It was another dull week that passed. There’s a presidential campaign on, but people hardly feel it. Even the media has been unsuccessful in drumming up things, except for one TV channel which alone has managed to convey the impression that there is a contest going on. But even that is only during news hour. When you switch that TV channel on, there is a contest, when you switch it off there’s no contest. So the contest is in the airwaves, but not on the ground.

This campaign needs a Vijaya Kumaratunga type, an agitator who can create something out of nothing, to do a job like that which Vijaya did in 1982. There is perhaps a Vijaya Kumaratunga type in the making, but he seems to be in a TV station and not in the UNP where he is needed. One major factor for this dull patch of course is the fact that the UNP leader Ranil Wickremesighe was overseas last week. Ironically, while Wickremesinghe’s lack of charisma was what forced him to abdicate his candidacy to someone else, Wickremesinghe is the only orator left in the entire opposition campaign.

The JVP has no orators. Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Vijitha Herath, Tilvin Silva and Somawansa Amarasinghe are not orators. The UNP too has nobody except Wickremesinghe, who has become an aggressive speaker of late. A couple of months back, when S.B.Dissanayake told the present writer that he was willing to be the presidential candidate of the UNP, what I told him was that he (SB) would never be given the presidential candidacy. "Have you noticed how aggressive Ranil is these days?" I asked SB, and I told him that one day, I heard someone roaring and fulminating on TV against the government and when I went to see who it was, I was surprised to see Wickremesighe’s image on the screen.

Wickremesinghe no longer has the tremulous complaining voice that he had for example in 2001 during the campaign to oust CBK. On this basis, I argued with SB, that Wickremesinghe may want to contest the presidency himself. Ten years ago, if someone had told me that by 2010 the only orator left not just in the UNP but in the entire opposition would be Wickremesinghe, I would have thought that person was daft, because Wickremesinghe was never an orator. The general has no oratorical skills beyond what it takes to address soldiers. So Wickremesinghe will have to hold the general’s hand throughout the election campaign in a kind of ‘kora saha andaya’ arrangement with - a cripple mounted on the shoulders of a blind man.

Wickremesinghe does not have the popularity and political capital which the general has and the general does not have the political know how and oratorical skills that Wickremesinghe has. But to do a blind man and cripple style campaign, Wickremesinghe will have to do a lot of hard work. He’ll have to accompany the general to every important meeting. But Wickremesinghe is notoriously averse to hard work. Even during election campaigns fought by his own party, where he would inevitably be blamed for the defeat, he had a laid back attitude making only single visits to a district lasting only a couple of hours. Then he would be off to relax in a luxury hotel in the vicinity.

Given this background, it is unlikely that Wickremesinghe will exert himself in the general’s campaign. Indeed it would be surprising if he does, because the general’s victory would mean the end of his own political career. Be that as it may, what the last week demonstrated is that there is no election campaign without Wickremesinghe. He was overseas and was back on Saturday to do a quick tour to Jaffna.

This is in a sense nothing new. We saw a very similar situation in the north central province after the UNP fielded general Janaka Perera as their chief ministerial candidate. Even thought the film star Ranjan Ramanayake had been fielded in the Sabaragamuwa province, the UNP’s hopes of a victory were centered on the NCP. In that campaign too the most effective blows against the government were struck by Wickremesinghe and not by either of the two chief ministerial candidates. This columnist pointed this out at the time. The only other good platform speaker in the entire UNF alliance is SLMC leader Rauff Hakeem, but he has restricted himself to a minority community, and as such will not be of much use to the general in the overall campaign.

Even though Wickremesinghe is not the opposition candidate at this election, he will nevertheless be the main figure in this election campaign. The general may get the cheers and the applause, but the blows against the government (if any) will be struck by Wickremesinghe. If Wickremesinghe refuses to perform and enters the relaxation mode, as he usually is wont to do, the entire campaign will remain flat to the very end like what it was last week.

A foreordained defection

The event that enlivened the past week was S.B.Dissanayake’s crossover. This was in many ways inevitable as the whole exercise in bringing in Sarath Fonseka as the common opposition candidate was to prevent S.B.Dissanayake from being the UNP’s presidential candidate at this election. Ranil Wickremesinghe had been toying with the idea of fielding another candidate without contesting the next presidential election himself, the idea being that his chances would be better in 2017. Instances where he openly told the UNP working committee to chose someone else in his place were reported in this column. At that time of course, the idea was that someone else in the UNP would be put forward instead of Wickremesinghe.

Vajira Abeywardene, that intrepid defender of Wickremesinghe in all internal party power struggles, in fact had already formulated a dare for those opposed to Wickremesinghe. Abeywardene’s contention was that for a capable candidate, it was not necessary that he be the leader of the party giving him its ticket. He used to point out that R.Premadasa, Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapakse won the presidential elections without being the leaders of the party they represented. Therefore, he argued, if anyone was up to it, he could contest the presidency on the UNP ticket and once he proves himself by winning, he could become the party leader amidst the acclaim of the membership.

Vajira proclaimed his dare on the assumption that nobody in the UNP would be able to defeat President Rajapakse and therefore Wickremesinghe’s leadership would be safe. But S.B.Dissanayake was one man in the UNP who was preparing to take up that challenge. He even had the mathematics worked out. For a while it seemed as if Wickremesinghe himself would not be averse to SB taking the fall. What changed all plans was however, the results of the central provincial council election. SB contested as the UNP’s chief ministerial candidate and got over 188,000 votes, with five out of every six UNP voters casting a preference for him. SB contested not from his familiar Nuwara Eliya district, but as a newcomer to the Kandy district. But such was his popularity among the rank and file of the UNP as well as the minorities that he got the highest number of preference votes in the UNP list in every electorate in the Kandy district.

What this indicated was that SB would have become a rallying point for UNPers at a presidential election and even if he loses it, the mere fact that he ran as the UNP’ presidential candidate would have created another power centre within the party. Wickremesinghe has now managed to avoid such a situation by fielding an outsider. So SB was on his way out from the day that the UNP working committee decided that General Fonseka would be their common candidate. SB is now around 58. The only reason why he did not leave the UNP with Karu Jayasuriya in early 2006 was because his intention was to lead the UNP one day and to become president by 2017 when he would be in his mid-sixties. Now that Wickremesinghe has fielded Fonseka and ensured his own survival as party leader until 2017, there was no longer any point in SB remaining within the UNP. If it’s to end his days as a minister, he might as well do that within the SLFP. Besides, it would take the UNP many more years to get into power, whereas he could become a minister much faster if he joins the SLFP and President Rajapakse would in any case treat him much better than Wickremsinghe ever did. As things stand now, SB has wasted three years of his life by not joining the SLFP when Karu Jayasuriya defected.

A party bled white

Of course having failed in his leadership and presidential candidacy bid within the UNP, SB is careful not to ruffle any feathers within the SLFP. He openly says as he said to this columnist that he no longer has any presidential or even prime ministerial ambitions and that he has rejoined the SLFP not with the intention of leading the party or the country, but to serve the Rajapakse family (He used the world FAMILY) and to simply be around. Moreover he said that even if somebody tried to force him to take an interest in the presidency or the premiership, he would still reject it. All this has to do with time. As he is 58 now, SB would be in his mid sixties by the time the next presidential election comes around. That would be his only chance. He cannot wait for the presidential election after that which would be around 2023, because he would then be over 70 and too old to contest a presidential election for the first time.

So all this is about age in the final analysis and his defection is no different to that of M.H.Mohamed, who was having his last run in politics. It made no sense for Mohamed to spend the limited time available as a member of the perennially unsuccessful UNP. SB also had the added frustration of having to endure active persecution by the party leader. His list of grievances is too long to enumerate here. The infighting began soon after he helped the UNP form a government in 2001 and continued till SB decided to quit. The latest act of persecution was fielding a presidential candidate from outside the party without running him. When I visited SB at his home after he defected, he seemed relaxed and happy as did his long suffering followers. There was no gnashing of teeth or discussion of real or perceived persecution. SB himself looked as if he had just been relieved of a massive burden. I saw the same mood among the 17 UNP defectors who left with Karu J. and to this day they have managed to remain in the same mood. The only UNPers who have been happy for an unbroken period of around three years during the past one and a half decades are these UNP defectors.

Even though SB has rejoined the SLFP to have his last cock-a-doodle-do, he is far from being a spent force. His best electoral performance in his entire political career came just months ago at the Central PC elections. He was the most energetic and popular politician in the UNP and it was he who always got more applause than the party leader at party gatherings. His defection will be a body blow for the UNP and a corresponding gain to the SLFP. His energy and drive to get things done will be an asset to Mahinda Rajapakse who has been hard put to find talent to govern the country, and had to fall back on dissidents from the UNP to hold responsible posts.

Even though SB’s defection will not necessarily affect the UNP vote bank, there is a section of the electorate that will shift along with him. It is this factor which enabled him to win the Hanguranketha electorate and come first in the Nuwara Eliya district whichever party he may contest from. Even at the last CPC election, he and his brother Saliya Dissanayake contested from the two contending sides and they both won – such is the political capital he has built up in the area. While there will thus be a regional shift, the average UNP voter will not follow SB’s example. However his loss will be keenly felt by the UNP voters oppressed by insipid, colourless political leaders.

The ‘visible Kandyan’

In fact, the UNP has been losing its most dynamic and colourful characters to the government. If one takes even the most recent defections, SB, Johnston and Azath Sally are all prominent UNP figures – among the movers and shakers in the party. It is quite clear that what is going to happen to Wickremesinghe is the political version of what happened to Prabhakaran who expended his best fighting cadres recklessly until he was left mostly with unwilling conscripts and the baby brigade who fled as the government forces advanced. No politician becomes an SB or a Johnston overnight. It takes years to produce politicians of that calibre. What is now happening is that the UNP is being bled white. Even more harmful than these losses to the UNP, is what the other side gains from the defections. When the enemy is without ammunition, you don’t send a lorry load of your own ammo to them. But this is exactly what the UNP has been doing for years.

By driving SB on to the other side, the UNP has managed to help the SLFP to overcome a major lacuna in their set up. One of the things that the UPFA government lacked was a prominent Kandyan leader to balance the low-country Sinhalese dominated government. The president took in Keheliya Rambukwella, who was the UNP’s most dynamic Kandyan leader at that time and gave him a prominent role as the defence spokesman. Ramkukwella was then the ‘visible Kandyan’ in the Rajapakse government with a prominent place in media appearances. But the prominence given to him was tied to the war and when the war ended he suddenly seemed to disappear from the public radar. Besides, Rambukwella was systematically destroyed by Wickremesinghe before he joined the UPFA.

Rambukwella, the UNP’s former district leader for Kandy, polled over 143,000 votes when the UNP came into power in 2001. It was he who held Kandy for the UNP against the terror of the Ratwattes. But he was denied even a deputy minister’s post in the UNP government formed by Wickremesinghe in 2001. At the last general election in 2004, Rambukwella’s vote had gone down to 110,000 – an indication to the extent a party leader can make or break a man. Speaking to this columnist after his defection, SB, described what was done to Rambukwella (among many others) as ‘an act of revenge’ by Wickremesinghe against the UNP. The next UNP figure to emerge in Kandy was S.B.Dissanayake who polled even more votes than Rambukwella. Now, with SB’s defection, the UNP has no one who can replace either Rambukwella or SB in the Kandy district. Nor can replacements be created any time in a hurry.

The UPFA needs that kind of experience and expertise especially in the Kandyan region. Keheliya Rambukwella once carried out this holding operation for the UNP in the Kandy district. His crossover from the UNP to the government diminished him to some extent and he is no longer the colossus that he was when he was in the UNP. The UPFA gave him a prominent place in their government as the defence spokesman, but with the end of the war, he had the rug pulled from under his feet.

The advantage to the government in having SB is that he will not be just another run of the mill, uninspiring Kandyan politician but one with a vision and drive – the kind of leader that Kandyans would like to have. SB has not held office for a while; but he is a pushy type of politician used to doing things in a big way. He is a man who if given the necessary powers can carry out a massive holding operation in a district or a province or even beyond. SB is the type who will not go unnoticed and it is people like SB, with their natural proclivity for being in the limelight, who will provide the Kandyans with the feeling that they too wield power even though the president is from the south. The problem in the Kandy district is that SLFPers have been ganging up against ‘outsiders’ and Keheliya will not be able to dominate the district as an SLFP candidate the way he did as a UNP candidate.

The quest for relief

SB himself, did very well in Kandy as a UNP chief ministerial candidate. But to contest the next parliamentary election as an SLFP candidate, SB will be going back to his seat of Hanguranketha in the Nuwara Eliya district because this is where he has a constituency which will follow him wherever he goes. Moreover, with the CWC and other breakaway factions of the CWC supporting the government, his chances of harvesting preference votes from the minority voters is better in the Nuwara Eliya district. Even when he contests on the UPFA list, he has to come first on the list and Nuwara Eliya district is where this may be pulled off. The only competition he has from the UPFA in the Nuwara Eliya district is minister C.B.Ratnayake. But Ratnayake attended SB’s book launching ceremony a couple of months back and referred to SB as ‘his political mentor and guru’. This was when he was a minister in the government and SB was an opposition politician who was vying for the UNP’s presidential candidacy.

SB’s value to the Rajapakse government will be doubled by the fact that SB has won the confidence of the minorities that inhabit the central province in large numbers. He has the ear of the Buddhist clergy as well as the minorities in the Central Province – a very rare combination in this day and age and, no doubt, his joining the government, may well help the UPFA government mend fences with the minority communities. SB was the only politician within the UNP other than Wickremesinghe himself, who could elicit spontaneous support from the minority communities. After the last Central PC elections, calculations indicated that SB had polled more Tamil and Muslim preference votes than the Tamil and Muslim candidates on the UNP list.

Speaking to this columnist after his defection, SB described Wickremesinghe as a ‘modaya’ and someone who was clueless about governance. He also described Wickremsinghe as a ‘thuttu deke kairaatikaya’ (a cunning man not worth two cents). Asked whether he was not blowing his chances at the top job by defecting, SB admitted that he was and said he was doing so gladly as he wanted peace of mind more than anything else at this moment in time.