MS-MR backchannel talks
May 23, 2015, 6:53 pm
The only thing surprising about the resignation of Ministers Mahinda Yapa Abeywardene, Dilan Perera, Pavithra Wanniarachchi and C.B. Ratnayake from the government last week was that there weren’t more than just four. The dissolution of the largely SLFP controlled local government institutions placed enormous stress on the SLFP ministers in the government as this was a clear case of giving up an advantage held by the SLFP for which they had no explanation to give the rank and file members of the party. Questions are being asked by ground level activists of the SLFP whether their party leader was acting in the interests of the SLFP or the UNP. In the middle of all this, it was major faux pas for president Sirisena to say publicly that he is not a ‘paramparika’ member of the SLFP and that his parents were UNP. Coming as it did on the heels of his dissolution of the LG councils, that statement is going to reverberate in the mind of SLFPers.
Last week, during what used to be War Hero’s week during the previous regime, former Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was hauled up for the first time before the FCID which Susil Premajayantha claims is a Gestapo like organization used to victimize political rivals. Gota had been interrogated about the nearly decade old MIG deal by a young woman ASP. Even Dr P.B.Jayasundera had been interrogated by an ASP about the CPC hedging deal. When we were young, an ASP was a senior officer but today, ASPs are often young inexperienced officers. One would think that when senior government servants are interrogated on highly technical matters, an officer with commensurate seniority and experience and also expert knowledge of the matter at hand should be assigned to the job.
The War Hero’s commemoration organized by the pro-Mahinda group was held last Monday at the Viharamahadevi open air theatre. The venue was packed to capacity with many left standing at the back and on the aisles. The crowd that attended this event was much bigger than that at the ceremony held at the same location on December 1 last year to sign the MOU between Maithripala Sirisena and the dozens of political parties and organizations supporting his candidacy. Madhumadawa Aravinda, one of the artistes who organized this event, told this writer that they had only four days to get things together including the day of the event. It was only after the cabinet spokesman announced that this year’s War Hero’s Day would be held as a ‘Remembrance Day’ that the pro-Mahinda artistes had decided to organize a separate War Hero’s Day commemoration.
That this event was organized by artistes and not politicians and further that it was done in great haste was evident. Aesthetics was given precedence over protocol. The large stage was almost empty with a section earmarked for the clergy and just five or six chairs on the stage for the dignitaries in attendance. Only former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Alavi Moulana, Dinesh Gunawardene, Wimal Weerawansa, Udaya Gammanpila and the mother of Hasalaka Gamini were accommodated on the stage. Everyone else had to sit in the audience. The organizers may not have known who else would be attending the event and some very senior politicians had to sit in the audience. Gammanpila, a provincial councillor was on the stage while his chief minister Prasanna Ranatunga was sitting in the audience. Weerawansa was on the stage while Gamini Lokuge and Bandula Gunawardene and several other seniors were sitting in the crowd.
Among those sitting in the audience were Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and former Navy Commander Wasantha Karannagoda as well. As we have commented on earlier occasions in this column, it’s remarkable to see how unimportant protocol is within the pro-Mahinda camp. In normal circumstances, the seating arrangements at last week’s Hero’s Day commemoration may have precipitated a mini-riot and Jackson Anthony, Madumadawa Aravinda and other organizers of the event would have been sporting bruises and bandages by now. But the spirit of the pro-Mahinda camp is such that these protocol issues which usually are life and death matters for politicians simply do not seem to matter at any gathering held to facilitate the re-entry of Mahinda into politics. In fact the protocol-less seating arrangement at the war heroes’ commemoration would not have been even noticed unless pointed out by someone like this writer.
What this commemoration demonstrated once again was the energy and momentum of the pro-Mahinda camp. They organized large gatherings on May 1, May 8, May 12 (LG representatives meeting) and the lates on May 18 not to speak of the meetings on the previous months, and all these events were well attended. There is no other political force in this country that can organize large events one after another in that manner. Furthermore, all this is in addition to the numerous gatherings attended by Mahinda Rajapaksa on his own in the temple circuit. It is therefore unsurprising that back channel talks between the MS and MR camps have recommenced. As of this moment the back these talks between MR and MS are at the stage that the UNP will be very familiar with - the day that the common opposition candidate arrived at Sirikotha and pledged to address Ranil as ‘Sir’ even after becoming president, and further lulled the UNP voter into acquiescence by relating stories of how this presidential aspirant addressed even Gamini Atukorala as Sir. This is the stage at which the target is persuaded to pull someone’s chestnuts out of the fire with MR as the cat’s paw this time instead of RW!
Mahinda as a cat’s paw
There is persuasion and coaxing going on these days for MR to lend his name to the SLFP/UPFA campaign without however being designated as the prime ministerial candidate. One of the arguments being put forward publicly by MS himself is that if MR is made PM candidate, the SLFP will not get any minority votes. The SLFP never got minority votes anyway and it has always been a largely Sinhala Buddhist party. Today even the UNP does not get minority votes despite its pro-minority political stand. At the Northern PC elections in 2013, the UNP got only 855 votes in the whole of the Jaffna district and 54 votes in the Kilinochchi district. At the Western PC elections last year, the UNP got only 28% of the votes in North Colombo, less than 46% of the votes in Colombo Central, less than 42% in Borella and less than 33% Colombo West. If that is the position of the UNP, what is the minority vote that MS is trying to attract to the SLFP by not fielding Mahinda? The minorities vote only for communal parties now.
Another excuse trotted out by MS is that the SLFP has never declared a prime ministerial candidate. Before the presidential system of government was introduced, everyone knew that the leader of the party that wins will be the prime ministerial candidate. Even after the presidential system was introduced, if a political party wanted to capture power at the parliamentary level in a situation where the presidency was held by the leader of a different political party, a prime ministerial candidate had to be shown to the people to convince the public that it was worthwhile voting for a different party. That is how Chandrika Kumaratunga became PM after defeating the UNP government in August 1994 and Ranil Wickremesinghe became PM after defeating the PA in December 2001. Likewise today when there is a UNP appointed president and a UNP government in power, the SLFP cannot make any headway in winning public confidence without putting forward a good PM candidate to challenge the UNP power structure.
Furthermore, with the passage of the 19th Amendment, a limited role for the prime minister has been defined in the constitution it is now imperative that all parties contesting the parliamentary election declare their prime ministerial candidates so that the people will know who will exercise the powers of the premiership after the election. Whether the people vote for one party or the other will depend to a considerable extent on the public image of the prime ministerial candidate in the future. The situation is similar to that of the provincial councils where the image of the chief ministerial candidate is important to win an election although MR found it convenient not to name them before the election was concluded.
The reluctance of MS to appoint MR as the PM candidate is obviously not due to any of the excuses trotted out but simply due to an antipathy to the Rajapaksas. In the final analysis it is MS who will have to fight his own demons. For example, he goes around saying that if he had lost the election he would be six feet under by now. Is that really the case? After Mangala Samaraweera fell out with MR, he has kept up a relentless propaganda campaign against the Rajapaksas through websites directly or indirectly controlled by him. Yet nothing untoward happened to Mangala after he parted company with MR. Quite on the contrary, Mangala very nearly ended up rejoining MR in protest at Ranil Wickremesinghe’s plan to contest the 2015 presidential election. If such was the case with Mangala, what makes MS think he would have been killed if he had lost the election? It is true that Sarath Fonseka was imprisoned after the presidential election of 2010. But that was because Fonseka kept threatening to put his political opponents behind bars during his election campaign. You can’t make public threats like that and not expect retaliation.
President R.Premadasa could not govern the demons in his own head with regard to Gamini Dissanayake and Lalith Athulathmudali and that destroyed Premadasa politically. That is a lesson that MS will have to learn from. This writer’s most enduring memory of Gamini Dissanayake is the way we first met. I had minimal contact with Gamini D though I had got to know UNP figures like Ranil Wickremesinghe, Lalith Athulathmudali and Ranjan Wijeratne much earlier. It was Herman Gunaratne who introduced me to Gamini at my request. One day we arrived unannounced at Gamini D’s Alfred Place house and were ushered into Gamini’s presence promptly. We had a long and interesting chat with him and it was only after we left the house that Herman G told me that this was the first time he had met or spoken to Gamini after falling out with him over the Maduruoya settlements affair which ended up with Herman G being kept in police custody and interrogated by the CID and him writing a book criticising Gamini Dissanayake for letting him down.
No one who was present at that meeting could have imagined that Herman and Gamini had officially been enemies and not on talking terms until we walked in through his door. When I expressed my amazement at the fact that Gamini could talk to him without the slightest hint of any residual resentment despite years of unresolved misunderstandings, Herman G’s response was "That is Gamini!" That was this writer’s first introduction to Gamini Dissanayake. It may be a bit too much to expect MS to be a Gamini Dissanayake, but a politician has to think first and foremost about politics and what conduces to his wellbeing and advancement as a politician. In President Sirisena’s case, that would be asking himself what conduces to his survival and advancement as the leader of the SLFP? The contra view would of course be what conduces to the success of his presidency and leadership of a national government.
One thing that we have to realize today is that the concept of the political party today has much less significance that it did in the era when the DUNF broke away from the UNP. At that time, the UNP as a party mattered because that was the name and the symbol and colour that won elections. In contrast to that, the SLFP party and symbol has not been used at an election for over a quarter of a century now. In fact if an attempt was made today to contest elections under the hand symbol, it would look like a quaint anachronism. The hand symbol is no longer familiar even to the larger body of SLFP voters. The body of SLFP voters have been voting for political alliances variously styled as the People’s Alliance or United People’s Freedom Alliance for over two decades now.
The SLFP activist base gave a convincing demonstration last May Day that they are only too willing to dump the official SLFP if it does not look after their interests. The resignation of four SLFP ministers last week underscores the same point. We have today reached a position like in 1946 or 1951 where a new national political formation is about to be born.
The birth of a new
political party?
Seeing the build up of the pro-Mahinda camp over the past few months has been an educative experience. Never in our lifetimes have we seen a phenomenon like this. Some have compared this phenomenon to the DUNF that split the UNP in the early 1990s. But there is no comparison between the DUNF and the pro-Mahinda group. The DUNF had some of the most dynamic individuals in the UNP, but it was hamstrung from the beginning because only a limited number of parliamentarians broke away with Lalith and Gamini. The DUNF was strong in the electorates represented by the defectors, but they were not that strong in other electorates. Besides, R.Premadasa was himself a forceful presence in the UNP and he had the team to be able to run both the government and the party without both Gamini and Lalith. Though the UNP was shaken to its foundations by the breakaway of the DUNF, the party still held.
The difference between the DUNF experience and the rise of the pro-Mahinda faction in the SLFP is that the pro-Mahinda faction has taken the entire bottom out of the SLFP. Support for Mahinda is much more widespread in the SLFP than support was for Gamini and Lalith within the UNP. The sympathy for Gamini and Lalith was not of such magnitude as to make the majority leave with them. But in MR’s case the majority of the SLFP appears willing to identify with MR rather than MS. There is a widespread demand for the return of MR by the average SLFP voter and this pressure from below is making SLFP people’s representatives at all levels of government take Mahinda’s side. That is an advantage that Gamini and Lalith never had.
Furthermore, while many UNP people’s representatives did not go so far as to resign and join the DUNF because they considered UNP nomination to be thing of value. But in Mahinda’s case, most of his supporters care not a twit about getting nominations from the SLFP. The Kurunegala meeting was held within 48 hours of President Sirisena officially turning down the request that MR be made the UPFA’s prime ministerial candidate. Less than two weeks before that, the 19A had re-imposed the two term restriction on presidential tenure. So by the time the Kurunegala meeting came around, Mahinda could not contest the next presidential election and he had just been denied the prime ministerial candidacy of the UPFA, but no less than 56 parliamentarians with uncounted numbers of PC and LG members joined that meeting along with a crowd that was large even by the standard set by the Nugegoda rally.
That is a kind of support that Gamini and Lalith could only have dreamt about. Much of this is caused by the widespread feeling within the SLFP that there is no one who can ensure the SLFP’s victory at the next parliamentary election other than Mahinda. Coupled to this is also the awareness of the stark contrast between the present state of the economy and the situation that existed when the Rajapaksas ran the country. Coupled to the lack of concern for nominations through the SLFP is the fact that due to the police investigations, the court cases and the imprisonment of UPFA activists, a whole new crop of ‘battle hardened’ and tempered politicians have been created in every district. The public profile of these politicians have also gone up in their districts owing to the struggle and they have become regional political colossi.
Mahinda Rajapaksa now has the kind of human material to build a new political party that D.S.Senanayke never had when he built the UNP and S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike never had when he founded the SLFP. Even J.R.Jayewardene didn’t have as tough, resilient and active a team as this in the run up to the 1977 general election. In 2005, when Mahinda came in for the first time, most of these individuals may have been in the SLFP but they had not evolved into what they are today. If MR does not forge this most forceful and dynamic of all Sri Lankan political forces into a new political party, that will be a waste of a human resource that no politician has ever had at his command in this country.
There are certain imperatives that will govern the politics of the coming weeks and months. The first imperative is that MR will have to look after those who have gathered around him at the risk of their political futures. What he cannot do is to ask those who followed him after turning their backs on Sirisena to accept the latter as their party leader and to allow him to determine their futures. There will have to be a political outfit where MR calls the shots and where he distributes the positions and largesse without any interference from a third party. Besides, after the dissolution of the SLFP LG institutions, it will be impossible for even Mahinda Rajapaksa to convince the SLFP voter that President Sirisena has the best interests of the party at heart and that they should contest elections under Sirisena.
Besides, one has to watch out these days for the political practice of serial double crossing. What happened to Ranil Wickremesinghe on the question of abolishing the executive presidency should loom large in the minds of SLFP/UPFA. The UNP would never have agreed to field a common candidate if not for the pledge to abolish the executive presidency. But MR would have been president if there was no common candidate. The UNP today is once again undergoing serious stress on the question of the dissolution of parliament. MR should be mindful of the fact that the UNP entrusted their destiny to an outsider and are now suffering unforeseen consequences. MR should ensure that he does not end up in the same boat by contesting the next parliamentary election through an outfit controlled by someone else.
