The die is cast, finally. After months of speculation and dilly dallying, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa now appears to have embarked on a course of action he has not undertaken in a political career spanning almost fifty years: separate himself from the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP).
Rajapaksa’s decision last week to open an office at Nelum Mawatha in
Battaramulla seemed to signal the next phase of his political life. A
separate political entity is likely to emerge in the next few weeks,
initially with the intention of contesting local government elections
which, ironically, have not been called for just yet.
This sequence of events was always in the offing after Rajapaksa was
sidelined following the ascension of President Maithripala Sirisena to
the Presidency. However, initially at least, in the immediate aftermath
of the presidential election there was hope among senior SLFPers that
there could be a rapprochement between the two.
Defeated candidates
That however did not materialise despite the efforts of several party
seniors. The reasons for this are manyfold: the smaller parties within
the United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance (UPFA) were constantly projecting
Rajapaksa as the ‘real’ leader of the Alliance rather than the President
and Rajapaksa himself was planning a return to Parliament at the
general election and implicitly supporting calls for his endorsement as
the prime ministerial candidate, a prospect the President didn’t relish.
That led to a series of decisions that were impulsive rather than the
result of well-planned strategy: President Sirisena, besieged by his own
party men, talking to the media to declare he would not appoint
Rajapaksa as his Prime Minister and then appointing his loyalists
instead of Rajapaksa’s nominees to Parliament through the National List,
most of them being defeated candidates.
The Sirisena-Rajapaksa relationship has
never been the same since then. The SLFP has found the lines of division
between the two camps extending deep in to the fabric of the party both
at the higher echelons as well as the grassroots. By virtue of being in
power, President Sirisena commands the loyalty of a majority of party
stalwarts including party officials, ministers, deputy ministers and
most importantly, a majority of the party’s decision making body, the
Central Committee.
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