This time, the writing is behind the wall

By?N Sathiya Moorthy

Reports that Sri Lanka has fallen from 128^th?rank to 133 in a total of 147 countries surveyed in a World Happiness Study raises the question if the past five months of JVP-NPP rule has not done anything positive to the people?s psyche that was overwhelming in the previous two years, post-Aragalaya. Whatever the reason, some local agencies that were dutifully publishing mood-of-the-nation polls every now and again suddenly stopped doing so once the new President first and the new Parliament came into being.? No marks for guessing that all those results, incidentally post-Aragalaya, put the JVP-NPP on the top of the heap, for both elections.

Whatever an international Happiness Survey may tell you now, the chances are that the ruling combine would sweep the 6 May local government poll in most, if not all parts of the country. Indications are that even in the Tamil North, where after ?losing? three of the six parliamentary seats each in the Jaffna and Vanni electoral districts to the JVP-NPP did not force the Tamil parties to shed their personal egos, to form a stronger alliance, can help the NPP.

In the East, two one-time LTTE commanders in Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan?alias?Karuna Amman and Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan?alias?Pillaiyan have come together after a break, but their alliance is avowedly against other Tamil parties, not the JVP-NPP. In the normal course, whatever vote-transfer, if it takes place, may not touch the NPP too much. Or, so it seems weeks before the polling day.

Not hopeless yet?

The likelihood of the NPP sweeping the Sinhala-South for a third time in just over six months owes to reasons that are theoretical and/or otherwise logical. First and foremost, despite the Government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake not living up to the expectations that the JVP-NPP alliance had kindled in the common man through the long run-up to the twin polls, one after the other, people have not come to dismiss them as ?hopeless?, at least not as yet.

Two, there is a tradition for the voter to give multiple victories to the party of their choice until that hopelessness sets in. It was thus that after the 2015 presidential election and the 2016 parliamentary polls, the Sinhala-South gave the Opposition SLFP a massive victory in the Local Government elections of February 2018. A little over a year before the ?Easter serial blasts?, the southern voter had unmistakably concluded that his vote for the Maithri-Ranil combo twice earlier was a huge mistake.

Of course, the voter regretted voting the SLPP In the presidential and parliamentary polls, post-Easter blasts, if not the LG elections of 2018. The unprecedented?Aragalaya?protests and the forced resignation of President Gota Rajapaksa were proof thereof. Two years down the line, the JVP-NPP?s twin electoral victories attested to the same.

Consolation prize

It is not as if the voter has exceptionally good reasons to vote for the NPP again, here and now. But the divided Opposition has not given them any reason to cheer them, and vote them in, if only as a consolation prize of some kind.? With his stubborn decision not to align with parent UNP, because he still hates Ranil Wickremesinghe, breakaway SJB boss Sajith Premadasa may have handed over the LG polls to the NPP on a platter, it would seem.

Yes, the NPP does not have the kind of cadres required to win a grassroots-level election in multiple locations spread across the country. Rather, the LG elections is an opportunity for the ruling combine to spread its wings, and then try and work bottom-up, to try and win a fourth election to all nine Provincial Councils (PC), possibly later this year.

Rather, the NPP wants a big LG poll victory, precisely for the same reason. It may not be a fluke, but the NPP strategists should readily accept that their twin victories, one bigger than the other, in the recent past, owes to their adversaries even more. Rather, the NPP did not win those elections. Its adversaries lost them. And in Sri Lanka, like most democracies, most elections are lost, not won in the literal sense of the term.

Leader as the Brand

Going by the main candidates in the fray for the Colombo Mayor, for instance, major political alliances seem to have concluded that their brand-image, rather than the candidate?s CV would win the LG polls for them. It seems to be the case in most cases across the country, where, yes, party cadres have not been totally ignored or side-lined in favour of fresh and acceptable faces.

Yet, the respective leaderships have seemingly taken upon themselves the burden of winning each battle, each LG body ? without expecting their candidates to win those seats for them. That is saying a lot in terms of responsibility and accountability of their elected members to their constituents, whether or not their alliances win a particular LG body or not.

This means two things. One, parties are not going to develop more than already at the grassroots. Two and more importantly, it will be furthering the practice of promoting ?Leader as the Brand? even more.

If in these LG polls, parties do not strive to live down the image and adopt a holistic approach to winning polls, then they all can forget their past promises of abolishing the Executive Presidency. It is thus a weak party that promotes an Executive Presidency, whose powers remain undefined and unrefined ? owing to assumptions, commissions and omissions, not otherwise.

So, don?t blame the Constitution for it. With an ever-weakening political set-up, parties are going to root even more for whoever can win (but not lose) elections. If it is not an Executive President, the same persona as the prime ministerial candidate. It is not in the name and title, but of a single man?s ability to win elections for his party.

There is no one here of CBK?s calibre. If someone thought that Rosy Senanayake or Hirunika Premachandra or someone else had it in her, they have all withered away already. Of them, Hirunika especially seemed to have got her strategies wrong. She had concluded that she was ready for the job. But the party and the nation were not ready for her. Or, through her conduct and political behaviour, she convinced them that she was not the one they were looking for.

Test for survival

Yes, the LG poll in the Sinhala-majority South is between the ruling NPP and the SJB.? Yes, it is true. But they too are on test within their respective constituencies, which they both seem to forget. The real test for survival is for the UNP and the SLPP ? and the SLFP, who? ? and, thereby hangs a tale.

Should even by mistake, the UNP should make some gains, then it would only be at the cost of the SJB, not the NPP or any other. It carries a message not only for the SJB but more so for Sajith, who seems to be adamant against working with the UNP and Ranil. Or, is it with the UNP as long as Ranil is around ? despite his open declarations that he would not be contesting another election.

The fact remains that between the twin elections to the presidency and Parliament, and now, it?s Ranil, and not Sajith, who has been more in the news. Yes, Ranil wants to tell Sri Lankans, especially his erstwhile UNP followers in the breakaway SJB and more so, President Dissanayake, that he knows the world more, and the world knows more about him than the other two Sri Lankans.

If in the process, he got caught in the PR trap set for him by Al Jazeera interviewer Mehdi Hassan, so be it. The way he looks at it, even Al Jazeera and Mehdi Hassan thought only of interviewing him, not Dissanayake, not Sajith, not even the two Rajapaksa brothers, Mahinda and Gota, both former Presidents, who would have to face even more embarrassing questions in Ranil?s place.

It is even more important for the NPP to trounce the SLPP now more than in the presidential and parliamentary polls. To strategize for it, the leadership should acknowledge that their votes are the traditional centre-left votes that got deposited in the hands of Mahinda R. They were the same votes/voters that Gota lost for the party ? and the family ? in a fit of ignorance combined with arrogance, which is the most deadly of potions for any political leader to drink, especially when in elected power.

Any substantial loss of LG bodies, seats or votes to the SLPP this time round will not show the Rajapaksas as the winners, no. Instead, it can show up the NPP and Brand Dissanayake as the ?losers?, however small their loss be.? It is not good for the future, especially when the NPP too has to face the Provincial Council polls, down the year.

The best or the worst

The best or the worst in this election is reserved for the SLPP. It is not known why and how some wisecrack in the party decided to project Namal Rajapaksa as the President-in-waiting, as if the next round of presidential poll is only weeks / months away. Maybe, the one-time 40-plus per cent ?Rajapaksa voters? may have begun getting tired of the NPP, especially because of goods-and-prices. But they are still not ready for the Rajapaksas, not yet for Namal.

For the Rajapaksas, it is not about winning back the party?s glory or catapulting Namal as an acceptable presidential candidate for a second time. It is about the ?denial? of adequate security-cover for Mahinda and an official residence for the man who made the lives of all Sri Lankans, including that of the Tamils, secure after he had put down the fearsome LTTE.

The Gota story showed that it is old wine in an old bottle and would not sell anymore despite the ?age of the wine?. This is one last time the Rajapaksas can hope that Mahinda still retains at least some of that magic that had made him invincible until he went overboard about his inherent limitations, as outlined by the Constitution.

Looking back, Mahinda might still rue that he should have boldly settled for son Namal than brother Gota, when the need arose. He seemingly gave in to sibling-pressure and the family and the party, and in that order, is worse for it. A victory thus for the SLPP, however small, is a voter?s message to the ruling alliance. A defeat for the SLPP, on the other hand, is a defeat for Namal?s early ambitions to return as a credible presidential candidate.

It is often said that when Namal wanted to enter politics, his father Mahinda, then President in his second term, reportedly cautioned him, that it was in fact a crown of thorns, which too he had to win, and cannot be inherited, as the latter might have imagined at that point in time. But even then the father might not have thought that it would be as bad as this ? worse than the plight in which the undivided SLFP found itself in when JRJ won back the nation for the GoP, UNP, in Elections-75.

In that historic election, the last one under the parliamentary scheme, the UNP won 140 seats and 51-per cent vote-share. The SLFP could manage only eight seats, but still had a substantial 30-per cent vote-share. That was not the case in Elections-2024. The party won just three seats, and the vote-share too was only three per cent.

But there is a hidden message in it all for those who can read beyond the writing on the wall. Whether it was 1975 or 2024, a substantial number of Sri Lankan voters are non-committal, and vote on issues and personalities, not on ideologies and party symbols. Hence, the kind of extreme swings that are witnessed through the nation?s electoral history.

The message especially has been for the rulers of the day, this time it is the JVP-NPP. People want answers to their problems, not answers to problems, as projected by the elected rulers. That is saying a lot, and it means a lot ? to parties, leaders and voters, not necessarily in that order.

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