By Kassapa
It hasn’t been a good time for the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) and particularly for its leader Sajith Premadasa lately. His political strategies are unravelling and more party members are beginning to question his political maturity. The loss at the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) only highlights this even more.
While campaigning for the local government elections, Premadasa was quick to launch into rhetoric against the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) calling it the ‘hora pohottuwa’. As such, there would be no deals with the SLPP, he declared.
Although the elections results saw the Jathika Jana Balavegaya (JJB) way ahead of the SJB (43 per cent of the vote to 21 per cent of the vote), the quirks of the local government seat allocation system meant that the JJB did not command a simple majority in many a council, leaving room for opposition parties to ‘unite’ and wrest control of at least some of these councils.
Soon after the election results were declared, Premadasa issued a statement saying the voters have sent a ‘message’ to the opposition. Premadasa read this message as a call for the opposition to unite against the JJB government. Hearing this, the party where he spent most of his earlier years, the United National Party (UNP) made noises about teaming up with the SJB for the purpose of gaining control of local councils.
Had the SJB joined forces with the UNP, few would have found fault with Premadasa. That is their parent party from where most of them came from. There aren’t any ideological differences between the two parties. The big stumbling blocks to their reunification is the fact that UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe and Premadasa do not see eye to eye and Premadasa bitterly resenting Wickremesinghe’s inner circle running the day-to-day affairs of the party.
However, Premadasa had other plans. He was willing to partner with not only the UNP but also the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). The SLFP is of little consequence these days but the decision to align with the SLPP raised many an eyebrow.
Previously, Premadasa has opted to take the high moral ground of principled politics. He has repeatedly reminded voters about how he refused to betray Wickremesinghe and accept the Premiership when it was offered to him by Maithripala Sirisena when Sirisena fell out with Wickremesinghe leading to the 2018 Constitutional Crisis and a 52-day government with Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Premadasa is even more proud of the fact that he again refused the offer of Premiership, this time from Gotabaya Rajapaksa, during the mid-2022 uprising against Rajapaksa. At that time, he said that he would not be in a position to govern with a Parliament dominated by the SLPP which he claimed was corrupt to the core!
Either Premadasa was suffering from significant amnesia or he made a calculated decision to become bedfellows with the ‘pohottuwa’ with the objective of stalling the JJB gaining control of most of the local councils. Obviously, it was the latter. In doing so, Premadasa was going against a sizeable faction within his own party who were wary of the stigma the SJB would accumulate by partnering with the SLPP which was totally rejected by voters in last year’s national elections.
We understand a primary motivating factor for Premadasa in this was not so much gaining control of the many local councils scattered countrywide where the JJB didn’t have an absolute majority. His eyes were on the grand prize, the CMC.
The CMC had never been out of the grasp of the UNP since 1954 when Dr. N.M. Perera, later Finance Minister in Sirima Bandaranaike’s government, became mayor. Dr. Perera’s tenure as mayor was short-lived and the UNP regained control in 1956. Even when there were countrywide swings against the UNP such as in 1970 (for Sirima Bandaranaike’s United Front), in 1994 (for Chandrika Kumaratunga’s Peoples’ Alliance) and 2010 (for Mahinda Rajapaksa’s United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance), the CMC resolutely stood with the UNP. In 2006, when the nomination list of the UNP was rejected, it backed a hitherto unknown independent group which won the election.
With such history, the CMC was Premadasa’s ultimate prize. The man who didn’t want to become Prime Minister without the mandate of the people was willing to become bedfellows with the SLPP to win the mayoralty of the CMC, again without a mandate of the people. He was even willing to accommodate the requests of the Sarvajana Balaya led by Dilith Jayaweera, a party with well-established racist credentials.
The rest, as we can now say, is history. Premadasa and the SJB failed and by a considerable margin too. Premadasa attempts to create a smokescreen by claiming the vote wasn’t conducted properly because it was a secret vote and not an open vote.
What he is not saying is that some of those who promised to vote for the SJB candidate- for whatever reason- didn’t vote for him. Is that reason some type of inducement that he cannot publicly acknowledge? And what is more democratic than a secret vote? Finally, despite all the breast beating that ensued in the SJB camp after the vote, the SJB councillors did agree to a secret vote after an hour of debate, so what is Premadasa whingeing about?
In the final analysis, the campaign to win the CMC was another failed campaign by Premadasa. It brings into focus his inability to be astute in tight political situations and the ease with which he is manipulated by others. In hindsight, Premadasa would have been better off had he been magnanimous, admitted that the SJB did not have a clear mandate to govern the CMC (and maybe even other councils) and let the JJB take charge. That way, he would have been spared the insults that are now coming his way for sleeping with his enemy, the SLPP.
Sajith Premadasa must realise that it is not difficult to become Leader of the Opposition but that is not a guarantee that he will lead the next government. He was taught that lesson once. He is in danger of letting history repeat itself.
