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Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake

The final phase of Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe's campaign for the Presidency was elevated to a crusade - to save the SLFP. Claiming that the JVP would ultimately gobble up the SLFP because of Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse's alliance with it the UNP leader said that he was ready to work with the SLFP once he becomes President and made specific reference to a role he had set aside for outgoing President Kumaratunga in the peace process.

Taken in conjunction with the less than lukewarm attitude of Mrs. Kumaratunga and her brother towards the SLFP's candidate this move by the UNP leader raised considerable hopes of a Wickremesinghe victory on the part of that slice of Colombo society to which the stock market is the sole monitor of the nation's health.

However, as the election results showed this fond hope of a section of SLFP 'moderates' being stampeded into a panic by the JVP bogey proved to be a chimera. Not only did the Cabinet and the Government parliamentary Group hold solidly with Mr. Rajapakse but he also managed to spectacularly enlarge the SLFP's vote base which served to erase the poor support he received from the minorities.

What was the basis then for the accusation made by the Bandaranaikes that Mr. Rajapakse had betrayed SLFP policies? The SLFP after all was inaugurated by the late Mr. Bandaranaike on twin planks, namely nationalism and populist socialism.

Both figured prominently in Mr. Rajapakse's campaign sometimes even to the point of caricature. The quarrel then with Mr. Rajapakse would seem to have originated in his rejection of a federal model for the devolution of power.

There would naturally have been a sense of personal pique on the part of President Kumaratunga on this count since she takes pride and justifiably so in the fact that she was able to persuade substantial sections of the people to accept a federal solution thus sharply deviating from the traditional SLFP position which even rejected Provincial Councils when they were first proposed in 1987.

For his part the UNP leader made much of the fact that both the UNP and SLFP were agreed on the federalist platform thus seeking to project a spurious consensus. But what President Kumaratunga did not sufficiently appreciate is that public opinion had substantially changed since she proposed the federal model as part of the Constitution of 2000 which incidentally the UNP roundly rejected going to the extent of burning copies of it in the chamber of Parliament.

The federal model which Mr. Wickremesinghe proposed formed part of the CFA - Oslo package which rightly or wrongly had caused considerable disquiet among substantial sections of Sinhala opinion as borne out by the election results themselves.

It was not that these sections had suddenly become extremists. They might well have been the same sections of opinion who were ready to accept federalism under Mrs. Kumaratunga. But coming from Mr. Wickremesinghe who was perceived as being soft on the LTTE and too subservient to the West the same federalist mantra had lost its spell.

Not sensing this change in the national mood Mrs. Kumaratunga appeared to almost walk into the UNP's trap. The pro-UNP press for example was looking forward to a bombshell by her anytime before the end of the election campaign.

What is more the cooing noises emanating from the UNP and the strange posturings of the Bandaranaikes to the accompaniment of a chorus from the pro-UNP press reminding the hoi-polloi of the imminent fall of the Horogolla dynasty all combined to create an unreal air of a UNP-SLFP detente even as Mr. Rajapakse seemed to be battling his home side as well.

This mythical consensus can also jeopardise the SLFP. For example during President Kumaratunga's Presidency subtle attempts were made to suggest that there was little difference between the SLFP and the UNP because both on their policy on the ethnic issue and the economy they held almost identical views.

This in spite of the fact that from 1994 the two parties had fiercely contested each other at every election with Mrs. Kumaratunga and Mr. Wickremesinghe as the two leaders. President Rajapakse's greatest intervention in this contest therefore was to tear apart the veil of this illusory consensus and bring the battle back to the ideological terrain. Therefore, whether by design or accident he has done a signal service to the SLFP by serving to differentiate it from the UNP and re-demarcating for it a separate territory.

On the economy in particular Mr. Rajapakse through his credo of a balanced economy has shifted his Government sharply away from the Jayawardene style open market economy or the Wickremesinghe-style neo-liberalism.

While retaining the strengths of a mixed economy the new President will seek to move the economy back to the social welfarist model which was instrumental in enhancing Sri Lanka's quality of life down the years. While encouraging the private sector and foreign investment he will not abdicate the state's role as the agent balancing the disparate forces of the market place.

On the National Question too it must not be forgotten that President Kumaratunga herself was critical of certain aspects of the CFA and the peace process even claiming that the country's sovereignty had been placed in jeopardy.

While President Rajapakse's commitment to an unitary state can appear to be an insuperable obstacle it has to be noted that the LTTE's political wing chief S.P. Thamilselvan had said that all kinds of promises are made during an election campaign but that they would await the new President's actions once he assumes office.

Now that the campaign has ended it will be easier to separate rhetoric from reality. With the LTTE chief himself cautiously welcoming the Rajapakse regime and the President reciprocating Mr. Prabhakaran's gesture a new phase can open in the peace process unencumbered by the residual hang-overs of the past.

This year's Presidential Election therefore can be properly seen in retrospect as having ended the stagnancy of contemporary politics and carried the national debate to a new ideological plane. So what is needed now is not the futile pursuit of the chimera of a National Government which can only blur the ideological differences but the vigorous pursuit of solutions to the urgent national problems by the new Government which has received a mandate for just such a course of action.

As she bows out of the Presidency Mrs. Kumaratunga can take pride in the fact that she was able to bring about a national consensus on the devolution of power on the widest scale. However, it has also to be recognised that this was done at the expense of somewhat diluting the character of the SLFP. But now that President Rajapakse has taken the party back to its roots the road is open for a new ideological phase in Sri Lanka's politics.

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