The UNP is in the throes of more intra party ferment and this time the man of the match is Kurunegala district parliamentarian Johnston Fernando. In the aftermath of the defeat at the Eastern Province elections, there have been two tendencies in the UNP - one seeking to make S.B.Dissanayake the deputy leader of the party and another faction wanting to see Rukman Senanyake as party leader after kicking Ranil Wickremesinghe upstairs to lead a grand coalition of the UNP, the SLFP(M), Chandrika Kumaratunga, the SLMC and whoever else would join. Wickremesinghe is down because of this latest round of infighting, but he is far from out. He still has the unstinted support of parliamentarians like Akila Kariyawasam Sagala Ratnayake and Vajira Abeywardene, the latter who is militantly on his side. He also has the support of Tissa Attanayake, the general secretary of the party. In the past, there was a group of relatively young parliamentarians like Abeywardene, Johnston, Lakshman Seneviratne, Attanayake and Gayantha Karunatilleke who were a solid bloc of support for Wickremesinghe through the many leadership challenges that he has had to face over the years. But this latest challenge has seen deep fissures emerging within this group.

Johnston Fernando

Johnston Fernando has been by Wickremesinghe’s side from the time of the first rebellion against him launched under Gamini Atukorale’s leadership in late 2001. This was just before the election that brought the UNP into power. From that time onwards, Johnston has been a prominent presence by Wickremesinghe’s side through all intra party battles. Last Thursday when Wickremesinghe met Lakshman Seneviratne for a one to one meeting, he had told Seneviratne "Johnston is a kalabalakaari type of person, but you area more kalpanakari, so why are you involved in this?" This in a way illustrates the fate of all those who support Wickremesinghe too enthusiastically. The reason why Fernando is being described now as a kalabalakaari type of person is not because he had been in the habit of rebelling against Wickremesinghe, but because he was in the habit of bringing a whole horde of young men with him to express support for Wickremesinghe at various meetings. Johnston was one who provided the muscle and dynamism to the Wickremesinghe camp within the UNP. Despite Fernando’s proximity to Wickremesinghe, there was an element of uncertainty because he comes from the Kurunegala district where Wickremesinghe’s clear favourite was Akila Kariyawasam. The nagging doubt existed that no matter what he did for Wickremesinghe, that he would always be on a lesser level than Kariyawasam.

During the EPC election, when a difference of opinion arose between Fernando and Sagala Ratnayake, Wickremesinghe had taken Ratnayake’s side thus sending the message loud and clear to Fernando, who seems to have ceased being a Wickremesinghe loyalist from that moment onwards. Johnston is not the only person to whom this kind of thing has happened. Another similar casualty was Olitha Premathiratne of Katana. Olitha was a man who brought storm troopers from Katana to the party headquarters at Pita Kotte at the height of the ‘reformist’ drama in the UNP in early 2007 because of a rumour that the reformist group was planning to storm the party headquarters. Olitha was also one who provided muscle and dynamism to the Wickremesinghe block. But when it came to appointing organizers, Olitha was unceremoniously brushed aside and Katana was given to Ranjan Ramanayake, a complete newcomer to politics.

Where the Johnston Fernando drama is going to end is anybody’s guess. Up until the time we went to press, he had not responded to a request made by Wickremesinghe to come for a discussion. Even Wickremesinghe’s telephone calls to Johnston had gone unanswered. Wickremesinghe had lamented to another MP, "When Johnston is with me, he is with me 200% but when he is against me, he is 200% against me". Wickremesinghe has been in panic mode over the past several days. He had summoned S.B.Dissanayake for a discussion and SB had responded. Wickremesinghe had asked him what he should do about these problems besetting the party. SB had told his leader that he (SB) had given him an 18 point plan to improve things in the party, but that Wickremesinghe had not taken any notice of those suggestions. SB had told Ranil that had his suggestions been implemented at that time, Wickremesinghe would not be facing the problems confronting him today.

The sacrificial animals

Kurunegala district MP Dayasiri Jayasekera had also been summoned by Wickremesinghe and what Jayasekera had told him was that things are not going to be easy this time and that it would be best if Wickremesinghe enlisted the support of Sajith Premadasa and S.B.Dissanayake for the forthcoming Sabaragamuwa and NCP elections. That would also help defuse the present situation in the party. Sajith Premadasa in the meantime, is keeping his head low in all this. Some sections of the media tried to make out that SB and Sajith would be put in charge of the NCP and Sabaragamuwa elections. From the content of that report, one understood it to be an assignment of the kind that was given to Thilanga Sumathipala during the presidential elections of 2005, when he was sent as a UNP ‘special commissar’ to Anuradhapura to co-ordinate matters. For Sajith and S.B.Dissnayake to go to the NCP and Sabaragamuwa as mere special commissioners will be political suicide. Unless they are leading the UNP in their own right, there is little that these two can do to galvanize a UNP which is led by someone else, with that someone making all the decisions about who gets what.

What this columnist has heard about the meeting that Lakshman Seneviratne had with Wickremesinghe is that it was short and curt. Seneviratne had given Wickremesinghe a piece of his mind and told him to accede gracefully. Seneviratne himself has a history of rebelling openly regardless of the consequences if he is totally fed up with the status quo. He joined Gamini Dissanayake and Lalith Athulathmudali in 1991 after the impeachment motion had failed which means that for him being on the winning side was not necessarily a consideration. That was a singular act of bravery and the likes of Seneviratne represent the very backbone of the UNP. Whatever is being done, is being done openly, with people being approached without fear. Once the Sabaragamuwa and North Central provincial councils were dissolved, people thought this internal battle in the UNP would die down until the conclusion of the elections. But that does not seem to be happening. The battle is in full swing and unless some resolution is arrived at, the UNP will go to those elections as a house divided.

Even if Rukman Senanayake cannot be appointed leader as has been suggested, because Wickremesinghe has to step down from his own post, a compromise solution that Wickremesinghe may be able to arrive at is to appoint S.B.Dissanayake as the deputy leader, which he can do without having to give up his own position. But it is highly unlikely that Wickremesinghe will appoint Dissanayake as deputy leader because that will be a case of creating another contender for the leadership. It appears that the last thing on the minds of the UNP at the moment is the forthcoming elections in Sabaragamuwa and the NCP. Because of the overwhelming presence of the minority communities in the Eastern Province, everyone in the UNP, even the ordinary MPs, joined the election campaign with a certain degree of optimism. That was the province where the UNP’s chances were brightest because they had the support of the SLMC, the TNA and even the LTTE – the latter issued a request to all Tamils in the EP to defeat the government.

What’s plan B?

But vis-a-vis the NCP and Sabaragamuwa, the UNP has no reason to be optimistic. The recent defeat at the EPC elections has queered the pitch for the UNP by creating a losing trend. Even if there was no such trend the UNP is abysmally weak in both provinces. If one takes the Kurunegala district, the UNP has a strong presence. The district is led by Gamini Jayawickreme Perera, a political veteran. Then they have dynamic young organizers like Johnston Fernando and Dayasiri Jayasekera in the district. Even in the Puttlam district, Palitha Range Bandara has been providing leadership even in a Neanderthal kind of way. But the districts of Polonnaruwa, Anradhapura, Ratnapura and Kegalle, have no Jayawickreme Pereras, no Johnston Fernandos or even Palaitha Range Bandaras. Besides, the Polonnaruwa district has only one UNP parliamentarian, Earl Gunasekera, who is also the district leader. The Anuradhapura district has P.Harrisson who is the district leader and Chandrani Bandara. Kegalle has Kabir Hashim and Champika Premadasa. Ratnapura has Talatha Atukorale and Dinesh Gankanda. Just to give readers an impression of how weak the UNP really is, the JVP also has exactly the same number of parliamentarians in the Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and Kegalle districts as the UNP two, one and two respectively. In the Ratnapura district also, the JVP until recently had the same strength as the UNP with two MPs, Achala Jagoda and Deepal Gunasekera, but these two MPs have since defected to the Weerawansa group.

The Ratnapura district has lost UNP district leaders twice – the first time when Susantha Punchinilame defected to the government and when his successor, Mahinda Ratnatilleke, followed him during the budget drama late last year. Now Ratnapura does not have a district leader. The most dynamic UNP figures in all these districts have joined the government. On top of all this, the UNP’s sole slogan of the cost of living will not necessarily draw crowds in either of these districts. The NCP, being a rice producing area, actually benefits from the high cost of living. Paddy is receiving high prices and with the world food crisis set to last for many years, there is a new optimism in the food producing areas of the country. The same can be said of Sabaragamuwa which has a large number of tea and rubber smallholders, and all of them are getting record prices for green leaf and sheet rubber. Minister Mano Wijeratne, the former UNP district leader for Kegalle, told the present writer that when he was deputy minister of plantation industries in the Premadasa government in the early 1990s, he had encouraged one village called Uduwaka in the Dedigama electorate, to take to cultivating tea in home plots and now that village has about 500 acres of tea which brings a substantial income for those people. This is a segment of the population that can afford to watch TV and be patriotic. So if nobody in the UNP is stopping their other engagements and turf wars on behalf of the NCP and Sabaragamuwa elections, that’s not surprising.

The Seruvila effect

When the JVP politburo met last week, they roundly condemned the government’s decision to dissolve the Sabaragamuwa and NCP provincial councils. The JVP’s view was that if the government is combating terrorism, they should organize the people to face terrorism instead of holding elections before they were due. The party said that the government had become a minority in both provincial councils, but that the JVP had not moved away from the policy of supporting the government in matters of national interest and that this unholy quest for a clear majority was to push through anti-people legislation. Even though the government spoke of the war, what was on their minds was something completely different. Clearly, the JVP is not too happy about having to face elections at this particular time. The EPC elections showed that their popularity had taken a nose dive in the Digamadulla and Trincomalee districts. And the same situation may well be revealed in Sabaragamuwa and the NCP as well, even though JVP strongman K.D.Lal Kantha hails from Anuradhapura. If they are shown to lose ground in these two provinces as well, this may become a kind of creeping death for the JVP, with this trend enhancing their losses in other provinces.

The JVP has nine members in the Sabaragamuwa PC. This combined with the UNP’s 15 outnumbers the government’s 18 plus the CWC’s lone member and one renegade JVP member who has joined the Weerawansa group. In the NCP, the JVP has eight seats, which together with the UNP’s 10 and the single SLMC seat outnumbers the government’s 14. Thus, the government’s objective is obviously to win back some of the seats they lost to the JVP at the last election. It is almost certain that the JVP’s numbers are going to dwindle and the PA is going to win more seats than they did last time. Until 2004 and culminating in that grand campaign of November 2005, the JVP was very much on an upward trend. The downward trend began in the East and will continue in the NCP and the Sabaragamuwa. This is what worries the JVP which, though a cadre based party, see their members swayed by election results.

When Rohana Wijeweera, not only lost the 1982 presidential elections but also failed to get the number of votes that would have given hope of a future, JVP activists left the party in droves. The present writer has described this as the JVP’s second great disaster after the failed insurgency of 1971. Even though there was no loss of life in 1982, activist turnover was almost as great. If the JVP fails to put up a good showing at the Sabaragamuwa and NCP elections, they will be faced with another situation analogous to the aftermath of the 1982 presidential election. But it would be impolitic at this stage to predict the number of seats that the JVP may be able to win. The present writer predicted that the JVP would not be able to win a single seat in the EPC but they did win in Seruwila even against their own expectations. The reason for this was that the UNP had all but abandoned that electorate, because they thought the government had gone to war in order to restore the water supply to Seruwila and had delivered the goods. Therefore the UNP did not have a chance in that electorate. This complete abdication by the UNP worked to the benefit of the JVP. Likewise, given the present state of ferment in the UNP and their pathetic situation in both provinces, the effect’ may give the JVP a new lease of life – more at the expense of the UNP than at the expense of the government. It is yet to be seen what effect the JVP’s break away group will have on its prospects at the two PC elections.

In an interesting development, the politburo of the JNP which met last week, shared the view of the mainline JVP that dissolving these two provinces at this time, was uncalled for. The government however says that it was the NCP chief minister who had approached the president at the height of the budget drama last year and suggested that the NCP be dissolved so that the government would be able to test its popularity.

There was a meeting held last week between the president, Mahipala Herath the CM of Sabaragamuwa, Berty Premalal Dissanayake CM of the NCP, Dullas Alahapperuma, Mano Wijeratne and others where it was discussed that both the JVP and the UNP had asked for elections and that they were protesting when an election was granted. The UNP holds that what they wanted was not a PC election but a parliamentary election. The way an opposition party can gauge their chances was through by-elections in the old system. Between 1970 and 1977, the fact that the UNP won the by-elections held was the sign that they were on their way back to power. In the new system, since there are no by-elections, the way the opposition can gauge their chances is through elections to PCs and local bodies. In 1993, the PA’s victory in the Western and Southern PC elections was the signal that they were on their way back to power. Likewise the Sabaragamuwa and NCP elections will serve as the UNP’s gauge whether they are on the way back to power or not.