UNP crisis: The fish rots from the head

By Dayan Jayatilleka

(May 16, Singapore City, Sri Lanka Guardian) By defeating a world class enemy, reunifying a long-sundered national territorial space and reasserting national sovereignty, Mahinda Rajapkse has proved himself a great leader. Having supported him as Opp leader, PM, Presidential candidate (when many were enamoured of the Ranil-Chandrika tugging of the federalist forelock before an arrogant and aggressive Prabhakaran), as wartime president, and then again at his re-election, I am content. But as a political scientist I worry. The concentration and centralisation of power, resources and access to both, in a single extended family network or clan, the discernibly oligopolistic contours of the regime (in the Aristotelian sense) considerably narrows available political space and options, which further constrict due to the decay of the democratic Opposition. This ‘freeze’ shuts off systemic safety valves. The revival of the Opposition is thus imperative for the reclaiming of political space, the restoration of equilibrium, the future of pluralist democracy and the ‘circulation of elites’ necessary for a healthy body politic.

The fish rots from its head. By what moral, ethical or political (as distinct from narrowly legal) right does Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe remain the leader of the United National Party? If he remains at the helm due solely to the centralist and authoritarian party constitution he installed in 1995, then by what moral right can he or the UNP accuse President Rajapakse as heading an authoritarian administration or centralising power?

We know the right that Mahinda Rajapakse has to the leadership of his party: he won an election in 2005 and is a magnet for votes; a Sinhala ‘super-hero’. We also know how Ranil became party leader. Prabhakaran killed everyone else who could have become leader, and then stopped. Mr Sirisena Cooray who sidestepped the Prime Ministership in favour of Ranil, made a Sirisangabo-ish gesture and handed him the post of Colombo Central organiser of the UNP, which is how he keeps getting all those votes in the city, though these too have dropped and he scored fewer than Wimal Weerawansa. This he followed up by handing over to Ranil’s UNP, the printing press that President Premadasa had set up in Colombo Central independently of the party as the latter was unsure as to the hands the UNP might fall someday. Ever the gentleman, Ranil repaid Sirisena Cooray for the triple favour by keeping him resolutely out of the leading circles of the party which he had joined at 16 and had been the Gen Sec of.

The secret of how Ranil has kept the UNP leadership so far is subject to interpretation. In a recent newspaper column Dr Wickramabahu Karunaratne, hardly a Sinhala chauvinist, accords a vital role to the Tamil and Muslim business houses in Colombo. The SundayLakbimanews, edited by Rajpal Abeynayake broke a story which brings in the dimension of gender preference and attributes Mr Wickremesinghe’s power of adhesion to a network, a freemasonry of a distinct orientation. Others attribute it to state patronage. I recall a story related to me by both SB Dissanaike and Mangala Samaraweera, to the effect that CBK, on her way to London in early 2000 for medical treatment after the Tiger suicide bomb attempt, warned them sternly against any support for the rebellion against Ranil brewing in the UNP at the time.

The Ranilist rearguard (no pun intended) is reduced to two arguments. Ranil won in 2001 and would have won in 2005 if not for Prabhakaran’s boycott. In 2001, the majority of the majority voted against Ranil but he was able to form an administration because the SLFP and JVP were rivals. Two years later, when they were together he lost. Today he loses even when they are apart once more! Laudatory reference to his 2005 performance (with CBK on his side) begs the questions as to why the boycott affected Ranil adversely but not Mahinda, and why Ranil relied on the votes of a Northern Tamil community under Prabhakaran’s iron control. Is it not revealing of how (and how foolishly) Ranil regarded Prabhakaran, while Mahinda did not? Why did the 1999 suicide bomb attack on Chandrika blow Ranil’s candidacy out of the water? It is because he had positioned himself in a manner that the Sinhala voter identified him as Prabhakaran’s proxy. Ranil never polled a majority of the Sinhala majority, never will and never can. In a demographic scenario in which the minorities are declining in absolute and relative terms, that renders him toxic to the UNP, and his retention as its leader, electorally suicidal.

The debate today centres on whether or not Sajith Premadasa or any aspirant for UNP leadership should make his move now, or should desist for now because the incumbent administration is too strong, and await the decomposition of the regime or the first hints of such. Those who urge inaction and passivity make several errors in their analysis. If Sajith moves now, it will not be against a strong Rajapakse regime, it will be against a weak Ranil Wickremesinghe one. Sajith assuming the party leadership does not mean he has to go up against the Rajapakses, simply because there is no election at which he has to do so for the next several years, except for the local authorities’ election next year. At that election he does not pit himself against the Rajapakses but has a chance of showing an improved performance on the part of the UNP under his leadership.

The second fallacy of the ‘take it slow and easy’ school is the same as that of those within the administration, who feel that the GOSL must not move swiftly to engage the ITAK leadership in talks and arrive at a speedy final settlement. The problem in both cases is that time is not on the side of he who waits. In the case of aspirants for UNP leadership, the error in waiting for too long is that the UNP may reach the point of terminal decay. One more disastrous showing – at the local government elections—under Ranil’s leadership and the party may be on its deathbed, incapable of revival even by Sajith. Indeed even this moment may be the one in which to emulate what DS Senanayake did when he left the Ceylon National Congress to form the United National Party, and SWRD Bandaranaike did when he split from the UNP to form the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

The third mistake of the ‘conditions are not ripe’ school is that this line flies in the face of the political history of the UNP as well as other democratic parties the world over. When JR Jayewardene and R Premadasa mounted their separate challenges to the UNP leadership, it was shortly after the defeat of 1970, when the United Front government of Madam Bandaranaike was most formidably popular. When the coalition govt had put down the 1971 uprising, was armed with Emergency powers and had promulgated a new Constitution, the UNP power struggle had reached such a decisive point that the party leader was one individual and the leader of the Opposition, another. By the way, the myth that Ranil Wickremesinghe is anything like his uncle JRJ is exploded by the fact that when the JVP insurrection broke out, and despite the defeated UNP having suffered post-election house burning and killings at the hands of Coalition supporters, JR argued that the UNP as a democratic party must unequivocally support the elected government of the day against an undemocratic attempt to seize power mounted by an undemocratic force. Contrast that with Mr Wickremesinghe’s line during the war that Chandrika and more decisively Mahinda Rajapakse’s governments had to wage against the Tigers! If Ranil had really been anything like JRJ, he would have had the latter’s intelligence and perspective to support the government and the state until that crisis was over, instead of leaving himself and his party wide open to the charge of treachery.

Ranasinghe Premadasa’s own struggle for change in the party leadership was waged despite the fact that he had been mentored in the party by Dudley Senanayake. His struggle was so uncompromising that he was jeered at when he attended Dudley Senanayake’s funeral. It is admitted even by his worse critics that Mr Premadasa was one who stood by those who helped him. What then happened in this case? Unlike those veteran UNP politicians who refuse to do their duty by the party and the country by replacing its leadership on the grounds that they do not wish to be disloyal, Mr Premadasa’s primary loyalties were to the country, the people, and the party (the party being but a vehicle to serve his project of serving the people). Personal loyalty came second to all these. (Gamini Jayasuriya, a gentleman of utmost integrity, will be listed by history as one of the greatest leaders the UNP and the country never had, simply due to lack of focused drive).

Let us recall a more recent example. The SLFP remained in opposition for seventeen years, and all any UNP candidate had to do was to remind the voter of the years of economic hardship under the closed economy and ask whether the voter wanted to take the risk. The voter always said no. This was the case as long as Madam Bandaranaike, the sari-clad symbol of the closed economy and the Queen of queues, remained as leader of the SLFP. That party became electable the very moment that the leadership changed and Chandrika, representing a new look, a new brand, took over. Had Mrs Bandaranaike been the candidate, DB Wijetunga could have contested her and the UNP would have won, but Chandrika was the game changer and no one outside of President Premadasa could have won that election; not even Gamini Dissanaike. Today’s UNP has to live down the memory of appeasement of the LTTE just as the SLFP had to live down the memory of shortages and queue. Just as the SLFP needed a new face at the top to symbolise that it had given up that past and that policy, and could reassure the voter, so too has the UNP to change the face at the top.

Even more importantly, regimes do not decline and governments do not weaken entirely of their own accord, but do so when an alternative is on the horizon, and even if they do weaken it is to no purpose if there isn’t a viable alternative to takeover. It is like a lofted shot in cricket: it becomes a catch only if there is a fielder in position or positioning himself fast enough to take it.

What is the record worldwide? The Republican dominance which set in under Ronald Reagan was unshakeable until the Democrats, piloted by a new caucus, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), pulled the party to a new centrism symbolised by Bill Clinton. He beat George Bush who had just won the Gulf War and on whose watch the US finally won the Cold War, with the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Then again in 2008, John McCain would have beaten the Democrats under Hillary (as the Sri Lankan government expected), if not for the Obama miracle. (In his latest ‘Reflections’ Fidel Castro ‘partly agrees’ with famous journalist Gay Talese’s May 5 statement that Obama is the summation of all that is progressive in US history over the past century). The long years of Thatcherite rule ended when Labour rebranded as New Labour under Tony Blair. After a decade and a bit in the wilderness, the British Conservatives became electable under David Cameron. Gordon Brown has announced his impending retirement so the party can elect a new leader and more easily cut a deal with the Lib Dems. So the record is clear: for a party to recover from decline and defeat, a new leader representing a new ideology and ideas is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition. It is however, an indispensable pre-requisite.

All talk of reorganization while Ranil remains UNP leader, is empty nonsense, because it will not have any credibility at the grassroots. The UNP voter knows that if the party is led by Ranil, it will surely lose. After all, Wimal Weerawansa polled more than the UNP leader did in Colombo, of all places – and he publicly said that he would do so before the election. There will be no time for the UNP to repair itself if it replaces its leadership only within sight of the next national election, several years down the road. Even DS Senanayake reborn would need time to rebuild the party. This means that the sooner the changeover takes place, the more time the party gains to re-organise. Sajith Premadasa, Kabir Hashim, Dayasiri Jayasekara – these are the faces of a newly emergent Sri Lankan society in the age of globalisation and the type of talent and sensibility needed for the modern, meritocratic multiculturalism without which Sri Lanka cannot get from the semi-stagnant periphery of the Asian economic miracle to stake-holder status at its vibrant centre. However, of those in the UNP, Sajith is the only one with a national (and international) ‘name recognition factor’ and ‘brand’. (Ruwan Wijewardene, a decent enough youngster, hasn’t dropped the Ranilist deadweight -- and a rebranding as the Uncle Nephew Party cannot make the UNP competitive with the nationalist, populist Rajapakse machine). Sajith is the only ‘engine’ in sight.

Ranil Wickremesinghe belongs to the parabolic Prabhakaran period of Sri Lanka’s history: the era of national humiliation and retreat, betrayal and weakness. Ranil is the most visible residue of the Prabhakaran era: his political partner. For Sri Lanka to exorcise the Prabhakaran saga and shadow, Ranil must go. His sole defender is Ravi Karunanayake whose disgraceful “Alimankada/Pamankada” remark will haunt UNP voters every time the TV footage is aired, which will be at every election for the next quarter century at least! For the UNP to be re-electable it must cut loose the personalities (Ranil-Ravi-Jayalath) who are most associated in the public mind with that disgraceful period and must cut away from that past. Losing the UNP leadership is the price one must surely pay for betraying the country, burdening the party and damaging the democratic system with that legacy of betrayal. Ranil is the problem. He cannot, therefore, be part of the solution.