The much talked about IMF loan has still not been approved. When the IMF external relations director Caroline Atkinson held the last bi-weekly press briefing several days ago on June 18, she was asked whether she could say something about the progress of the Sri Lankan application for a stand by facility. Atkinson’s answer was evasive. A mission has been in Colombo to look at the safeguards assessment she said, and added that "Whenever there is a final agreement, then a program would go to the executive board." The previous press briefing had been held on May 21 in the immediate aftermath of Prabhakaran’s death and the end of the war, and what she had to say then, was that "We welcome the cessation of hostilities and look forward to improvements in Sri Lanka. We are at an advanced stage in discussions with the authorities. We don’t have an exact executive board date scheduled, but we look forward to being able to bring a program to the board for its approval in the coming weeks".

Probably with the intention of finding out whether any political reasons were the cause for the delay, Atkinson was pointedly asked, "With the political situation in Sri Lanka as it is now, is that a good conditional foundation for a government to implement a program?" But the IMF official refused to take the bait and the answer was a masterpiece of evasiveness – "Obviously, when we make…a loan, we are also making a judgment on the ability of a government to carry out the policies that we see as necessary and that will be all part and parcel of what is considered". Weeks have now turned into months and the IMF loan is in limbo. Upon inquiry, the Central Bank assures us that the IMF staff team that came to Sri Lanka, has completed their work, and that the report has been favourable to Sri Lanka. The procedure is that once the staff completes their assessment, the matter is put to the executive board of the IMF. Yet, Sri Lanka has still not been placed on the executive board agenda until the end of the month of June.

They also further observed that "Sri Lanka’s domestic financial markets have been largely immune to the global financial turbulence." The IMF’s assessment of Sri Lanka’s performance in 2007, was also on the same positive lines. But they had a cautionary note as well, Directors noted the significant risk of public debt distress in Sri Lanka arising from heavy reliance on dollar-denominated short term commercial debt. They stressed the need to lengthen and smoothen the maturity profile of the debt to reduce rollover and liquidity risks …and to improve debt management in general. (This latter reference was to the commercial borrowing of the government, such as the $500 million loan from the HSBC.)What is significant is that such positive comments on the economy was made at a time when the war was raging in the country, and the LTTE was making successful air raids in Colombo, driving up insurance premiums and creating economic havoc. Now that the war has ended, their next yearly assessment in October this year, should if anything, be even more positive. Yet as far as the stand by facility is concerned, Sri Lanka seems to have come up against a glass wall.

The processing of the loan slowed down from the time Hillary Clinton made that statement that this would not be an appropriate time to grant Sri Lanka this loan. The IMF executive board is made up of 24 directors representing 185 member nations of the IMF. A few countries such as the USA, Japan, Germany, France and the United Kingdom have one director each. Collectively, these IMF superpowers control close to forty percent of the total votes on the executive board with the USA alone controlling nearly 17%. The remaining 19 directors on the executive board are chosen by various groups of countries. For example, Sri Lanka shares one director post with India, Bangladesh and Bhutan. If one counts the total number of votes of the countries that has been lecturing Sri Lanka on human rights of late, that would amount to well over fifty percent of the total votes. So not all directors of the IMF are equal and we can trace the disappearance of the Sri Lankan application into the bowels of the IMF bureaucracy to this.

The bureaucrats in these international institutions, do what the powerful countries want. Even in an institution like the UN Human Rights Commission where voting power of the members is equal, we found Navi Pillai, the Human Rights Commissioner, doing the bidding of western nations much to the fury of countries like Algeria which had to remind her that the Council had spoken with regard to the situation in Sri Lanka and that she had no right to press for an investigation once the council had voted against it. The ex post facto vindictiveness that the west has shown towards Sri Lanka probably has no parallel in the history of that supposedly most apolitical of institutions - the IMF. If the Western powers had shown this same activist ardour to help the UNP government of 2001-2004 by mounting pressure on the LTTE to desist from violating the ceasefire, then the war would not have been necessary, and history would have been completely different. But now, when the war is over, the killing and dying has stopped, and Sri Lanka needs every penny it can get for the purpose of reconstruction, there is this international conspiracy launched against Sri Lanka which is playing itself out in various fora, be it the UN Human Rights Committee or the IMF.

When the UNP political affairs committee met on Friday last week, one topic dominated the discussion and this was the question of the UNP entering into alliances with other parties in order to fight future elections. The discussion had raged for nearly three hours and this was not necessarily because there were widely differing view points expressed at the PAC, it was because speaker after speaker expressed concern over the UNP forming alliances with other political parties to fight the next presidential or parliamentary election. These are the elections that will decide the future of the UNP for the next six years or more, and everybody is very concerned about the manner in which it will be fought. It is not really that anybody expects the UNP to win, but the way the election is fought will determine the party’s prospects even in 2017, and this is what is causing concern.

Malik Samarawickreme, who had not been present at several past meetings of the PAC also attended this meeting, because the topic that was being discussed was of such crucial importance to the party leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. Ravi Karunanyake had expressed views in favour of the UNP forming alliances with other parties. What became clear during the course of the discussion was that the concern that most members of the PAC had is not about alliances with minority parties such as the SLMC, or Mano Ganesan’s group or the upcountry parties that allied themselves with the UNP, such as Digambaram’s group and Sathasivam’s group. The concern was much more with the likes of Mangala Samaraweera whom many members of the PAC felt expressed views that could do enormous harm to the UNP’s campaign. The fact that the party leader entered into an agreement to make Samaraweera the second in command of a future UNP government, also could be a contributory factor as there are others eying the same slot.

Another point that causes concern to the members of the PAC is that Samaraweera has a tendency to cling onto ideas which have ceased to have validity. While members of the UNP like Ravi Karunanayake, and Lakshman Kiriella also made statements that were seized upon by the government propagandists, the difference between such members of the UNP and Samaraweera is that the UNPers would know when they have made a mistake and lie low and try not to repeat it, whereas Samaraweera, has an in-your-face kind of approach and he would seek to justify publicly even the most outrageous stand he has taken, regardless of the political cost. This is not something that the UNP can afford –hence the resistance to forming an alliance with Samraweera’s newly registered political party the Ape Jathika Peramuna. As a coalition partner, Samaraweera will be present on the national UNP platform come an election, and his outrageous views will pass off as the UNP’s views – a situation that most would like to avoid.

Even though last Friday’s PAC was convened especially to discuss the formation of a coalition in the wake of the election commissioner recognizing Samaraweera’s party, the members of the PAC were determined to stymie it. So what they did was to do a Wickremesinghe to Wickremesinghe – they appointed a committee! The PAC appointed a committee comprising of Gamini Jayawickrema Perera, S.B.Dissanayake, Sajith Premadasa, Lakshman Seneviratne, Johnston Fernando and Kabir Hashim to work out a programme for victory (Dinana gamana) and only those agreeable to this program would be allowed to join in a coalition with the UNP. The UNP is in many senses an establishment party. The majority of the working committee is still with the party leader despite a string of defeats over a fifteen year period because of this visceral dislike for rebellion. In the public domain too the UNP is not the party that rocks the boat unnecessarily – many members of the UNP parliamentary group may not be as ready as Samaraweera, to question conventional ways of thinking especially on matters such as the war on which Samraweera has taken a view closer to the lunatic left than to the conservative majority.

One might say that the PAC has basically lost the battle to have Justin Galappaththy reinstated as the district leader for Matara and Dayasiri Jayasekera appointed as the leader of the UNP university students unions. The failue to get Jayasekera’s appointment confirmed, may not impact too negatively on the UNP because university students were not necessarily a mainstay of the party in any case. Even though university students are generally perceived as being anti-establishment and the UNP is in the opposition and articulating a point which is very anti-establishment, university students will not necessarily be attracted to the UNP in significant numbers because the UNP’s brand of anti-establishment politics is not necessarily attractive to university students or even the younger generation in general. All his appointment would have done is perhaps to make the UNP’s presence better felt at the university level. But the failure to get Galappaththy reinstated as the district leader for Matara may have repercussions that go even beyond the Matara district.

The manner in which the drama played out finally was as a contest between the Govigama and the Karava, with the latter being the aggrieved party. The neighbouring district of Galle has a much larger population of Karavas than the Matara district, and unless the UNP can field a very popular Karava leader from the Galle district, Galappaththy’s matter may have repercussions on the UNP in the Galle district as well. The Galle district has probably the highest concentration of Karavas of any district in the country and they constitute the second largest caste group after the Govigama.

Among the events that attracted media attention last week was the resignation of Joseph Michael Perera from the position of UNP organizer for Negombo. When the chief opposition whip resigns from his electoral organizer’s position, it certainly raised eyebrows especially because of the present situation in the party. But it so turns out that this is just to facilitate the switching of electorates between Jayalath Jayawardene who is the present organizer for Ja Ela, and Perera. Joseph Michael Perera was for many years since the 1970s the UNP organizer for Ja Ela. But then he started losing Ja Ela from the time of the first provincial council election in 1988, and some years ago, Perera was shifted to the Negombo electorate. Now it appears that he wants his old electorate back and Jayalath Jayawardene who was once the organizer for Negombo also wouldn’t mind going back. So it will finally be an all’s well that ends well, scenario in the Gampaha district.

The other resignation – that of Lilantha Perera, the UNP organizer for Colombo North, will however be different. Lilantha Perera resigned last year as well, because his electorate had been split into two. But later, when he was given complete control over the Colombo North electorate once again, he relented and withdrew his resignation. Last week’s resignation however seems to be for good. His letter of resignation sent to Ranil Wickremesinghe says that he is resigning because the party leader pulled him up for having organized a ceremony to felicitate the president, the defense secretary, the three service commanders and the armed forces for the victory over terrorism.He put up posters announcing the event all over his electorate. Perera points out that both his father, Christie Perera, and his elder sister were victims of the Thotalanga suicide bombing and that the ceremony to felicitate the armed forces for their victory was held as a memorial of his later father.

He states that it is everybody’s duty at this stage to give the fullest cooperation to the president to develop the country instead of trying to undermine him. He has therefore resigned from his position as the organizer for north Colombo and the UNP working committee. He does not however, say he has resigned from the party. He further states that he will organize welfare programs for war veterans through the Christie Perera Foundation. When asked whether he had taken this decision to quit after having met the president, or Basil Rajapakse, Perera insists that he has not done so and that he has not been contacted by these parties either. He states that he will be willing to rejoin the UNP if there is a change in the leadership. When asked whether he would accept a position from the president, he states that he would be only too willing. Asked whether he is going to contest the next parliamentary election on the UPFA ticket, he says that he has no such plans.

Thus, one might say that Lilantha Perera has not really defected like all the others who left the UNP in the past – he has gone into hibernation. Incidentally, a few UNP politicians have been toying with the idea of going into hibernation politically, but Lilantha Perera is the first to actually do it. Since the UNP has no hope in hell of winning the next presidential or parliamentary elections, they will be out of power for the better part of a decade, and some politicians have been wondering aloud whether there is any point in exhausting their energy and resources fighting unwinnable elections and whether it would not be wiser to stay off politics for a while, maintaining contact with the grassroots through social work, so that they would be able to re-enter politics at a later date when the situation was more conducive to capturing political power.

Talking about the UNP’s prospects, there was the bizarre incident last week of an astrologer making predictions at a meeting convened to discuss the UNP media strategy that president Mahinda Rajapakse would be dead by September 9 this year and the present prime minister would become president with Ranil Wickremesinghe as the prime minister. This astrologer is a contributor of an astrological column to a pro-UNP Sinhala Weekly. Predicting the death of the president has since 2005, been one of the favourite morale boosters of the UNP. This is a relatively new phenomenon. The UNP has been out of power for more than thirteen years, but in the first seven years from 1994-2001, nobody was waiting for Chandrika Kumaratunga to die in order to come to power – even though the UNP had much more reason to wish Chandrika dead because her preoccupation during the first seven years was persecuting the UNP. The UNP was battered, but confident at that time, and they did win power after just seven years in the wilderness. They lost power again in 2004, and because a presidential election was soon due, which the UNP expected to win, nobody once again, wanted to see Candrika dead – she was on her way out anyway as she couldn’t contest a third term.

Waiting for the president to die is something that started after 2005 – even though nobody in the UNP has any reason to want to see him dead – he has not done anything hostile to the UNP since assuming power unlike his predecessor. When the LTTE was around, the UNP could live off the expectation that a suicide bomb would do what they couldn’t do for themselves. The problem was compounded by having a leader who owes his career to a series of LTTE suicide bombings. But it turned out that he would not be second time lucky after all because the LTTE is now no more. The astrologer who made the brash prediction is now in CID custody as one might expect. This was an extremely foolhardy thing to do especially in the situation that the UNP finds itself in. This is probably the fear that so many in the UNP have – of various mavericks hijacking the UNP platform and bringing ruin upon the party for years to come.

One of the things that the UNP did right last week was filing nominations for the Vavuniya and Jaffna Municipal elections. The UNP is thus the first national party to enter the political fray in the north. The SLFP does not have its own list and even the UPFA list is dominated by the EPDP rather than the SLFP. So the government is fighting the election through proxies, while the UNP is fighting it out on their own. Once upon a time, they did have a substantial base in the north and the UNP still has the goodwill of many Tamils. They may not win in Vavuniya and Jaffna, but by contesting, they are at least making an attempt to claw back some of the lost ground. A.A.Satyendran, the UNP’s Mayoral candidate for Jaffna, is a seafood exporter in his mid-forties with no previous background in politics. R.Pakianathan, the leader of the UNP group on Vavuniya, is a former protégé of Mrs Pulendran who was the last UNP parliamentarian from the district. Pakiyanathan is a graduate teacher and fluent in both Tamil and Sinhala. The man who made it possible for the UNP to file nominations in Jaffna and Vavuniya is the party’s de facto charge d’affaires for the north, Dr Jayalath Jayawardena.

In Uva, the UNP was unable to put forward a candidate who could have given Sashindra Rajapaksa a run for his money. Sashindra is the latest Rajapaksa to come into politics. Unlike his father, Chamal, who is quiet and reserved, Sashindra, is much more gregarious with a ready smile and unassuming ways. In 1994, when the SLFP came into power, it was not a party that was suited to wield power. They were given a chance to seize power because the entire leadership of the UNP had been massacred by the LTTE. They came in scowling and spitting venom in all directions and spent the first several years in power doing just that. It is only after 2004, that the party became humanized to some extent. Now the under the Rajapaksas the SLFP as a party has come into its own. What that party badly needs now, is a facelift – the gradual phasing out of some discredited old faces, and the bringing in of new blood – not the scowling, spitting, scratching and complaining kind of old SLFPer, but the smiling, forward looking kind of SLFPer and Sashindra fits the bill perfectly.