Last week the UNP leader finally got into the election campaign in the Central and Wayamba Provinces. After his trip to the Maldives with Sagala Ratnayake, Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe spent some days in Mirissa near Galle, most probably because his wife Maitree, was a participant at the Galle literary festival held between Jan 28 and Feb. 1. Maitree Wickremesinghe is a major figure in the literary scene in Sri Lanka, and this time’s Galle literary festival had been even more successful than last year’s event. It was attended by figures like Thomas Keneally (Author of Schindler’s Ark) Edna O’Brien and the prickly feminist turned admirer of the young male physique, Germaine Greer. Ms Greer, a pioneer of the man-hating feminist movement finally gave in some years ago and published a controversial photographic essay featuring young males. The Galle literary festival was attended by more than 1,000 foreigners and an estimated further 4,000 locals. The wealthy and cultured classes in Colombo had been much in attendance in their numbers. To be somebody in Colombo, one had to be seen at the Galle literary festival.

The kultur crowd

During his sojourn in Galle, Wickremesinghe attended a meeting in Bentara-Elpitiya organised by Gayantha Karunatillake to discuss the problems of export crop cultivator’s in the area. Karunatilleke, readers will remember, was one of the three parliamentarians assigned to the Kandy district and he was supposed to be in Kandy helping S.B.Dissanayke. But here he was in the south, attending to his own work. Clearly, there was a problem in the UNP in prioritizing work. It certainly is important for politicians to harness discontent in their own areas, but organizing meetings of export crop cultivator’s at a time when international markets were down anyway, made no sense.

Wickremesinghe was honest. He told the export crop cultivators "You will get help only from God, not from the government". After the Galle literary festival ended, Wickremesinghe was on the campaign trail from Feb. 2 attending meetings in the NWP in Wennappuwa and in Narammala. Two days later, he attended the Independence Day celebration organized in Kundasale by party general secretary Tissa Attanayake giving the government’s big show in Colombo a miss.

Party money was finally doled out last week to the candidates at the NWP and Central Province elections each getting between Rs 75,000 to 100,000. The chief ministerial candidate of the NWP has also been ‘helped’ by the party but not SB on the assumption that SB is capable of raising his funds direct from donors. But funds apparently are in short supply given the economic condition in the country. Even the money given to the candidates at the NWP and Central PC elections is much less than that given to candidates at the NCP and Sabaragamuwa elections held a few months ago where each candidate had been given up to Rs. 200,000. Be that as it may, Wickremesinghe is now in the fray and in touch with what was happening.

One of the things that Wickremesinghe acknowledges is that SB has managed to get the traditional UNP voters to come out at this election. Although never a platform speaker, Wickremesinghe’s speech made at the UNP’s Independence day celebration in Kandy, clearly marks him out as one of the most forceful speakers in the UNP today.

Making forceful speeches was once S.B.Dissanayake’s territory, but at this election, Wickremesinghe’s speech appears more forceful than the snippets of Dissanayake’s speeches shown on TV. One reason could be that Dissanayake as a candidate is circumscribed by the local and parochial nature of the campaign while Wickremesinghe, as the party leader, is not. Wickremesinghe’s secret weapon in the central province elections could well turn out to be Mano Ganesan. Subsequent to last week’s appraisal of Ganesanrole in the UNP alliance, he has sent the present writer an e-mail with the figures of the Sabaragamuwa PC elections held a few months ago. This is a Psy-ops communication which is undoubtedly in wide circulation in Colombo by now. Both the CWC and the Up-country Peoples’ Front contested the Sabaragamuwa PC election separately, and when the final results were counted, one of the things that struck most people was how poorly both the CWC and the UPF had done.

David in Nuwara-eliya

Neither CWC nor UPF succeeded in winning any seats and the votes they received were abysmally low. The CWC got 5,135 votes in the Ratnapura district and 3,179 votes in the Kegalle district. The Up-country Peoples’ Front got only 1,418 votes in the Ratnapura district. But Mano Ganesan’s candidate in the Ratnapura district, Ruban Perumal, got 9,447 preferential votes and Baskaran Annamalai in the Kegalle district got 10,107 preferential votes. If these preferential votes represented Tamils, then the CWC and the UPF should be very worried. A hitherto unknown fringe group has shown itself capable of getting more than twice the combined vote of the established Indian Tamil political parties. Mano Ganesan has even more riding on this Central PC election than SBD. Even if SB does not become the chief minister, he would have gained anyway by having his civic rights problem laid to rest either way. But Mano Ganesan, the David of Indian Tamil politics, has taken upon himself the task of slaying the two Goliaths - the CWC and the UPF.

If the voting pattern among Indian Tamils in the Central Province is similar to that in the Sabaragamuwa, then the Goliaths are already dead. Ganesan holds that the plantation community is at the bottom of the heap in education, housing and health not due to any fault of the majority community, but due to the faults of the representatives of the plantation Tamils. He points out that successive Sinhala-led governments have given important ministries to the representatives of the plantation workers including the housing ministry once held by Prime Minister Premadasa. He points out that at present there are ten Indian Tamil parliamentarians and except for him, nine are ministers (two cabinet ministers and seven non-cabinet ministers). Hence he contends that the plight of the Indian Tamils is not due to a lack of representation or a lack of political power. He holds Arumugam Thondaman and P.Chandrasekeran personally liable for the plight of the plantation workers. This rhetoric seems to have worked in the Sabaragamuwa. Whether it will work in the heartland of the CWC power base in the Nuwara Eliya district, is yet to be seen.

About two decades ago, P.Chandrasekeran made his appearance on the scene with very similar rhetoric, but he was never able to dislodge the CWC from its position of supremacy. What he was able to do was to carve out his own niche in Indian Tamil politics, playing second fiddle to the CWC. Even if Ganesan is unable to topple the CWC and the UPF from their pedestals in the hill country, he may be able to come in as a third player and could spring some surprises on the government. The Indian Tamil plantation workers have had a long standing relationship with the UNP from the time of Thondaman Snr. Junior himself teamed up with the UNP on three occasions for the 2001 parliamentary election, the 2004 parliamentary election and for the 2005 presidential election. So the UNP tilt of the plantation workers is well established. Mano Ganesan, being a shrewd political entrepreneur, is exploiting this to the full. He would never have got into parliament if he had not contested on the UNP ticket in Colombo. He has always taken care to use the cover provided by the UNP for his politics.

Mustafa in Kandy

The UNP once had a powerful plantation trade union of its own, the Lanka Jathika Estate Wokers’ Union (LJEWU) which was led by Gamini Dissanayake. Perhaps in Mano Ganesan, the UNP has an Indian Tamil leader capable of restoring the UNP’s place among Indian Tamil workers. So there could be some surprises for the government on this front. The UNP on the other hand may be in for some surprises on the Muslim front. With Rauff Hakeem on their side, the greens assume that the Muslim vote is theirs. But Minister Faizer Mustafa has been in Kandy assiduously cultivating the Muslim vote. His father Faiz Mustafa was a prominent member of the Kandy bar, Faizer M himself looked after the interests of the SLMC in the Udathalawinna massacre case. Among the many thousands fed at president’s house in Kandy, was one group of Muslims from the Kandy district numbering over 7,000. Apart from the opportunity to see the president in the flesh and to partake of a meal at the ‘Rajagedara’, these Muslims were also given a display of Muslim power within the ruling coalition with all Muslim ministers in the government being in attendance.

The government also has the advantage that it can dole out patronage. One of the promises given by the phalanx of Muslim ministers present at that gathering of Muslims at president’s house was that if a Muslim provincial councilor is elected on the government list, he will have authority over a Muslim school to be set up in Kandy under the provincial council. This is of course in addition to the numerous favours the Muslim ministers will be able to grant the members of their community in so many unspecified ways. Both Mano Ganesan and Rauff Hakeem are too dependent on ideology and identity politics and too dismissive of the patronage factor, which militates in the government’s favour. It is true that the SLMC began as a reaction to the merger of the northern and eastern provinces in 1987 and thus identity politics was the very rationale of its founding. But it consolidated its position among the community through shrewd alliances with ruling parties and gaining access to state patronage. With regard to both Muslim politics and Indian Tamil politics, identity politics and patronage often went together. The reason why many voted for ‘their own’ was to strengthen the hand of their community and to gain access to even more patronage.

Pragmatism vs Ideology

 In the case of the Indian Tamils and the Muslims in particular, the whole rationale of identity politics was to gain access to state patronage. In the case of the Tamils of the north and east, the rationale of identity politics was to gain a separate state, so the question of jockeying for more state patronage did not apply in their case. Hence in the north and east identity politics could thrive without patronage. Whether it will be able to do so among the Muslims and the Indian Tamils will be known before the next column is written. Be that as it may, the SLMC is working only with the limited objective of having their sitting provincial councilors re-elected in the NWP and CP. The SLMC today clearly identifies itself as an anti-government, anti-establishment force. To be sure, the Muslims have for long been associated with the UNP, and as in the case of the plantation Tamils, the synergies created when they contest in alliance with the UNP, always sees the sum being greater than the parts. But Muslim political loyalties which remained affixed to the UNP for more than four decades after independence, began to loosen after M.H.M.Ashraff started the SLMC. Today, Muslim loyalties are fluid. This new trend is epitomized in figures like Hilmy Careem the former UNP Mayor of Matale who joined President Rajapakse and was elected as the UPFA Mayor of Matale at the last local government elections.

The UNP is still searching for a chief ministerial candidate for the western province. There were rumours that they were trying to persuade Sajith Premadasa, Ravi Karunanayake or Karu Jayasuriya to resign from parliament to contest as the WPC chief ministerial candidate. But it is highly unlikely that any parliamentarian will resign to contest the WPC. The reason why some fixated on Karu Jayasuriya was because he contested the WPC elections held in 1999 and got a record number of preference votes. Another reason could be that Jayasuriya has the ‘credentials’ needed to approach the public these days. He wears the cloth and banian, espouses the Sinhala Buddhist cause, and walks from village to village in the NWP to talk to villagers unlike Wickremesinghe and, above all, everywhere he goes, he speaks glowingly of the military victories of the government. His claim is that he joined the Rajapakse government for a while to further the cause of the war on terror. However it is unlikely that he will resign from parliament to contest the WPC elections. Speaking of PC elections, the last time Karu J contested the WPC election in 1999 – that was just a few years into his political career – he was told by the then Indian High Commissioner in Colombo Shivashankar Menon (Now the Indian Foreign Secretary) that there was an LTTE plot to assassinate him in such manner that the blame falls on the government.

Jayasuriya had stopped campaigning for some days as a result of this warning. Readers will recall that 1999 was the year that the LTTE tried to assassinate Chandrika Kumaratunga as well. If that plot had succeeded, Karu J would have been the Athulathmudali of 1999. The modus operandi would have been the same. The LTTE assassinates a well-loved opposition figure so that the blame falls on the government and then they follow up by assassinating the head of the government as well – the LTTE’s version of the Moghul practice of beheading Muslim detractors and burying them wrapped in pigskins so that they will remain defiled forever. It is standard LTTE practice to defile the government it plans to bring down, which is why I insisted on keeping an open mind on the Lasantha Wickremetunga case. If it is the LTTE that did away with Lasantha, well they have at least partially achieved their objective by defiling the record of the government.

Ivan’s analysis

 Wickremesinghe is in an unenviable position, because in addition to being burdened with a string of electoral defeats which brings with it an inevitable erosion of credibility, he is confronted with an SLFP leader of the kind that no UNP leader ever had to face before. The SLFP leaders that Dudley Senanayake, J.R.Jayewardene and R.Premadasa had to faced were all abject failures. And it didn’t take them years to fail – they started failing from day one. The Bandaranakes, father, widow and daughter were good at capturing power, but failures in governance. This captain however is different. Mahinda Rajapakse fights like Ranjan Wijeratne, builds like R.. Premadasa and does his public relations like Gamini Dissanayake. Yet the people of this country expect Wickremesinghe to compete with that! While fighting terrorism more successfully than any previous government, the president has kept numerous major infrastructure projects on track in Norochcholai, Upper-Kotmale, the Hambantota harbour not to mention innumerable lesser projects like flyovers, roads and irrigation projects in a manner reminiscent of the best years of the J.R.Jayewardene era.

In addition to this, he woos the electorate in a manner unseen ever before, talking to people, shaking hands and feeding them, and playing the part of people’s president. The UNP’s way of trying to deal with this challenge posed by the president – to threaten legal action against presidential meals - was counterproductive to say the least. The president has turned this to his advantage by saying that the UNP was trying to stop him from breaking bread with the ordinary masses.

The president’s triumphant march seems unstoppable. Another diplomatic victory scored by the president last week was the call by the co-chairs (USA, Norway, the EU & Japan) for the LTTE to surrender to the government. Analyzing the co-chairs statement Victor Ivan states in the editorial in today’s Ravaya that by asking the LTTE to lay down arms and surrender, the co-chairs have accepted that the LTTE has been militarily defeated and that there was no talk of a political solution but only the terms of an amnesty. Thereby he says the co-chairs have accepted that there is no further business to be transacted with the LTTE and that they too tacitly approve of crushing the LTTE militarily. He states that it is commendable that the co-chairs changed their position for the better even belatedly and that now there was the possibility of co-operation for the betterment of the country. He states that the co-chairs should without rancour, help Sri Lanka to overcome the problems it faces, as it is important for the entire world to safeguard the military victory gained; and that after the war ends, it would be opportune for the western donors to provide Sri Lankan with that USD 4.5 billion aid package that was pledged in 2001.

Not stopping at these editorial comments, Ivan states in his centre page political analysis in today’s Ravaya that he looks positively upon the anti-LTTE war conducted by the Rajapkse regime. Having explained the reasons which made him change his stance from negotiation to war, Ivan says that the decision to defeat the LTTE militarily was the most important, the riskiest, most forceful decision that any leader of this nation has taken since independence. He says that President Rajapakse had to tread this path despite obstacles placed in his path by the international community but that he now stands vindicated.

Ivan takes to task the opposition, the media and even the judiciary for having acted irresponsibly in this crisis. He argues that the opposition acted irresponsibly in trying to utilize opposition to the war among the international community to cut off aid to Sri Lanka; the judiciary acted irresponsibly when it came to rulings on searches and road blocks. As for the media, they continued to ply their trade as they would in a situation of complete normalcy and did not take into account the special circumstances prevailing in the country, at times unnecessarily probing into the internal affairs of the military at a time of war.