By

C.A.Chandraprema

As far as provincial elections go, the UNP seems to be doing much better in Uva than at any previous election since 2005. Due to the much spoken of violence in the Moneragala district, the impression has been conveyed to the rest of the country that the government is facing an uphill struggle in Uva. The mere fact that such an impression has been conveyed to the rest of the country is in itself a major triumph for the UNP.

All this while, the impression that everyone in the country had was that the UNP just could not face the UPFA at any election. Now thanks to some thugs who have been burning down so called ‘campaign offices’ of the opposition in the dead of night, the entire country thinks the government needs to resort to thuggery to win in Moneragala. The government for its part has been trying to say that the opposition has been burning down their own ‘campaign offices’ to garner sympathy.

Anybody familiar with elections knows that this too happens quite often.But what is happening in Moneragala is different. Because a member of the Rajapaksa family is involved various boorish types from outside the district are trying to score brownie points by burning down these ‘campaign offices’ in the night so as to convey the impression that they are doing everything possible to see that Sashindra Rajapaksa comes out on top. With friends like this, no government needs enemies.

The problem that this government has is that there are too many lower level politicians vying to be noticed by the ruling family and have no way of doing so except by such means. These so called campaign offices that are being systematically destroyed are nothing but polythene sheets stretched over a framework of sticks and destroying them does nothing to discourage the opposition.

On the contrary, the destruction of these structures which cost only a few hundred rupees each gives the opposition parties publicity worth millions. The TV channels televise the scene and interview people and the party concerned gains much publicity and even sympathy in the process. If anybody in the government actually believes that the opposition was systematically setting fire to their own campaign offices, then government candidates should do the same so that everybody ends up at the same level.

These campaign office burnings shows once again how an unassailable government can be brought low by a few fools looking for ways to curry favour with those who wield power. At the last PC election in 2009, the UNP got only 15% of the vote in the Moneragala district. At the parliamentary elections held in 2010, they got slightly more at 18%. But now, thanks to the destruction of these structures of polythene and sticks the whole country thinks that the government is struggling to retain control of the Moneragala district!

The SLFP hierarchy should take a long hard look at what is happening in Moneragala. The burning of these campaign offices has harmed the image of the SLFP more than it has harmed or intimidated the opposition. Leaving aside the intimidation of the opposition, this has given them a massive boost.

Today, people are talking in terms of Sashindra Rajapaksa being unable to come out on top without a campaign of violence and intimidation to help him win. The story going around is that Sashindra is inaccessible and unavailable even to SLFP politicians and voters and that it will be an uphill struggle for him to retain the number one slot in the Moneragala district.

Some say that he is downright lazy and that his inaccessibility is due to sloth. There is also the talk that he has done absolutely nothing for the Uva province. All this shows how a little bit of unnecessary violence by hangers on seeking to curry favour can queer the pitch for a politician.

Those who know Sashindra Rajapaksa know that he is a pleasant easygoing type who always looks genuinely pleased to see you. This writer sees him on and off at the Kataragama Maha Devale and easy relationship he has with those who come to see him (which this writer has personally witnessed) sits oddly besides these accusations of inaccessibility. We have of course heard many sad stories of the sons of successful politicians ending up as disasters in politics.

In fact it is only very rarely that the son of a successful politician has turned out to be a successful politician in his own right. Looking at some offspring who have entered politics on the shoulders of their fathers, one is almost surprised that otherwise successful politicians would fail to see that their sons are not cut out for a career in politics and that by bringing their sons into politics they have ended up ruining their own reputations.

What seems to happen very often is that the wives of politicians who would like to see their son becoming an ‘amathithuma’ like daddy, persuades the politician to bring the son into politics even though he would be better suited for some other career. Every successful politician is a hard worker, who likes interacting with people and can tolerate the idiosyncrasies of the village voter.

If one is unable to work hard or interact easily with the hoi polloi then one should not be in politics. Every politician should have an accurate assessment of whether his son or daughter is cut out for a career in politics. But when you examine Sashindra from that point of view, from the outside at least, there is nothing to show that he is not cut out for a career in politics. On the contrary, his bubbly personality would give one the impression that he is even more suited to a career in politics than his more reserved father Chamal!

Some claim he is lazy and that he has done absolutely nothing for the Uva province. It need not be stressed that sloth is fatal to a politician. There are examples of otherwise pleasant and approachable and wise politicians falling by the wayside simply because of their slothful lifestyles.

If you are asleep in bed when you should be meeting people, then that’s the end of your career. This is one area where this writer has no direct knowledge of Sashindra’s conduct. Even if he is the very epitome of sloth however, he should get just carried along by the work done by the unarguably energetic older generation of Rajapaksas. The SLFP as a party, never did any constructive work until the Rajapaksas took office. Historically, the SLFP has been a destructive force in economic and political terms in this country.

If not for the Rajapaksas, the SLFP would still be what it always was. The entire SLFP is being dragged along by just one family. Since three or four members of one family are carrying a good number of other SLFP politicians on their shoulders, one is at a loss to understand how one more SLFP politician in the form of Sashindra is going to make any difference. He too should be able to ride on the shoulders of his uncles the way most of colleagues in the party seem to be doing. Even if he has not personally done anything for Uva, the various programmes initiated from Colombo alone should suffice to see him through.

Among the other stories that this writer has been hearing from Uva is that while Sashindra is inaccessible and doing nothing, his private secretary who serves as his interface with the public is a ‘boru karaya’. That too strikes a discordant note. Sashindra’s private secretary Ranjan Bandara was formerly the private secretary to Karu Jayasuriya and is well known to this writer. He is as dedicated and dynamic a private secretary as any politician could wish to have.

He may be uttering a few lies and half truths here and there – it is impossible to be a private secretary to a politician without uttering a few lies but what this writer is unable to accept is that he would bluff and bamboozle people all the time. The chief minister’s office carries with it certain powers and it just cannot be accepted that an experienced private secretary like Bandara would not use those powers to solve the problems of the people who come to him.

Everybody in the UNP that this writer has spoken to in recent days seems to be entertaining hopes of a massive turnaround in the UNP’s fortunes at this election. More disconcertingly, some members of the government also seem to share that view!

The upbeat mood of the opposition seems to have rubbed off on the diplomatic missions as well. Everybody seems to think of Sashindra as the weakest link in the Rajapaksa chain. The American embassy in Colombo for example commissioned a survey which has forecast the following result for Uva.

Badulla District

Total votes cast 457,000 (79% of registered voters)

UNP – 229,000 (50.1%) 10 seats

PA – 181,000 (40%) 7 seats

JVP – 27,800 (6.1%) 1 seat

Moneragala District

Total votes cast 239,000 (78.8% of registered voters)

PA – 108,000 (45.1) 8 seats

UNP – 90,000 (39%) 5 seats

JVP – 25,000 (10.4) 1 seat

And it’s not just the American embassy either. Sane rational people, who have years of experience in election campaigning and have studied voting patterns at elections have told this writer quite confidently that the UNP will win in the Badulla district and lose the Moneragala district only by a small margin.

Some predict an outright victory for the UNP in the Haputale electorate in the Badulla district. (Nobody has however told this writer categorically that the UNP will form the next Uva provincial council.) There are many incongruities in these stories that we have been hearing. Even though a victory for the UNP is being predicted only in the Badulla district, there is no violence or destruction of ‘campaign offices’ in that district and everybody is talking about how good things are in that district in comparison to what is going on in Moneragala. So we see that none of the violence reported at this election has been with the motive of clipping Harin Fernando’s wings.

Incongruously, all the violence seems to be concentrated in the Moneragala district which everybody says the government is going to win anyway. If the government is going to win in Moneragala anyway, then why all the violence? The violence apparently is to reduce votes for the opposition. But if that is the goal, it is better to reduce the votes going to the opposition the Badulla district instead of the Moneragala district because the number of voters and PC seats is much higher in the Badulla district. Besides, the opposition’s chief ministerial candidate is also in Badulla.

The reason why all the violence has been concentrated in Moneragala is thought to be due to the government thrashing about to preserve Sashindra’s position. However one fails to understand how his position will be safeguarded by attacking the UNP and the JVP. If Sashindra’s position as number one in the district is to be safeguarded it will have to be in relation to the other candidates in the ruling party so those who wish to see Sashindra getting the highest number of votes should actually be attacking UPFA campaign offices belonging to other candidates. But we don’t see that happening. So there are many unexplained incongruities in the stories that we have been hearing.

Harin’s superstardom

In any event, we must look at the election forecast made by the team commissioned by the American embassy in the light of the results of past elections. At the provincial council elections held in 2009, the UNP got an overall percentage of just over 22% of the votes cast in Uva. In the Badulla district where the UNP has been traditionally strong, they got close to 26% and in Moneragala district where they have always been weak, they got only 15.5%.

If we compare that with the forecast of the American embassy, we see that the UNP will have to increase their vote by nearly 30 percentage points in both districts! At the Western and Southern provincial council elections held earlier this year, the UNP got 26.5% of the vote in the Western province and 25.7% in the Southern province. Between that time and now, absolutely nothing has happened vis a vis the UNP that would justify any hopes that they would be able to make such a radical turnaround as anticipated by the American embassy forecast.

The only new thing that has happned is that Harin Fernando resigned from parliament to contest the Uva PC election as the UNP’s chief ministerial candidate. In the Western and Southern PC elections, the UNP did not have a chief ministerial candidates worth the name. The UNP did try to persuade some individuals to resign from parliament and contest the Western and Southern PC elections as the UNP’s chief ministerial candidates, but there were no takers. So the only factor that is different is that the UNP has a good CM candidate in the Uva province in the form of Harin Fernando.

If Harin is able merely by coming forward to contest this election to change the UNP’s fortunes so radically, and make the UNP’s vote leap upwards by no less than 30 percentage points between the last the present PC election, this is the leader that the UNP has been looking for! Leaving aside the 30 percentage points, if Harin Fernando is able to increase the UNP vote by 15 percentage points, everyone in the UNP should rise up as one and throw both Ranil Wickremesinghe and Sajith Premadasa out and make Harin the leader of the UNP!

One of the sane rational people that this writer spoke to over the past several days even said that the UNP was set to win the Haputale electorate. The UNP got only 20% of the vote in the Haputale electorate at the Uva PC election held in 2009. At the 2010 parliamentary election they got 33.5%. At national elections, the voting percentages improves for the opposition and that explains the increase in the vote the UNP got between the 2009 Uva PC election and the 2010 parliamentary election.

While there may be differences in the voting percentages between national level and localized elections, between two elections at the same level, there will usually not be a radical change in the voting percentages. That is why J.R.Jayewardene introduced the proportional representation system in the first place. Even if we take the 2010 parliamentary election, where the UNP did much better in the Badulla district than at the Uva PC election held in 2009 due to the national/local factor, still the UNP got only 32% as against the UPFA’s 58%. Even from 32% it’s still a steep climb to get more votes than the UPFA. Moreover, this time, the UNP has to win in the Badulla district without any of the Indian Tamil political parties supporting them. At the 2009 Uva PC election and the 2010 parliamentary election, the UNP had the benefit of having P.Digambaram on their side contesting on the same list. Today they have to win without him and that makes the task doubly difficult.

If Harin Fernando is to win the Badulla district, he will have to do so with only the Sinhala Buddhist vote. Since 2005, that has been the holy grail of the UNP – winning back the support of the Sinhala Buddhist vote! If Harin now wins in Badulla without the support of any of the Up-country Tamil parties, and only on the Sinhala Buddhist vote, he would have achieved at the district level what the UNP so badly needs to achieve at the national level. And he would have done so in a situation where the UNP continues to be labeled as an anti-national party in the rest of the country! If Harin Fernando is able to win the Badulla district even with all the odds stacked against him, then he will be Sri Lanka’s newest political superstar.

Whatever the outcome of the Uva election may be, the UNP has certainly made headway in one respect – there is now no talk of all parties uniting to take on the UPFA. The UNP on its own is now seen as the only challenger to the ruling coalition and that in itself is a giant leap forward for them.

Courtesy:Sunday Island