New realities for UNP and Tamil politics

Alls well that ends well must be the thought in the Ranil camp of the UNP after the much threatened leader retained his position and the leadership struggle that was being so much spoken of and written about seemed to end in a damp squib at Siri Kotha last Wednesday

Sajith Premadasa was reportedly backtracking after his much vaunted bid for the leadership of the political jumbos and has settled down to be one among two deputy leaders of the party. The reported reason for his accepting this position is his interest in leading a united party and not a divided one.

The weakness of a house united is well known to all, but one is surprised as to what can be achieved by being the deputy leader of a house that is very clearly divided, to the extent that even the main contender for leadership dares not seek an election, but chooses the easier path of a shared deputy leadership, with the sop of being Deputy Leader of the Opposition thrown in.

Three days of frenzied activity at Siri Kotha that followed yet another humiliating defeat for the UNP at the local polls, saw nothing emerge other than the leader repeatedly rejected by the public of Sri Lanka, remain at the helm of the party that claims to be that of alternate governance.

The sheer size of the Government with its many ministers, does not allow the UNP to even have an adequate number of members in Parliament to form a proper Shadow Cabinet; so much for its imagination of being the party of alternate governance. But, what bothers those who believe in electoral democracy even more is what kind of leadership the UNP can offer to the country, when it is unable to offer anyone other than a serial loser as its unchanging and possibly unchangeable leader.

Serial loser

When the youth of Arab countries beginning from Tunisia and soon followed by Egypt took to the streets of Tunis and Cairo, signaling a whole new phase in the politics of the Arab people, there were some in the UNP (and in the JVP, too) musing about the possibility of such developments taking place in Sri Lanka, too. In fact leading figures from both parties made statements to the effect that such action seemed inevitable here, on their own reading of politics, based on a blinkered view of reality.

But the results of last weeks Local Government polls must surely have shown them that governance in Sri Lanka is in no way ripe for the plucking by street action, in the absence of the conditions that lead to such action and a fervour comparable to that seen on the Arab streets today. But, if one is to draw a serious lesson from the Arab Street, it is the fate that seems to await the leadership of the UNP. Seventeen years in Opposition, but for a tiny window in governance from December 2001 to March 2004, puts the UNP leadership more in line with the autocrats who have held power for two and more decades in most Arab countries and are now being challenged by a new generation.

The time may not be far when the members of the UNP, who still comprise a sizeable number of voters in the country, may have to follow the example of the Arab youth to call for a change in their own party leadership.

Local Government polls

There were many pundits who said the UPFA would lose lightly or heavily at the Local Government polls just concluded, because the popularity of the President and the Government were badly eroded.

They were certain that the success of military victory over the LTTE and terrorism had been worn over and the triumphalism of the government was not having an impact on among the people.

There was much belief, put forward with great fervour by Ranil Wickremesinghe that the price of pathola (snake gourd) and coconuts would be a much more potent political weapon than the defeat of the LTTE, when it came to harvesting votes for the local bodies.

The facts turned out to be very much different. Not only did the pathola and coconut slogan have no impact; those who played by it were pushed into third place - behind ITAK, which is in fact the TNA, hopefully not just in sheeps clothing. The JVP that was echoing similar slogans, with a more confused political image, was pushed even further back.

The coming days and weeks will see many doing diverse calculations in efforts to show that the UNP had not really lost, but that it had gained some percentage more than earlier and some other aspect of statistics to satisfy themselves that the defeat was not as bad as it is evident from the number of local bodies won and lost.

Local polls

There will be others who will move on to making predictions on the next small round of local polls that are to be held. But all those statistics in defeat and projections of future success will not erase the fact of an all-round beating, which when put in the parlance of today’s cricket was a humiliating leather hunt.

Worn out slogans

It is interesting that those who comment on the local polls results pay little attention to the reality behind the success of the ITAK (TNA) in the areas of the North it contested. Where electoral and representative democracy is the practice, the results showed, as it did at the General Elections too, that the Tamil people who exercised their vote did have a choice and were free to use it.

What the newly elected local councilors will do with the mandate they received has to be seen. It is possible they would use to re-brand their worn out slogans of the LTTE days.

That is a matter for the Tamil people who voted for them to watch out for.

But, the important fact is that this election has once again proved that the Tamil people do have the right to choose their representatives; which is what the LTTE never allowed them to do.

Western countries

This is a reality that will never be admitted by the pro-LTTE Tamil expatriates in Western countries, who are masquerading as the Tamil Diaspora and the Tamil politicians in Tamil Nadu, who see that flogging the cause of the Tamils in Sri Lanka more gainful than seeking solutions to the genuine problems of Tamils of Southern India.

The Local Government polls have produced a real time for reckoning for both the UNP and Tamil politics in Sri Lanka. For the UNP it is a time for decision whether it is to move ahead in Sri Lankan politics; rather than stagnate and move into oblivion. For Tamil politics it is the time to decide how best the interests of the Tamil people could be served, away from the dream slogans of a bloody past that only brought misery to both Sri Lanka and the Tamils.