By

Vishnuguptha

“You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.”
~Ernest Hemingway

Proportional Representation (PR) system introduced along with the passage of the 1978 Constitution changed the way in which elections are conducted in Sri Lanka forever. Although it was introduced into our body-politic by J R Jayewardene with the singular objective of sustaining the United National Party (UNP) in power for almost ever, ever since its defeat in 1994, the Party has been a cruel victim of the system that was introduced to protect its ‘majority-character’. I call it ‘majority-character’ because the UNP, barring the electoral debacle in 1956, always managed to maintain its voter base fairly consistently from 1947 onwards at each election and it could boast of being the strongest single political party. Even in 1970 with the sound beating it suffered at the hands of the SLFP-led coalition, UNP as a single political entity still managed to secure the highest number of votes at the General Elections.

This performance of the UNP at a very consistent level convinced J R that on the basis of a proportional representation system, the UNP could not be ousted from power forever. Little did J R realize that Premadasa who succeeded him as leader of the UNP and President of the country had other ideas. The great restraint that J R exercised, while being the Executive President, despite some abuses of power both by his Ministers and himself, was done away with to a very great extent. The real and great powers that were invested in the office of Executive Presidency were not only used with utter disdain to the Office of Presidency but the disregard Premadasa showed towards his Ministers and officialdom was sometimes callous and outright uncivil. Yet, the great politician he was, Premadasa was clever enough to read the pulse of the ordinary men and women and played populist politics to the hilt and he made the entire country along with the Cabinet of Ministers dance to the tune of it too.

And the PR system made sure that the UNP was returned at each of the local elections with comfortable ease minus the finesse that was the hallmark of the J R era. The ‘Stalinist’ approach Premadasa adopted towards his opponents and friends alike ultimately took its toll and the departure of the best of the UNP at the time, Gamini Dissanayake, Lalith Athulathmudali and G M Premachandra more or less sealed the deal for upstart politician Chandrika Bandaranaike. After the ascension of Chandrika to the ‘throne’, an extremely disheartening phenomenon took over the mindset of the Party structure and its players.

Twenty years of rotting away in the Opposition benches in turn created an utterly negative psyche that contributed to a fast-vanishing sense of positivity and creative politicking. Trapped in this unconstructive scenario, all UNP candidates, barring none, engaged in a battling for the ‘Manápes’ instead of trying to defeat the opposing candidate in his electorate. The electorate has been taken out of the electioneering equation with the introduction of the PR system and a larger and a more diverse unit- the district- came into play that created a lopsided setting, diverting the attention of the candidate from the immediacy of his area of authority, the electorate.

The resulting process has given birth to the current chaotic and absolutely energy-sapping exercise of hunting for ‘Manápes’ in areas that don’t ‘belong’ to the candidate. In the old ‘first-past-the-post’ system, the candidate got elected to a specific electorate with a specific population and a defined geographical area. He or she could not get into Parliament without ‘defeating’ the opponent from the opposing party within this electorate. The ‘winning’ tag that was attached to the Parliamentarian was replaced by the ‘elected-from-the-district’ badge. The system that J R created in order to make his party last forever in power has instead got it bogged down to a stagnating pool of muck and mess. The MPs so elected became district representatives, ignoring their central domain of influence and the electorate, their attention, their money, man power and priorities got so messed up that they began to think in terms larger than they could imagine to grasp. Their scope became larger than they could envisage. A slow but definite sense of ‘national’ importance enveloped their parochial thinking.

The MPs became too large for their own puny shoes. Those who could not get into Parliament even in these uncompetitive circumstances started dreaming about becoming Presidents and Prime Ministers. Provincial Councils and Pradesheeya Sabhas became nurseries for Parliamentarians. Parliament became a breeding ground for higher offices. However, all these day-dreams and fantasies remained just that- day-dreams and fantasies, while the Party lost election after election. The neglect of the small area of authority took its toll. And the Party’s debacle became almost irreversible.

The false notion created in the minds of all UNP MPs that they are legitimately elected to Parliament by virtue of defeating the opposing UPFA/PA candidate took grip of their mindset and they became quite content with that situation. How they entered Parliament actually was by getting more votes from the collective block of UNP votes which turned out to be either stagnant or decreasing. Their opponents were their own UNP candidates, not the opposing UPFA candidates. They fought among themselves and managed to secure more ‘Manápes’ than their weaker colleagues. And they are very happy to dwell in that illusory bubble.

The real test of a good candidate is how he or she fares when their Party has lost. In 1956, no newcomer came into Parliament from amongst the eight UNP MPs elected. Although E L B Hurulle was a newcomer and won the Horowpathana electorate, the non-UNP vote there was divided between two candidates and the sum total of the non-UNP vote was greater than that of the UNP vote. In 1970, only Gamini Dissanayake secured a victory as a newcomer although S B Herath who was newcomer himself won the Hiriyala electorate again mainly due to the fact that two candidates from the SLFP-led coalition split the non-UNP vote. The test of a true candidate who could muster a personal vote, independent of the party is when the voters switch parties just to cast their vote for the candidate of their choice.

Among the current crop of UNP Politicians, none can claim that they won an electorate when the Party lost, except perhaps Sunethra Ranasinghe and Jayantha de Silva, the two electorate organizers of Dehiwela and Borella respectively. In the 2010-Presidential Elections, both these seats secured a majority for General Sarath Fonseka. One can hardly qualify the other Colombo Municipal area-seats such as Colombo North, Colombo Central, Colombo West and Colombo East where the UNP has always been successful whatever the political circumstances were. In the Kandy district too, General Fonseka won the Mahanuwara seat but the ethnic composition of the electorate speaks quite loudly for that, as the votes are almost equally divided among the three communities.

Right along, in the last twenty years, the UNP candidates have been fighting among themselves. Instead of selecting the target from the opposing political party, they all managed to secure some block of votes from the Party’s losing percentage of votes. That is no victory at all.

One can argue whether the same does not apply to UPFA candidates too. Yes, it does. But as one would observe the periods between ’77 and ’94 and since ’94, it is obvious that when one is in power it is quite difficult to dislodge the incumbent unless there is a game-changing event. There was a game-changer in ’94- the assassination of Gamini Dissanayake. It’s time the Parliamentarians and electoral organizers of the UNP started identifying their real foe, not among its own but the opposing UPFA Parliamentarian.

The writer can be contacted at vishnuguptha2012@gmail.com