By Vishvanath
Everything is now ready for next month’s general election. Time is fast running out. Political leaders are girding up their loins, despite election fatigue, and their campaigns will be in full swing shortly.
The general consensus is that the NPP, whose victory in last month’s presidential contest is still fresh, stands a better chance of emerging the winner in next month’s contest as well, but how many seats it will be able to secure in the 225-member Parliament is anybody’s guess. It failed to secure more than 50% of the total number of valid votes in the presidential election, and its candidate, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, could poll only 42% of the votes to clinch the presidency. The Proportional Representation system is known to throw up surprises.
The polity is still experiencing the aftershocks of the NPP’s victory last month and political forces are undergoing a process of realignment.
The SLPP dissidents, who sided with the UNP, were left high and dry following Ranil Wickremesinghe’s defeat in last month’s presidential election. Some of them are contesting the upcoming general election under the Gas Cylinder symbol for want of a better alternative.
Several key SLPP dissidents, such as former Minister Prasanna Ranatunga, have opted out of the parliamentary race, and others have joined the Sarvajana Balaya alliance led by Dilith Jayaweera’s Mawbima Janata Party. Only the SLPP dissidents who joined forces with the SJB have not fallen between two stools.
Dynastic woes
Political parties and leaders experience ups and downs, and governments come and go. So do political dynasties, which go out of circulation following major regime changes that prolong their stay in the political wilderness.
The Bandaranaikes, who founded the SLFP, and dominated the Sri Lankan political scene for decades are currently unrepresented in national politics. Former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga is doing her utmost to remain relevant politically. The same is true of the Senanayakes, who founded the UNP and produced national leaders including the first Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, D. S. Senanayake. Only a single member of that political dynasty—Wasantha Senanayake—is in active politics today, but not at the national level.
The Rajapaksa family, which has been in politics for 88 years, is in crisis. It produced two Presidents, and dwarfed all other political families, in contemporary politics, preventing some of them from developing into dynasties. But none of its members is taking part in the upcoming general election. The Hambantota District is going to the polls, for the first time in about nine decades, without a member of the Rajapaksa family in the fray.
The Sept. 21 regime change has upended Sri Lankan politics. The JVP-led NPP, which obtained only 3% of the valid votes in the 2019 presidential election, made a stunning comeback to win the presidency last month. Its leader Dissanayake’s victory has acted like a political twister, wreaking havoc on other political parties.
The UNP is not likely to recover in the foreseeable future. Its leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has lost three presidential elections and skipped three. His first defeat came in 1999, when he lost to Chandrika. He was defeated again in 2005, when Mahinda Rajapaksa became President. Thereafter, Ranil skipped three presidential elections in 2010, 2015 and 2019. His third defeat in the presidential race came last month; he could not even use his party’s symbol, ‘The Elephant’ in the election. He adopted the ‘Gas Cylinder’ symbol, instead.
For the first time in Sri Lanka’s post-Independence history, the leader of the UNP is not taking part in a general election. UNP leader and former President Wickremesinghe has decided against contesting the upcoming parliamentary polls. He is reported to have said he will not enter Parliament via the National List, either, but it is not possible to read his elusive mind.
Former President Maithripala Sirisena, who was busy building a Polonnaruwa-based political dynasty, has thrown in his lot with the Savajana Balaya. So has his son, Daham. Thus, they have let go of the SLFP, which has become a kind of political orphan.
Interestingly, the two parties vying for dominance at the national level—the JVP-led NPP and the SJB—were formed only about five years ago. Founded in the late 1960s, the JVP was going the same way as the traditional left, which lost its vitality and appeal to the public a long time ago, but it (the JVP) formed the NPP alliance to improve its electoral performance. Its strategy has yielded the desired results. So far so good.
The SJB, which came into being as a breakaway UNP group, in 2020, has become the second force in Sri Lankan politics, and the SLPP, founded in 2016, as an offshoot of the SLFP, has come a poor third.
Rise and fall of the SLPP
The SLPP had a meteoric rise in national politics thanks to former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s charismatic leadership and the UNP-led Yahapalana government’s failure and unpopularity. Its fall was equally fast.
Two years after its formation, the SLPP swept the Local Government polls (2018), marking the beginning of the end of the Yahapalana rule, and went on to win the 2019 presidential contest and the 2020 general election. In 2022, mass protests erupted against the SLPP government and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had to resign and the SLPP’s bete noire, Ranil Wickremesinghe, became the President with the help of the Rajapaksas. Its rule collapsed last month.
Regime changes occur in this country mostly due to protest votes, as we have seen in 1977, 1994, 2015, 2019 and 2024. The JVP-led NPP would not have been able to take such a quantum leap in electoral politics if not for the SLPP’s blunders, abuse of power, cronyism, corruption and internal disputes.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa surrounded himself with a group of self-proclaimed experts and undertook disastrous experiments, and mismanaged the economy, which was under Mahinda Rajapaksa and Basil Rajapaksa. Besides, there was a kind of cold war between Gotabaya and the SLPP parliamentary group controlled by Basil. The economy became a casualty of their tug of war, and its debilitation and the country’s sovereign debt default in 2022 led to mass protests and the recent regime change.
The forces that enabled Gotabaya’s victory in 2019 gravitated towards Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who undertook to play messianic role and gave a big fillip to the people’s anti-establishment sentiments. They were responsible for the NPP’s victory. Dissanayake would have found it extremely difficult to secure the presidency if President Wickremesinghe had not entered the fray and caused a split in the anti-NPP vote.
Twister still active
The political twister that the NPP triggered is still active, but it is bound to blow over after the upcoming general election. The group dynamics of the NPP will change significantly thereafter, with the JVP old guard trying to gain dominance in the Marxist-Liberal alliance, the way it happened in the SLPP government following the 2020 parliamentary election.
The policies of the JVP and the NPP are poles apart, in most respects, and if the JVP choses to play second fiddle to the NPP, there will be no dissension in the government’s ranks, but in power politics such compromises on the part of the old guard are not common; even the SLFP-led UPFA experienced clashes between the SLFP old guard, which was supportive of Mahinda Rajapaksa and others, although the Rajapaksa family had a firm grip on the alliance. One of the main reasons that Maithripala Sirisena and other UPFA dissidents cited for their breakaway in late 2014 was that the Rajapaksa family had shortchanged the SLFP seniors on opportunities in the UPFA.
In the mid-1970s the SLFP-led United Front government experienced clashes between the SLFP and its leftist allies, who pulled out when their differences came to a head and the LSSP was expelled. The leftists contested the 1977 general election as the Socialist United Front, which failed to gain parliamentary representation.
Thus, the path ahead of the NPP is far from clear although its political rivals will take some time to recover from their electoral setbacks, but they are bound to make a comeback sooner or later. The biggest challenge before the NPP, which has no experience in statecraft, will be to live up to the people’s expectations, and steer the economy to safety. It will be a journey into the unknown.
