|
|
|
| Sunday, 02 April 2006 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
A hangover for the parties Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake In the wake of the local authority elections then the United People's Freedom Alliance has consolidated its hold on the people's imagination while the defeat of the UNP is bound to aggravate its internal agony. The poor performance of the JVP which had invested such high hopes on these hustings will vindicate a thesis held for long in some quarters that a third force is not tenable in Sri Lanka's politics. But perhaps the most significant factor of these elections is the low turn out of voters which betokens the disenchantment of substantial sections with the political system as a whole. It will be no exaggeration to say that the outcome of the 'punchi chandaya', as it was dubbed, is a personal victory for President Mahinda Rajapakse. A bare four months after winning office in a battle where sections of his own party were less than supportive of him the President has been able to fire the people's imagination with his own personal vision. The Mahinda Chinthana need be no icon, mantra, holy text or sacred relic but it has apparently become indelibly imprinted in the mass consciousness. This should be good news for the SLFP whose premature obituary has been periodically penned for some time. It has been contended that the SLFP (and the finger of accusation is pointed at President Kumaratunga) had forsaken its popular nativistic roots and been cast in a strange liberal would. If there is some truth in this charge then its re-emergence under President Rajapakse a populist leader from the hinterland of the country demonstrates that the SLFP has indeed returned to its roots and its bedrock. It was also contended in these same quarters that it would be the JVP which would benefit from this abdication from its roots by the SLFP. this expectation had to faces, one innocent, the other devious. The innocent was that with its idealism, its mass base and its intimacy with the youth the JVP would be the great white hope of the future. The devious expectation was that the JVP having joined in a SLFP - led Government would eat into the entrails of the older party and lay it low. Here again President Rajapakse has bee the mediating force. Many criticised him for his understanding with the JVP and the JHU preceding the Presidential Election but this was reflective of the President's fine-tuned antenna. He has been consistently courteous to his electoral allies and has been in constant consultation with them even when they vocally opposed him over the peace talks particularly on the role of Norway. When the JVP decided to go it alone during these elections he was also understanding of its position. However now in defeat the JVP should be able to appreciate all the greater the pragmatic grass-roots approach of the President which in some ways is akin to its own thinking but in other ways differs from its more overtly ideological positions. Which brings us to the question of why the JVP could not capture power even at the local level while having a substantial representation in Parliament which indeed bolstered hopes of the party making drastic inroads into the local authorities. Is it that the people still see the JVP as an anti-systemic force which
can not be entrusted with responsibility? Or is it that the JVP itself
over-estimated its own potential? Perhaps the time has come for the party to
engage in an exercise in self-criticism, an act of catharsis. |
|
| News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
| Produced by Lake House |
