Does Kuveni’s Curse remain?
By N Sathiya Moorthy
The figure is still low yet for ten per cent of Sri Lankans to indicate a preference for authoritarian rule does not augur well for the nation’s democracy, which is already under multiple pressures. The continuing economic crisis, which some experts say could push the nation back to a 2002-like situation is only one of them, but a more visible and consequential one at that.
Yes, the poll by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), Colombo, points to a sharp rise in those desiring authoritarianism compared to the worst-ever democratic crisis of 2015-19, when the Yahapalayana government – as measured in 2018, or six years before the present. Whether the CPA finding can be related to the periodic findings of the Institute of Health Policy (IHP), which says JVP’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) is the preferred presidential candidate is for expert psephologists to comment upon.
That way, for former President Chandrika Bandaranaike (CBK) to be quoted as saying that she was ‘fed up with politics’ is only a reflection of the general perception of the nation’s mood – more so after the unprecedented Aragalaya protests that promised much without promising anything, and yet has left behind a feeling of dejection in a vast majority of the population. The continuing price rise and inflation, and also the simultaneous loss of real income still even two years after the economic crisis may be the cause, but the people too are to blame for their wrong assumptions that one time – and wrong choices, all along.
The question still arises if there was a better choice any time since Independence, as electoral politics in the country veered towards the sophisticated westernized way of a two-party system that did not provide elbow room for a third force or front. Thus, when a JVP was born in the already polarized southern political arena in the mid-sixties, it could have happened only in a bloody way.
Even before Independence, you had a Tamil party, which got to be slowly but surely replaced by the ITAK and a multitude of breakaway parties and reunited ‘united liberation fronts’ in their time. If all of it led to Tamil youth militancy, and an ethnic war under LTTE’s agies, that too had been written into the script. There was no escaping ‘Kuveni’s Curise’, if all these were so. But the Aragalaya and after-effects have only shown that the ‘Curse’ remains and has not been redeemed yet, as the nation would have hoped for.
Impossible alliance
In the overall context, ‘ruling’ SLPP founder Basil Rajapaksa’s call for all four major ‘national parties’ (?) to come together on a national platform, for the betterment of the people deserves independent evaluation. According to him, his SLPP and the JVP, two parties with nation-wide organizational structure, the SJB and President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s UNP should come together. He does not seem to have used the term ‘national government’ or ‘Government of National Unity’ as the Yahapalayana leaders said after winning the presidential polls in 2015. But that is what he seems to be having in mind.
It is an impossible alliance even before it could be thought about. The JVP’s mood and methods are well known. SJB’s Sajith Premadasa too has said it for the n+1 time that he would not do business with President Ranil Wickremesinghe from the parent UNP, which is now a poor shadow of itself. His observations assume immediate relevance as Basil has also said that Ranil was the best candidate to be President. Yet, he too does not commit the SLPP to supporting Ranil as their common presidential candidate.
Maybe, he thinks the party has to go through the processes before making its decision known. Maybe, there are wheels within wheels within the huge SLPP apparatus where the generational gap is showing more than any time in the past. That includes Basil’s own perceived differences with nephew Namal, son of elder brother and two-term President Mahinda Rajapaksa. If reports were to be believed, there was mutual discomfiture between the two even when Mahinda was President.
That is only for starters – of the SLPP sorting out its internal differences before anyone from the Rajapaksa clan talking about a ‘national coalition’. Remember how after the end of the LTTE war the Rajapakas themselves pooh-poohed suggestions for a national government as they were then confident of a sure-victory. Today, they are not sure if their presidential candidate, if fielded, would be able to obtain even a fraction of Mahidna’s famed 40-plus per cent committed vote-share.
What matters even more is for Basil to find someone to facilitate the emergence of a national front of the kind he has talked about. In doing so, he has of course left out political parties that represent the three ethnic minority communities, namely, the Sri Lankan Tamils, Upcountry Tamils and Muslims, both Tamil-speaking and others.
One may even have to ask Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith if he wants the Sinhala-speaking Catholics to be counted in as a separate ‘ethnic group’, even if not sanctioned under the Constitution at present. He has already made an issue of the ‘missing 1500 pages’ from the report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Easter blasts (2019), in the thumb-sticks copy handed over to them.
Cart before the horse
Still, it is anybody’s guess why Basil, in his Sinhala language Sirasa TV interview, talked about parliamentary elections preceding the presidential polls – rather, putting the cart before the horse. This is against the grain of all past behaviour of every president in office. Their conclusion was that they needed to ensure / re-ensure their place in the sky first so that they and they alone will be in a position to distribute parliamentary ticket within their party and government. This was believed to be the thinking of President Mahinda when he sought and won his first re-election bid in 2010, but became over-ambitious and lost it five years hence, in 2015.
Basil’s argument for the parliamentary poll preceding the presidential election is not bereft of pragmatism and logic. As he points out, people tend to vote for the party and candidates of the president-elect, or the new President as the case maybe without giving it any serious thought. True as it maybe, this alone has ensured political stability at the level of Parliament through the past years. Suffice is to point out that even without it all, the PR system of election has introduced multiple possibilities that tend to keep governments on tender-hooks or force Team President, or his rivals to engineer defections from the other side, promising everything by the presidency.
There is the other cunning possibility which an equally shrewd Wickremesinghe would not have missed already. It would not be surprising if he had already thought out the Basil kind of possibilities. Though he did not say so, Basil’s proposal for the parliamentary polls to precede the presidential election comes with a hidden clause. It’s the reverse of what past Presidents had done. That is to say, if in the company of the SLPP, even if others did not join, Ranil won the presidential polls – then, he and he alone would be the boss, and would manipulate political realignment in a way that would give him the controlling power ahead of the parliamentary elections – particularly in matters of alliance-formation, seat-distribution and more.
Thereby hangs yet another tale, isn’t it?
(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54
@nsathiyamoorthy.com)
