By Dayan Jayatilleka –
A Referendum is coming in 2021, on the new constitution. The Opposition must seriously prepare to defeat the regime and strive to the utmost to do so.
“By oneself is one defiled” said The Buddha. The democratic camp ushered in the victory of the hardline Gotabaya regime by committing political, ideological and electoral suicide. It must change drastically if it is to start winning again.
The model of successful democratic oppositional politics after a crushing electoral defeat, is the UNP of 1973-1977 spearheaded by JR Jayewardene and deputy leader R. Premadasa. The emphasis was by no means on building a broad platform. It was on understanding and admitting the reasons for defeat, dislodging the discredited Old Guard, thoroughly reorganizing the party on a new social basis and giving it a new profile. Anything and anyone that reminded the masses of the old Uncle Nephew Party was unceremoniously dumped. The UNP itself became the broad platform.
The UNP’s main ally in 1977 was Mr. Thondaman’s CWC, but that came years after the party’s robust repositioning, reorganization and consolidation. The priority was on turning the UNP into a totally new party. In the landslide of 1977, the new UNP was both main force and leading force.
The next lesson in the successful defense of democracy is 1988. Ranasinghe Premadasa was not a ‘common candidate’; he was the (uncommon) candidate of the common people.
He was geared up to run independently if deprived of the UNP candidacy, but it was ceded to him. Far from bringing together the broadest reassembly of the discredited, polarizing old elements which had caused the crisis and collapse, Premadasa’s election propaganda hardly mentioned the UNP government he had served in; he used the color orange instead of green; his manifesto ‘A New Vision, A New Deal’ was progressive, radical.
SWRD’s SLFP established itself in 1951, ran for elections in 1952 and formed the winning united front with Philip Gunawardena only in 1955.
Mrs. Bandaranaike’s SLFP formed the winning SLFP-LSSP-CPSL United Front only in 1968 at Bogambara.
Mahinda’s SLPP won the February 2018 local authorities election well before it entered a united front with its old parent party the SLFP.
The lesson is simple. You first establish your brand, get your message across, throw the old baggage overboard, demarcate yourself as a new or radically renovated force and build your base, before you form united fronts—or at the least, you give clear priority to the former task than the latter. The model and process must be of concentric circles with the new party as the nucleus, the core, and the united front built around it at the next stage.
Some think that the UNP and SJB belong to the same ideological camp, or should or should be regarded as such. But why? The failure of the post-Premadasa UNP to win a presidential election and lead the country for a quarter-century proves that the majority of the people of this country, the majority of voters, do not form part of the same ideological camp as the UNP. So why should the SJB regard itself as doing so? If it does and the voters think it does, that will ensure the defeat of the SJB too for a good long time. Perhaps that’s what a motley crew that wishes to prevent a second Premadasa presidency would like.
The UNP does not even belong in the same ideological camp as the UNP of JR Jayewardene and Ranasinghe Premadasa, in that it calls for the abolition of the executive presidency and therefore renounces the obligation to use this powerful instrument in the service of the people as Premadasa did.
The UNP belongs in the camp of neoliberal globalist elitism, which Jake Sullivan, president-elect Biden’s National Security Advisor has declared a “failure”, calling for “a new economic philosophy”.
Can anyone imagine the UNP of DS Senanayake, JR Jayewardene, Ranasinghe Premadasa or even DB Wijetunga, co-sponsoring a resolution on Sri Lanka in Geneva which is based on and commences with a commendation of a UN High Commissioner’s Report stating that war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the last war were “systemic” and “systemwide” i.e., not isolated, individual aberrations but deliberate policy?
The SJB cannot and must not belong to the same ideological camp as the UNP. The biggest danger faced by the SJB is the possibility of the public perception of it being infected by ideological ‘Ranilism’; of being ‘Ranil Lite’. The SJB must not identify itself or allow itself to be identified with the 2015 Yahapalanaya UNP, which is in the mind of the Sinhala voter, what the Yeltsin 1990s is in the mind of the Russian voter.
Simply because the SJB emanated from the UNP it does not inhabit the same ideological space, just as SWRD Bandaranaike’s SLFP, emanating from the UNP, did not share an ideological camp with the UNP.
The people need an alternative to the Gotabayan regime and ideology and decidedly want an alternative that of the UNP of the past quarter-century (of which Ranil, incredibly, remains the leader). The SJB must do what SWRD succeeded in doing: create a new, moderate progressive center and build a new ideological camp around it.
Given the polarization between neoliberal globalism and neoconservative tribalism in the world, as represented in Sri Lanka by the UNP and the Gotabaya regime, the SJB must carve out a new ideological space and rebuild a patriotic, rural peasant heartland-friendly (DS Senanayake), multiethnic, social-democratic (Ranasinghe Premadasa) center-space, aimed in the first place at winning the Executive Presidency (JR Jayewardene) in 2024.
My public support for Sajith Premadasa and clear advocacy that he lead the UNP and the Opposition dates back over a decade, to early 2010, as evidenced by the pages of the Sunday Leader (The Sajith Solution | The Sunday Leader) and Groundviews (THE OPPOSITION IN SRI LANKA: RESTORE VIABILITY, RESOLVE CRISIS – Groundviews).
Why didn’t Sajith Premadasa do better at the 2019 Presidential election than the very respectable 42% he scored? Why couldn’t he do a Premadasa 1988? It has nothing whatsoever to do with a change from his father’s time to the present which my critic alleges Sajith failed to comprehend. It had everything to do with the fact that he was tripped up by the UNP, thereby guaranteeing Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s victory:
(A) Sajith was not given the nomination until after Gotabaya had done several laps around the country as candidate.
(B) Sajith was given the candidacy but not the party leadership as his father had been in 1988.
(C) Gotabaya ran with Mahinda Rajapaksa, the ultimate electoral asset, at his side. Sajith was forced to run with the electoral deadweight and jinx Ranil Wickremesinghe appearing on the platform and on campaign literature and symbols, unlike in 1988 when Ranasinghe Premadasa ran with a clean slate devoid of any sign of the earlier President.
(D) Sajith was saddled with an election manifesto that was a compromise with the UNP’s old Ranil-Mangala thinking, unlike Premadasa’s winning 1988 manifesto ‘New Vision, New Deal’ which was drafted by him and Susil Sirivardhana.
(E) In the midst of a campaign where Sajith ran against an ultranationalist candidate, Mangala Samaraweera tweeted that the MCC would be adopted—while Premadasa in 1988 would never have countenanced anyone in his camp asserting that the IPKF would be retained. Premadasa’s manifesto pledged it would be sent back, thereby neutralizing the nationalist advantage of his opponent Madam Bandaranaike whose manifesto contained the same pledge.
Are there any alternatives to the SJB and opposition leader Sajith Premadasa’s leadership of the democratic camp? The SJB’s National Organizer has already announced his candidacy in 2024.
What of Karu Jayasuriya? I had said publicly that he would have been a better UNP candidate than Ranil in 1999, 2005, and 2015, but certainly not so in 2019 and not anytime in the future. I was appalled by Mr. Jayasuriya’s obduracy as Speaker in depriving Mahinda Rajapaksa of the leadership of the Opposition who clearly enjoyed the largest support in the opposition, and granting it to the TNA which had a fraction of that support. If anything lent a huge fillip to the Sinhala sense of a minoritarian conspiracy to displace and deprive them of even the Opposition leadership, this was it.
During and after the 52-day event of 2018, Karu Jayasuriya functioned as if the Speaker was a third political pole, the third center in the government, challenging the directly-elected President. This was the same Trumpian playbook as in Venezuela where Juan Guaido, the puppet pretender to the Presidency (now a nonentity) was propped up by the post of Speaker, and in Brazil where the Speaker succeeded in ousting Lula’s protégé and successor President Dilma Roussef.
These were powerful emotional factors which culminated in a ‘never again’ backlash from the overwhelming majority of the Sinhala majority, resulting in the 20th amendment and the retrogressive character of the forthcoming Constitution. Sadly, Karu Jayasuriya is identified in the mass mind with the disastrous Ranil Wickremesinghe leadership and his state-weakening project. The populist Sajith Premadasa was far less complicit, which is why he fared better as presidential candidate in November 2019 than Karu Jayasuriya could have in the face of the backlash, just as the populist Ranasinghe Premadasa did vastly better in 1988 against the xenophobic wave than Gamini Dissanayake or Lalith Athulathmudali could have.
Contrary to the myth of a strong Karu J-civil society movement, there are five identifiable streams in civil society:
(1) The pro-Ranil-Mangala-CBK-KJ stream of neoliberals who were against the war to crush separatist-terrorism (unlike Karu) and are for a non-unitary and non-Presidential state (like Karu). In the Sinhala heartland they are delegitimized and radioactive.
(2) The Sinhala-Buddhist extremists who shouldn’t be touched with a barge-pole.
(3) The independent professionals, including Sinhala patriots, who stood above the partisan political fray or supported one or another camp without being fanatics (e.g., the GMOA).
(4) Progressive civil society represented by the JVP-driven NPP.
(5) Radical civil society gathered around the Frontline Socialist Party.
The priority of a democratic movement should be to draw in categories (3) to (5). Ranasinghe Premadasa would have taken a verbal buzz-saw and power-drill to anyone who used the “Toiyya/Baiyya” dichotomy, not only because it was insulting to the common folk but also because there are a great many more “Baiyyas’ than “Toiyyas” among the voting population.
The UNP’s democratic claims are wildly uneven. The current UNP Constitution—the Ranil Constitution-which dates back to 1995 is utterly undemocratic. In 2010-2011 Sajith Premadasa led a reformist revolt within the party proposing structural democratization. It was defeated. Today the UNP is wiped out. It would not have been the case if Sajith’s reforms were accepted and the party had become more open and socially responsive. The party seems to have a lifetime leader. How can such a party which does not permit internal change, internal democracy, claim to stand for democracy and against dictatorship in the country?
The regime which deviated more sharply from democracy than any other, before or since, was UNP. The UNP government of 1977-1988 violently stole the 1981 DDC election in Jaffna and held a fraudulent and coercive island-wide Referendum in December 1982, suspending for an entire six-year term, the holding of the parliamentary elections scheduled for early 1983.
With the electoral safety-valves shut down and UNP Minister Cyril Mathew spreading racism for years through publications massively mailed out with the Government seal, Black July 1983 erupted a few months later.
The UNP promptly blamed the JVP which was completely innocent of the charge and banned it (over Premadasa’s objections).
In 1984, two unarmed university students were shot dead by the Police in Peradeniya and Colombo following a brutally threatening televised speech the previous evening by National Security Minister Athulathmudali (one was murdered by the Police before my eyes, when I was a visiting lecturer at Colombo University).
By its policies and practices in government, the UNP elite had created the extreme crisis which Premadasa (who had repeatedly dissented in Cabinet) dramatically summed up as a “torch flaming at both ends” which had been bequeathed to him when he accepted the candidacy.
Democracy cannot be safeguarded or retrieved by continuing to hold the very ideas and defending the very strategy that alienated a huge majority and opened the space for the most chauvinist regime in our post-Independence history. Projects and personalities (political and civil society) that were part of the problem, cannot be part of the solution.
Ajith / January 1, 2021
Dr Dayan,
What is the medicine the opposition have against Gotabaya’s (Mahinda’s) Sinhala only, Buddhist only, Mahinda family only “Mantra”? 75% of Buddhist Sinhala have fed with this mantra and they are mesmerised by this mantra.
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GATAM / January 2, 2021
TNA must drop Tamil Only (grievances and aspirations) and SLMC and ACMC must drop Muslim Only (grievances and aspirations) and take up Sinhala grievances and aspirations too.
Only then can they truly form a joint force to topple Rajapaksas.
Until then Rajapaksas will keep winning war after war and election after election.
(If Obama talked only about African Americans’ grievances and aspirations, he would never have won the election.)
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Native Vedda / January 2, 2021
GATAM
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“Only then can they truly form a joint force to topple Rajapaksas.
Until then Rajapaksas will keep winning war after war and election after election.”
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What on earth are you typing about.
The year 2015 is not that far removed from our memories.
Revisit the political history of this island between 2015 and 2019.
How do you think the clan won 2019 Presidential elections, the election campaign was mounted by the racists, for the racists and won by a racist. The Sinhala/ Buddhists demanded Sinhala/Buddhist voted a Sinhala/Buddhist party and a Sinhala/Buddhist candidate.
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After winning the elections the racist thanked fellow racists and assured them his continued support for Sinhala/Buddhism and Sinhala/Buddhists.
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He has been spending more time at Vihares and pleasing saffron brigades than solving immediate problems faced by this island.
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Why don’t you get Gota ordained as a member of Saffron Brigade, so as to provide him with religious recognition?
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GATAM / January 4, 2021
Vedda’s son,
So did you get anything better in 2015? Did Rajapaksas really lose in 2015? No. They continued to rule through Sirisena who is now back with them!! (Sirisena was also one of them.) It was a trick to bounce back.
Who was fooled in 2015?
People know what happened in 2015 and they will not let that happen again with the alliance of racist mono ethnic political parties. Rajapaksas keep winning war after war and election after election thanks to people like you.
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Stanley / January 1, 2021
‘The Opposition must seriously prepare to defeat the regime and strive to the utmost to do so. ‘
‘
It will never happen. In the first place the Opposition parties are disunited. Secondly (and more importantly) the President has a plan to create a constitution supported by the military, giving Buddhism a far more prominent place than it has at the present. He will be supported by the masses who have always treated the leader like a King rather than a representative of the people. He is recreating the past where the king rules and protects the people, advised by the Sangha and supported by the military. Look at all the promotions recently given to the armed forces. Soon the army will have more Generals than privates.
‘
What future then for those Tamils who want to split the nation, Muslims who want to Islamise the country, Christians who want to plant churches in every Buddhist village? A very grim future, I think, unless they stop their treachery.
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GATAM / January 1, 2021
If the new constitution abolishes provincial councils, it will be approved at a referendum with a landslide victory.
If SJB tries to protect provincial councils, that is digging their own grave. SJB must not paint itself into a losing corner. Take the popular side of the people and it can win the next election.
(If TNA, SLMC supports provincial councils that is enough advertising to abolish provincial councils. People know that whatever is good for them is bad for the country.)
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jambu / January 1, 2021
Hello there,
A complete overhaul is needed. That means starting from square one.
Mr. Nagananda Kodithuwakku offered quite an excellent set of proposals which I think you should study seriously.
I value your consideration.
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soma / January 2, 2021
A win without the majority of the majority is not a win. It is a conspiracy.
Challenge is to win the hearts of the majority of majority.
–
Soma
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Ajith / January 2, 2021
There is nothing to do with hearts.Blood!
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Native Vedda / January 2, 2021
soman
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“A win without the majority of the majority is not a win.”
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Brilliant, I understand your inadequacy.
You wanted the majority stupid electors to elect the most stupid candidate.
Its alright.
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What many of us don’t understand is that why should the majority who didn’t vote for the stupid leader has to suffer for the stupidity of those who voted for SLPP (Number of Electors who didn’t vote for SLPP 9,410,195, 58% of total electors).
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Think about it when you are in the toilet.
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GATAM / January 4, 2021
Vedda’s son,
Let me tell you a true story. There is a country called Rwanda. Horrible things happened in 1994. Majority Hutus supported by neighboring Zaire (now Congo) genocided minority Tutsis reducing their percentage from 15% to 10%.
But the Rwandan army was always 95% Tutsi. Yes Tutsi. Guns are more powerful than machetes and chest pumping. So since then a Tutsi president and Tutsi PMs rule Rwanda which is the fastest growing African economy thanks to China. Yes, China. Rings a bell? Or not?
Ever wondered why Tamils despite numbering a massive 90 million live under the rule of North Indians, Sinhalas and Malays?
Please reflect calmly if you can. I pity you man.
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Simon / January 2, 2021
“Victory of the New Opposition”. This proposition is another “PLOT” to “Kehi Gani Deela Hotu Gani Ganna”. What is this “New Opposition”? Simply it is “Old Wine” in a “New Bottle”, by name only. If you trace the history of political evolution since the death of the first PM D.S.Senanayke, one could easily see how “Family” connections and “Personal Ambitions” have crept into deciding the plight of the country. First, when DS passed away, all wanted the son Dudley to be made the PM. But was he the “Suitable” person compared to others like SWRD and JR? NO. Then after Dudley, the same question arose. Who should be PM? Again was it SWRD or JR. At that time two camps (SWRD & JR) fought against each other, but from nowhere emerged Sir John Kothalawala. Then SWRD, out of frustration left UNP and formed SLFP. But “JR” remained to for yet “Another” day. After the death of SWRD, the “Demand” was to make the “Widow” Srimawo to be PM. Having succeeded that, she was at the helm with even the support of “Left” stalwarts of LSSP, CP, and MEP. Next “JR” carried through a “Concocted” campaign “Dharmishta Samajaya” and won the “5/6th”. Next came Premadasa followed by Sunethra and next by Mahinda R and again by Ranil W and now “GR”.
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soma / January 2, 2021
Dr.DJ.
“The SJB must not identify itself or allow itself to be identified with the 2015 Yahapalanaya UNP,……”
Can you go the electorate and tell the people that we were lying you, cheating you, robbing you, allowed Islamic terrorism to root, planning to break this country into federal blocks while most of the time doing nothing. We won’t do that again. Acknowledge that you are fools with a short memory.
Can you actually say that to the people?
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Soma
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soma / January 2, 2021
Dr.D.J.
Your statements:
“Projects and personalities (political and civil society) that were part of the problem, cannot be part of the solution. “
AND
“The SJB must not identify itself or allow itself to be identified with the 2015 Yahapalanaya UNP,……”
Looks contradictory to one another.
.
Like racist donkeys on CT , you too seem to need some coaching in elementary logic.
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Soma
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Native Vedda / January 3, 2021
soman
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“Like racist donkeys on CT , you too seem to need some coaching in elementary logic.”
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Exactly, like your good-self, Eagle Blind Eye, ……. Wimal Sangili Karuppan Weerawansa, Elle, Gnana, Dinesh, Channa, …..
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Do you think being a racist yourself has helped the island to develop?
Now the racists have placed this country under the direct physical and administrative control of the war criminals, 25 unemployable Generals (out of 15,000) every nook and corner.
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Gen Kamal the Rommel was seen performing “Hitlergruß” a few days ago in front of his imaginary crowd/leader screaming “Heil, mein Führer!” (Hail, my leader!). He walks only on red carpet wherever he goes. Whats wrong with him?
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