By Vishvanath
The people speak loud and clear in some elections, but in others they don’t. When a controversy arose over the final result of the 2000 US presidential election, with Democratic candidate Al Gore having won the popular vote and the crucial result in Florida pending, the outgoing President Bill Clinton famously said that the American people had spoken, but the system was trying to figure out what they had said. Republican candidate George W. Bush secured the presidency by winning Florida following a legal battle and obtaining 271 electoral votes as opposed to Gore’s 266. Following the May 06 local government (LG) polls, Sri Lanka finds itself in a somewhat similar situation; the NPP won 266 councils, but it lacks working majorities in 117 of them. The SJB and the NPP are fighting a fierce political battle to seize control of the hung local government institutions, including the Colombo Municipal Council.
While vying with the NPP for dominance in non-majority councils, the SJB has had intraparty disputes to contend with. Some of its electoral organizers have accused it of having failed to adopt a set of selection criteria with integrity for making appointments to the local councils. They are of the view that the party leadership has acted arbitrarily in making some appointments much to the detriment of their interests. Some of them have already struck discordant notes in public and resigned from their posts in what may be considered a huge political setback for the SJB. They are Bandarawela electoral organiser MP Chaminda Wijesiri,Horowpothana electoral organiser Anura Buddhika,Dambulla electoral organiser Champaka Wijeratne,Rattota electoral organiser and Deputy National Organiser Ranjith Aluwihare,Nuwara Eliya District co-organiser Asoka Sepala Anagipura, and Galle electoral organiser Bandula Lal Bandarigoda
All these organizers have worked tirelessly for the SJB against tremendous odds, and enabled the party to improve its electoral performance significantly. Their resignations are bound to adversely impact the SJB’s election campaigns in the future. The country is expected to go to the polls again, most probably towards the end of this year or early next year, to elect the Provincial Councils, which have remained unelected for over eight long years.
The SJB leadership is said to be confident that it will be able to pacify the irate party organizers with the passage of time. It seems to think that the dissenters are without anywhere else to go as the NPP would not touch them with a barge pole, having branded the entire SJB as a party of crooks. The SLPP is not an option for them for obvious reasons. So, the SJB seem to think that the aggrieved party organizers are left with no alternative but to grin and bear it. However, party politics is full of unexpected twists and turns.
A fact that the SJB cannot wish away is that some of its prominent members are not well disposed towards the party leadership, as evident from a letter party Chairman Imtiaz Bakeer Markar has sent to SJB leader Sajith Preamdasa. In his letter, Imtiaz has stressed, among other things, the need to build stronger connections between party leadership and grassroots members, the importance of establishing unified ideological stance, organising activists to speak with one voice, the need to ensure internal democracy through member consensus in decision-making, and facilitating the emergence of leaders from youth and student organisations instead of relying on external influencers
The outcome of the LG polls has made the NPP renege on one of its main campaign promises. It lumped all its rivals including the independent candidates together and branded them as crooked outfits, and vowed that it would have no truck with them under any circumstances. But it has had to make overtures to some members elected from the Opposition parties and independent groups in a bid to muster working majorities in the hung councils. It has thus compromised its good governance credentials, which helped it garner favour with the people in the last three elections.
The Opposition has also accused the NPP of employing the same methods as the previous governments in trying to win over candidates to seize control of the hung councils. It has alleged that the government is using financial inducements for that purpose, a charge the NPP has vehemently denied. However, it is public knowledge in this country that no elected representative switches his or her allegiance to another political party for nothing. So, nobody will believe that the councillors who hold the balance of power will change sides without expecting any benefits.
The NPP will be free from problems where the appointment of its councillors is concerned. It is the most disciplined political alliance in this country; the JVP has never had internal disputes over preferential votes or National List appointments. However, it’s not all sunshine and roses for the government.
President Dissanayake’s remark, in his speech at the commemoration of the JVP’s 60th Anniversary on May 14, in Colombo, that some of those who would not have been used even as carpets by other parties were going places thanks to their alliance with the JVP, has been viewed as a swipe at some non-JVP NPP members in the government. The JVP is consolidating its hold on the NPP, with its General Secretary playing a dominant role in the government. The dialectical differences of the JVP and others in the NPP have come to light. There is no political party or coalition that is not prone to splits. The SLFP-led United Front coalition, which came to power in 1970, was quite strong, but it suffered a debilitating split five years later, and was in total disarray in 1977, when the UNP won a two-thirds parliamentary majority. The mighty UNP also experienced a breakaway in 1992. The Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga also fell in 2000 due to mass defections. The powerful Mahinda Rajapaksa government collapsed due to a split and the resultant crossovers in 2014. A group of dissenters broke away from the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government, which had a two-thirds majority in the parliament. The JVP itself has suffered crippling splits on several occasions. A group of prominent JVP members including MPs led by Wimal Weerawansa left the JVP in 2008 and formed the National Freedom Front. A faction loyal to Kumar Gunaratnam split from the JVP in 2012 and formed the Frontline Socialist Party. Former JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe himself left the JVP in 2015 and founded the Janatha Sevaka Party.
So, the NPP, too, will not be free from worries, and its problems will not go away even if it succeeds in bringing most of the hung councils under its control. It now sees the Opposition in the rear-view mirror unlike in the past.
