Pussyfooting and slow progress in common opposition alliance project

by Vishvanath

The UNP and the SJB are redoubling their efforts to forge a common electoral alliance before the upcoming local government (LG) elections slated for early April. They have had three rounds of talks so far, and the second and third of them took place in Colombo on Wednesday (Jan. 22). The representatives of the two parties met in the Opposition Leader’s Office, and subsequently at a five-star hotel in Colombo with the participation of the General Secretaries of the UNP and the SJBP, Thalatha Athukorale and Ranjith Madduma Bandara, respectively.

 Speaking to the media after the third round of talks at night, Madduma Bandara sounded upbeat. He said the discussions had been extremely successful. Asked by a journalist whether the two parties were planning a merger, National Organizer of the SJB Tissa Attanayake said they would form a common alliance while retaining their separate identities as political parties. The task they have undertaken is far more difficult than they make it out to be.  

What has prompted the SJB and the UNP to sink their differences and join forces in a hurry to contest an election is the success of their campaigns to defeat the ruling NPP in most of the cooperative society elections held so far across the country. Together, they have bagged the cooperative societies in areas such as Homagama, Moratuwa and Kelaniya, where the NPP swept the parliamentary polls in Nov. 2024. Beating a ruling party with a two-thirds majority in the parliament, within less than three months of its victory in a parliamentary election, in a series of grassroots elections is no mean achievement for an opposition, which has taken a severe beating. The NPP’s setback is not something the Opposition bargained for, but now it’s all out to capitalize on the situation.

 However, the Independent groups that vied with the NPP in the cooperative society elections would not have been able to win without the backing of other opposition parties like the SLPP as well, and therefore the question is whether the efforts being made by the SJB and the UNP to turn the tables on the NPP at the grassroots level will succeed without the support of the SLPP, etc. A split in the Opposition’s vote with the SLPP going it alone will stand the NPP in good stead in the upcoming LG elections. It is unlikely that the SLPP will agree to play second fiddle to the SJB/UNP in an electoral alliance. Will the Opposition parties be able to reach an agreement that is beneficial to all of them?  

The SJB and the UNP have not yet taken up contentious issues for discussion, such as who the leader of the alliance to be formed will be. Will it be SJB leader Sajith Premadasa or his UNP counterpart and former President Ranil Wickremesinghe? They have been at daggers drawn all these years, and the SJB blames Wickremesinghe for having queered the pitch for Premadasa in last year’s presidential election by causing a split in the anti-NPP vote.

 The UNP suffered a crippling split in 2020 due to a clash between Premadasa and Wickremesinghe, and many senior members of the two parties are still at loggerheads. It is being rumored that UNP Chairman Vajira Abeywardena is not well-disposed towards the efforts being made to bring the SJB and the UNP together. However, the ongoing rapprochement talks have the blessing of Wickremesinghe, who has a firm hold on the UNP. Abeywardena has been careful not to express his views on the issue in public. The SJB and the UNP will not be able to go on pussyfooting around indefinitely. Time is running out, and they will have to address the contentious issues and reach an agreement on them soon if they are to forge the proposed alliance in time for the next LG elections. There’s the rub.

Will the efforts of the Opposition parties to defeat the NPP fall through in case of their failure to form a formal common electoral alliance, which is considered the most effective way to challenge the NPP? There may still be a way out in such an eventuality thanks to the new electoral system, under which the LG polls are held. Under the Proportional Representation system, political parties that close ranks to win general elections have to submit common nomination lists and/or agree to share National List positions. But the situation is different where the LG polls are concerned.  

The LG elections are conducted under the mixed proportional system with 60% of the councilors elected on the ward basis and others on the proportional basis. The Opposition parties, especially the SJB and the UNP, can reach no-contest pacts on the ward basis depending on their electoral strengths in the local council areas, even if they fail to submit common lists of candidates to the Election Commission as constituents of electoral alliances. Such no-contest pacts were common at the national level under the first-past-the-post electoral system. The SLFP and its leftist allies in the United Front alliance entered into no-contest pacts in some constituencies in the 1970 general election, and defeated the UNP in those areas.

However, no-contest pacts are complex, and their success hinges on the ability of the Opposition parties to manage their competing interests and group dynamics, which always lead to internal disputes and personality clashes, but they are in the realm of possibility, for politicians tend to unite when they feel threatened by a common enemy. It may be recalled that the JVP closed ranks with its archrival, the UNP, to field common candidates in the presidential elections in 2010 and 2015 against the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa. They achieved success in 2015, when they defeated Rajapaksa and dislodged his UPFA government, which had a two-thirds majority in the parliament.

The upcoming LG elections will provide the Opposition with an opportunity to try to unsettle the NPP by making it face a midterm electoral setback. It is unlikely that the SJB and the UNP will squander that chance by refusing to join forces. The SLPP, which has become a prime target of the incumbent government, must be feeling the need to end the NPP’s winning streak more than any other party, and that may be the reason why it threw its weight behind the Independent candidates backed by the UNP and the SJB in the cooperative society elections, enabling the Opposition’s victory. Adversity is said to make strange bedfellows.