This column, written on the eve of the so-called joint opposition rally at Nugegoda ambitiously titled the ‘Maha Jana Handa’ or ‘Great Voice of the People’, have no confirmation as to what will be said and done at the gathering. Nevertheless, the lead up to it reveals some significant political trends that are slowly but surely emerging.
Initially at least, the prime movers behind the concept were the United National Party (UNP) and the Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (PHU) led by the indefatigable Udaya Gammanpila. The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) also readily joined in. There were great expectations that the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), the largest opposition party in Parliament and therefore arguably the opposition party with the largest vote base in the country would join in, especially in view of the rapprochement it was reaching with the UNP for a common ‘plan of action’.
That was not to be. The SJB pulled out. The official reason given was that it did not wish to appear on the same stage with corrupt elements in the local political landscape, a thinly veiled reference directed mostly at the SLPP. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake baited SJB leader and Leader of the Opposition Sajith Premadasa during the budget debate, thanking him for sticking to this principle. Premadasa angrily responded, saying that he need not be told who he should align with.
The underlying reality was different. The SJB did consider attending the rally. A faction of the party wanted to do so. Their rationale was that, if the meeting was a success- to be interpreted as drawing a significant crowd, which could easily be engineered, pooling the resources which the UNP and the SLFP had- the SJB would miss out and not be identified with it.
This is when Namal Rajapaksa, heir apparent in the SLPP, made his move. He began actively promoting the Nugegoda rally as if it was his pet personal project. After a lapse of ten years, he made a much-publicised visit to the Darley Road party headquarters of the SLFP, the party the SLPP broke away from, to discuss the rally. The photo opportunity was not lost on Rajapaksa. He even met with Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) stalwart M.A. Sumanthiran to invite the ITAK for the meeting. Almost overnight, the younger Rajapaksa had hijacked the meeting and was giving ‘voice cuts’ whenever he could to promote it.
The significance of this was not lost on Premadasa. This was Namal’s attempt to project himself on the national stage after polling a dismal two and a half per cent at the presidential election just over a year ago where Premadasa polled a decent thirty-two per cent. This was Namal Rajapaksa trying to assert himself as the leader-in-waiting, marking time for the Jathika Jana Balavegaya (JJB) to flatter, falter, fail and flop, so he could take the reins in four years’ time. Premadasa obviously did not want to be a party to that when he had the same ambitions. He opted out of Nugegoda, and rightly so, firing off the barb about not wanting to stand alongside the corrupt.
Rajapaksa however appears to have over-stepped the mark. In the week before the Nugegoda rally we hear of the ‘Trincomalee incident’. This was where a tense situation was created by a group of Buddhist monks in Trincomalee (and some well-known other monks visiting from Colombo) citing Police efforts to remove a hurriedly placed Buddha statue at a location which had been arbitrarily proclaimed as a ‘temple’. The monks involved have dubious reputations, the entire incident appears suspicious and smacks of a blatant attempt to ignite racial tensions in a community where Sinhalese, Muslims and Tamils now live in harmony. Not surprisingly, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara thero, a monk with a reputation for fostering racial hatred, quickly took himself to Trincomalee thereafter.
Also unsurprisingly, the government (or more specifically, Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala) bungled. He told Parliament that the statue was removed to prevent damage to it and it was ‘restored’ to the location the next morning, raising the obvious question: if the creation of a ‘temple’ overnight was irregular, why was the statue restored to that location?
It is a moot point whether Namal Rajapaksa engineered the issue or not. He spoke in favour of the monks in Parliament and then went to meet senior monks, proudly posting photos of those meetings on his social media accounts. He was resorting to the old SLPP slogans of Sinhalese nationalism and the marginalisation of other ethnic communities, unashamedly. This, just before the Nugegoda rally was ‘perfect timing’: it would provide the opposition, more specifically Rajapaksa and his SLPP a slogan to taunt the government with (‘Save Buddhism from the government’). The incident’s timeline and the ‘usual suspects’ involved raises suspicions as to whether it was created for the purpose of the Nugegoda event.
So, if anyone thought that Namal Rajapaksa was different from the older generation of Rajapaksas, that he had now ‘matured’, that he was a new age politician who was able to see beyond narrow ethnic and religious boundaries, perish the thought. He has just confirmed that he is a chip off the old block, uttering the same slogans of racial and religious divisions, pitting one community against another just so he could garner some votes just like his father and uncle did, the former during the Eelam war and the latter in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday terror attacks.
It is a pity that, after the humongous political drubbing the SLPP received at the last presidential and general elections, Namal Rajapaksa has not read the message voters were delivering: racism is not in fashion, they abhor it. That is why the JJB was able to secure a mandate even in the North and East, a first for a southern party in post-independence history.
So, when will the Rajapaksas ever learn? Possibly never, if Namal Rajapaksa’s conduct over the past few days is a benchmark. For none are so blind as those who do not wish to see
