The United National Party (UNP) has not won a Presidential
Election since 1988. That’s 26
years. In a could which saw frequent
baton-changes between the two major parties, i.e. the UNP and the Sri Lanka
Freedom Party (SLFP) or at least coalitions led by one or the other, this is a
serious state of affairs.
Now it can be argued that Ranil Wickremesinghe was robbed,
so to speak, both in 1999 and 2005. In
1999 a close election went the incumbent’s way when she lost an eye in a
terrorist attack, the resulting sympathy translating into a vote-sway. Moreover, S.B. Dissanayake once claimed that
he had ensured that 400,000 හොර
ඡන්ද (illegal votes) were cast in her favor. The claimant of course late switched sides
and was the UNP’s National Organizer for a while before crossing party lines
again. It is also claimed, frequently
enough, that Ranil would have won in 2005 had the LTTE not stopped Tamils in
the North and East from voting.
It seems to have gone downhill thereafter. The brief UNP-led Government with Ranil
Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister was roundly defeated in 2004. The UNP suffered another major defeat in 2010
when the UPFA retained power in a Parliamentary Election. Between 1994 and 2014, except for a brief
high in local government elections in 2002/3, Ranil’s UNP has lost so dozens of
elections. It must be said, however,
that the provincial and local government elections generally go to the party
holding power at the centre and thus Ranil was always handicapped, not to
mention the fact that the ruling party used the staggered-elections policy so
that state resources could be more effectively (and illegally of course and as
has been done by all ruling parties, the UNP included) employed to secure
victory.
For all this, the UNP’s manifest inability to field a
credible candidate at presidential elections is a serious indictment on that
party. In 2010, as the ‘Common
Opposition Candidate’ Maithripala Sirisena observed, it was a tough ask for
anyone. He said he was surprised that
the former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka polled the numbers he ended up
with. This was, as he said, just after
the country was rid of the terrorist menace after three long decades of bombs,
bullets, suicide attacks and bloodshed.
Naturally, credit accrued to the man under whose leadership the battle
was won. No one who says ‘all power resides with the president’ courtesy the
constitution can really argue that credit should go elsewhere.
The 2010 election was therefore going Mahinda Rajapaksa’s
way anyway, whoever the UNP fielded. And
yet, even in unfavorable conditions, those in the weaker camps have not twiddled
thumbs, either in Sri Lanka or elsewhere.
Hector Kobbekaduwa in 1988 and Sirimavo Bandaranaike in 1988 fought the
good fight. Left candidates always
showed spirit. They all lost, but their
respective parties gained, at least to the extent that they managed to
periodically re-energize their ground-level networks.
The UNP on the other hand threw in the towel almost
immediately after the bell was rung for the first round. In 2010, Sarath Fonseka was not a proxy but a
sacrificial lamb. The support was
lukewarm, the outcome was a foregone conclusion and the only consolation that
the UNP got was the right to say ‘we didn’t contest, so we didn’t lose!’ That’s as weak a brag as you can find. If the UNP wounds of 2004 and 2005 were close
to getting healed, the January 2010 victory of Mahinda opened them up. In April, the UNP bled and continued to bleed
to the point that the regime was able to secure a two-thirds majority in
Parliament.
One would have expected the UNP to learn some hard lessons,
but this time around too the party was unable to put forward a credible
candidate. Instead, it now supports a
renegade of the party’s principal political enemy, expecting to get some
tidbits should he succeed in defeating the formidable incumbent, Mahinda
Rajapaksa.
For all the talk of the Prime Minister for Ranil (for
services rendered) in the event Maithripala Sirisena wins, for all the
calculations about Maithripala needing the UNP’s Parliamentary group after
January 8, 2015 (if he wins, again), the UNP has shown abysmal understanding of
political realities. On Day 1 of a
Maithripala Presidency, he would not just be the all powerful Executive
President, he can count on the entire SLFP to turn its back on Mahinda and back
him instead. The political future of all
SLFP MPs, after all, would thereafter be tied to the fortunes of Maithripala
and not Mahinda. It is not impossible to
think that he could even get the support of two-thirds of the MPs and institute
constitutional reform without any support of the UNP!
Where would that leave the UNP? Where would that leave Ranil
Wickremesinghe? In short, in the event
of a Maithripala victory, Ranil and the UNP will be totally dependent on
Maithripala’s generosity. To place one’s
political eggs in a basket of a man who still claims to be the Secretary
General of a rival party is utterly naïve.
‘In the larger interest of the country,’ Ranil and the UNP
can claim. ‘If only politics was a fairy
tale!’ someone would respond.
Is it a personality issue?
Something wrong with Ranil and not necessarily the party? Perhaps.
The fact remains though that the party hasn’t been able to fix the
problem if indeed this was the problem.
So, as things stand, this side of the ‘national interest’ thesis, the
party doesn’t stand to gain in the event Maithripala wins. Is this the explanation for the lethargy of
the UNP’s electioneering machine on the ground? After all, there seemed to be a
lot more enthusiasm in Badulla during the Uva elections, with Harin Fernando
leading the way.
2 comments:
Hip read. The green elephant needs a thicker skin … !
I'm sure these trifle issues would not affect UNP in a significant way - I'm also sure win for the common candidate would see a large scale defections from Pro Rajapaksa camp and also psuedo moderates :D
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