Who ruined SLFP?

Friday 4th September, 2020

Ex-President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (CBK) would have us believe that her successors, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena, are responsible for the ruination of the SLFP, which her late father founded. She has taken it upon herself to rebuild the SLFP with the help of a young team. Can any of the ex-Presidents absolve himself or herself of the blame for ruining the SLFP?

The SLFP is in the current predicament because its leaders save S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike and Sirimavo, have subjugated its interests to theirs. CBK weakened the SLFP by leaving it, in 1984, but revitalised it by returning to its fold, in early 1990s; she led it to victory at the parliamentary polls and the presidential election, in 1994, and at several elections thereafter. But she sought to further her personal interests at the expense of the party in the run-up to the 2005 presidential election. She went all out to queer the pitch for the SLFP/UPFA presidential candidate, Mahinda Rajapaksa, whom she had an axe to grind with, as former President Sirisena has revealed in ‘Eththai Sathhai’, a hagiographic book on the early part of his political journey.

President Rajapaksa rebuilt the SLFP as a formidable political force, after defeating the LTTE, and led it to victory at several elections but surrounded himself with a coterie of UNP crossovers in the UPFA and alienated the SLFP seniors, prominent among them being Sirisena, who voted with his feet in the end. Three years after his abortive bid to secure a third term in 2015, Rajapaksa dealt a body blow to the SLFP by leaving it to join the SLPP.

Sirisena weakened the SLFP by breaking ranks with it to challenge President Rajapaksa in the 2015 presidential race, citing harassment as the reason for his exit. He won the presidency and, together with CBK, dismantled the SLFP-led government, which had mustered a two-thirds majority in Parliament. His subsequent return to the SLFP, which he used as a political crutch to keep himself steady vis-à-vis the UNP’s attempts to unsettle him, marked the beginning of the SLFP’s present crisis. He prevented the SLFP-led UPFA’s victory at the 2015 general election and, thereby, consolidated his power in the SLFP and ensured the continuation of the SLFP/UPFA-UNP honeymoon in Parliament.

The SLFP lost the local government polls badly in 2018, but it is not as debilitated as the UNP at present. Thirteen of its candidates who contested the recent general election, on the SLPP ticket, were returned. It has also won a seat in Jaffna and gained a toehold in the North. The SLPP must be envious of its feat.

The SLPP is unarguably the strongest political force in the country, at present, but its fate is tied to that of the ruling family. There is no guarantee that it will not go the same way as the Congress, the party of the Gandhi family, in disarray. The crushing defeat of a member of a storied dynasty was reported yesterday. US Congressman Joe Kennedy’s bid to secure a Senate seat failed, on Tuesday. Joe is the grandnephew of JFK. This is said to be the first time the Kennedy dynasty has lost a state election in Massachusetts. Dynasties do not last forever. Political observers are wondering whether Joe’s defeat marks the end of the Kennedy dynasty.

The UNP is facing its darkest hour, but it is bound to bounce back under a new leader sooner or later. It cannot be written off. The SJB, which has floored the UNP, is a political mélange, whose ability to survive hinges on the fragile unity of its leaders who are notorious for political promiscuity, as it were. Sajith and other SJB stalwarts insist that they have not left the UNP. Before last month’s election, they vowed to take over Sirikotha, after defeating the UNP. They are likely to do so.

The SLFP and the UNP have the potential to make up lost ground, under new leaders, and be in a position to dominate national politics, once again, provided the former Presidents and former Prime Ministers keep their hands off the two ailing giants.