Presidential Poll result an SLFP victory:

Mobilizing people with innate native values

Continued from yesterday

Prof. Wiswa Warnapala Higher Education Minister

Mahinda Rajapaksa’s charismatic qualities of leadership reached its Himalayan peak during the course of the campaign and the ordinary rural vote, including the down-trodden in the urban areas, saw him as the sole saviour of the nation, and it was his populist style of leadership with which he reached the rural voter whose attendance at public meetings was at its historic height. His gift of grace, as Max Weber described, was ‘the absolutely personal devotion and personal confidence in heroism or other qualities of individual leadership’.

President Rajapaksa’s charismatic leadership brought people together. File photo

This is charismatic domination exercised by a great political leader who displays immense capacity in mobilizing the masses, and no leader in the post-independent Sri Lanka has achieved this feat - the mobilization of the masses with such political alacrity.

A set back

It needs to be mentioned that the campaign, at its initial phase, suffered a set back primarily due to the lethargy of certain activists who were more interested in the ‘preferential vote’ but this trend, though registered a bit of a decline in support, was immediately arrested with the active intervention of the SLFP organizers in the respective electorates, and it was achieved through the activation of the network of the SLFP branches in the electorates.

In Sri Lanka, the grassroot level political organizations always play an active role, and the SLFP, in particular, activated its grass root level base through which the entirety of the rural electorate was mobilized for the purpose. The party has a network of branch organizations and affiliated organizations which are traditionally activated during election time, and this has been the experience of the party since the time of the leadership of Sirima Bandaranaike.

It was as a result of the activation of the traditional base of the party that the campaign reached its heights in the last three weeks of the campaign, and it was this stepping up operation of the campaign which influenced the final result.

Effectively mobilized

All the traditional supporters of the SLFP, including those supporters associated with the established pressure group network which is integrally linked to the party, were effectively mobilized for the purpose. We all know that the SLFP has a network of pressure groups, and they, as constituent elements of the 1956 emerged alternative political leadership, have successfully influenced the verdict at elections.

Its base is in the phenomenon called the Pancha Maha Balavegaya which represented a collection of traditional pressure groups, whose one element, the Buddhist Sangha entered the fray through indirect methods.

The majority of the Buddhist Sangha were mobilized and no village level propaganda meeting could be held without the active participation of the Sangha; these are fundamental realities in our political culture in the rural areas and the SLFP, whose presence has improved the capacity of the State for representative government, has been mobilizing the traditional institutions and interest groups to inspire the voter. It is this historical base of the SLFP which finally assisted Mahinda Rajapaksa to obtain a massive mandate at the Presidential poll.

The urban vote, which traditionally UNP-oriented, along with the urban minority vote, went against the SLFP and this is nothing unusual, and this, though in terms of its impact was insignificant, is a matter which needs consideration.

Democratic politics

All the minority areas, primarily the voters in the North and East, though voted against Mahinda Rajapaksa, have begun to experience democratic politics. In addition, it sends a signal to focus attention on the interests and aspirations of the minorities who, after three decades, exercised their franchise.

Dennis Austin, a leading British political scientist, once stated that ‘Sri Lanka was a ballot-box-oriented democracy’, and this description amply fits into the situation which the country experienced at the 2010 Presidential poll. The electoral dynamism is ever present in the Sri Lankan national electorate, and this is largely due to the competitive nature of the party system.

The electoral competition between the party in power and the Opposition is the lifeblood of democracy. In other words, representative government, underwritten by electoral competition, requires a responsible opposition which has the ability to present an electoral threat to the party in power. An Opposition, which is in total disarray, cannot present itself as an alternative. No Opposition should specialize on political slander. Sri Lanka displayed its ability to derive inspiration from the deep seated values in the Sri Lankan society which the political parties are obliged to express if they are to mobilize support for a candidate.

It is my view that the SLFP is the only established political party which can rightly mobilize people on the basis of the innate values of the Sri Lankan people and it successfully did it to bring about a historic victory to President Mahinda Rajapaksa. It, undoubtedly, is a victory for the SLFP which still remains the dominant political formation in Sri Lanka. The opposition, which projected itself as a major bundle of contradictions, has been decimated and no credible alternative is likely to merge in the near future.

Electoral fortunes

The debacle, which both the UNP and the JVP experienced at the Presidential poll, is certain to have an impact on their electoral fortunes in the future. It needs to be emphasized that the SLFP is not merely a political party; it is some kind of a social movement with deep roots in the rural masses of the country and it is this character of the party which gave Mahinda Rajapaksa an impressive mandate.

With the fresh mandate, the popular basis of which is very solid, the SLFP and its political leadership has inaugurated yet another important period of consolidation of political power and this remarkable victory is certain to influence the course of events for a couple of decades.

Mahinda Rajapaksa has enlivened the SLFP for yet another vital era in Sri Lankan politics. Is this not enough to say Sri Lanka is still a flourishing democracy?

Conclude