14 September 2024 12:32 am Views - 283
Of the main parties in the fray this time, the NPP is different as they never have been in office as a ruling party
It is exactly a week left for the 9th Presidential election in Sri Lanka which is scheduled for September 21. Of the 38 candidates only a few are campaigning for their candidacy.
Election observers have found that several candidates are untraceable while some others have totally ignored campaigning.
Despite several candidates having published their manifestoes and conducting public meetings, manifestoes of only for candidates who are considered by the people and the media to be in the fore front are being discussed in political circles.
They are President Ranil Wickremesinghe, the leader of the United National Party (UNP) who is contesting as an the independent candidate, leader of theNational People’s Power (NPP) Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) leader Sajith Premadasa and the national organiser of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), Namal Rajapaksa.
These manifestoes are in fact lists of promises as happened at elections during the past several decades, without explaining the means of keeping them. It would in fact be difficult for those parties to explain especially how they are going to fund the implementation of their promises in a brief document like an election manifesto.
Waste of money
In a way, election manifestoes are a waste of money, as hundreds of thousands of them straightaway find their way into trash bins even without being glanced through in most cases. On the other hand, many of those who read them tend to interpret them according to their political affiliations distorting their contents.
The question remains as to whether the promises in an election manifesto would be honoured once the relevant party comes to power, even though the people read, understand and accept them, since their experience with political parties for the past 76 years goes against the contents of the manifesto. Here, the SLPP and the SJB are also counted, since they are still the majority factions of their parent parties, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the UNP which alternately ruled the country throughout since 1947.
In response to the younger generation who crave for a departure from the past blaming the past leaders for not adhering to their promises which led to the bankruptcy of the country, some people attempt to defend those leaders by comparing the development level of the country between the time of independence and now. True, some of those leaders have built huge reservoirs, airports, expressways and ports, yet, the government still has to dole out Aswesuma to millions of families, millions of students are being dropped out from schools annually before they enter the GCE ordinary level, millions of families struggle to make ends meet, millions of youths are without employment and overall, the country has gone bankrupt. Hence, economic progress cannot be judged just comparing then and now alone.
Indicating the level of political literacy of the people of the day leaders during various elections, especially after 1970 had given promises which are now seen as hilarious. The most famous of them were the ones given by the United Front (UF) and the UNP in 1970 and 1977.
During the sixties two measures of rice was provided weekly to each person at a concessionary price at cooperative stores. (The British imperial system of measurement was in force then in Sri Lanka until the metric system was introduced in 1974.) The seven-party coalition government of Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake that came to power in 1965 revoked this concession and distributed only one measure of rice weekly for each person free. This was a heavy blow to the poor who were larger in percentage then and created a huge outcry against it, since they had to buy the other measure of rice at a higher price.
The UF, a coalition of SLFP and two leftist parties led by Sirimavo Bandaranaike promised at the 1970 general election to provide the two measures of rice that was deprived of by the UNP government, bringing sufficient rice even from the moon. This promise was never kept, but a famine-like situation befell the people instead, forcing some of them to eat many leaves and yams they had never eaten. The weekly concessionary ration for a person was reduced at one point to half a pound of flour.
The UNP used this situation at the 1977 Parliamentary election to whip up anger against the government while promising eight pounds of cereals for each person monthly. However, the people were again hoodwinked when the UNP assumed office at that election and the governments of Presidents J.R.Jayewardene and Ranasinghe Premadasa ( Sajith’s father) were the most oppressive governments the country had ever seen. The Presidential election in 1982 and the referendum in the same year to postpone the Parliamentary election during Jayewardene’s tenure were the most rigged two polls in the history of Sri Lanka. Ranil Wickremesinghe was a powerful minister then.
It was during that 17-year rule under the UNP that both the armed revolts in the North and the South broke out. Although the Tamil groups had resorted to arms far back as 1975 when Alfred Duraiappa, the Jaffna mayor was killed, the actions by the UNP government gave impetus to the Tamil separatist movement resulting in individual killings turning into a full-blown war.
Despite Jayewardene having promised to resolve the ethnic problem through a round table conference, the post-election violence against the Opposition party supporters in 1977 soon turned into riots against Tamils. UNP leaders further provoked the rioters by calling the Tamil leaders to choose between war and peace.
This and another two riots against Tamils, in 1981 and 1983, especially the 1983 “Black July” riots which could have prevented or controlled at the beginning served as boosters for the Tamil armed rebellion to turn into a fully-fledged war.
Similarly, the Jayewardene-Premadasa government proscribed the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in July 30, 1983 blaming it for the black July riots without an iota of evidence while the latter had fully entered into the democratic political process renouncing violence. However, after three years into the proscription they lost hope of democratic politics and took up arms again but their brutality was so easily surpassed by that of the armed forces and the government-sponsored vigilante groups quantitatively and qualitatively.
When the rebels were accused of killing nearly 7000 members of the armed forces and alleged collaborators, armed forces and the vigilante groups were accused of killing over 60,000. Torture chambers in places such as Batalanda in Biyagama and Eliyakanda in Matara as well as mass graves in places like Hokandara, Sooriyakanda and Wanawasala were reported. This dark period is still being called “1988/89 Bheeshanaya.”
These developments changed the promises at the next successive elections from food issues to democracy. Chandrika Kumaratunga, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena rode on the pledge to scrap the executive Presidency at the Presidential elections in 1994, 1999, 2005, 2010 and in 2015, but only to hoodwink the masses. It must be recalled that Sirisena campaigned with Ranil Wickremesinghe at the 2015 Presidential election.
Economic prosperity
Gotabaya Rajapaksa who promised economic prosperity (Soubhagyaya) in 2019 declared bankruptcy in three years. During all the past governments corruption thrived with political patronage, despite some Presidents (Chandrika) threatening to take the fraudsters to the Galle Face Green and skin them. Even today, any rogue who leaves from a party is being welcomed by any other party except for the NPP, without taking his/her credentials into consideration. Hence, history of a party prevails upon its promises.
Of the main parties in the fray this time, the NPP is different as they never have been in office as a ruling party, except for four of the JVP members having been in Chandrika Kumaratunga’s Cabinet for 14 months. They joined hands with her in 2003 to topple the then UNP government which wanted to discuss the LTTE’s Interim Self-Governing Authority (ISGA), a blueprint for a separate state and left the government when Kumaratunga also accepted another similar proposal by the Tamil rebels, the Post-tsunami Operational Mechanism (P-TOMS). Therefore, we have only the evolution of the JVP - the steering group of the NPP - from a rebel outfit to a democratic party to judge them. Their credential as a ruling party is yet to be proved.