{"id":132038,"date":"2014-10-23T00:53:39","date_gmt":"2014-10-22T19:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=132038"},"modified":"2014-10-31T11:43:28","modified_gmt":"2014-10-31T06:13:28","slug":"options-for-the-opposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/options-for-the-opposition\/","title":{"rendered":"Options For The Opposition"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Malinda Seneviratne<\/span><\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Malinda<\/a>

Malinda Seneviratne<\/p><\/div>\n

Dayan Jayatilleka<\/span><\/a> in an article published in the Colombo Telegraph (How a weak opposition could still play it smart<\/span><\/a>) offers that the Opposition is actually helping President Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/span><\/a> secure a third term.<\/p>\n

He claims that the Opposition has picked the wrong slogan, that of \u2018constitutional change\u2019 when \u2018it has little prospect of acting as a rallying cry among millions of rural voters\u2019. But even if the Opposition got the slogan right, it has got the candidate wrong, Dayan argues. As things stand of course, the stand out figure among the pretenders is Ranil Wickremesinghe<\/span><\/a> who, according to Dayan and many others is the weakest of all candidates against the President.\u00a0 Furthermore, Dayan argues that the President will win against any candidate that the Opposition puts forward, so in and of itself Wickremesinghe contesting is not an issue.<\/p>\n

In this scenario, Dayan advises the Opposition to use the Presidential Election as a springboard to target \u2018the weak link in the chain of regime hegemony, which is lodged in its real base: the parliament and the two thirds majority\u2019.\u00a0 Ideally, the ruling party would be defeated and this would stop \u2018an\u00a0oligarchic-securocratic<\/i>\u00a0or\u00a0oligarchic-militaristic<\/i>\u00a0Iron Curtain (descending) upon post-election Sri Lanka, behind which a garrison state will grow and a dark age will settle\u2019.\u00a0 That\u2019s Dayan with his usual doom\u2019s day conclusion-flourish.<\/p>\n

\"Karu_Sajit<\/a>In an earlier piece titled \u2018The Uva effect and the Presidency,\u2019 written just two weeks ago, Dayan made a case for the UNP putting forward someone other than Wickremesinghe. He tossed out two names, Sajith Premadasa<\/span><\/a> and Karu Jayasuriya<\/span><\/a>, and argued the former\u2019s case.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t claim that Sajith could win, but that he would help secure moral points in a loss that narrows the gap between regime and Opposition.\u00a0 He seems to have shelved Project Sajith (for the moment), but can\u2019t be blamed for arguing that any momentum gained even in a losing cause at the Presidential Election could help the Opposition in the Parliamentary Election that is most likely to be held immediately afterwards.<\/p>\n

There are lots of \u2018ifs\u2019 in Dayan\u2019s analysis of post-election scenarios. There are lots of \u2018wants\u2019 too. He would ideally have \u2018the main Opposition goes into the parliamentary election under a new, populist-patriotic leadership which can achieve two things at the same time: (a) re-profile the Opposition so it looks newer and younger than the UPFA and (b) neutralize the regime\u2019s monopoly of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism.\u2019<\/p>\n

That re-profiling, according to Dayan, would see the Opposition using the Presidential Election to raise consciousness and employing \u2018Sajith Premadasa, Sujeeva Senasinghe, Harsha de Silva, Eran Wickremaratne, Rosie Senanayake, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Sunil Handunetti, Vijitha Herath, Wasantha Samarasinghe, Lal Kantha and Tilvin Silva in a pincer move\u2019. Ranil Wickremesinghe and Karu Jayasuriya are left out of the picture.\u00a0 Ravi Karunanayake and much of the UNP\u2019s \u2018Leadership Council\u2019 are out too.\u00a0 So re-profiling would essentially be a Sajith-led affair.<\/p>\n

Now \u2018newer and younger\u2019 doesn\u2019t guarantee anything.\u00a0 J.R. Jayewardene was not young in 1977, for example.\u00a0 As for \u2018pincer moves,\u2019 it\u2019s not names that count but the numbers behind the names.\u00a0 It is not that each JVP leader mentioned here comes with all the JVP supporters. Together they bring all — separately they don\u2019t bring additional numbers. Harsha, Eran and Sujeeva are intelligent and eloquent but they are all voice-cut politicians.\u00a0 Sajith has great appeal but not only is he not his father\u2019s son in this respect he is divisive, arrogant, fixated with his political future and is a puppet of two prominent media moguls.<\/p>\n

In a post-Presidential situation, whatever momentum gained loses to election-fatigue, demoralization, additional electoral swing towards the winner and the scrambling of coalition. Going by history, the UNP would be distracted by yet another Unseat-Ranil effort which, given that the man is far more shrew than people make him out to be and is backed by a For-Ranil party constitution, would give nothing but take much from \u2018re-profiling\u2019.\u00a0 It would be optimistic to stake it all on an unlikely reversal.<\/p>\n

The solution (a tough one of course) would be to look for an alternative candidate who doesn\u2019t look like Sarath Fonseka<\/span><\/a> (a sure \u2018loser\u2019 that saves face).\u00a0 Alternatively the Opposition should dig in for the long(er) haul associated with regime-change.\u00a0 Such a choice would not see anyone getting too excited about the Presidential or Parliamentary Elections.\u00a0 To the extent that these elections can be used, it would be about enlarging the Opposition by winning over all disgruntled elements in the ruling coalition. Only a right candidate with a right program that addresses all the antipathies that the majority of Sinhala Buddhist voters have regarding the UNP\u2019s political positions could do this.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t seem to be happening. Dayan is right in this sense: taken as a collective (and with a few individual exceptions) Sri Lankan politics today has the dumbest opposition this country has ever seen.<\/p>\n

*Malinda Seneviratne is the Chief Editor of \u2018The Nation\u2019\u00a0and his articles can be found at\u00a0www.malindawords.blogspot.com<\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":105560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"\nOptions For The Opposition - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/options-for-the-opposition\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Options For The Opposition - Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[…]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/options-for-the-opposition\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-10-22T19:23:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-10-31T06:13:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Malinda-Seneviratne-150x150.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"130\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"135\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/options-for-the-opposition\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/options-for-the-opposition\/\",\"name\":\"Options For The Opposition - 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