BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS

Candidature for the next presidential election has become a complex problem to all political parties in Sri Lanka as the party politics in the country has become corrupt, undercutting and involved in many disguise cunning practices.  It is a nature not only in Sri Lanka, but also in other democratic countries in the world. In USA political parties are given more than one-year time to select the next presidential candidate and the process is democratically designed to elect the candidate from the votes of party members. This procedure is to give people opportunities to consider broader spectrum of views in relation to policies, past behaviour of candidates and many other areas. It is an exemplary procedure for Sri Lanka to adapt in the process of selecting a presidential candidate.  In Sri Lanka the general practice was the leader of a major political party has been supposed, to select as the candidate for the presidential election.  This system had a possibility to continuing, but Mr. J.R. Jayawardena’s astute action after 1978 has radically changed the implied practice.

The UNP government elected in 1977 had a hidden intention to destroy the opposition SLFP and the easy way to do it was working against civil abilities of Mrs Sirimao Bandaranaike, whose behaviour had been subject to severe criticism of the right-wing as her government nationalised lands, newspaper organizations and some privately-owned companies.  The result of the civil disabilities case against Mrs Sirimao Bandaranaike and Mr Felix R. Dias Bandaranaike was creating serious problems to the leadership of SLFP.  Since then the issue of the candidature for the presidential election was arose and now, we can see that the problem is continuing without abiding rule or tradition.

The 19^th amendment to the constitution of Sri Lanka was a complex constitutional provision and when it was passed by the parliament, general public and the members of the parliament and the president had no idea or clear understanding of the hidden intention of the constitutional provision, now it has clearly revealed or come to light that hidden focus of the 19^th amendment was to taking revenge from the Rajapaksa family, but it was not to re-establish the good governance and democracy in the country.  There may had some democratic and good governance features, despite such good aspects, the manipulators of the 19^th amendment was to take revenge from the Rajapaksa family. The greedy people of NGOs and rejected members of Marxist political parties associated with the good governance movement, most probably gaining financial incentives (bribery) and with a view to gaining the political popularity of the Rajapaksa family to them. In fact, what happened was gaining unpopularity of the movement as yahapalana advocates in the country did not expect and they were not happened in the history.

However, people have realised the truth and now it is obvious from the actions of breakdown yahapalana politicians that the use of the candidature for the next presidential election as a talking point to coverup the corruptions in the regime. The dismissal of the aspirer candidature of Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa has become a failed strategy of yahapana advocates and the real experience in Sri Lanka has come to light Mr. Rajapaksa would be the strong candidate to attract votes of people without political, racial, religious and any other differences.

The incidents reported during the past several weeks and the return of Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa to Sri Lanka as planned and his reception by people at Katunayake Airport has strongly confirmed the candidature of Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa by people, despite political engineering of some political parties or personnel to disgrace Mr. Rajapaksa.  The vital fact about this short term experience is that Sri Lankans must not get deceived to fabrications in internet programs and it is a lesson to internet programs such as Facebook, utube and others to strict or restrict information publish about Sri Lanka as some people of the country use these internet programs to destroy the credibility of such programs.

Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa has strong respect from people in Sri Lanka and overseas as he had not associated with lower grade politics to gain political advantages. He won the hearts of people by his work related to military and civil work.  He has rich experience in military and civil work and has proven that he will be the choice of people without political difference.

Now, Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa has an opportunity to openly talk to people and tell that I will be a candidate for the next presidential election and address all political parties to give support without any difference. This is required because about 25% of floating votes of UNP is willing to support Mr Gotabaya Rajapaksa as he is a firmed candidate with policy making abilities and positively considering issues in Sri Lanka to take forward consistent with modernization.  Other potential candidates cannot openly talk to people as they have no knowledge, experience, skills and attributes like Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa and people have no trust on them.

Statistically based on the census of 2012, 28.7% of voters in Sri Lanka are in Western Province, 12.6% in Central Province, 12.2% in Southern Province and 11.7% in North Western and 34.8% live in other provinces.  This means that Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa must focus on his campaign mainly in these provinces and reasonably convincing campaign should go to other provinces.  He must be with a uniform message that his priority is people to give equality without racial, religious and divisional differences.

Racial mix of voters are 74.9% Sinhala while 11.2% Sri Lankan Tamils, 4.2% Indian Tamils and 9.3% Sri Lankan Muslims.  Mr Rajapaksa needs attracting 80% of Sinhala votes, 6% of Lanka Tamil votes, 2 % Indian Tamil votes and 6% of Muslim votes to show a great victory of presidential election in the history. To attract such a huge vote base need giving a promise to create an equality to all races and religions with modernization, would be the strategy. The current government cannot do it because they are in the power, but they have not done it. The heavy weights of the current government have engaged in serious corrupt work creating tremendous problems to people.  How can trust a regime that mislead people again?

Sri Lanka’s population consists of 70.1% Buddhist, 12.6% Hindu and 9.7% Muslim and 7.6% other religions such as Christians and other.  If Mr Rajapaksa attracts 60% of Buddhist votes, 6% Hindu votes, 6% of Muslim votes and 5% Christian votes, it would be the greatest victory in the history.  This situation could be achieved only by giving equality to each religion and promising to make necessary legal provisions for anti-discrimination.  People in Sri Lanka needs to say we are Sri Lankans with different faces, but our aim is to construct the country to liveable place to everybody.

The statistics clearly indicates that Mr Rajapaksa’s policy must concentrate on the unity and a united Sri Lanka with equality for people in all races, castes and religions. This is the environment that we can observe in Western countries and Mr. Rajapaksa should promise to make legal provisions to eliminate discrimination.  The yahapalana regime has failed to enact laws to prevent discrimination because the main partner of the yahapalana regime, TNA did not agree with elimination of discrimination as they wanted to continue caste and religious differences in the country, with caste dictions TNA wants to establish power in Tamil dominating areas.

The reconciliation process was an essential role after ending the LTTE war, however, it did not effectively work and the reconciliation process under the yahapalana regime was a cheated activity of some members of the government that supported to gain financial advantages to selected people and it was not supported to a really established reconciliation between Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim communities.  Mr Gotabaya Rajapaksa needs to initiate a true reconciliation process, which heals wounds between all three communities and it shouldn’t be a process attracting money to pockets of operators of the reconciliation process.

Mr Gotabaya Rajapaksa should give strong economic policy focus to achieve per capita income of US $ 15000 in 2030, US$ 150 billion foreign reserves, stability of currency unit in domestic and foreign terms, a government budget surplus, positive outcomes in the balance of payment and a sustainable economic growth more than 8% rate.  Mr. Rajapaksa must be able to give leadership to maintain a balanced foreign policy reconciling India and China and attract foreign direct investments from all countries especially from USA, China, India, Japan, Korea, Middle East, EU and other countries.  When the economy is recording a higher rate of growth, debt is not an issue but the country needs to maintain total government debt at 60% of GDP.  The internal economic policy stress to balanced growth with a balance urbanization, which would create a large volume of employment opportunities and absorb local people to jobs, it is an essentially needed policy correction and reforming education and training for local people for employment-oriented education.  Mr. Rajapaksa has already talked about modernization like in Japan.

He must be vigilance on his own supporters and many of his supporters may have dishonest intention and corrupt elements. Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa did a good job for the country but it was outweighed by the malice propaganda and animosity of people with him.  Now those people are with Mr Ranil Wickramasinghe, Mr. Sajith Premadasa and Mr Karu Jayasuriya and any other potential candidate for the next presidential election. The crisis in UNP is how to find a right candidate with excellent experience in military and civil service.  People of Sri Lanka are knowledgeable and they don’t consider that playing cricket is the best qualification for the presidential candidate.