Damocles’ Sword of Defection
By N Sathiya Moorthy
Taken to its logical conclusion, the recent court-ordered disqualification of then Minister Naseer Ahamad as a Member of Parliament (MP) can have far-reaching consequences. Already, the Opposition SJB’s case against two ministers who had ‘defected’ from the party is in the courts. The relatively larger question is about all those MPs who had crossed over from the SLPP, which remains the single-largest party in Parliament (if not outside, still?) and is the official under-writer of the government of President Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Naseer Ahamad was elected to Parliament from the Batticaloa District as a nominee of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC). When he coolly walked over to the SLPP camp, the party moved the courts to brand it as ‘defection’ under the law and want him barred from continuing as MP. The courts have done precisely that, and already under t he law, the SLMC has got to replace him with the next in the list of preferential votes in Vanni district from the list of nominees for the 2020 elections.
It is to be appreciated that the Sri Lankan law provides for courts to ‘determine’ a defector, when approached. In larger democracies like neighbouring India, the law confers most powers on the Speaker/Chairman of the House concerned – either at the centre or in the state. They are political appointments, and their decisions are even more political, invariably landing in the courts, in multiple stages.
Fast-tracking the process
The court-ordered defection/anti-defection process in the country is thus more credible and transparent. Yet, starting the process bottom-up, from the civil court is time-consuming. If the polity is serious about it, and the post-Aragalaya public expectations still hold, then the law should be changed to fast-track the process.
Maybe, all cases of the kind should begin and end in the Supreme Court, where it belongs. It should be so in the case of members of the Provincial Councils (if and) when they are revived through popular elections. President Wickremesinghe has said that the PC polls won’t happen anytime soon, only after the elections to the presidency and Parliament, which he said would both occur next year.
It is then for the elected government at the time to fix the fate of the PCs, the incumbent already having violated the Supreme Court’s directives in the matter. Already, Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister under the predecessor Yahapalanaya government of which foe-turned-friend Maithripala Sirisena was President, had made a mockery of the PCs as constitutional institutions by innovating ways to delay their elections. Clearly, the then government leadership was afraid of losing those elections.
But that did not stop them from losing the successive presidential and parliamentary polls to their ceaseless infighting from within what they dubbed as the ‘Government of National Unity’ (GNU), which definitely it was not. The successor administration of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa should have conducted it as they hoped to sweep the PC polls as with the other two. However, the Covid first, and then the leadership’s overnight unpopularity leading to the Aragalaya protests and Gota’s exit, did in the PC polls.
Looked at from the court-ordered disqualification of Masthan, three to four dozens, or at times more of the majority SLPP members in Parliament could be hauled up under the law, one way or the other. Of course, it would then be for the courts to decide if they are ‘defectors’ or not, but the Damocles’ Sword may now be hanging over their heads more than ever, after the Masthan verdict.
Short trance
Of course, the Aragayala protests may have made past election results meaningless. But they are not useless, certainly for the political class. After letting the people have their song-and-dance at Galle Face Green for days and weeks, the nation’s well-entrenched polity effortlessly recovered the initiative from where they had left, as it the nation was through a short trance in between.
Rather, the way they have been going about it all since, as if nothing has happened in the previous year and nothing has been lost to them in the previous year and later, it would make one wonder if they were the ones who wrote the Aragalaya script and let ‘foreign hands’ and peripheral political left (both ideological and electoral) in the country take the blame for it all.
Under such a construct, one can further assume (amuse oneself) that inexperienced and even more Gota became the inevitable sacrificial lamb of the entrenched polity, and not a prized possession of the protestors, as the latter class still believes it to be. The more you sit back and look at the post-Aragalaya political developments, the more you will be convinced about such a possibility, to the point of it being probable, too!
Independent groups
The Parliament website still shows that the SLPP has 145 members. In reality, it is not so. There are three ‘independent’ (?) groups of members elected on the SLPP ticket. One of course is the official parent, SLFP, which humiliated itself by having to contest on the SLPP symbol. Barring Angajan Ramanathan from the Tamil Northern Province, all SLFP members were elected on the SLPP ticket. They wanted it so. Heading the list of course is the Yahapalanaya President, Maithripala Sirisena.
Because he was not accommodated in the government of predecessor President Got and incumbent Ranil, Sirisena wants this government too to go. Maybe, he has found post facto justification and reasons in price-rise, corruption, etc, etc, all of those charges that his government too had faced in its time.
Then, there are two independent groups of long-term associates of the parent SLFP, the breakaway SLPP and more so the Rajapaksas, who presided over the former, at least at two crucial, stage(s) in the nation’s post-Independence history, namely LTTE war and Aragalaya protests. One of course is that of eternal critics of every government where they do not have a voice, namely, the one led Quixotically by traditional left Vasudeva Nanayakara, peripheral left, Wimal Weerawansa, and yes, centre-right, Udaya Gammanpilla.
Then, there is the group of more moderate breakaway MPs of the SLPP, who are more ambitious than the other. Led by former minister G L Peiris and last year’s presidential aspirant Dullas Alahapperuma, they keep making noises. Having broken away from the Rajapaksas, they may now be embarrassed to go back ahead of the next parliament elections in particular. But can they join hands with the SJB Opposition? Or, can the SJB Opposition afford to have those around, and still claim that they want to end corruption in the country?
The irony of the time is that you can sleep with the Rajapaksas for long years and until the last moment, and then heartlessly blame them alone for whatever happened to the nation under their command. It happened with the Sirisenas and Rajitha Senaratnes of the world ahead of the 2015 presidential polls. They had their way.
More conscious
Today, post-Aragalaya especially, the voter may be slightly more conscious, if not as conscientious, than earlier. That means, the SLPP rebels, by whatever name they call themselves, may not be the voter’s favourite any time soon. If Aragalaya stir-up has awaken the voter a little more than usual, then even the SJB and its allies, may be in for trouble.
After all, they were part of the Yahapalanaya government and benefited from it, immensely. They split away not on principles and ethics, but owing exclusively to personal ambitions and personality clashes with entrenched Ranil in his UNP.
Today, it requires the SLPP leadership only to issue a three-line whip on any future parliamentary vote, to straighten out the two, or even three sets of rebels, including the ‘SLFP faction’ within Parliament. They vote against the will and whip of the party, and they could face ‘defection’ under the law.
In theory even more, the message could well be for President Wickremesinghe. Apart from the ‘SJB rebels’ in his company, he also has silent supporters from the SLPP, who would be forced to decide their own future if they were to violate a party whip. Leave aside some cabinet ministers and the rest, will it go all the way up to Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena is the question.
The left-leaning old buddy of President Ranil from their days in Royal College, Colombo – and school-bonding is a serious business in Sri Lanka as in the UK and elsewhere – he may have to choose between the latter and the long-time discredited ally in the Rajapaksas. Individually, the electoral hopesof one is worse than that of the other, only that one cannot prioritise, just now.
The possibilities are many. It includes the fact that President Wickremesinghe is now qualified to dissolve Parliament and cause fresh elections long before they are due – and the SLPP, among other sections of the polity, thinks they are ready for. And thereby hangs a tale!
(The writer is a policy analyst & political commentator, based in Chennai. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)
