The Island Editorial

Polls Phobia

22 September 2016

A group of SLFP local government (LG) politicians loyal to former President Mahinda Rajapaksa staged a protest in Colombo on Tuesday, demanding that the much-delayed mini polls be held forthwith. They raked the government over the coals for postponing the elections on some flimsy pretext for political reasons.

President Maithripala Sirisena is in a quandary. He succeeded in forming a joint administration with the UNP after being elected last year. Following the general election a few months later, he made the SLFP join the UNP to form what is described as a national unity government. A president without his party solidly behind him is like a banana without the skin as they say in this country.

So, if the President is to retain his grip on the SLFP vis-à-vis a determined effort by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa to wrest control of the party, he will have to lead the SLFP’s LG polls campaign himself and defeat the UNP. But, his problem is that his candidates will have to compete with the SLFP rebels as well who are sure to enter the fray from another party, or an independent group, backed by Rajapaksa. This is a worrisome proposition for President Sirisena in that the SLFPers won’t vote for his candidates if they have the slightest doubt that he would opt for a joint administration with the UNP at the LG level as well. On the other hand, though he controls the SLFP’s decision making body and its organisers, he cannot rest assured that the rank and file of the party are with him. If he fails to steer the SLFP to victory at the next LG polls, the party membership is likely to rebel against him and he will be at the mercy of the UNP completely for political survival as a mere figurehead in such an eventuality.

The UNP pretends to be cock-a-hoop about the possibility of the SLFP suffering a split, which will, no doubt, be to its advantage at the LG polls. But, if President Sirisena loses control of the SLFP, the present joint administration will be doomed with the SLFPers within its ministerial ranks voting with their feet lest they should also be rejected by the party membership. Should what is feared come to pass, the UNP would have to enlist the backing of either the TNA or engineer crossovers from the SLFP to muster a working majority in Parliament. Both these options are problematic. The TNA favours federalism and the SLFP defections will weaken President Sirisena’s position further and strengthen the position of the Rajapaksas. Hence, the government decision to keep postponing LG polls!

What the protesting ex-LG members seem to have forgotten is that it is the SLFP which started the bad practice of postponing elections. In 1975, the SLFP-led United Front government blatantly abused its two-thirds majority to extend its parliamentary term by two years. But, it could not avert an ignominious defeat in 1977, when the UNP secured a mammoth majority.

J. R. Jayewardene declared he would roll back the electoral map, but he failed in his endeavour. He would spin in his grave if he knew that the present government with some of his kinsmen at the helm has surpassed him posthumously.

Most of the civil society outfits which have taken upon themselves the task of cleansing the electoral process of malpractices and were instrumental in creating conditions for the formation of the present administration are not flogging the issue of the postponement of LG polls the way they should. Cynics ask how they can be expected to take on the government which is backed by their foreign paymasters.

Brecht has his character, Galileo, say in the Life of Galileo: ‘Unhappy is the land that is in need of heroes’. Similarly, one, disturbed by the hypocrisy of the self-appointed messiahs who promised good governance, may say: ‘Unhappy is the land that is in need of statesmen.’

The only way to preserve democracy is to ensure that the government in power fears the people and not the other way around. This is not possible if a political party of a coalition is allowed to get entrenched in power for far too long by securing more than one term. If the Rajapaksa government had won the last presidential and parliamentary elections as well, the many scams its grandees were involved in would have gone uninvestigated. Likewise, the corrupt deals such as the Central Bank bond scams and the Customs SUV racket, under the present administration, will get probed only in the event of a change of government. When it comes to electing politicians people have to set a thief to catch a thief for want of a better alternative.

Let those who resort to postponing polls for fear of losing them be warned that they are making a terrible mistake. They are only causing public resentment to well up and burst forth sooner than expected. Their effort is as futile as ‘trying to control dysentery with a loincloth’.