Buth gottahs run amok

On Monday, the 96 members of the Working Committee of the United National Party delivered a crushing blow to the political ambitions of Karu Jayasuriya. They voted for Ranil Wickremesinghe to remain Party Leader by a three to one vote in his favour against the erstwhile ‘Co-Deputy Leader’.

The sole victory for the opposition to the Opposition Leader was the election of incumbent Sajith Premadasa as Deputy Leader, narrowly defeating Colombo District MP Ravi Karunanayake.

Former reality TV show star Dayasiri Jayasekera found that party elections are a different business from SMS voting when he was crushed in the race for Party Organiser by Daya Gamage, although by a rather narrower margin than the figurehead leader of the dissident group, Karu.

This was a historic occasion, as it was the first time the UNP had conducted an election to select its top leaders. It followed a recent change in the party constitution, which democratised the appointment process.

The UNP is still not democratised. It does not go nearly so far as the Left parties, in which elected representatives of the entire membership votes for the Central Committee, which in turn elects the Politburo. Nevertheless this was a welcome step toward internal democracy in a party stifled by the dictatorial ethos of the Jayawardene and Premadasa regimes.

Sadly, a whiff of the old dictatorial stench did manage to mar the electoral proceedings. An unruly crowd of adherents of the UNP ‘dissident group’ had gathered outside ‘Siri Kotha’, the Pitakotte Party Headquarters of the UNP.

Members of the ‘Uncle Nephew Party’ had historically been called buth-gottahs (rice-packeteers), from that party’s predilection for distributing packets of cooked rice (‘buth gotu’ in the parlance of yesteryear – nowadays they are called buth parsal) to supporters as inducements for turning up at meetings or at polling stations. Apparently, reported observers, on this occasion the lunch packets were doled out with the exhortation that Karu should be elected Leader of the Green Jumbos. On hearing of the defeat of their ‘Co-Leader’, this multitude transformed itself from a quietly feeding herd into a pack of rampaging rogue elephants in must.

The mob threw itself at the gates of ‘Siri Kotha’ and brought them crashing down. Once inside the compound, the rogue herd had run amok, pelting stones and damaging property, as well as the vehicles of Ranil stalwarts.

Sir John Kotelawala, the eponymous donor of the original ‘Siri Kotha’ at Colpetty, must surely be turning in his grave. The historic occasion of the dawning of partial democracy within the UNP had been marred by the vicious and violent acts of the dissident rabble, aimed at members of their own party.

Parenthetically, it should be mentioned that this incident is symptomatic of the drift away from civilised behaviour in the political discourse of this country. Another appalling recent instance was the extra-parliamentary scuffle which took place after the legislative proceedings: apparently two members decided to transform their verbal debate inside the house into a brawl outside. The fact that the opposition to the Opposition Leader may be willing to sink to the level of street-fighting German Brownshirts bodes ill for the future. The memory of what UNP goondas did during its Seventeen-Year Misrule has not yet faded from memory. That they may be willing to unleash violence against their own side is indeed regrettable.

Given the predilection to mindless violence which is a sad fact of life in our polity, it is doubly unfortunate that the ‘Siri Kotha’ incident may be taken as the casus belli for a renewed internal battle and thereby used as an excuse for suppressing once more the nascent perestroika within the Grand Old Party. It is reported that, in the wake of the pachyderm riot, Ranil loyalists on the Working Committee had once more gathered in conclave and discussed the unpleasant episode. Rumour has it that the suspension was mooted of certain ‘Dissident Group’ members, said to have encouraged the disturbance.

Even worse, the buzz is that the constitutional amendment which made the re-selection of the leader an annual event may be itself amended out of existence. The reason being given for this was that annual elections might be the occasion for opponents of the status quo to go berserk on an annual basis. Most unhappily, this sounds more like the kind of excuse that was trundled out in his heyday by Ranil’s predecessor as Leader of the Uncle Nephew Party, the Old Fox himself. It is to be hoped most sincerely that the nephew will not follow in the uncle’s footsteps insofar as democracy (in general) and elections (in particular) are concerned.

However, much one might condemn the disreputable behaviour of the UNP ‘Dissident Group’, however much one might sympathise with the Ranil faction who saw their oh so expensive vehicles damaged, nevertheless the curtailment of democracy when it comes to the election of one so powerful as the UNP Leader is not tolerable.

If the UNP is to again win the confidence of the electorate, it will have to start thinking of cleaning up its act. The acts of the ‘Dissident Group’ have gone a long way to regaining for Ranil the public sympathy he had lost.

Now it is up to him to forgive and forget and try and patch up some kind of unity in his disintegrating party. For the UNP ‘Dissident Group’ on the other hand, it is vital that it discard the tactics of bygone years. Neither buth gotus nor goondas will deliver the goods.

The entire UNP has to put aside the question of personalities and start thinking about policies, about what the needs are of the masses and how they may be fulfilled.