UNP rocked in the East

It appears the United National Party wants to take the entire country with it in what is strictly an exercise in damage control for itself. Piling on after its successive defeats in so many elections be it Presidential, Parliamentary, Provincial and Local Government, which it contested, the UNP is now in desperate mode to save face after its defeat in the Batti polls that it did no contest.

Ranil Wickremesinghe, Tissa Attanayake and others who clown together with him these days are sending a clear message of how they had misread the developing situation in the East when they decided not to contest the Batti polls, and now they continue to be totally out of touch with the public mood about the outcome of that election.

Wriggling in defeat in an Election it did not contest, which decision is described as the height of political folly by some of its leading members, the UNP is giving reasons it did not give at the time of nominations or the short but brisk campaign as to why the Elections to the Local Government bodies in the Batticaloa District were flawed. Not surprisingly for its ex post facto thinking of election is talking of a dangerous pact with a terrorist organisation.

Such thinking by the UNP is not new, but it shows the rut the party has got itself into in this long period away from power. The sounds made by it about the outcome of the Batti polls are a weak echo of the noise it made after the last Presidential Election that saw President Mahinda Rajapaksa defeat its leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, in his second bid for the Presidency.

In November 2005 the excuse for the Ranil Wickremesinghe’s defeat was a secret pact between Rajapaksa and the LTTE to prevent the people of the North and East from voting and thereby hand the election on a platter to the UPFA candidate.

The UNP has still to present this argument in a court of law, which is the only means by which an election can be seriously challenged in this country.

For a brief period it was able to create some warped interest in this thinking through the antics of the late Sripathi Sooriyarachchi, who was not loathe to do anything to attack his former political colleagues with the most fanciful but resonant charges, that would never stand up in good examination.

This time it is the pact with the TMVP - party now led by Pillayan - that began its existence as a breakaway from the LTTE with which it carried arms against the Sri Lankan State, and subsequently turned its guns against the LTTE.

The main reason for its turn around was the lack of importance the Vanni leadership of the LTTE, headed by Velupillai Prabhakaran, Pottu Amman and Soosai, gave to its cadres from the East, who happened to be the larger number of its fighters and also its suicide killers.

It might help the UNP to think a little better if it recalls how it had boasted not so that the very breakaway of the Karuna faction from the LTTE was made possible by the Ceasefire Agreement that the UNP leader signed with the LTTE in February 2002, to which we shall revert a little later.

Sour grapes

It is obvious the UNP cannot get over the sour grapes syndrome when it comes to defeat in polls whether it contests or not. But the fact that it relishes the taste of sour grapes is shown by how it gets back to the failed presidential bid of Ranil Wickremesinghe in prefacing its attacks on the polls just concluded in the East.

The UNP obviously does not realise that recalling the so-called Rajapaksa Pact with the LTTE in November 2005 sounds more than farce today when it is possible to hold an election in the East, which was not possible during the entire period of the CFA being in so-called operation there, or in fact for the past 15 years.

The opinion of election observers may be that the poll there was flawed, but nevertheless no serious analyst could say the election was fixed or rigged. We are not unaware of both flawed and rigged polls in this country, and in both the UNP and the SLFP, the two major parties in the country, have played a major role, with the UNP as the leading actor.

But a flawed poll cannot be described a fraudulent poll. There are members sitting in the current Parliament who were elected as a result of a wholly fraudulent poll and who often vote with the UNP. I refer to the representatives of the TNA elected in April 2004.

The UNP has only to read the report of the international monitors of that poll to know how bad the situation in the North and East was during that election. To date the UNP is not on record, being critical of the role of the LTTE in that election or questioning, with the Elections’ Commissioner, or any other authority, the validity of that poll in the North, and parts of the East.

Let’s get on to rewind mode to see what happened in the General Election in December 2001 that saw the UNF led by the UNP gaining a Parliamentary majority. That entire election campaign was fought by the SLFP led People’s Alliance against the existence of a secret pact between the UNP and the LTTE. The popular slogan was Ali Koti Givisuma - the Elephant - Tiger Pact. The existence of this pact was never denied by the UNP leadership through the entire campaign.

In fact the UNP leader was on record on TV trying to explain that it was not such a dangerous understanding as it was made out to be. In the event the UNF won a majority. Demonstrating that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, not long after then results announced in December 2004, the UNP did sign the Ceasefire Agreement with the LTTE in February 2002, bringing into effect what of the most dangerous phase in the ethnic conflict in the country, where the LTTE’s separatist claims were strengthened by the Prime Minister of the country.

The same UNP now complains that this Government has entered into a pact with another terrorist organisation, for the Batti polls. There are some facts that the UNP must take into account what makes such allegations. It was some time since the Karuna group made the usual legal application and was registered as a political party in the country.

The public is unaware of any objections that the UNP raised with the Commissioner General of Elections against such registration. There was no complaint that the TMVP is an armed terrorist group, striving for the separation of Sri Lanka made when nominations were called for the Batti Local Government Elections.

The UNP thought it fit to be on the sidelines, saving its skin as they now say, and not participate in this election, instead of coming forward and telling their perceived truth about the TMVP to the public, and cautioning them about giving even limited Local Government power to the TMVP or its allies.

Absentee defeat

Whatever the UNP may say after being sidelined in Local Government in the Batticaloa District through its own folly, the fact is that nearly 60 per cent of genuine voters did participate in the Batti polls and elected the parties, groups and independents they wanted. This is certainly a far cry from a rigged poll.

In its agony of absentee defeat the UNP is now crying out that the UPFA has come into alliance with an armed terrorist group, and that it is the replacement of one terrorist organisation with another - the LTTE with the TMVP.

It is indeed a strange terrorist organisation that seeks registration as a political party, is so registered, gives public notice of interest seeking election in poll (which is what nominations are), contesting it and having a large number of its members being returned in a brisk and largely peaceful poll.

In case the UNP does not understand it, this is what is known as electoral democracy. The UNP’s campaign to devalue the Batti poll lacks any ring of credibility about it. What is worse, it brings to mind the many examples of rigged elections and downright violations of democratic practice that the UNP has been correctly associated within the recent political history of this country.

It is not for a party that played mayhem with the elections to the Jaffna District Development Council (recall the Jaffna Public Library blaze and the ballot boxes floating in the lagoon and hidden under the beds of UNP leaders) to talk of any tradition of upholding democracy.

From even before its actual birth in 1947 the UNP has been involved in the shameful rigging of elections, One can also recall the Presidential Election of 1982 when JRJ obtained the “mandate” for his second term, and his main rival, Hector Kobbekaduwa, saw his own vote being impersonated in Colombo; one also recalls how JRJ and the UNP kept the leading opponent of the UNP and JRJ out of the contest at that time by depriving Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike of her civic rights through a naked manipulation of the system of justice in the country.

We also remember well how the postponement of the General Election due in 1983 through the infamous referendum of the UNP led to the strengthening of armed militancy in the North, leading to the UNP manipulated Black July of 1983, and the resultant rise of the LTTE, with which the UNP is so much in cahoots today.

Talking of rigged elections, one cannot forget how the UNP used so much violence in the country (ably assisted by misguided Marxists of the JVP at the time) to rig the poll in the Presidential Election that saw President Premadasa elected.

The UNP has clearly lost its way in the Batticaloa District of the Eastern Province. It will have to do a great deal of hard thinking to see how it can resurrect itself from this situation.

One opportunity is the forthcoming elections to the first Eastern Provincial Council. But to be serious about that it will have to re-think its strategy of not contesting an election where the TMVP will be participating. That will mean a great deal of political wriggling, which is not so strange to the UNP.