Ceylon Today Editorial

LG Elections and Beyond

18 September 2016

With information being leaked about the possibility of Local Government elections in early 2017 at least one report emerged from former President Mahinda Rajapaksa's visits to South Korea and Malaysia hinting at meetings with Chinese connections, which Rajapaksa has to date not denied.

President Sirisena and Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe have apparently decided to go for it rather than wait for the Rajapaksa-led Joint Opposition to muster more support to contest that election.

But this time around, unlike when he had Chinese President Jinping flying to Colombo on the eve of the 2015 Presidential election, the ball is in the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe court to woo the electorate to back them at the next LG polls.

While Sirisena has been overtly populist, the Premier has been economically pragmatic, preferring to deal with hard facts, impose taxes to boost government revenue to liquidate Rajapaksa-bequeathed debt burdens, and give the populace some relief only where it has been economically feasible to do so. That's his brand of pragmatic economic management...calling a thing by its name and telling the people the truth but simultaneously giving them some small relief by way of wage hikes and price controls on a range of common, everyday 'kitchen' essentials in every ordinary man's household. To the contrary, Rajapaksa's economic theory and practice was limited to insanely high infrastructure funding at enormous interest rates from China, and illogically ill-advised cuts in costs of electricity, kerosene, diesel and petrol which he failed to see would not percolate down to real costs at retail consumer levels.

Ranil sticks to economic pragmatism and that means that in the long run it will be the all-important IMF and WB, plus the US and EU markets who will hack Ranil, and not Sirisena, when the nation has to vote at a general election next.

Sirisena has said a few times in the very recent weeks that he aims working towards ensuring that 'An SLFP-led Government will be elected next'. What we have today is an UNP-led Government. In other words Sirisena wants that order reversed and hence the UNP will be contesting the LG elections and a general election on its own while the SLFP will also contest sans members of the UPFA.

The US and EU, IMF, WB and ADB are fully behind the government. But chop that down to size....they're all with Ranil Wickremesinghe and not with the SLFP faction in the government.
It would seem that Wickremesinghe and his UNP have more global financial muscle than MR's solitary Chinese, Russian and a negligible Pakistani backing.

When Jinping visited Colombo just before Mahinda called his ill-timed Presidential election, it was clear even then that China had misgivings that Mahinda could clinch victory two years hence because of fast-declining popularity and Beijing wanted him to go for it immediately rather than lose later.

Beijing was proved right. The Chinese Embassy in Colombo had its ears to the ground 24 x 7 and led Jinping to push Mahinda into hasty elections, so hasty, that even his then acting Defence Minister Maithripala Sirisena himself advised him strongly against it.
Western interests still did not have confidence that Ranil could clinch the overall majority vote at a presidential poll and it would have been a hectic couple of months before the 'west' was sure of CBK's backing to get a fair slice of UPFA votes for Sirisena in addition to the UNP, Tamil and Muslim votes to ensure Rajapaksa was sent home in the groundswell of UNP, TNA and Muslim support.

This time around all those votes could go to Ranil and the UNP with a splintered SLFP floundering and barely having its nose above water.

That Jinping did come to Colombo to lead Rajapaksa much more deeper into an irrevocable Port City and maritime cooperation commitment with suggestions of mammoth aid, led Rajapaksa to take the plunge and announce unsustainable revenue losses by throwing out reductions in electricity and fuel prices. Ranil is today struggling to rectify those so-called pro-populist economic measures. They were not pro-populist in fact, they were defeatist, and Sirisena is making the same mistake because they are clearly retrograde and deprive the State of vital revenue to import social needs such as pharmaceuticals and consumer commodities not produced in this country.

If Jinping's uncalled-for visit was not an overt show of Chinese interference and deep involvement in determining the socio-political fate of Sri Lanka, then we do not know what Jinping's visit was all about.