Of those jumpers

Monday 8th January, 2024

The dawn of 2024 has marked the beginning of the season of defections. Politicians, including those who are so horizontally-gifted that they can hardly stand erect, are amply demonstrating their acrobatic skills. They remind us of Tom Stoppard’s play, Jumpers, which is a satirical exploration of complexities of human thought and behaviour, albeit in a different philosophical context and setting. However, the unfolding political drama in this country is also absurdist and brings into focus, among other things, some questions about morality, reality and ethics.

Defectors are widely considered politicians of easy virtue, and the late JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe famously called those who solicited their services ‘political kerb-crawlers’. Despite social stigma attached to defections, crossovers have come to characterise Sri Lankan politics over the decades.

Frogs cannot make the heavens open by croaking aloud and leaping about aggressively, but their ribbiting choruses coupled with intense hopping are thought to portend rain. Similarly, the political frogs, as it were, cannot turn public opinion in favour of any political party with their croaks and leaps, but such a frenetic pace of activity generally indicates which way the wind is blowing on the political front. Hence the significance of the crossovers since the beginning of this election year.

Some of the politicians who rode on the coattails or the satakas of the Rajapaksas and entered or re-entered Parliament in 2020, and remained in the SLPP, despite last year’s political upheavals, have switched their allegiance to President Ranil Wickremesinghe. Thus, the political liabilities in the SLPP are now divided between the Rajapaksas and Wickremesinghe. The pro-Wickremesinghe faction of the SLPP consists of the likes of SLPP MP Nimal Lanza, who received a bear hug from President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in 2011, following a police raid on his house, and caused the latter to incur the wrath of the public as a result. Nothing could be more disadvantageous to a presidential candidate than his or her association with such characters, some of whom are greeted by the public with loud boos wherever they go.

Having engineered some crossovers from the government parliamentary group, SJB leader Sajith Premadasa and his lieutenants are in seventh heaven. They are labouring under the misconception that defectors will be able to deliver block votes to the SJB at future elections. It may be recalled that in the run-up to the 2015 presidential election, the then UNP General Secretary Tissa Attanayake himself defected to the UPFA, but President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s re-election bid came a cropper.

Crossovers can deprive a government of its parliamentary majority, but they work electorally for a political party only in situations where other factors are favourable to it, as was the case in 2001. The regime change in that year came in the wake of mass crossovers from the SLFP-led People’s Alliance government to the UNP. The Chandrika Kumaratunga regime had ruined things for itself big time, and it would have collapsed anyway with or without defections from its ranks. The lead-up to the fall of the Yahapalana administration also saw a spate of crossovers from the UNP-UPFA parliamentary group to the SLPP, but what actually led to the end of that regime was a tide of anti-government sentiments, which had welled up for years owing to rampant corruption, abuse of power and the deterioration of national security. Crossovers are no substitute for serious political work coupled with manifestly doable, pro-people agendas.

There is no way a political party can shore up its electoral prospects in the long run solely by effecting defections from its rivals although they help boost the egos of political leaders who benefit therefrom.

The JVP, which is trying to make itself out to be different from other political parties in a bid to woo the public, continues to espouse threadbare ideological shibboleths, and makes a public display of its commitment to its brand of Marxism while claiming to be a modern political outfit. It seems to think that it can sway public opinion with the help of click farms and its cadres acting as shills on social media platforms. Clicks and shilling do not necessarily translate into votes, as can be seen from the past electoral performance of the JVP.

The ordinary Sri Lankans, who have apparently learnt from their blunders at past elections and are calling for the ouster of all 225 members of Parliament, are believed to be more concerned about the economy than ever. They have also realised the value of proper economic management. Those who offer to play a messianic role to improve the people’s lot and fortify the country’s future will have to unveil an alternative economic programme which is pragmatic and devoid of traces of unachievable and anachronistic ideological goals. Populist gimmicks, such as holding protests, making promises and engineering crossovers, will not work.