Ranil's last gamble: jumping from the frying pan into the fire

by H. L. D. Mahindapala

At the end of the day, there is no way in which anyone take away from Ranil Wickremesinghe his three major attributes: 1) his insensitive capacity to sell the nation to its enemies in the name of peace which he can't win with appeasement; 2) his proven ability to run down his party until only he is left holding the fort and 3) his knack of picking the wrong political partners and issues in the mistaken belief of saving himself, irrespective of what happens to the UNP or the nation. If you add up all three it amounts to committing political suicide. And he has done it so many times that he now stands out as the nearest thing to a dead man walking.

His failures are legion and in any other democracy he would have resigned and faded out of public life.

But he clings on to the wobbly presidential chair of the UNP promising to take over power tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow which never comes. These promises are essentially to prevent his backbenchers from crossing over. But his frontbenchers and backbenchers have seen through him and they have deserted him. The last remaining talent is K. N. Choksy and he too has decided to leave him sooner or later. On top of all this comes the news that Tilak Karunaratne, the UNP Treasurer, has resigned citing Wickremesinghe's latest gaffes of belittling Thoppigala and attacking Buddhist monks. The outstanding quality of any leader is to solve problems. But Wickremesinghe excels in his extraordinary capacity to create problem for himself, the party and the nation. He just can't score a single run. Whoever named him had foreseen that he will live up to his name: Run nil!

A desperate Wickremesinghe is now clutching at straws.

His new tactic is (1) to blame President Mahinda Rajapakse for his failure to win the last presidential election which was declared fair by independent observers and (2) to embrace Mangala Samaraweera as his new political partner. Feeling quite elated and gay about the crowds that attended his political marriage to Mangala Samaraweera, the head of the SLFP (Mahajana Wing), Ranil Wickremesinghe has announced that President Mahinda Rajapakse has no mandate to govern. Why? Because the LTTE-instigated polls boycott had been paid for by the government. Mahinda is looking after Prabhakaran and Prabhakaran Mahinda," he said, at the rally.

The Government has denied this accusation and is demanding that he should produce Prabhakaran as his witness to prove the case. This, of course, is the latest whip of Wickremesinghe to lash out at the government. But he has picked the wrong issue. This is not an issue on which the government is going to lose votes. Nor will he be able to topple the government on this issue. In making this accusation Wickremesinghe, without realising the import of what he is saying, has placed Mahinda Rajapakse on the highest pedestal as a political genius who had outsmarted Prabhakaran. And, if what Wickremesinghe says is true, then Mahinda Rajapakse has fulfilled the basic qualification to govern the country because the task of any national leader is to outsmart Prabhakaran.

In making this accusation Wickremesinghe is also saying that Prabhakaran has played him out for a sucker. In other words, Wickremesinghe is saying that Prabhakaran took everything from him and gave it to his rival Mahinda. This is what is hurting Wickremesinghe and not any violation of democratic principle. Wickremesinghe sold the nation to Prabhakaran in the Ceasefire Agreement to win the Tamil votes. In the end the Tamils votes didn't come to him. No doubt, Wickremesinghe feels hurt. But why is he blaming Mahinda Rajapakse? He must blame himself. As stated earlier, he has this extraordinary knack of picking the wrong political partners and combining them with the wrong issues at the wrong time.

As far as the law of the land goes, the mandate of the President remains intact. It is the executive President and the elected parliament that have the mandate to govern the country. But, since Wickremesinghe is raising the issue of the mandate to govern, it is appropriate to apply this principle to his own political conduct and ask whether he has the right to govern, let alone the country, his own party.

Hasn't he lost the confidence and the will of the people several times over due to his bungling of party and national affairs? After the people had rejected him 14 times, after 47 UNP MPs altogether had voted against him with their feet by crossing over to Mahinda Rajapakse, (what better mandate than this for the President!), after he had been sacked by his own party men (Gamini Dissanayake) and his erstwhile bitter rival for power, Chandrika Kumaratunga, what mandate can he claim to be the leader of the opposition, or his own party?

Before aspiring to grab the Presidential chair Wickremesinghe must consolidate his position, through the popular will of his own party men, to remain as the head of the UNP. The mass exodus from his party confirms that he has no right, or mandate, to sit in the chair of the President of the UNP. He is sitting in that chair only because he has fortified himself with a constitution that guarantees him a permanency enjoyed only by one other political figure: Prabhakaran.

Supervision

In plain language, Wickremesinghe, contrary to the high-sounding principles inscribed in International Democratic Union of which he is a regional head, has managed to survive as the leader of the UNP not because of any charisma or power and ability to lead the party to victories but only because he has stifled and suppressed all opposition to him by throwing a iron constitutional wall round him to keep his rivals out. Stalin and Mao established their one-man rule over the party by calling it the dictatorship of the proletariat. The LTTE has established the one-man dictatorship in the guise of being "the sole representative of the Tamils". Wickremesinghe, of course, has no valid label except to impose his rule as "the dictatorship of mediocrity".

This explains why all the talented UNPers have left him, leaving behind a set of rag-tag hangers-on whose notable ability is to be servile yes-men. They are harbouring the illusion of enjoying the spoils some day- not in the foreseeable future - because the senior potential rivals in the UNP have crossed over to the other side. They little realise that Wickremesinghe has driven them into the wilderness and that the feeble elephants in the UNP are an endangered species facing extinction.

They, however, labour under the illusion that by hanging on to Wickremesinghe they can get somewhere.

But the UNP is going nowhere. According to news reports, it has even given up its traditional identity and merged into an amorphous National Congress, abandoning its iconic symbol the symbol that had served the UNP from the time its founding fathers dissolved the Ceylon National Congress and established the first democratic party under the enlightened and pioneering leadership of the Senanayakes who paved the path for a united, multi-cultural, welfare state with equality and freedom for all citizens, with free education from kindergarten to university, free health services and even free rice. President Ranasinghe Premadasa went as far as giving free money to the poor.

Opposite direction

Wickremesinghe is going in the opposite direction of the founding fathers of the UNP by joining Samaraweera. He is matched by Samaraweera who is also going against the foundations laid by S. W. R. D.

Bandaranaike, the father of the SLFP. The irony in our day and time is that the children who came out of the loins of the two great political fathers never fail to pay homage at the shrines of the Senanayakes and Bandaranaike to gain maximum political mileage from their historic achievements and then walk out immediately to undermine the very principles which they inherited and exploited for their rise and survival.

Wickremesinghe, for instance is distancing himself from the Senanayake-Wijewardene tradition and getting closer Mangala Samaraweera - the anti-thesis of the sacred traditions on which this nation was born and held together. This makes their marriage look like politics of the same sex. Besides, the UNP-SLFP (M) MoU ties Wickremesinghe to a morganatic marriage in which he has been reduced to the lower status with his offspring having no claim to the higher titles.

Knowing that Wickremesinghe is desperate and has nowhere to go except to marry him, Samaraweera has refused to go to bed with Wickremesinghe until he gets on top of him. He is insisting that Wickremesinghe's brood will have no claim to the title of premiership.

Nor will he agree to work under the party symbol etc.

He is shrewdly playing the role of Wickremesinghe's saviour and getting all what he demands. In the light of all these gains, Samaraweera gaiety is understandable.

This left-handed dress designer turned politician is not going to give up his old habits. Samaraweera is determined to dress his new partner in the lingerie that he designs. Which means Wickremesinghe has to be a cross-dresser i.e. neither UNP nor SLFP but somewhere in between like a political hermaphrodite.

Which means giving up the green dress embroidered with the UNP symbol, the name of party and forcing Wickremesinghe to reject all claims of his UNP partners to the No:1 position in parliament.

And being birds of a feather Wickremesinghe is quite agreeable to flock together. Despite denials of UNP maintaining its identity and symbols news reports persistently confirms that Wickremesinghe, in his usual under hand way, (like the way he signed the secret deal with Prabhakaran selling the nation) has come to an agreement with Samaraweera to sell the UNP down the drain. Where does all this leave John Amaratunga, Tissa Attanayake, Lakshman Kiriella & Co? Above all, what's going to be the fate of S. B.Dissanayake's dreams of becoming the PM? What are they going to get out of this deal except to suck their thumbs in corner and watch their "leader" (?) being dressed up in emperor's clothes by his new designer?

Of course, everything depends on Samaraweera bringing over to their side 18 SLFPers. Is it with this 18 that Wickremesinghe- Samaraweera couple hopes to topple the government? Even then the numbers are stacked against them. Wickremesinghe is operating under the illusion that getting Samaraweera on his side will solve all his current political problems. He has even fallen for the illusion that Samaraweera has the magnetic pull to swing the votes of the SLFP and the JVP. This reminds me of a story that Dudley Senanayake once told me. A UNP stalwart, S de S. Jayasinghe, one of the bus magnates of the time, was aspiring to be a Senator.Because the party was not going to nominate him he was told to canvass votes from the MPs including the opposition. Jayasinghe did what he was told and after the lower house counted the votes he found that he had not got a single.

After the results were announced there was a big commotion in the lobby of the old Parliament. Dudley along with other MPs ran out to find what it was all about. They found Jayasinghe berating Maithripala Senanayake at the top of his voice. Dudley asked him why he was shouting so rudely. Jayasinghe said: "No, sir I gave him five thousand to vote for me and he did not give his vote to me." A sheepish Maithripala was slinking away. It turned out that Maithripala was hoping that at least one MP would vote for Jayasinghe and as it was a secret ballot he could claim it to be his. It backfired when none voted for Jayasinghe.

The moral: those who pin their future on the fickleness of MPs' votes lose not only the money but their future too. So what's going to happen to Wickremesinghe if his new marriage partner fails to produce the 18 children? Where does it leave Wickremesinghe? In another disastrous divorce, eh?

Highlights

The major highlights in Wickremesinghe's career has been for 1) appointing committees which produces nothing and 2) signing MoUs which end up in divorce even before the ink can dry up on the marriage certificate. He has been in the habit of prostituting his politics so much that he can't get used to settling down to a permanent marriage. He has had so many MoUs with Chandrika, Mahinda Rajapakse, the Tamils, the Muslims, and even with the international community. The last was the Ceasefire Agreement. Nothing ever lasted or succeeded in strengthening his position. He always ended up with egg on his face.

The latest gamble of Wickremesinghe is more risky than the others that went before. Since there is no election in the offing the frustrated UNP MPs will have to survive on empty promises of the government falling tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow. Besides, with Samaraweera taking the plum prize of premiership the frustrations of the UNP MPs are likely to increase than decrease. With Samaraweera and his cronies taking over the UNP seats in the upper levels the chances of UNP MPs getting even a ministerial post seem to be remote, especially with the agreement to limit ministerial portfolios.

Furthermore, the MoU, like the Ceasefire Agreement, contains hidden clauses not yet revealed, according to reports. This can only mean that Samaraweera had called the shots and a desperate Wickremesinghe had caved in. This can also mean that Wickremesinghe had sacrificed the future of his own MPs in secret deals with Samaraweera so that he could become the next president. It is Wickremesinghe who needs this MoU and not the UNP.

Samaraweera is refusing to surrender to the UNP symbol of elephant because he is wise enough to know that his place ultimately is with the SLFP.

His mentor Chandrika Kumaratunga too went down this "Mahajana track" and eventually came back to the SLFP. So he is keeping his options open by putting pressure on Wickremesinghe to keep him in the comfort zone of his liking.

Now that Wickremesinghe has swallowed the line sold by Samaraweera the former is hooked and has no escape route. For instance, on the controversial issue of the symbol Samaraweera is not likely to let the elephant trample him. Perhaps a compromise solution for both and both may prefer it would be the carnation worn on the lapel of flamboyant Oscar Wilde.

Where else could the couple find a more colourful, sentimental and common symbol like this?