The past week was as eventful as any during an election time. Minister Sajith Premadasa became the presidential candidate of the UNF, ending a long-drawn struggle and allowing new dynamics to emerge within his own and the opposite camp, including the fringe candidates. Labour union actions, protests, strikes and quasi hunger strikes seem to have been weaponised to an unprecedented scale and precision to debilitate governance and to subjugate an increasingly weaker government. The SLFP has passed another week as a bystander while its power of negotiation eroded further.
End of an Era
To borrow a term from the historian Kumari Jawawardena, it was the week that marked a symbolic end of the ‘nobodies to somebodies’ dynasties in Sri Lanka’s post-independence politics, namely those to which Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe belonged. It was they who succeeded the Kandyan elite as it lost its socio-economic power with the fall of the Kandyan Kingdom. This new class emerged in the 19th and early 20th century under the patronage of the British, mainly from the low country areas, and they soon got connected with the old elite through inter-marriages and business connections. This new class got their children educated in the best universities in the world and became a truly elite class that produced leaders of the nation from Senanayakes, Bandaranaikes, Kotalawalas, Jayawardenas to Wickremesinghes, who led this country five out of its seven decades of independence. In that sense, as Wickremesinghe graciously proposed the name of UNP Deputy Leader Sajith Premadasa as its presidential candidate, the last of their chances fell with a smile, perhaps forever. The last two samurais of that class could be Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. Prospects of another from that class becoming a head of state in Sri Lanka seem remote in for the immediate decades to come, unless we want to believe in the wild card alternatives.
Emerging new Right
An important symbolic move took place on Friday. United Left Front (ULF) which formed part of the UNF government pledged support to the JVP-led National People’s Power (NPP) candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake. This quick reaction by UNF national list MP Jayampathy Wickremaratna and ULF secretary-general Lal Wijenayake to Sajith Premadasa’s presidential candidacy means that leftist forces do not find Sajith Premadasa as their first choice (as they still urged people to mark their second preference to the strongest candidate against Gotabaya Rajapaksa of SLPP – thereby marking the boundaries of their camps very clear). In a nutshell, all forces that stood together in January 2015 are still united in their opposition to the SLPP.
Two weeks ago, (http://epaper.sundayobserver.lk/News.aspx?tday=2019/09/15&id=pg09&ver=pro ) this column argued that the ideological stance of UNP and SLPP have been inverted from what it used to be three or four decades ago (at a time when SLFP formed the largest opposition to UNP). As a norm, in a nation state, the party that claims the closest allegiance to nationalism becomes the conservative force that enjoys the largest block vote in a two party system. If Sri Lanka’s conservative party was UNP in the 1980s, today, it is the largest party in the progressive camp. The SLPP, on the other hand, enjoys the largest block vote of nearly 37%, as opposed to the 30-32% that of the UNP. However, what the selection of Minister Sajith Premadasa as UNP candidate means is not a mere inversion of these ideological positions, but a sliding of overall political debate further right of centre. As this statement needs clarification, let’s start by looking at potential policy stances from both sides.
Neither candidate has presented their manifestos yet. Premadasa recently said that he is the very embodiment of his policies and “people know what his policies are”. On a more serious note, how different are the two candidates going to sound, for instance, on national security, power sharing, executive presidency, welfare, rural development, foreign relations, tax policy or education. As we will soon be able to see, the articulation of these policies will be quite close to each other, but significantly far to the right-of-centre from their earlier (2010, and 2015) policy positions. The metamorphosis of political camps in the post-war era of Sri Lanka has affected the two main political parties in different ways. The SLFP has been split, and its breakaway faction, SLPP, has taken away with it almost everything of SLFP, reducing the latter to a mere fringe force, with a soul-searching support base and a deal-hopping leadership. On the other hand, the UNP seem to be experiencing an inner transformation, with the choice of a populist leader to run the race. As the SLPP announced its candidate much in advance, UNP led camp was faced with the choice of trying to look different from SLPP or resembling more and more like it. These policy options were manifested through two potential candidates, Speaker Karu Jayasuriya to look in contrast to SLPP or Minister Sajith Premadasa to mimic the SLPP. While the election day will tell us if the decision to mimic SLPP was the right thing to do, the presence of Sajith Premadasa would force the SLPP further to the right and perhaps close to explicit majoritarianism as in the case of current Indian politics.
Battle for Nationalism
On Friday, a personal brawl between two youths culminated into a communal conflict in Kirinda in the Matara District and the Police had to deploy large platoons to contain it. The emergence of Sajith Premadasa may have taken the SLPP by surprise and we will see many of those in the next few weeks in the run up to the election. Outrageous public response on social media to a photo featuring presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa after the successful candidacy bid and his party leader colleagues including Ministers Rishard Bathiudeen and Rauff Hakeem may have given the SLPP a cue to their next act of propaganda. As much as the UNP would want to look more and more like a nationalist party that welcomes minorities, the SLPP would try to move further towards a non-Muslim party, at least on its face value by targeting Muslim leaders. It will not be a surprise, if they explicitly promised a non-Muslim government, as in India under BJP, in the upcoming elections. Many Sinhala and Tamil people whose first three political priorities are to see the Muslims being singled out in politics may find it an attractive option. Such desperate political campaigning will bring about lasting polarizing in society that will take long to heal.