Woes of Greens and Blues

Tuesday 27th July, 2021

The whilom yahapalana leaders are in the news again. Former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has gone on record as saying he will reveal, on 06 September, when the 75th Anniversary of his party falls, how the UNP is going to form a government. He is obviously trying to boost the sagging morale of his supporters with such rhetoric. His erstwhile yahapalana chum, former President Maithripala Sirisena, met President Gotabaya Rajapaksa together with an SLFP delegation for a discussion to iron out difference between the SLFP and the SLPP.

What does the future hold for the UNP and the SLFP?

Sirisena and Wickremesinghe are now ordinary MPs, having squandered a political windfall. They have to stomach indignities at the hands of the breakaway groups. This is the price they have had to pay for their national government experiment which ended in disaster. Sirisena’s performance, however, has been somewhat better than Wickremesinghe’s—the SLFP has 14 MPs (in the SLPP parliamentary group) as opposed to the UNP’s one. Sirisena is lucky that he joined forces with the SLPP at the right time. The UNP made the mistake of overestimating its strength and pitting itself against the SJB.

The SLPP and the SJB have done well electorally mainly because of their leaders. The UNP and the SLFP have survived in spite of their leaders, and therefore may be able to better their performance in case of changes being effected at the helm. They cannot be written off simply because of their poor electoral performance, which is due to their leaders’ blunders. Wickremesinghe has rightly pointed out that the UNP bounced back despite being reduced to eight seats in 1956. So did the SLFP after its crushing defeat in 1977. But the fact remains that they made comebacks under new leaders!

The SLFP and the UNP may be able to regain their strength because they are two mass-based parties albeit currently in crisis. Their foundations are stable. The SLPP and the SJB are overdependent on their leaders. This can be considered a weakness. The former owes its meteoric rise in national politics to Mahinda Rajapaksa’s popularity. It was Sajith Premadasa’s popularity that enabled the SJB to obtain 54 seats in Parliament.

We saw something similar following the UNP’s crisis in 1992 owing to an abortive bid to impeach President Ranasinghe Premadasa. The Democratic United National Front (DUNF), formed by a breakaway UNP group, also derived its strength from the popularity of its leaders, especially Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake. It did extremely well initially, but began to crumble after the assassination of Athulathmudali (followed by that of President Ranasinghe Premadasa, who was responsible for the UNP’s split). Dissanayake returned to the UNP’s fold, and the DUNF lost its popularity and withered away. This is what happens to political parties overdependent on their leaders.

The UNP is in the current predicament owing to its leadership struggle that went unresolved. If Sajith had succeeded in securing the UNP leadership, he would not have broken away to form the SJB, and the UNP would have been strong today. The same is true of the SLFP. If Mahinda had been allowed to lead the SLFP after the 2015 regime change, the SLFP would have been the ruling party today. Those in the SLFP and the UNP must be looking forward to a day without their present leaders, but the SLPP and the SJB cannot think of a day without theirs. It is too early to guess what future holds for these parties.

Meanwhile, Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva, who was part of the SLFP delegation that met President Rajapaksa told the media yesterday that their talks had been successful. There is no reason to doubt his claim. The President and Sirisena are friends; talks between them are always cordial. But it is not the President who has control over the SLPP. The SLFP should have had talks with SLPP National Organiser and Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa, who runs the SLPP. It is the Basil loyalists who have turned hostile towards the SLFP and are even daring the latter to leave the government.