{"id":228263,"date":"2022-07-18T00:46:54","date_gmt":"2022-07-17T19:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=228263"},"modified":"2022-07-26T19:08:24","modified_gmt":"2022-07-26T13:38:24","slug":"slpp-survival-depends-on-shift-to-dullas-rejecting-ranil-the-rajapaksas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/slpp-survival-depends-on-shift-to-dullas-rejecting-ranil-the-rajapaksas\/","title":{"rendered":"SLPP Survival Depends On Shift To Dullas, Rejecting Ranil & The Rajapaksas"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dayan Jayatilleka<\/a> –<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka<\/p><\/div>\n

The SLPP is at a crossroads. If it takes the wrong turning there is no going back. The wrong turning leads to politico-electoral extinction.<\/p>\n

The SLPP is being pushed into a disastrously wrong choice not once but twice over. One is voting for Ranil Wickremesinghe. The other is remaining with the Rajapaksa and indeed the Gotabaya brand. The two disastrous choices are merged into one: to vote for Ranil Wickremesinghe, the front person for and candidate of the Rajapaksas. That is the worst possible combination, and the most horrific possible branding for the SLPP.<\/p>\n

Will the SLPP remain the Rajapaksas\u2019 pet \u2018Pohottuwa\u2019, now and forever reviled by the public, or will it return to its proper name the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, with its roots in the Joint Opposition (JO) and the country\u2019s traditional Center-Left?<\/p>\n

If I were an SLPP MP, in the blink of an eye I would opt for Dullas over Ranil, would go flat out to convince that Party\u2019s Parliamentary Group to do so too. Here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n

If the SLPP makes the wrong choice, it will suffer the same fate at the next election as the UNP did in August 2020. If it makes the correct choice it can wind up like the SJB in August 2020. If it is very smart and very fortunate, it could even be like the UNP in Oct-December 1988, a hugely unpopular ruling party barely escaping extinction by the skin of its teeth– by switching its leader to a dissenting reformist who was more in tune with the demands of a radical uprising.<\/p>\n

If the SLPP makes the right choice, it will have a slim chance to wash away some of its sins and re-brand itself under a new, non-Rajapaksa leadership. That will bring it more in line with the SLFP and the 10 smaller parties, enabling a refloating of the country\u2019s traditional Center-Left, which is no guarantee of electoral victory at an upcoming parliamentary election or even in 2024\/2025, but affords a chance to avoid a complete wipeout as suffered by the LSSP-CPSL in 1977 and the UNP in 2020.<\/p>\n

What was the SLPP formed to fight for and against? It was formed to fight for the values of the SLFP which the SLFP at the time had betrayed by entering a coalition with\u2014wait for it\u2014Ranil Wickremesinghe. It\u2019s MPs and more importantly voters recoiled from that choice and having gone through the crucially important stage of the Joint Opposition (JO) of which Dullas Alahapperuma was the national organizer, crystallized as the SLPP.<\/p>\n

So, Ranil Wickremesinghe is the very antipode of everything that the SLPP was formed to represent. But was that the real agenda behind the SLPP\u2019s founding? Were there two agendas, one open and the other hidden?<\/p>\n

Hidden Agenda<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Is the SLPP merely the platform for one family clan and a pod for its young Crown Prince someday? Or is it the platform for a certain ideology and intended to fill a distinct space in the island\u2019s politics?<\/p>\n

Today the SLPP is faced with a choice between the ideas and ideals of its voters and the hidden agenda of its leaders. This is the same choice that the SLFP faced a quarter century ago.<\/p>\n

The SLFP was formed by SWRD Bandaranaike to represent certain ideas, values and social forces which were not represented by the UNP. It was formed to constitute a Center-Left in the country\u2019s politics.<\/p>\n

Later it degenerated into a vehicle for the Bandaranaike family or more correctly the Ratwatte-Bandaranaike-Obeysekara oligarchy. The SLFP survived by changing its leadership, first to a rebellious left-oriented member of the family identified more as Chandrika Kumaratunga than Chandrika Bandaranaike, and then switching from the Bandaranaikes to Mahinda Rajapaksa and finally to Maithripala Sirisena.<\/p>\n

The SLPP should do the same, with Dullas Alahapperuma having come forward. There is not only no better moment than now to do so, , but it is also the very last chance offered by history to do so.<\/p>\n

Ranil Wickremesinghe is a walking Chernobyl, utterly toxic for the SLPP, SLFP and Group of 10 voters. The SLFP split with the bulk going with the rebel faction of which Dullas was a key personality, precisely because it opted to enter a coalition, not just with the UNP but precisely with the UNP of Ranil Wickremesinghe, not of Sajith Premadasa or Karu Jayasuriya.<\/p>\n

In 2015 it was Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga who pushed Maithripala Sirisena and the SLFP into the alliance with Ranil Wickremesinghe, instead of insisting on Karu Jayasuriya as UNP partner. In 2022 it is the Rajapaksa clan that is pushing the SLPP into backing the same Ranil, with far more terminal prospects.<\/p>\n

If the SLPP MPs back Ranil over their own candidate Dullas, they will be deserted by their voters who will switch either to the JVP-NPP or the successor party to the SLPP that those parliamentarians who vote for Dullas will doubtless establish on the morning after. Voting for Ranil means that the SLPP which was founded to counter the SLFP\u2019s 2015 option for Ranil and substitute for that parent party, will become the SLFP of 2015-2017, while the Dullas Group will become tomorrow, what the JO was in 2015 and the SLPP was in 2017.<\/p>\n

The SLPP is already facing the prospect of electoral elimination that the UNP experienced in 2020. Since the economic punishment that the Gotabaya administration meted out to the people was even more severe than that experienced under the Bandaranaike regime of 1970-1977, it will take much more than the 17 years it took for the SLFP to be elected to office.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, since Namal has been an obedient son and loyal nephew unlike Chandrika was in relation to Madam Bandaranaike, and since he is incapable of breaking away and forming an SLMP (Sri Lanka Mahajana Party) that CBK and Vijaya did in 1984, it will take the SLPP at least two decades before it makes a comeback. It could take even as long as it took Bongbong Marcos, i.e., 35 years.<\/p>\n

However, the SLPP doesn\u2019t have to wait that long if it opts for Dullas and defeats Ranil. Dullas, unlike Ranil, is the guy who can understand the Aragalaya and dialogue with it. In the 1990s when I was working with President Premadasa, Dullas was on the other side, a brilliant political essayist in the new wave of leftwing tabloids of the 1990s. I do not know whether he was ever a member of the JVP but the tabloids certainly were a platform for the recovery and return of the JVP into mainstream politics, organizationally spearheaded by Kumara Gunaratnam. So, whether or not Dullas was JVP, he and the leaders of the JVP and FSP could fairly easily dialogue or \u2018trialogue\u2019 with each other.<\/p>\n

Few are aware or recall that the actual author of Mahinda Chinthanaya in its successive version, starting with the winning manifesto of 2005, was Dullas Alahapperuma. No Dullas, no Mahinda Chinthanaya or a very different one. Dullas was the young righthand man \u2013 and more importantly, the ideologue– of Mahinda Rajapaksa when Mahinda was at his very best, during his first candidacy and in his first term.<\/p>\n

Dullas is also that rarity, an SLPP personality against whom there is no charge of corruption or the abuse of power. His house was spared by the public during the arson attacks of May 9th<\/sup>. The guy is known for his progressive views and non-polarizing, non-confrontational personality. In a party that has the mud of the Rajapaksa clan all over it, he is Teflon. What more could the SLPP need to survive and even recover?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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