By

Dr.Dayan Jayatilleka

First of a Two -part Article

Whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad, said the old line. I’d modify that and say that whom the Gods wish to destroy they first render stupid.

There are two sorts of folks in Sri Lanka who are being driven stupid so to speak. One consists of politicians, ideologues and intellectuals who are pro-government and of liberal persuasion. The other are the same categories of persons who adhere to the Tamil nationalist cause.

Let’s review the first lot, first. The liberals earnestly wish that Ranil and Maithri renew their political marriage vows, and believe that the UNP and SLFP can together defeat the rising Rajapaksa tide. They also wonder whether Mahinda Rajapaksa can be inveigled into supporting either the 20th amendment or the new Constitution—and thereby stop the Gotabhaya surge.

These folk just don’t stop to ask themselves why they add the UNP and SLFP votes together when a sizeable faction of the SLFP has defected with the blessings of President Sirisena. Obviously the SLFP vote or most of it, has to be subtracted from the Government’s vote and added to the Opposition’s, and President Sirisena’s own reading of the situation has to be deduced from his remarks to the SLFP Central Committee. He sure doesn’t look like he’s heading into a tighter embrace with Ranil’s UNP.

The Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim liberals are not merely stupid; they are utterly insincere. If they really wanted to keep the UNP and SLFP together they’d be demanding Ranil’s resignation and his substitution as UNP leader by Sajith Premadasa, who is the only one who would be acceptable to the restive SLFP. But the liberals don’t want that either and won’t call for it. Furthermore, if they wanted to stop Gotabhaya they’d be calling for the full re-enfranchisement of the only man who can do so—Mahinda Rajapaksa. But they aren’t doing that.

So they want to retain Ranil as PM, UNP leader and candidate and want the SLFP and president Sirisena to stay solidly with such an UNP, and they also want the 20th amendment and or the new Constitution to go through! How crazy can you get?

There are two reform proposals on the agenda, both of which are likely to be rejected and rightly so. The two proposals are the JVP’s 20th amendment and the government’s draft constitution. There are many reasons that rejection is likely. One is timing. The mass mood is for change, but not of Constitutional reform. The mood is one of regime change; of rejection of the government. The one thing that the people are sure of is that an exit ramp is coming up next year—that of the Presidential election. There is absolutely no appetite for risking that exit by tinkering with the Constitution, which might open the window to a postponement of national elections. If the executive presidency is abolished, the next election will be the parliamentary election of 2020 and not the presidential election of 2019. There is no way the masses will welcome such a deferral. There is also no way that any Opposition party will be able to be seen to accede to such a postponement of the day of reckoning with this government.

The second factor that is related to mass mood and mistiming of initiatives, is that both proposals, the 20th amendment and the draft Constitution, entail a weakening of the state and the center of power. The proposals if implemented will go beyond the multi-polarity that has set in due to the 19th amendment. The mass mood is for the restoration of order through a strong state and leadership. No Opposition party which hopes to win the next national election can be seen to support a further weakening of the State.

Not even the justifiable desire to see Mahinda Rajapaksa return to lead the country—a sentiment I share in no small measure– will enable an Opposition party to collaborate with a reform proposal that weakens the state. Sinhala society already sees a win-win solution in which Mahinda is a powerful, highly popular and respected Prime Minister, while the System remains undiluted. That win-win solution is one of MR as PM and any one of his nominees as the presidential candidate (with Gotabhaya a favorite in many, but not all circles).

It is the acme of stupidity to present the Opposition with a choice of the 20th amendment or the new Constitution, in the hope that factional rivalry will force it to choose. On the contrary, all the opposition has to do is to stay put, while the government’s unpopularity does the rest. Thus the boot is on the other foot. It is the UNP and the liberals who have to choose.

For those liberals in particular and the UNP in general, whose very worst case scenario is Gotabhaya as President, there is a choice on the table; and only one: revise the 19th amendment now, so as to allow Mahinda to run for President, or face Gotabhaya next year.

The Establishment also has a second choice to make: run Sajith Premadasa as UNP candidate, adopt a Premadasist platform, and make it a race, reducing the time lag for bounce-back as a strong opposition, or run with Ranil, and keep the party out of reach of the country’s top national leadership post for another quarter century, making it a half century in all.

Frankly, from my point of view, the only real debate that is happening now is one that is taking place slightly beneath the surface, in the ranks of the Opposition. And that is with regard to the possibility of changing the parliamentary balance before the presidential election and moving Mahinda to center–stage (which is my overwhelming personal preference) or, if it fails, the best choice of candidate. What the Government says, thinks or does is of less importance because this is a government that is doomed to defeat.

Within the Government it is President Sirisena who still has options and he has cannily exercised them by permitting the SLFP’s Sixteen rebels to move into Opposition and open a second front against the UNP. The ranks of the opposition have now broadened and this gives both Mahinda and Maithri more options than Ranil has with his belated Constitutional moves by proxy.

The UNP has to face the facts. The SLFP has been in office and more strikingly, has held the highest office for quarter century. The SLFP has produced three presidents: Chandrika, Mahinda, and Maithri. The UNP has yielded none since Premadasa was elected in late 1988 and took office in early January 1993. Why then should the SLFP abolish the system? Even though the official SLFP is down to 14% of the vote, the Pohottuwa, which has 40% is the SLFP in disguise or rather, in its normal Populist guise and its breakaway mode. Taken together the Pohottuwa (JO+SLPP) and the SLFP can win any election, notwithstanding the minority vote. The resounding approval that Dr. Sarath Amunugama, a stalwart of the status-quoist SLFP faction, accorded Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s policy peroration simply goes to show that even the SLFP Right will support his candidacy. It is quite possible that if Sajith is not the UNP candidate, many UNP rebels may do so too.

Analytical argumentation apart, the latest news gives us all the reasons why the 20th amendment and the new constitution should not be entertained and why we need a strong state and leadership—though I would prefer progressive “Sri Lankan Model of Development” (Godfrey Gunatilleke) to an attempt to imitate a Chinese or any other model, especially when we do not have a market of a billion people and we do have competitive multiparty elections!

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