By Vishvanath
The break-up of the political marriage of convenience between the SLPP and the UNP has come as no surprise. That uneasy union was doomed from the very beginning, and what held it together so long was adversity as well as expediency. President Ranil Wickremesinghe and the Rajapaksa family were at daggers drawn, but they opted to co-operate, for that was mutually beneficial to them in an extremely hostile political environment.
President Wickremesinghe has come forward as an independent candidate. That move also came as no surprise. He has done so for two main reasons. The UNP has not been able to recover lost ground on the political front and therefore is not ready to contest an election under its own steam.
Wickremesinghe seems to think that by contesting as an independent candidate, he will be able to enable even those who do not want to join forces with the UNP for ideological or political or personal reasons to back him in the presidential race. He has apparently taken a leaf out of the JVP’s book; the JVP formed the NPP (National People’s Power) to woo those who do not subscribe to it Marxist ideology. Wickremesinghe is busy cobbling together an electoral alliance.
The SLPP has decided to field its own presidential candidate, who is to be named shortly. Speculation is rife in political circles that business tycoon Dhammika Perera, who is very close to the Rajapaksa family, will be its choice. Namal Rajapaksa is expected to be named as the SLPP’s prime ministerial candidate at the next general election, which is expected to be held immediately after the presidential poll in September. Perera has been promoting himself as the SLPP’s presidential candidate for a long time. He has the wherewithal for electioneering, which is going to be a costly affair, and for looking after the politicians who will back him.
Disintegration of SLPP
What Mahinda Rajapaksa said would happen to the SLFP, in 2004, has befallen the SLPP thanks to its union with the UNP. He was the Opposition Leader at the time, and President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga was all out to defeat the UNP-led UNF, which had captured power in the parliament and was undermining her presidency. Unable to stomach endless indignities at the hands of the UNP, she decided to form a broader Opposition alliance with the JVP as a constituent, but that was not to the liking of Mahinda, who protested, claiming that if such a coalition was ever formed, the JVP would swallow the SLFP. He reminded President Kumaratunga that it had been JVP founder leader Rohana Wijeweera’s strategy to infiltrate the SLFP, destroy it from within, become an alternative to the UNP and gain control of the parliament.
Kumaratunga ignored Mahinda’s objections, formed the SLFP-led United People’s Freedom Front (UPFA) with the JVP as a partner and won the 2004 general election. The JVP obtained as many as 41 seats and donated two of its National List slots to the SLFP, and some of its leaders topped the preference vote lists in Colombo (Wimal Weerawansa), Gampaha (Vijitha Herath) and Kurunegala (Anura Kumara Dissanayake). Thereafter, the JVP tried to get even with Mahinda by asking Kumaratunga not to appoint him Prime Minister; its choice was Lakshaman Kadirgamar. But Kumaratunga gave in to pressure from the SLFP seniors and appointed Mahinda the PM–something she would regret subsequently.
SLPP’s regrets
Today, the SLPP regrets having entered into an alliance with the UNP. National Organizer of the SLPP Namal Rajapaksa himself has said it was a mistake for his party to join forces with the UNP. He has accused President Wickremesinghe of having divided the SLPP. About 40 to 50 SLPP MPs are reported to have pledged their allegiance to Wickremesinghe although the SLPP has officially announced that it will field its own presidential candidate and take disciplinary action against those who support any other person in the presidential fray. This warning is not likely to be taken seriously by anyone.
Political parties are predatory by nature. They prey on one another, as evident from the manner in which the SLPP and the SJB thrived at the expense of the SLFP and the UNP, respectively. It is only natural that the UNP has eaten into the SLPP and the SLFP to some extent.
It is being argued in some quarters that the SLPP has made a mistake by deciding to contest the presidential election instead of hitching its wagon to President Wickremesinghe, who is a formidable presidential candidate. But desperate to prevent the UNP from swallowing it whole, the SLPP was left with no alternative but to break ranks with Wickremesinghe. It had to field its own presidential candidate even though his or her chances of winning are very remote. The SLPP seems to think its move will provide the party’s rank and file with a fresh rallying point, which they are badly in need of at this hour. More importantly, the Rajapaksa family will now be able to retain its hold on the SLPP.
Wickremesinghe’s prospects
What will be the impact of the break-up of the SLPP-UNP alliance on Wickremesinghe’s chances of winning the presidency? Opinion is divided on this score. There are two schools of thought. One is that it will prove advantageous to Wickremesinghe because the Rajapaksas have become hate figures and his associations with them would have ruined his prospects of winning. The other is that the SLPP is still a force to be reckoned with and the SLPP MPs who have sided with Wickremesinghe do not have block votes as such, and most of them are hate figures themselves and cannot deliver enough votes to President Wickremesinghe. Both these arguments are not without some merit, but President Wickremesinghe will have to explain to the public why he desperately sought to secure the SLPP’s backing. His political opponents are sure to hold this fact against him.
It would have been advantageous to President Wickremesinghe if he himself had severed his ties with the SLPP on his own before entering the presidential fray as an independent candidate.
Tough fight ahead
President Wickremesinghe’s stakes are extremely high in the upcoming presidential contest. Unless he wins it, the UNP will find itself in a far worse predicament, and chances are that it may not even be able to retain the single seat it has in the current parliament come the next general election.
President Wickremesinghe is a formidable candidate, but the SJB and the NPP have emerged very strong. Wickremesinghe has failed to engineer mass crossovers from the SJB, and this is an indication that the SJP MPs have confidence in their leader Sajith Premadasa, who polled 5.56 million (42%) votes at the last presidential election, which Wickremesinghe skipped.
The upcoming presidential election is likely to be a three-cornered contest among President Wickremesinghe, Opposition Leader Premadasa and NPP leader Dissanayake, and the participation of Wijeyadasa Rajapaksa, representing the Maithripala Sirisena faction of the SLFP and the SLPP candidate to be named will make the race even more intense, perhaps to the point of ending up with no candidate obtaining the 50% plus one vote to secure the presidency straightaway. This is not a situation President Wickremesinghe bargained for some months ago. His entry into the fray will surely upend the dynamics of the presidential election, but the contest is bound to prove unnervingly arduous for him.
