H. L. D. Mahindapala

All the major political battles will be over by April 8.

President Mahinda Rajapakse will be sitting at the peak of his power with no formidable rivals to challenge him. He will be shifting his focus from politics to the new frontier of developing the economic and social infrastructure of the nation. This will be facilitated by the new parliament which for the first time will give him powers to govern on his own without depending on allied partners. Another major aspect of re-building the nation will be the healing of the wounds of the past with the sole objective of bringing the divided communities together. This task has been made easier by removing Vadukoddai violence out of the political parameters.

Nevertheless, this is an issue that needs careful handling as it 1) has, in the short run, sensitive ramifications affecting all layers of society and, 2) in the long run, is intended to lay the firm foundations for peace and stability. So whichever way you look at it Mahinda RajapakseƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s role will be to build on what he has already achieved and go forward with a ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-yes-we-canƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ positive approach after April 8. He has the power and the will of the people behind him to take the nation to the next level. If he takes the necessary mid-course corrections there is no way he could go astray.

But what about Ranil Wickremesinghe? Will he have a future at all after April 8? It all depends on his choice of politics. After April 8 he will have ample time to analyze the increasing string of defeats he has suffered at the hands of the people and re-evaluate the politics that took him to a dead end. The message delivered from the electorate has been unmistakable. But is he listening? And if not why not? He has tacitly conceded that he will lose this election though he puts on a brave front to keep up appearances. Even the frenetic Kolam-bians (a slight variation of my friend Gomin DayasiriƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-ColombiansƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚) who went bananas in the presidential election have come down to earth and accepted the inevitable. A sampling of the public opinion conducted by the Kelaniya University Mass Communications Department has concluded that the UPFA is heading towards a figure of 140- 146 which is near enough to a two thirds seats in Parliament.

This confirms that Wickremesinghe has no chance of wielding power in the foreseeable future. His future is not even in struggling to win power as the next battle for power is yonks away. His immediate task after April 8 will be to sit down and identify and face, with courage, what he should do to regain the confidence of the people. This is necessary because the UNP will remain as a key player in the opposition. The JVP, which pretend to be the Third Force, will sink into the hole from which it came. The responsibility of running an opposition falls on the shoulders of Wickremesinghe. But before doing anything he should sit down and ask: why are the people passing votes of no confidence in me each time I go before them? There is no point in blaming Mahinda Rajapakse, or the Elections Commissioner, or computer jilmaats. If the people were behind him he need not be trotting out these lame excuses. It is because the people are not behind him that he plays the routine blame game. Looking for scapegoats is not the answer for failures.

If he has any intention of going forward he must first admit that the UNP has been spinning in free fall from February 2, 2002 ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…” the fateful day he signed the Ceasefire Agreement with Prabhakaran. The UNP is in this plight because it has lost its traditional, moral and political compass. The UNP is so confused that it does not know whether it is at Pamankada or Alimankada. People do not take Wickremesinghe or his party seriously because they have alienated themselves from the mainstream opened up by the Founding Fathers. How can the people take them seriously when the leader declared, at the height of the Vadukoddai War, that Thoppigala is a piece of rock not worth winning? The people, however, knew that Thoppigala was more than a piece of rock in a jungle. They recognized it as a rock-hard symbol of the national will to march forward courageously to change the course of history. But when Wickremesinghe trivialized Thoppigala, to gain political mileage by demeaning the victories of the forces, he was not only condemning himself but also ridiculing the nation and the soldiers whose mothers and fathers in the villages were waiting to get even with him when the time came for voting.

Thoppigala is merely a symptom of a larger disease that has blinded his perception of reality. It is a symptom of his overall negative politics. All his major moves, from the CFA to Thoppigala, have been to put the clock back at a time when he should have been leading the nation with a positive ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-yes, we canƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ strategy. His reliance on negative politics has been a fatal mistake. He took the easy way out by virtually surrendering to the anti-national forces which, he believed, were invincible. He failed to grasp the untapped forces of the mainstream that were there waiting for a leader. Overwhelmed by negative politics he went down the path of appeasement when his duty was to take on the anti-national forces head-on.

His fundamental flaw is in his inability/unwillingness to distinguish between negative and positive politics. Appeasement proved to be the worst kind of negative politics in dealing with an implacable and intransigent pathological killer like Velupillai Prabhakaran. Wickremesinghe was ensconced in a state comatose denial believing that his appeasement could benignly ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…” perhaps, even magically ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…” transform the devils of violence into angels of peace. He was stretching every limb and nerve of his body to appease and had no qualms in going to the extremes of giving his Navy Commander a dressing down for daring to protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the nation by attacking a Tamil Tiger boat. In short, he refused to recognize the evil facing him.

His war time experience should have taught him a lesson for him to review his moves in peacetime. But he refuses to learn from history. He continues to pursue the same line of appeasement hoping to reap benefits that are not there. Consider, for instance, his suicidal decision to start his parliamentary election campaign in Jaffna. Obviously, he thought it was a great positive move. It is like his wooing the West with his membership in the International Democratic Union (IDU) ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…” a band of arch conservatives of the West determined to impose their will on the rest. What benefits are there in cozying up to them? How many votes can the IDU deliver to make a difference in any election in Sri Lanka? And how many votes can he expect to get from the north to win power? Even if he has a remote chance of winning one seat in Jaffna how is that going to change the power equation in the south?

Besides, every major political move in his career has boomeranged on him. The only favour done to him by the Tamil Tigers was to open the way for him to get to the top of the UNP by assassinating President Premadasa, Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake. This helped Wickremesinghe to step into the leadership vacuum. Ever since then he has been wasting his energies in trying to make the UNP look like a branch of the LTTE or the IDU ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…”neither of which has brought him any political dividends.

Throughout its history UNP managed to fend off the withering attacks of the Left which relentlessly portrayed the UNPers as ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-Yankee DickiesƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚, ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-buth gottasƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚, ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ…-reactionariesƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ”š‚ and the oppressive rulers representing the capitalist class. It survived because the founding fathers never betrayed the fundamentals that held the nation together. Instead of giving into the divisive forces it hzs successfully pursued a strategy of uniting the minorities under its broad umbrella.

If he knows his history Wickremesinghe will remember that the Founding Father of the UNP, D. S. Senanayake, too faced divisive politics. He had to face the pressures coming from the north for 50 ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…” 50 — the usual demand of the peninsular political class/caste for a disproportionate share of power. Senanayake didnƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢t budge an inch. Instead he adroitly managed the ethnic tensions of divisive politics until he united all communities under one flag. Wickremesinghe, however, decided to take the UNP in the opposite direction of its Founding Fathers. He discarded the centripetal strategies of the Senanayakes of bringing all communities under one united national party and misdirected the party to embrace the centrifugal forces bent on fragmenting the nation in one form or another. He was focused on reducing the power at the centre and hand over asymmetrical/disproportionate power to the periphery. This is where he came a cropper. And in taking this wrong turn he lost his way and the people at the green, green grassroots of Sri Lanka.

To be continued ƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬…” Part II