FROM HERE TO 2020

“We cannot allow the neighborhood to be drifted away from us --whether it is Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or Afghanistan.”

--‘India can’t allow its neighbors to drift away to China’: Indian Army Chief, Gen Bipin Rawat, PTI, January12th 2018   

So, all roads still lead to 2020. The Feb 10th local election is the most significant of all Sri Lankan elections since 2005.Nov 2005 decided whether we would live like slaves under the scourge of Tamil terrorism or prevail over it. This Feb 10th the existential stakes are as high, and the long term, large scale geopolitical and civilizational stakes even higher, than they were in 2005.

The quote which prefaces this fortnight’s column shows that the Indian Army chief, speaking the day before India’s Army Day, has referred to Sri Lanka as if it should be regarded as a colony or satellite. The PTI report, quoted prominently in all leading Indian newspapers, reiterated that “Rawat said countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan have to be kept on board as part of a broader strategy to deal with China…”   

For millennia this proud, self-respecting island has never been our giant neighbor’s puppet. However in fairness to the Indian army chief, it must also be admitted that this island has never before had a governing party whose leader has been willing to cede the control of Sri Lanka’s destiny to India. Unless an unambiguous rejection of the UNP is registered by the citizenry on Feb 10th, this country, island home to the Sinhalese, one of the oldest nations on earth, will, for the first time in its very long, uninterruptedly recorded history, be owned and controlled by India.

The upcoming election will decide whether we cede theKKS-Trincomalee-Mannar-Mattala strategic‘deep diamond’ within this small island to neighboring BJP-India, grant federal powers to the North and East (with a rising Rajnikanth in Tamil Nadu),and lose for generations, our capacity for self-determination as a State.   

The most damning indictment of the Yahapalana experience did not come from the Joint Opposition but from within the Government, from the heir to the classic tradition of UNP liberal-conservatism, namely DS Senanayake’s great grandson Vasantha Senanayake, who is the State Minister for Foreign Affairs. 

Senanayake was seen on TV news delivering the address at the FR Senanayake commemorative meeting, at which he dropped a bombshell saying that it seemed to him that “Sri Lanka’s foreign policy was being decided externally”. He added that Lord Naseby and Ian Paisley had courageously defended Sri Lanka in the British parliament, but they were sniped at by elements in the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry.   

2018 is not 2015.Time has not worked in favour of the Government. It is difficult to imagine that the citizenry will reward the bond scam and a low growth economy with an electoral victory for the UNP.   
The Yahapalana/‘Hansaya’ bloc of January 2015 is split three ways: UNP, SLFP, and JVP. Ranil’s UNP is taking fire from the SLPP, SLFP,JVP triangle,and is politically encircled and isolated. The JVP’s pivot indicates how far the UNP’s popularity has plummeted since Jan 2015.   

Mahinda Rajapaksa was defeated in January 2015 for pretty much the same reason that Winston Churchill lost in 1945, while De Gaulle felt constrained to step down in 1946 and again in the early 1950s. Both Churchill and de Gaulle made comebacks. Mahinda is doing so too, albeit in Muhammad Ali style.   

For millennia this proud, self-respecting island has never been our giant neighbor’s puppet. However in fairness to the Indian army chief, it must also be admitted that this island has never before had a governing party whose leader has been willing to cede the control of Sri Lanka’s destiny to India

Any dramatic downswing in the UNP’s electoral popularity will put a stop to the grotesque ‘reform’ packages that are on the runway: the Geneva 2015 resolution on ‘transitional justice’ and accountability through Special Courts; a Constitution which is not merely beyond the unitary state but ‘beyond federalism’ (says MA Sumanthiran);placing the island of Sri Lanka under India by conceding an enormous Indian footprint from KKS in our Far North to Mattala in the Deep South; the savage unleashing of foreign and free market forces throughout the economy and social sectors including higher education; and the rollback of progressive legislation on land and labor.   

The results of the upcoming election will show just how close or far Mahinda Rajapaksa is from being the Prime Minister in 2020. The Rajapaksa comeback project does contain a contradiction. 

Mahinda Rajapaksa cannot run for President and therefore faces a dilemma. Can he push for a revision of the 19th amendment which restricts the restriction to two consecutive terms as in Russia? Or does he help push through a Constitutional reform that abolishes the executive Presidency? The hostility generated between the UNP and the JO/Pohottuwa is so intense that any collusion which shifts power to UNP leader and PM Ranil Wickremesinghe even temporarily from the SLFP’s President Sirisena, is going to be a hard sell among anti-UNP voters.

And as Brexit showed, all it takes for the defeat of a proposition at a referendum, even if the proposition has bipartisan mainstream support, is an economically discontented citizenry and some populist political guerrillas sparking a brushfire protest vote.So, Mahinda cannot be expected to abolish the Presidency before 2020, in collusion with Ranil. However he can abolish the Presidency if his populist bloc wins the August 2020 parliamentary election and he becomes PM.   

The UNP’s dilemma is colossal. If it succeeds in abolishing the executive Presidency, it faces the prospect of a ‘Ranil versus Mahinda’duel for the country’s leadership in 2020.

The JVP’s Anura Kumara Dissanaike as Left Presidential candidate will not improve Ranil’s chances against a resurgent MR.Even in better circumstances, never once has Ranil beaten Mahinda, or anyone else, in a race for the top leadership of the country.

This leaves the UNP three options. One isrecycling the 2015 formula and supporting President Sirisena. If President Sirisena has Ranil as his Prime Ministerial ‘running mate’, he will surely lose in 2020, though he could win if he has Mahinda, Gotabhaya, Chamal, Dinesh, or Basil as Prime Ministerial candidate, and even has an outside chance of success withSajith as PM-designate.The UNP’s (suicidal) second option is running Ranil as presidential candidate against Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Dinesh Gunawardena or Chamal Rajapaksa.

The third option for the UNP is running a non-Ranil candidate: Sajith. He will indubitably do better than Ranil, but having chosen not to be the pronouncedly patriotic-populist dissident within the UNP government that his iconic father was, it is unlikely that he or any UNP candidate will be able to pre-empt or prevail over the pendulum swing of 2020.   

The UNP is caught in a trap. Because it has no strong candidate, the UNP hashardly any options in 2020 even if manages to scrape through on Feb 10th. By contrast, the SLFP has several options in 2020, however unimpressively it may fare on Feb 10th. 

The SLFP can opt for (1) a Sirisena-Rajapaksa ticket (2) a Gotabhaya, Dinesh or Chamalcandidacy or (3) abolish the Presidency and regroup around Mahinda as PM.   Addressing from LA via Skype an electoral town-hall meeting with a Pohottuwa billboard as the backdrop, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa declared that “the present government is taking its development cues from the IMF, World Bank and a West in crisis and decline, but Sri Lanka should follow instead the developmental experience of Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan and above all, China.” He offers a vision of an alternative (East) Asian modernity.   

The UNP-DPL-NGO strategists can comfort themselves with the delusion that a solid bloc of minorities can be guaranteed to tilt the balance against a ‘Gota 2019’candidacy. That nonsensical formula overlooks the tremendous swing of Sinhala-Buddhist and middle class votes from the UNP itself that a Gotabhaya, Dinesh or Chamal candidacy can secure, amply off setting the loss of the minority vote.