Conventional wisdom has it that a winning president would post haste dissolve parliament – as AKD has pledged to do – to take advantage of the voter tendency to back the winning side.
by Manik De Silva
Cynics may well view President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s choice of a gas cylinder as his election symbol as the most titillating bit of news to emerge on Nomination Day last Thursday. With no fuel queue available as an election symbol, RW made the next best choice of a gas cylinder to remind voters of what he has achieved following the 2022 Aragalaya that dethroned the Rajapaksas and miraculously catapulted him from zero to hero. It was he, after all, who led the UNP to an unimaginable debacle of not a single elected seat, losing his own in the process. He returned to parliament after much foot dragging to occupy his party’s only National List slot. It was also he that ended the horrendous queues of that time and is no doubt anxious to remind the voters of that achievement.
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| People queue to buy liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders amid shortages of essentials in Sri Lankan capital Colombo on March 14, 2022 (Photo: Ishara Kokikara/AFP) |
Despite the extra-long ballot paper resulting from the record number of candidates, the majority of whom have been labeled dummies/proxies or just plain jokers, there are likely to be only four serious contenders. They are the incumbent president, the leader of the opposition, Anura Kumara Dissanayake leading the NPP/JVP and late entrant Namal Rajapaksa striving to keep the Rajapaksa name and the pohottuwa symbol alive in the country’s political picture.
How successful Namal will be in that endeavour remains to be seen. The president who still runs the government with the legislative backing of an SLPP majority has attracted shoals of defectors from the Rajapaksa party including several bad eggs. He will have to await the result to determine whether defectors can deliver votes to a winning or any other ticket. Sajith hasn’t done too badly attracting defectors and dissidents while AKD is on record saying there were several knocks on their door but applicants were politely rebuffed.
The reality is that incumbent parliamentarians, in deciding which horse to back, are looking at their own prospects at the general election that must be held next year at the latest. This election may be held earlier if the winner of the presidential election exercises his privilege of dissolving the legislature at any time of his choosing now that two and a half years after its first sitting in August 2022 has elapsed.
Conventional wisdom has it that a winning president would post haste dissolve parliament – as AKD has pledged to do – to take advantage of the voter tendency to back the winning side. So what the defectors and the alliances that have been/are being forged is all about the parliamentary election that will follow the presidential contest. One of the most recent defectors, Dr. Rajitha Senaratne who has hopped on to RW’s bandwagon saying “I love Sajith but I love the nation more,” made the revelation that Premadasa tried to persuade him to remain with the SJB by offering a National List seat to his son after the next parliamentary election! What RW has offered remains unsaid.
Senaratne, by his own admission, has been jumping from side to side like the proverbial frog. Although he last week mentioned the various sides he’s been on, there was no word on what the consideration was for changing sides. He’s said he was the leader of a student union during his university (dental faculty) days and then became involved with the SLFP. Realizing that socialism was not the answer for the country’s economic ills, he accepted the open economy and joined the UNP.
He left the greens with Karu Jayasuriya on the basis that Mahinda Rajapaksa was capable of winning the war. Then he left that government in 2015 persuading Maithripala Sirisena to do likewise because MR “did not live up to expectations.” In 2022 he saw how President Wickremesinghe brought stability to the nation and “I’m now here to support him.” Rajitha Senaratne is not the only such puduma satha (strange animal) in the present political spectrum. Prof. GL Peiris, despite his undoubted academic record (Rhodes scholar, law professor, vice-chancellor) and abilities would be a strong competitor to Senaratne in the crossover game. In fact, the numbers who have held office on both sides are so many that it’s difficult to count them.
Although there are anti-defection provisions in the law following the implementation of the proportional representation (PR) system, they have been difficult to enforce. MPs Harin Fernando and Manusha Nanayakkara who became ministers in the RW government crossing from the SJB, recently lost their parliamentary seats as a result but other defectors have not paid the price. Many MPs have become vulnerable on this score in recent weeks, but it is debatable whether their parties will press the issue with a parliamentary election due fairly soon. It may be convenient to ignore defections for the time being and deprive culprits of the party ticket next time round.
Last week’s arrest of the secretary and other officials of a formally recognized but unknown political party for allegedly accepting a Rs. 30 million bribe to nominate a runner at the forthcoming contest raises another question. The candidate was the whistle blower. His deposit to run, it was reported, was paid by the same worthy who was arrested! Remember that Diana Gamage entered parliament on the SJB National List? She then crossed over and became a state minister.
She “earned” her parliamentary seat by passing on a recognized political party she claimed she “owned” to Sajith Premadasa and Co. Sajith and his followers who had quit the UNP and needed a recognized party in a hurry to run at the last parliamentary election rewarded Gamage with a parliamentary seat in consideration for the arrangement.
It is urgent that ‘Sign Board’ political parties are taken off the register of recognized political parties at the elections office and the deposit bar for running at election is raised to deter spurious candidates from contesting for reasons of their own.
Manik De Silva is the Editor of Sunday Island, a Colombo based weekly published by Upali Newspapers Ltd.
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