The Rajpal Abeynayake Column

The pressures of minding the other party's business

In a clandestine way the Colombo elite is angrier with Ranil Wickremesinghe however than they are with Mahinda Rajapaksa as he let them down on two counts. He first let the UNP down and therefore broke the Colombo elite's grip on power, and also let the SLFP down by failing to install a proxy elite leader - Chandrika or someone like her - in the SLFP. If you ever wondered why the Colombo rugger-bugger brigade barracks Ranil more than anyone in Rajapakse's camp when they have got sufficiently lubricated, this is the reason.

Now we know the agenda of most of Sri Lanka's freelance and private sector opinion makers. It is to keep the loser as the head of one of Sri Lanka's key political parties, and the winner from being the head of Sri Lanka's other major political party.

Last week's media analysis was running at the nose with stories about Ranil Wickremesinghe bringing his political troops in for a pep talk, clearly giving the impression that he is in the clear leadership position in that political party. But Mahinda Rajapaksa was painted as a swaggering political mafia don, who riddled his ex-leader with politically lethal missiles (....and got her to vacate the party seat that she was occupying from the regal outpost in London.) 'Ranil is the legitimate son of the UNP' is how the analysis goes. Mahinda is the bastard son of the SLFP. For most of those who made this kind of analysis it didn't go against their grain, however. They are ne' er do wells from well to do families. Ranil is a ne'er do well from a well to do family. He ne' er did well with the party that was handed him on a platter due to his family connections.

So he is a ne' er do well - and therefore, he is legitimately the leader of his party, because being a ne' er do well is for Colombo's society, the most significant sign that somebody is a legitimate son, and not a bastard son. All sons in Colombo, are n er' do well, really -- particularly when they hail from the privileged..

So by this yardstick, the SLFP's son who won, and did well, is a lesser of a political quantity than the UNP's son who lost and lost and lost and lost and lost. The major political parties of the day always belonged to the Colombo elite. When the business elite ran the UNP, the feudal elite ran the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. When the comprador bourgeoisie ran the UNP, the landed elite ran the SLFP and the Kumaraatunga regime was the best exemplar of that tendency.

Mahinda Rajapaksa wrenched control of one of these parties from the hands of one of these groups of elite - to be specific, Chandrika's feudal elite. Colombo elite can never forgive a sin that's so cardinal.

In a clandestine way the Colombo elite is angrier with Ranil Wickremesinghe however than they are with Mahinda Rajapaksa as he let them down on two counts. He first let the UNP down and therefore broke the Colombo elite's grip on power, and also let the SLFP down by failing to install a proxy elite leader - Chandrika or someone like her - in the SLFP. If you ever wondered why the Colombo rugger-bugger brigade barracks Ranil more than anyone in Rajapakse's camp when they have got sufficiently lubricated, this is the reason. They do Ranil's Billy Bunter impression with conviction.

But, never before has the Colombo elite shown its hand in this inelegant way. Why is the Colombo elite worried about the internal politics of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, which used to be run by the feudal elite as a populist party -- which they pretended -- was run on behalf of the people? Why is the UNP talking as if the SLFP to them is more important than the UNP? Is it because the party elite always felt that since they had the UNP in their pockets, they should also have control of the SLFP through their proxies? Well, as a matter of fact, they did. Mahinda Rajapaksa has upset that apple cart now, and power has ebbed from the hands of the Feudal political elite to an ordinary party member. The UNP is in apoplexy. Having lost their party to Billy Bunter Wickremesighe, they have now also lost the other party to a man who is not on their side.

Suddenly these newspaper analysts have got the cojones to say utterly terrible things about the winner who took over the party that doesn't belong to them, the cojones they didn't even remotely possess in baring the facts about their own man, running (and ruining) their own party..... They have imposed therefore their middle class morality on the SLFP, as a very last resort, from on high.

Strange, for the simple reason that middle class morality was hardly the strong suit of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party which was the preserve of the feudal, who eschewed middle class morality with a disdain because they thought middle class morality was of course - in a class sense - contemptibly infra-dig. The feudal thing to do was to arrive late, keep people waiting, drink and burp, and treat the political party in the manner of a dinner party. Chandrika did that to the UNP's almost awestruck admiration.

It's to this SLFP that the UNP is now trying to introduce middle class morality by saying "see, that guy took over the party when she was out of the country.'' But the incredible aspect of all this, is the sense of entitlement with which the UNP talks about the SLFP, and its leadership takeover by Rajapakse, which they feel is a blotch on their good name, and not on the SLFP's good name.

Some newspapers cradled the news of the Rajapksa takeover, with its perceived intrigues and all, as if it's a newborn baby that cannot be dropped, or scarcely looked at due to the dainty touch. Their take was that Rajapakse had intrigued to takeover of the SLFP, which was somehow a bigger slur to their sense of propriety than a loser taking over their own party and surviving anyway. That to them this is an egregious mistake - but what to do - its one of theirs, and it has to be explained that he is on a perpetual learning curve.

It's a phenomenon that has to be lamented and barracked in secret, but not bared in the open. But a winner takes over the party that doesn't belong to them, and they really feel robbed, and cheated.

It's the same sense of disquiet they must feel when their neighbour's misery, for instance, is for some reason suddenly alleviated......