{"id":116395,"date":"2021-07-23T05:03:02","date_gmt":"2021-07-23T12:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=116395"},"modified":"2021-07-23T05:03:02","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T12:03:02","slug":"reading-the-re-election-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/07\/23\/reading-the-re-election-statement\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading the \u2018re-election\u2019 statement"},"content":{"rendered":"

MALINDA SENEVIRATN\u200bE<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n
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\n\n\u2018The boss has said it loud and clear that he will contest a second time! Now the other side (opposition) would have to nominate Basil. If not, even someone from the tuk-tuk party could also do the job!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The above is the rough English translation of an FB post by someone who has essentially backed individuals and parties opposed to the Rajapaksas and the SLPP (i.e. Maithripala Sirisena and Sajith Premadasa, the UNFGG and the SJB). He\u2019s obviously referring to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa\u2019s statement intimating that he would see re-election. He\u2019s essentially saying \u2018lost cause.\u2019 He may be implying that the SLPP would have a better chance if it was someone other than the President.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speculation. Speculation. Speculation. Ifs and buts. What ifs and if nots. Entertaining in its own right of course. Predicting political outcomes is sometimes about positioning preferred outcomes. It has a role in campaigns and this is why we see lots of \u2018polls\u2019 when elections are at hand. That said, predictions say more about predictors than about relevant candidates, parties and political realities. Let me elaborate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Way before the SLPP announced that Gotabaya Rajapaksa would be the party\u2019s candidate for the 2019 Presidential Election, there was an intense back and forth in social media which could be captured as a debate titled \u2018Gota or Basil?\u2019 Obviously the participants sided with the SLPP. Most of the more vocal of the debaters pointed out the positive attributes of one as well as the negatives of the other. There was a lot of exaggeration as well. Fun banter, anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was essentially a battle between Gotabaya-loyalists and Basil-loyalists. Now this is speculation, but I couldn\u2019t help but wonder along the following lines. It made every sense for Gotabaya-backers to want him to contest. Gotabaya contests and if he wins, they profit one way or another. At the very least they have the satisfaction of backing the winner. If it was Basil, they would get nothing, unless he lost and they could say \u2018We told you so; Gota would have won.\u2019 Flip names and you get the flip-side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now let\u2019s switch to the other camp, i.e. the UNP-SJB or let\u2019s say \u2018the anti-Rajapaksa bloc.\u2019 They revelled. For them it was a case of a Rajapaksa split. They believed that once a candidate was announced the \u2018hopeful\u2019 who lost out and his backers would back away from the campaign.  This was interesting because they were also among those who ranted and raved about pavulvaadaya<\/em> (familism?) and insisted that the power should not fall into the hands of a single family. If indeed the Rajapaksas had a clan mentality then it probably meant that they would resolve their disagreements one way or another, decide on the more \u2018winnable\u2019 and back him to the hilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t even know if this \u2018spat\u2019 flowed from the two individuals \u2014 neither mentioned anything of the kind. In fact Basil, in an interview, quashed such speculation and jokingly said \u2018Gota has less experience than Mahinda; so if he is the President I could have a bigger role than before.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a wish, nothing more. The spat narrative and extrapolations, I mean. Didn\u2019t pan out. Previously, they had speculated that Gotabaya would be stopped by none other than Mahinda. Here\u2019s the \u2018logic\u2019 in brief:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Mahinda wants to be in control. This is why he got his people to vote for the 19th Amendment. He knows he can\u2019t contest, but he felt that if power is wrested from the Ranil-Maithri combine, he could, as PM, call all the shots.\u2019 [Note: obviously they hadn\u2019t read the 19th Amendment carefully \u2014 Patali Champika Ranawaka had done so; he knew all about how much of the presidential powers had been clipped and moreover had a stake in the whole matter given his own presidential ambitions].\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course they didn\u2019t address the obvious question: \u2018If not Gotabaya then who?\u2019 Anyway, it was the same mind-set that spun these scenarios. Wishes. Preferred outcomes. Extrapolations. Glee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happen next? Well, the SLPP picked Gotabaya. And then? Up came the citizenship issue. But why? Simple. They had to find some way to block Gotabaya. Why? Isn\u2019t it obvious? The implication is that if Gota did get to contest, he would win. He did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what now? Will the President win a second term? If not, could we conclude that, say, Basil would have had a better chance? Well, whether or not he wins, we can never know if his brother could have bested him, either by securing more votes in a defeat or a greater margin of victory. All that\u2019s speculation. Good entertainment in the main possible but not probably framed by \u2018campaign strategy\u2019 as alluded to above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What should we make of this decision? Power nourishes greed? We don\u2019t know. We could talk however about realities. The President would have had to make an announcement either way, sooner or later and probably sooner rather than later. If he ended speculation by going the other way, reiterating that he would not seek reelection, a scenario that would probably be followed quickly by the \u2018emergence\u2019 of an SLPP front runner, that would be a signal to one and all to line up next to him or if not at least behind him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would that do to governability? Wouldn\u2019t help, that much can be said. Structures will remain but the people within them would not be as stable \u2014 they would move around, there could be foot-dragging and much time and effort will be expended by those who are tasked to get things done to secure their futures. That\u2019s the political culture we live in, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, then, is about the lame-duck factor. Typically the \u2018decline\u2019 in this sense begins the moment after re-election. If \u2018no-show\u2019 was announced, the decline begins right there. Then and there. That\u2019s decline in terms of backing from within. It might impact the track-record of the regime negatively, but then again, that does not necessarily translate into an inevitable defeat in the next major election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must also be understood that the Opposition is in disarray, moving from one issue to another as though punch-drunk. No talk of Lankagama now. No talk of deforestation. No talk even of provincial council elections. No talk of constitutional reform. No talk of mishandling the pandemic (after all, those who got the jab, especially after saying \u2018there won\u2019t be jabs\u2019 and \u2018Sinopharm won\u2019t work\u2019 can\u2019t really afford to complain).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even angst regarding the fertiliser policy is not exactly translating into the rant-rave that is, sadly, the best that oppositions in this country do. A war-analogy would help explain, I believe. Back in the day the so-called peace activists said \u2018war is bad\u2019. They then said \u2018the LTTE cannot be defeated\u2019. Then they stopped saying \u2018cannot\u2019 and instead toned down to \u2018do it right.\u2019 Took years. In the case of the fertiliser issue it has reached \u2018do it right\u2019 in less than two months!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to the beginning. Could someone from a tuk-tuk party defeat the President? Let\u2019s not get into the prediction game. It shows angst at best; says more about the sayer. What\u2019s politically relevant at this point is that it strengthens the President. Loyalists won\u2019t look for another pohottuwa<\/em> hopeful at this point and unless there\u2019s a significant change in the fortunes of the opposition and\/or a series of significant blunders by the government, they won\u2019t look outside the party either.

malindasenevi@gmail.com

[Malinda Seneviratne is the Director\/CEO of the Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute. These are his personal views.]<\/em>
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MALINDA SENEVIRATN\u200bE \u2018The boss has said it loud and clear that he will contest a second time! Now the other side (opposition) would have to nominate Basil. If not, even someone from the tuk-tuk party could also do the job!\u2019 The above is the rough English translation of an FB post by someone who has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malinda-seneviratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}