Heta Dakina Ranil: Starts last campaign after too long a wait, but two years too soon

by Rajan Philips-August 26, 2017, 7:16 pm 

By all appearances the United National Party is rolling out a well laid plan to project Ranil Wickremesinghe as its candidate in the next presidential election which is not due at least for another two years. Are they starting the campaign two years too soon? Too much seems to have been packed in a span of six months - a new biography, 40th anniversary celebrations, a national exhibition of family albums, and posters pasting the town with the leader’s face. At this rate a lot more will be required to fill another two years before the election. Too bad, the 40th anniversary could not arrive a little closer to the election. It would have if JRJ had not conjured up the Third Amendment and succeeding presidents did not manipulate their re-election timing.

Now you cannot run the clock back, although the government may want to run it too fast forward and somehow have the presidential election before the Provincial and Local Government elections. And anyone after 40 years in politics or anything would be left with more yesterdays and fewer tomorrows. It may be that Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe, now very much a yesterday’s man, is trying to make the best of his political tomorrows that are still left. We can only wish him all the best and god speed, but politics is brutal business and well-wishing alone is not enough to snatch the highest political reward in the country. It is not my business, nor is it my purpose to offer campaign advice to the UNP or its leader, but it is everyone’s business to question the propriety of a Prime Minister starting the next presidential campaign halfway through the most historic mandate ever in Sri Lankan electoral history.

It is not only the Prime Minister but even the President is fancying a crack at the next election. Unlike in 2015, he will not be a Common Candidate, but an SLFP Party candidate. After defeating Mahinda Rajapaksa in the last election, Sirisena will be succeeding him as the next party candidate. In fact, it is the SLFP that started the election ball rolling by passing a resolution that Maithripala Sirisena would be their candidate for the next presidential election, even though Sirisena contested and won as a one-term only candidate. The UNP has now intercepted and taken the ball and is now gleefully running along with it. The bizarre likelihood is that in two years the President and Prime Minister of the national-unity government could be facing off each other as presidential contenders. After vowing to abolish the presidency at the last election, the two leaders are getting ready to compete against each other for the same office at the next election.

The January 2015 election was historic because for the first time in our electoral history the voters defeated an incumbent president and elected a new president and government based not on commonplace rice-and-curry promises but on the promise to end corruption and to reform and restructure the system of government. And in a public ceremony at the Independence Square, the President elect not only snubbed the Rajapaksa Chief Justice at the time by having his oath administered by the next senior-most judge, but he also followed up his oath by administering the oath to Ranil Wickremesinghe as the new Prime Minister, snubbing again the Rajapaksa Prime Minister at the time. The oaths (and the snubs) were powerfully symbolic even as they were substantively unconventional. The critics barked but the country went along, confident that the two new leaders meant what they said and would do what they meant. Now what?

Betrayal and backlash

Not enough, after promising the world in 100 Days, the government does not have anything worthwhile to show after more than two years in office, the President and the Prime Minister are now preparing to run against one another in the next presidential election. It is one thing not being able to deliver on the promises made in one election (in fact there were two in 2015), but quite another to presume that the two leaders can take the people for suckers full two years before the next election. The rationale for the unity-government is that the two major parties must govern together to accomplish a minimum agenda, after which they will go their separate ways and resume electoral contests. It is quite normal for political parties in a coalition government to contest one another in intervening elections while remaining in government. So it would be normal for the UNP and the SLFP to contest the PC and the LG elections while being unity-government partners. But it is a betrayal for the President and the Prime Minister even to think about contesting one another in the next election half way through their joint mandate from the last election.

Many a plan in politics can go awry, and if such a contest were to materialize, you can expect the Prime Minister to come up with a convoluted explanation that the unity project can survive a presidential contest between him and Sirisena, and that they are only respecting the democratic rights of the people in asking them to decide on who (MS or RW) should be their President and PM for the next term. I am not giving him ideas, but the PM would laugh and insist, like the way he tried to laugh away the bond scam, that whatever role the people assign to him or the President they will abide by it and continue their joint venture after the next election. That is to say, the roles could be as they are now, or the people could reverse the roles making RW President and MS Prime Minister. The two will even administer each other’s oath and continue the unity project happily for another term.

So in their minds, there will be no betrayal of the 2015 mandate but only a course change in a conveniently longer than expected journey to the promised land. Whatever that could not be achieved in the first term, which is practically everything, will be achieved in the second term, or, if needed, in continuing subsequent terms until death do them part. No matter how bizarre my satiric speculation might seem, do not put it beyond the creativeness of pseudo-yahapalanaya minds. Put another way, after getting rid of the coercive and corrupt attempts of the Rajapaksas to interminably install them in power the country could be en route to suffer the same fate but in a seemingly benign and patronising way.

The saving grace in all this is the propensity for backlash from the people. As was noted pungently in last week’s Sunday Island editorial, the public reacts more vigorously to today’s rascals than yesterday’s rascals. And those who claim to see tomorrow better than others can ignore what is going on today only at their political peril. But there is also an alternative to the recurrent cycles of voting in and throwing out governments. And that is to hold the government in power accountable in real time without waiting for the next election. This alternative approach seems to have worked with this government more than with previous governments. The government has been pig-headed in many areas, but has been forced to back track in a number of other key areas.

The inquiry into the bond scam, the resignation of two ministers, and delaying and even withdrawing controversial bills are all signs that much can be achieved by holding the government’s feet to the fire for the next two years without waiting to burn it wholesale at the next election. More specifically, genuine yahapalanaya activists and organizations must insist that the President and the Prime Minister abandon their direct and indirect preparations for the next election, and refocus their energies and efforts to fulfilling their last election promises in two critical areas: ending corruption and effecting constitutional changes. The normal business of government can never be properly done until government corruption and the system that breeds it are eradicated. Only then, the slogan ‘heta dakina Ranil’ could have some meaning.