The Island Editorial

Antho jata bahi jata

18 May 2017

It looks as if the UNP thought the SLFP had overstayed its welcome in the yahapalana government though the originally agreed two-year cohabitation period is not yet over. The SLFP has had to endure contempt, humiliation and obloquy at the hands of the UNP and its backers.

A collective of pro-UNP NGOs has recently reproached the SLFP members of the Cabinet for the government’s failure to make good on its pre-election pledges. It has also held them responsible for the inordinate delay in introducing the promised constitutional reforms. There seems to be an attempt to lay all the sins of the yahapalana regime on the SLFP goat, as it were, and banish it into the political wilderness.


Minister Lakshman Kiriella, too, has attributed the vexing cunctation in the constitution-making process to the SLFP’s failure to submit its constitutional proposals. The UNP and the SLFP are at loggerheads over a Cabinet reshuffle on the cards. Some UNP big guns have reportedly threatened to leave the government if their ministerial posts are changed. They suspect a surreptitious move on the part of the SLFP to consolidate its power in the government by granting all important ministerial posts to its Cabinet members. The UNP’s rank and file are openly questioning the party leadership’s wisdom of continuing with the yahapalana cohabitation. Some members of the UNP’s ginger group have made known their desire to join the Cabinet ‘to serve the public better’.


The SLFP is divided and it is now up to the UNP to take the tide in its affairs at the flood by going for an election or regret later. However, unless the UNP supporters are assured that they will have a government of their own in 2020 many of them may not be so enthusiastic as to cast their votes let alone go all out to campaign for their party’s victory.


The popularity of the yahapalana government, which has so far failed to live up to public expectations is manifestly on the wane. If the SLFP and the UNP are seen to be keen to resume their cohabitation after contesting future elections separately, frustrated voters are likely to look for an alternative. The Joint Opposition (JO) is likely to stand to gain in such an eventuality. (The JVP was hoping to capitalise on public disillusionment resulting from the failure of the two main parties on honeymoon, but its plan went awry due to the emergence of a formidable SLFP dissident group.)


President Sirisena is in a dilemma. He brought down a strong SLFP-led government in 2015 after defecting to the Opposition and winning the last presidential election. Thereafter, he engineered the SLFP-led UPFA’s defeat to prevent Mahinda Rajapaksa from becoming the Prime Minister. He has thus achieved his personal goals at the expense of the SLFP, which he currently leads. Now, he is faced with the daunting task of making the debilitated SLFP win elections!


The President is like a jockey who is trying to win a race with a horse he has willfully crippled. Besides the problems he faces in the national unity government, which is paradoxically characterised by disunity, he has had to contend with some other serious issues including the prospect of his loyalists losing power in two Provincial Councils. He may have been able to bring the situation under control in the North Central Province, wherein lies his home district, Polonnaruwa, by giving ministerial posts to some rebel councillors, but his problems are far from over. If the JO succeeds in wresting control of a Provincial Council that will mark the tipping point in the power struggle between the two factions of the SLFP.


Antho jata bahi jata—conflicts within, conflicts without!