Sajith Premadasa’s conundrum

Sri Lanka needs thoughtful figures calling the shots

Fortunes of the UNP need to be revived

Sajith represents the best and worst deal for the UNP

Sajith stands on two opposing poles

 The opposition desperately needs a thoughtful head, and it’s not going to get a thoughtful head with the mess it’s in right now. This leadership tussle was and is probably the worst the UNP has faced. But the stakes are too high. The people want Sajith Premadasa – or at least the populists in the UNP want him – and to reject calls to appoint him as not only the leader of the oppositional alliance but also the leader of the party that heads that alliance would be, in the long-term, futile.

It can only compel a breakup, and a breakup at this juncture does not bode well for the future, whether of the UNP or of the country. Sri Lanka needs thoughtful figures calling the shots and thoughtful figures subjecting those calling shots to constructive critique. Without the one, the other can only lead the country down the slope. The fortunes of the UNP thus need to be revived, and the surgery needs to be done fast. 

The Sajith Premadasa whom we know was largely, if not significantly, a product of the media, a media that’s now hostile towards him

There is a case for Sajith Premadasa as well as a case against him. The Sajith Premadasa whom we know was largely, if not significantly, a product of the media, a media that’s now hostile towards him. He was the product of MPs who, in the aftermath of the Easter attacks, could not find a saving grace elsewhere. He was their last straw, their last shot. That this last straw and shot didn’t quite become their saving grace is a painful fact: everyone hedging their bets on him in the UNP’s rank and file including Ajith Perera and Harin Fernando lost his seat to Gotabaya Rajapaksa. If political sources were to be believed and Maithripala Sirisena, despite his avowal of neutrality during the election campaign, was going to get up on Sajith’s stage in Polonnaruwa, it indicates too clearly that Sajith’s victory was a myth indulged by sections of the SLFP as well. And if those sections of the SLFP were rooting for a Sajith victory and also working for it, this explains the less than expected margins Rajapaksa won within not only Polonnaruwa, but also, bewilderingly, Anuradhapura. 

The case against Sajith Premadasa is therefore quite strong, almost unimpeachable. Largely a product of a cult, he represents the best and worst deal for the UNP. Those loyal to his implacable foe Ranil Wickremesinghe see in the man an extension of the worst elements of the Rajapaksa regime, whether it’s the old Mahinda or the new Gotabaya: loud and bellicose, yielding easily to populist pressures, making one unrealistic promise after another, playing on contradictory political impulses – pledging to build an ungodly number of Buddhist edifices, for instance, while fostering a culture in which all faiths are fostered and given equal status – and privileging emotion and hysteria over reason and intellect. Sanjana Hattotuwa in his last column, weeks ago, claims that a new culture fetishising these indefensible values have been invading the political sphere since Gotabaya won. Agreeable as I am to this view, I’d like to point out that the guy in the opposition then was no better: his campaign and the rhetoric he and his cohorts employed for it were almost a rehashing of the campaign they were opposing, a campaign which to a certain extent they even outdid. 

Those loyal to his implacable foe Ranil see in the man an extension of worst elements of the Rajapaksa regime, whether it’s the old Mahinda or the new Gotabaya

What’s there in the new UNP that’s different from the old? When J.R. Jayewardene assumed leadership in the 1970s, he mobilised sections of a social milieu that had not been mobilised to as considerable an extent before. The UNP’s resounding 1978 victory represented a victory of this milieu over the classes between which the fluctuating fortunes of mainstream political parties in the country had played out before. This is a political inheritance the UNP has since then not been able to shake itself of, and it contributed to some of the worst excesses of the Jayewardene regime in the ’80s: including, but not limited to, the anti-Tamil riots of 1983, the incarceration of the Old Left and the brutal crackdowns on the New Left. The 1978 election represented, in that regard, a triumph of an intermediate milieu hostile to both marxism and unfettered capitalism: a class not necessarily opposed to populism or for that matter even chauvinism if these interlocked with their economic aspirations. Neither the UNP nor the SLFP – neither Jayewardene nor Sirimavo Bandaranaike – would have ignored the potential this milieu contained, but not until 1978 was it tapped into fully. 

The downside to all this was the emergence of a populist political culture which a number of political commentators saw as emancipatory and progressive. That culture reached its apogee only in the Premadasa era, since during Jayewardene’s regime it lacked a leader with whom it could be compounded. What political commentators see in the equity-plus-growth paradigm or philosophy of the Premadasa regime were, for the most, the optics. More than any of his predecessors, the man became a symbol of hope in a culture dominated by political elites. But to become that symbol, the man and the party had to unleash certain inevitable changes which 1956 had first unleashed. The inevitable economic and social changes facilitated by the 1956 election had to let go, and they did when reducing economic fortunes in the 1960s could no longer sustain the rising social aspirations of those said to be liberated by the 1956 revolution. The result was a backlash by the petty bourgeoisie, a backlash which permanently disfigured the left and put in its place a set of leaders who did not think twice of resorting to thuggery and chauvinism to appease the rabble. This was the base the UNP operated on. 

The late Mervyn de Silva called Premadasa’s political ascent “a sociological breakthrough for the Sri Lankan system.” The caste-driven, class-driven political hierarchies survived “1956,” though those who won that year’s election pledged to do away with them. This led to certain political contradictions which first crowned J.R. Jayewardene and then, in 1988, forced him to choose as his successor, against his will, a person representing all that those opposed to political hierarchies favoured. The successor’s equity-plus-growth philosophy was an optic in an age of political populism, hence: the elite didn’t like him, the southern youth didn’t like him, but the intermediate milieus opposed to both supported him, and they had to be satisfied. So Premadasa satisfied them, and so he continues to be treasured in the minds and memories of the middle- class from that era, for much of whom the brutal putting down of the second JVP insurrection was not only necessary, but also vital, to their interests. 

Here I see a contradiction, though it’s clearly not one for those who choose to cave into it. By continuing to deny the neo-fascist character of Premadasa’s regime today, the most virulent opponents of the Rajapaksas and the damage the latter have inflicted on the economic, social and democratic fabric of the country speak in forked tongues. They brush aside the atrocities the Premadasa regime committed in the name of stability – atrocities which, mind you, have been squarely substantiated – yet denounce atrocities – substantiated and unsubstantiated – which Mahinda, Gotabaya, and their cohorts committed between 2005 and 2014. In that sense, Dayan Jayatilleka is more honest and forthright than most: in his support for Sajith, he sees a continuum, not a break, from his support for only the father, but also the father’s in-many-ways political heir, the populist from the south, Mahinda. 

So we have a situation in which we see those opposed to Premadasa supporting his son, those supportive of Premadasa opposing his son, those supportive of Premadasa opposing the Rajapaksas, those supportive of Premadasa supporting Mahinda and Gotabaya, and those supportive of Premadasa supporting Mahinda and Sajith and opposing Gotabaya. In this not a little confounding configuration, it’s difficult to predict what will unfold. What we know is that all these political personalities derived support from sections of the petty bourgeoisie, the entrenched wannabe elite (as I like to call them) who are neither for the one nor for the other unless their crude social aspirations are met. 

Sajith Premadasa stands on two opposing poles. On the one hand, if he’s trying to woo away the base of the Rajapaksas, he has to act and even be like them: he has to channel the populist in him and do away with the arrogant usa-nam-kamkaru air in him. On the other hand, if he’s to present himself as a superior oppositional figure, he has to do away with both the populist and the strongman in him. That’s Premadasa’s problem, but we can’t be satisfied by saying it is, since it’s also Rajapaksa’s problem: the latter now has to choose between the strongman-meritocrats in Viyath Maga and the rabble-rousers in the Pohottuwa. In trying to be a superior figurehead, both Sajith and Gotabaya are thus, ultimately, facing the same problem.