Is economic revival an electoral option now?

By?N Sathiya Moorthy

Even as many, if not most, Sri Lankan eyes are riveted to New Delhi for the impact of Modi 3.0 government on bilateral relations the nation itself is caught in the web of its own making. It?s as much economic as it is political. The reverse is equally true.

Yes, it owes to the glorious indecision about the presidential polls no one is clear which way it all is going. This is so even when at least two candidates from two major alliances are standing on root-tops and shouting their names at the top of their voice.

Over time, the nation has forgotten, who between SJB?s Sajith Premadasa and JVP-NPP?s Aruna Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) announced their candidature first. Whatever that is, both are in the fray and the confusion is about a third, fourth and a fifth candidate, if not more.

The immediate reference is to President Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Rajapaksas? SLPP, and a ?common Tamil candidate from the North and the East, who, if there is one, could hope to swing fellow-SLT voters in the capital and elsewhere, if not a share of the Tamil-speaking Muslim and Upcountry Tamil votes.

Cunning or confused?

Of them all, Ranil?s candidacy is the key to the presidential polls. It is not about his winning or losing, which comes next. It is about his contesting the polls or not contesting the same.

Until not very long ago, people, especially Ranil acolytes, whose numbers have become wafer-thin over the past five years or so, used to attribute his confusion over early decisions to his ?cunning?. Today, they too seem to be coming to the conclusion that his is ?confusion?, not ?cunning?, at least this one time.

As if to silence critics and revive the expectations, if not outright hopes of the few supporters across the country, Ranil inaugurated his election office, recently. No, it is not located on the premises of his UNP headquarters, ?Sri Kotha?.

This has led to speculation that he would be contesting the presidential poll this time, not on the GoP ticket but as an independent candidate. The implication is that he would then ? and then alone ? get the support of the SLPP under-writers of his government.

If someone thought that Ranil would also announce his candidacy at the inauguration of his camp office, it was not to be. Nor has the SLPP, whose leaders, Mahinda and Basil Rajapaksa, have been engaging the President in a series of talks, come up with their decision in the matter.

Both sides have led the media to speculate on their next move, and also on the day their decision would be made known. The current date for the SLPP decision is around 16 June. Even then, no one knows if and when Ranil would announce his decision ? his candidacy, that is.

?Minority? candidate

If Ranil decides to contest the presidential poll as an ?Independent? candidate, it would not be the first time it?s happening. Sarath Fonseka in 2010 and Maithripala Sirisena in 2015 were ?independent? candidates for all practical purposes, but were projected as the ?common Opposition nominee?.

Of the two, Fonseka lost to incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sirisena defeated his ministerial and political boss until the other day.? Fonseka did not even have a party, so to say, so did Sirisena. He recaptured the presidency of the ?ruling? SLFP only after becoming the nation?s President, no, thanks to an amendment that MR had inflicted on the party?s constitution earlier.

For all technical purposes, both Fonseka and Sirisena were official nominees of the New Democratic Front (NDF), founded by Srimani Athulathmudali, wife of Lalith Athulathmudali, who was assassinated by the LTTE, like many other ministers and politicians, both Sinhalas and Tamils. That the NDF was/is a splinter group of the even lesser-known Democratic National United Front, founded by Athulathmudali, is another side-light, which no one knows, for them to remember to date.

So, the question of Ranil being dubbed a ?minority? candidate if he contests either as a UNP nominee or an ?independent? candidate should not matter to him. It would however matter to the Rajapaksas and the SLPP, whether or not to support Ranil.

Having been brought up in the parental SLFP tradition of anti-UNP politics since inception in 1952, the breakaway SLPP cannot re-write the script and expect all its followers to back Ranil if the latter contested the presidential poll as the GoP nominee.

Yet, there is a lot amiss in a majority of SLPP members, including Mahinda and elder brother Chamal Rajapaksa, voting for the highly controversial ?electricity privatisation bill? ? or, that is how critics want it to be known ? in Parliament. SLPP members, starting with Namal Rajapaksa not voting on the bill meant that they are opposed to the bill, or the leadership wants to project the twin-image that way.

The same cannot be said of the SJB members who did not join the vote. They are possibly the ones who want to cross over to the Ranil camp. Whether it is individual SJB parliamentarians or a collective of them, or those from the SLPP Likewise, Team Ranil should remember that none of them carry any votes on their shoulders to be able to transfer to him. Some of them may not be able to win even a local government election without the party and/or leadership brand of the SJB/Mahinda kind.

Debt-restructuring

Those that back Ranil for presidency from outside his party or even from the extended political class want to acknowledge his contributions to the economic revival after the multiple crises that caused the ?Aragalaya? protests this time in 2022. But the recent governmental reiteration that the nation would require time till 2042 on the ongoing debt-restructuring, while being pragmatic, may not be politically sensible.

That?s another of Ranil?s problem ? not being able to spin tales where they are needed to win elections. That has not taken him too far on its own, or on his own. It is the same like his political cunning or shrewdness, whichever way you want to term it.

Ranil?s kind of economic revival policies and programmes may be producing results, not even over the medium-term but the long-term, if at all. By then, all of us are dead ? to put it crudely. Also, the way, JRJ?s reforms worked against the poor and the middle class is the same way Ranil?s reforms are also working ? though the economic situation on the two occasions were different.

For the economy to revive truly, and anyone in power to win elections, the government has to put money in the people?s pocket ? not as one-time bribe by political parties and candidates on poll-eve. Unless the government is able to improve the purchasing power of the people and/or bring down prices drastically to levels affordable to the poor and also the middle-class, economic reforms, stability, revival are all electoral myths that don?t sell.

Today, the urban middle class is the new sect of urban poor of a different kind who do not know how to lower their standard of living overnight ? though they have done a lot of it through the past two years ? and cannot be seen as doing it, either. The poor know how to live with their poverty, and they make do with rice and fish, if rice is still affordable. The rich do not have to care, and do not seem to care, either.

It is the middle-class, whether urban or rural, who stand to suffer. Neither can sacrifice their self-image that generations have cultivated in the immediate neighbourhood. But they are already doing it, little by little, day by day, week and month by week and month. Their new-borns will grow up in circumstances that their parents were unaccustomed when they were born and brought up.

This may even sound silly from a socio-economic point of view, when one is comparing it all to the Aragalaya days. But these were also the traditional voters and unpaid campaigners of the UNP from before Independence. And they are losing hope, both in themselves and the party that they once loved.

There is a message in it, not necessarily for President Ranil, but for Candidate Ranil. Unless, his government is able to produce a magic wand and use it, to improve the living costs and conditions of the UNP?s traditional voters, there is no use engineering defections, whether from the breakaway SJB or the under-writer, SLPP ? or, both. There will also be no use trying to project that the so-called economic stability and attempts at economic revival (note, a la the IMF model, as rivals will market it), is also not an election option for the incumbent!.

(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsthiyamoorthy.com)