Ranil’s survival games

Since the Local Government elections, the reformist group within the UNP has gone into a shell. The reason for this being that the party under Ranil’s leadership is thought to have retained the Colombo CMC while the provinces, including those headed by the reformists, made a poor show at the LG elections. Thus Ranil and his loyalist have interpreted the results to be a vindication of Ranil’s leadership while the reformists, despite all their rebel rousing, are said to be ‘poor vote getters’.

Well, this is an analysis the present UNP top brass would wish to believe to buttress their positions even though in reality the position is quite the obverse. In democracies all over the world with party systems, the charisma of the leader goes a long way in garnering the votes to the party.

This is why in countries like Britain the leader of the party always steps down once the party became unsuccessful at elections under his/her leadership. For instance, the Conservative party in Britain had to undergo four changes in its leadership until David Cameron was able to win the last election for them. In a country like Sri Lanka, where the people are more traditional in their thinking, this calibre of the leader is even more crucial in taking the party to political power.

New political philosophy

Study of Sri Lankan politics would show that it was the towering personality of DS Senanayake that won the elections for the UNP, over an above the UNP policies at independence. Then it was the benign personality of Dudley Senanayake and upon his exit from politics people placed their faith in the new political philosophy of SWRD Bandaranaike.

Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike	SWRD Bandaranaike
DS Senanayake	Dudley Senanayake

Upon Bandaranaike’s death the SLFP was a ship without a rudder for some time and having realized this, the party persuaded Mrs. Bandaranaike to come to politics. Thus it was Mrs. Bandaranaike’s leadership that galvanized and led the party to political triumphs in 1960 and 1970.

Then again it was the astute and pragmatic leadership of JR Jayewardene that won the UNP an avalanche at the 1977 elections. Particularly at this election, the UNP had no known regional leaders, except R Premadasa in Colombo and hence the victory of UNP in rural areas by big margins was all the more convincing of the power of the party leadership in polling votes. Therefore you do not have to be a political scientist to conclude that it is the confidence invoked by the leader of the party that makes political parties win elections. The other point about Sri Lankan party system is that the country’s political parties have always been only as good as its current leader is. JR’s UNP was very different to the UNP of Dudley Senanayake which was again different from Sir John’s UNP. Mrs. Bandaranaike’ SLFP was different to Chandrika Kumaratunga’s SLFP and the SLFP of Mahinda Rajapaksa is completely different to that of Kumaratunga’s.

The voters too have reciprocated according to the faith they could place on the particular leadership and this explains the political vicissitudes of the same party under different leaderships. Thus, even the policies of political parties will always be interpreted according to the strengths, weaknesses and the proclivities of the party leader of the time confirming the position that fluctuating fortunes of political parties are essentially linked to its leader.

The UNP and its current leaders however, contrary to this overbearing evidence seemed to have chosen to be complacent in the thought of retaining Colombo ignoring the fact that the party has not even retained Colombo as it should and even in the regions its share of vote has been eroded.

This is the typical UNP leadership of the past 16 years and it is because of such fallacious reasoning that the party has been going steadily down- hill in recent years.

LTTE terrorism

Some UNPers however seemed to think that they cannot do without Ranil since he is the leader most acceptable to the West.

His recent reappointment as the Vice President of the Democratic Parliamentary Association also may contribute to this thinking. But this is again is another fallacious line of thinking. In the current international political scenario, it is plain and obvious that the Western countries are not happy with Sri Lanka for liberating itself from the shackles of LTTE terrorism. But the people of Sri Lanka would know what a relief it is now and hence these covert and overt attempts by the West to take Sri Lanka back to the dark ages is viewed by the general Sri Lankan public with disdain. Hence in such a context Ranil’s unqualified stand favouring West could only make him politically more unpopular among the Sri Lankan public.

Ranil however, though not a good reader of Sri Lankan politics is a master in political survival. He had no compunctions in destroying a man like Fonseka to save his leadership. Ranil certainly would not mind a few of these reformists crossing over to the government at the forthcoming budget as that would save him from the ‘headache’ of saving his leadership. Thus Ranil probably may survive with these tricks of trade but his action is sure to cost the UNP its place in the country and with that party politics in Sri Lanka may take an irretrievable plunge.

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