are showing signs of gaining ground as the ruling JVP-led NPP is learning to navigate governance issues the hard way. The new government was expected to get off to a flying start, but it found itself weighed down by a large number of teething problems and an unexpected credibility issue which provided a rallying point to its political opponents—a controversy over the academic credentials of some of its key parliamentary group members. The resignation of Speaker Asoka Ranwala over his failure to prove his educational credentials has emboldened the Opposition to go on the offensive.
The government has also not been able to tackle several key issues that affect the ordinary public, such as the shortages and rising prices of rice and coconuts. Above all, there have been several policy contradictions on its part. It has made about-turns in respect of rice imports, the IMF bailout programme, especially the Debt Sustainability Analysis and external debt restructuring, and proposed projects and pacts, such as the ETCA (Economic and Technological Cooperation Agreement) between Sri Lanka and India, the Indo-Lanka grid connection and petroleum pipeline links, and the Adani Group power plants.
However, it is not on the political front as such that the opponents of the NPP have been able to make a kind of breakthrough. They have put the government on the backfoot on the moral and propaganda fronts. There is a rising tide of anti-incumbency sentiments as evident from social media content, and even the Opposition figures whom the NPP succeeded in demonizing before the presidential and parliamentary elections have now taken to moralizing, which NPP used to have a monopoly over not so long ago, in a manner of speaking.
The parliamentary Opposition is still in disarray, and is not likely to be able to use the elections slated for next year to make a decisive comeback, but possible alternatives to the NPP government are already being talked about in political circles. There is nothing unusual about such discussions, speculation being an integral part of power politics. Following every regime change, competing interests and ambitions come into play in the ruling party/alliance as well as in the Opposition. This is the name of the game in politics.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) is firmly in the saddle despite his government’s bumpy ride. However, the NPP, which is an alliance of strange bedfellows, has ideological differences between the JVP and other coalition partners to contend with. It is experiencing dialectical tensions between the Marxists, who constitute the JVP’s old guard and the liberals in other parties of the alliance. One of the main reasons for the debilitating rift in the Mahinda Rajapaksa government in 2014 was that the SLFP seniors had been sidelined in the UPFA, and newcomers, such as defectors from other parties, especially the UNP and the JVP, had got close to President Rajapaksa. SLFP General Secretary Maithripala Sirisena broke away in 2014, claiming that he had been shortchanged, and went on to beat President Rajapaksa in the 2015 presidential race. The UFA government had a two-thirds majority, which however did not prevent its break-up.
The fact that there are tensions between the JVP and others in the NPP has been borne out by the suspension of two circulars issued by the Western Province Education Ministry, banning government teachers from conducting private tuition classes for students of the schools where they work, and another one issued by the Ministry of Education pertaining to modules. The person who was instrumental in having them suspended is Deputy Minister Mahinda Jayasinghe, a former JVP trade union firebrand. Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, who is the Minister of Education, has been left with egg on her face.
The SJB’s group dynamics are changing in such a way as to cause concern to Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa. It is being argued in some quarters that the Opposition should look for a new leader. Former SJB MP Patali Champika Ranawaka, who campaigned hard for Premadasa in the last presidential election campaign, has gone on record as saying that the SJB under the latter’s leadership is not equal to the task of revitalizing the Opposition. Former MP Lalith Ellawala resigned from the SJB yesterday (Dec. 27), claiming that it did not have internal democracy.
Time was when alternatives to governments in power were predictable in this country owing to alternate power shifts, which characterized most part of the post-Independence period, during which national politics was dominated by the UNP and the SLFP or coalitions led by them. Under the first-past-the-post system, the two main parties governed the country alternately, but the situation changed after the 1977 general election, with the UNP extending its rule until 1994. Still, the alternative to the ruling party was obvious—the SLFP or an alliance led by it.
The situation changed after the 2015 power shift, which led to the formation of the SLPP as an offshoot of the SLFP the following year. A breakaway UNP group formed the SJB several years later. Thus, the SLFP and the UNP became merenameboards. An alternative to the SLPP government emerged from an unexpected quarter, with the SJB failing to rally enough popular support. The JVP-led NPP eventually captured power.
Will a democratic alternative to the NPP government emerge from within Parliament or from outside? What propelled the NPP to power was a socio-political movement that came into being outside the parliament, following the 2022 mass uprising fuelled by public resentment towards the SLPP.
Will the SJB, the biggest opposition party with 40 MPs, be able to turn itself around and gain public acceptance as the government in waiting? Will it lose ground to an extra-parliamentary force, which emerges, rallying the support of other opposition parties and using them as a vehicle to capture power by winning future elections? Will a prominent opposition figure, other than Premadasa, be able to project himself/herself as a savior the way AKD did? Or, will the erosion of public trust in the democratic process intensify, giving rise to another wave of anti-politics and causing an alternative to emerge from an unforeseen quarter?
