by T. Sabaratnam, originally posted February 17, 2004
Weekly Review, 16 February 2004
Nomination week for the April 2 parliamentary election begins on Tuesday February 17 and the events of the last few days point to an intensely violent and confrontational campaign.
Two incidents of election violence have been reported from the Puttalam district on Saturday and police clamped night curfew to prevent the spread of the violence. Unidentified gunmen damaged the houses of two local leaders of President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s party and fired on, and injured, their supporters.
“The election campaign this time may be as violent, if not more, as during the 5 December 2001 election,” a high- ranking police official said. More than 60 persons were killed and hundreds of houses burnt during the 2001 polls.
The political confrontation appears to be more intense than the physical violence. Chandrika had already commenced her onslaught on Ranil, her adversary. She told her party supporters in Mahara on Sunday that it would be impossible to work with Ranil. She asked the people to give her a ‘massive mandate’ so that she need not depend on Ranil to carry on her government.
Ranil, too, is adopting a similar confrontational approach. He and his propagandists portray Chandrika as power-hungry, irrational, moody and undependable leader who places self- interest before the interest of the nation..
Chandrika, 58, and Ranil, 54, leaders of rival parties, were childhood playmates, yet are now feuding with each other to achieve their long-held political ambitions.
“The simple truth is that the president wants to remain president and the prime minister wants to become the president,” a family friend of both leaders said, requesting anonymity. “All other issues are secondary.”
Added to their political ambitions family animosities, too, make them distrust each other.
Chandrika’s father, S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, was a founding member of the United National Party (UNP), which came to power with the island gaining independence from Britain in 1948. But, he was pushed to defect to form the nationalist Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), which is now led by his second daughter, Chandrika.
Her mother, Sirima Bandaranaike, was also a prime minister and nationalised Wickremesinghe’s publishing firm in 1973, pushing Ranil, a trained lawyer, into politics instead of a career in the family newspaper.
Kumaratunga in turn has accused Wickremesinghe of blocking her son’s entry to a popular public school when he was education minister in the early 1980s.
“Political ambitions and family wounds would never permit them to work together,” said their family friend.
Chandrika’s hatred of Ranil is so intense that it has even pushed her into the JVP fold, political analysts said. They pointed out the discordant positions Chandrika and the JVP took on Sunday regarding the ceasefire agreement as a major problem the president is going to encounter. “She will soon find that it would be more difficult to cohabit with the JVP than with Ranil,” a political analyst said.
Chandrika is keen in upholding the ceasefire agreement Ranil signed with LTTE leader Velupillai Pirapaharan on 22 February 2002, while the JVP propaganda secretary Wimal Weerawansa said the JVP would press the president to scrap the ceasefire if their alliance, the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), wins the election on April 2.
Weerawansa said: “We have always said we will totally reject it,” and added that scraping the ceasefire agreement would be one of the first matters the JVP would talk with the president about if the alliance wins the election. He said they were working on an alternative plan to replace the Norway-brokered ceasefire agreement and they would present that to the Tigers.
Chandrika and the JVP also differ on the solution they are prepared to offer the Tamil people. Chandrika prefers a solution based on devolution of power, but the JVP is opposed to devolution. The JVP is going back two decades and talking about decentralization.
Chandrika and the JVP are planning to raise Sinhala- Buddhist fundamentalist issues and slogans which the Sihala Urumaya (that has changed its name to Hela Urumaya, the Sinhala word for Sri Lanka), too, hopes to exploit. The Hela Uramaya has vowed to field many Buddhist priests in its lists of candidates. What percentage of the Sinhala extremist votes the HU would draw away from the UPFA is uncertain. In 2001 it gathered only about 50,000 votes, a mere 0.05 percentage of the total voters.
Position of the Tamils
The JVP position on the ceasefire and the solution to the Tamil problem will definitely drive the Tamils into the fold of Ranil’s United Natiuonal Front (UNF) during the election. The Ceylon Worker’s Congress (CWC) and the Western Province People’s Front of Mano Ganeshan have agreed to contest in the UNF list. P. Chandrasekaran’s Hill-country People’s Front, which tried to promote a common front of all Tamil parties in the country, is also veering towards joining the UNF.
The collapse of Chandrasekaran’s effort was the result of squabbling within the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the realization that such a common front would not be in the interest of the hill country Tamils and the UNF. Support of Hill Country Tamils is essential to allow the UNF to win more seats in the Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, Matale, Ratnapura and Badulla districts. This is the only way to offset the big gains the UPFA hopes to make in the Southern districts of Hambantota, Matara, Galle and Monaragalle districts.
Sri Lankan Tamils living in Colombo district can elect a TNA MP if they vote unitedly. For that the TNA, which is in disarray due to an internal conflict in the TULF, must sort out its dispute soon. TULF president V. Anandasangaree is trying to make use of a court order that the party must obtain his consent even to hold a meeting in order to obtain for himself and his supporters places in the TNA nomination list. R. Sampanthan, secretary general, and Joseph Pararajasingham, senior vice president, had on Monday moved the Supreme Court to vacate that order.
The Supreme Court judgment would help the TNA to settle the question of the election symbol of the TNA. As it was, on Monday the TNA was barred from using the rising sun as its symbol without the consent of Anandasangaree. If the Supreme Court vacates or stays the Magistrate Court ban, the TNA will use the rising sun as its symbol. Otherwise it will use the TELO symbol of a lighthouse.
The Tamil public is hurt about the continued bickering among Tamil politicians. A Jaffna University academic caustically commented: “A selfish, dirty lot indeed.” He was particularly hurt with some politicians who talk as though the Tamil community is in a strong position today because of their leadership. “They have forgotten the sacrifices of the Tigers,” he fretted.
TNA leaders will meet LTTE political chief S. P. Thamilselvan, who returned to Vanni on Sunday after a 2-week trip abroad, to finalize their nomination list. Thamilselvan consulted LTTE leader Velupillai Pirapaharan about TNA backbiting on Sunday and Monday. Kilinochchi sources said Pirapaharan was disgusted with the self-seeking politicians.
Yet there are good developments, too. Maheswaran has declared his intention not to contest. He has also announced that the UNP would not field candidates in the Jaffna district. PLOTE’s anxiety to join the TNA is also a welcome development. So is the move to include some Muslims in the TNA list.