By

C.A.Chandraprema

With each passing week, the stresses and strains within the yahapalana coalition that formed the present government are coming more and more out into the open. Last week, at a seminar at the OPA auditorium,  Dr Jayampathy Wickremeratne who is an advisor to President Maithripala Sirisena alleged that some people in the government were trying to destroy the president’s credibility by blocking the abolition of the executive presidency. Dr Nirmal Ranjith Devasiri, the spokesman of Ven Maduluwawe Sobitha’s National Movement for a Just Society, who spoke at the same seminar was more specific and pinpointed minister Champika Ranawaka as the person blocking the abolition of the executive presidency.

 Had the present government been composed of just Maithripala Sirisena on the one hand and the UNP on the other, it may have turned out to be a smooth partnership. In actual fact, these were the two principal partners on the yahapalana platform. Had the JVP joined the campaign directly as in 2010, they too could have staked a claim to being a principal partner. As it turned out, the JVP ducked the responsibility and the UNP was left holding the baby. Others like Champika Ranawaka, Rajitha Senaratne, and Hirunika Premachandra may have addressed meetings but the ground level work like manning the polling booths, organizing meetings, doing house to house campaigns etcetera was done by the UNP. They may have not been as energetic as the JVP, but they did their part and in any case the vast majority of the votes that Sirisena got were UNP votes. If the UNP now expects a free hand to govern, that is certainly their right.   

The whole point in doing politics is to look after the interests of those who elected you to power and in the case of Sirisena it is undoubtedly the UNP voter who elected him into power. Before being elected into power, the president spoke of the abuse of power under the Rajapaksas and his wish to dismantle the presidential system. He wanted to give more powers to parliament and the cabinet. If he simply did what he said he was going to do and gave the largely UNP government a free hand while taking a back seat, there would be no stresses and strains at all in the government. But as many yahapalana activists are now beginning to realize, there is a small group of people around President Sirisena who do not want him to relinquish presidential power so that they can use it for their own benefit. No doubt this small group played a part in his campaign, but certainly not a part that outweighed the role played by the UNP.

 If a handful of individuals who have very little votes are able to prevent Sirisena from fulfilling his obligations by his principle backer – the UNP, then there is a serious problem. The small cabal of desperate, voteless, politicians who have surrounded Sirisena may be telling him, “We are your friends, it is we who have your best interests at heart” and “We are doing all this for you.” But what becomes clearer with each passing day is that they are using Sirisena to ensure their own political survival. Chandrika Kumaratunga, Maithripala Sirisena, Champika Ranawaka are united in their resentment against the Rajapaksas on the one hand and their need to wield power on the other. Their desire to wield power is not really inconsistent with the UNP playing a leading role in the government because CBK, Maithripala Sirisena, Champika Ranawaka and the others are just individuals with no large followings or political parties. As such, there should be plenty to go around even if the UNP holds most of the portfolios in the government.

 The yahapalana platform was made up of one large party, the UNP, which was several times bigger than all the others put together, several minority community political parties, a few individual politicians who had cut themselves lose from the UPFA and a whole host of NGO activists. By and large it would appear that most are satisfied with roles they have got except for a few vote-less politicians around President Sirisena who see this as a not to be missed opportunity to seize the reins of supreme power.

 In the case of Maithripala Sirisena, there should be no problem in allowing RW and the cabinet to make most of the decisions. Even under his predecessor, Mahinda Rajapaksa, it was P.B.Jayasundera and Ajith Nivard Cabraal who made most decisions relating to the economy and Gota who made most of the decisions relating to national security. One need not labour the point. No president takes all the decisions by himself. All presidents have delegated most of their work to their cabinets anyway. What has complicated matters in this cause is that certain individuals around the president are trying to usurp the UNP’s role in the government for themselves. It need not be said that such a shift in authority will be a serious perversion of the mandate that the yahapalana government got. The question is what benefit will Maithripala derive by pandering to wishes of such individuals?

Since he is already the president, he has nothing to gain but everything to lose by giving ear to those who have no votes but are trying to double cross and marginalize the largest political party that gave him the mandate to rule. The vote-less conspirators on the other hand, have nothing to lose and everything to gain if they make use of President Sirisena’s power in their own power games. Sirisena would do well to stick to his pledges to the UNP because when he fell out with the Rajapaksas and cast himself adrift, it is the UNP that took him under their wing and went ahead with what looked like a losing battle. If he dumps the UNP, he will be branded as a man who betrays trust for his own political advancement.  

 In the meantime, what is President Sirisena to do with the captive SLFP which is now hanging like a millstone around his neck? The SLFP has only two uses – firstly, it is being used as a tool to block the abolition of the executive presidency so that President Sirisena can continue to enjoy the presidential powers that he said he was going to abolish. Secondly they can provide a parliamentary majority to continue for another year if the UNP pulls out of the government at the end of April. But the SLFP can be made use of in that manner only for another year at the very most. What happens after that is uncharted territory. How useful the SLFP will be is completely dependent on when the next parliamentary election is going to be held. If the UNP (and the JVP which also wants an early election) manages to force MS to dissolve parliament in April, any usefulness that the SLFP has will evaporate and it will become a clear liability for Sirisena. As things stand many in the SLFP feel that neither Chandrika Kumaratunga, Nimal Siripala de Silva nor Susil Premajayantha can ensure their victory at a future parliamentary election. They don’t seem to think that even president Maithripala Sirisena would be able to ensure their victory even if he personally leads the campaign for the SLFP.

 So the vast majority of the SLFP’s people’s representatives are engaged in a headlong quest to get Mahinda Rajapaksa back as the SLFP’s prime ministerial candidate. On March 17, MR met Western province SLFP local government representatives at the Abeyarama Temple in Narahenpita. That same evening, ITN broadcast Maithripala Sirisena’s speech to the SLFP’s electoral organizers held a day or two earlier. The contrast between the rousing and emotionally charged pro-Mahinda speeches made by the SLFP local government representatives at the Abeyarama (which this writer witnessed personally) and the tepid and indifferent manner in which President Sirisena’s speech was received by the SLFP electoral organizers couldn’t be greater. If Sirisena is to obtain a people’s mandate to govern through the SLFP, he will have to make MR the SLFP’s prime ministerial candidate as there is no other leader in the SLFP who has enough public support to take on the UNP.

 But there is no sign yet of MS agreeing to make MR the prime ministerial candidate of the UPFA. Apart from the president’s own antipathy to the Rajapaksas, it is the same CBK-Champika led cabal around him that is thwarting the UNP that is also blocking MR from being the PM candidate of the UPFA. So ironically, we have a situation where the UNP and Mahinda Rajapaksa are both being undercut by the same group. It is the UNP that provides the mandate to rule that Maithripala Sirisena enjoys at the moment. If the UNP is kicked out of the government, the SLFP which is now under the control of President Sirisena will be able to provide a parliamentary majority (though not a people’s mandate) to be able to continue for about a year.

Whether he likes it or not, MS will have to choose between entertaining MR as the PM candidate or retaining the UNP. He can’t dump both MR and the UNP and hope to have a mandate to govern. In any country there is something called a political divide and no politician can be with both sides simultaneously. As of now, President Sirisena is in danger of falling between two stools if he continues to needlessly thwart the UNP at the behest of a few vote-less politicians who think they can use the hijacked SLFP to take the UNP’s place. It is very clear that the vast majority of the hijacked SLFP have other ideas. In any case, the party that made Maithripala Sirisena president was the UNP and not the SLFP. A politician who turns his back on those who gave him his mandate to wield power will not only lose his moral right to govern but will also be mistrusted by everybody.

Courtesy:Sunday Island