Cynics might consider President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s choice of a gas cylinder as his election symbol as the most exciting news of nomination day last Thursday. With no queue for fuel as his election symbol, RW has made the next best choice, a gas cylinder, to remind voters of what he has achieved after the 2022 election. Aragalaya who dethroned the Rajapaksas and miraculously turned him from nobody to hero. After all, it was he who led the UNP into an unimaginable debacle in which it failed to win a single seat and lost his own in the process. After much hesitation, he returned to Parliament to take his party’s only seat on the National List. It was also he who ended the horrific queues of those days and he is no doubt keen to remind voters of that achievement.
Despite the extra-long ballot paper resulting from the record number of candidates, most of whom have been labelled as fools/proxies or just plain jokers, there are probably only four serious contenders. These are the incumbent President, the Leader of the Opposition, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who leads the NPP/JVP, and the late entrant Namal Rajapaksa, who is trying to revive the Rajapaksa name and the Subscribe Symbol that remains alive in the country’s political image.
How successful Namal will be in this remains to be seen. The president, who still runs the government with the parliamentary support of an SLPP majority, has attracted scores of defectors from the Rajapaksa party, including some black sheep. He will have to wait for the outcome to decide whether defectors can deliver votes for a winning party or another. Sajith has done not too badly in attracting defectors and dissidents, while the AKD has officially stated that several applications have knocked on its door but applicants have been politely turned away.
Indeed, in deciding which horse to back, incumbent parliamentarians are looking at their own prospects in the parliamentary elections, which must be held no later than next year. That election could be held sooner if the winner of the presidential election exercises his right to dissolve parliament at any time of his choosing, after two and a half years have passed since the first session in August 2022.
The general perception is that a victorious President would dissolve Parliament in a hurry – as the AKD has promised – to take advantage of the voters’ inclination to support the winning side. So, as far as the defections and the alliances that have been/are being forged are concerned, it is all about the general elections that will follow the presidential election. One of the recent defectors, Dr Rajitha Senaratne, who jumped on RW’s bandwagon saying, “I love Sajith but I love the nation more,” revealed that Premadasa tried to persuade him to stay with the SJB by offering his son a seat on the national list after the next general election! What RW offered remains unsaid.
Senaratne, by his own admission, jumps from one side to the other like the proverbial frog. Although he mentioned the various sides he was on last week, there was no word on what the trade-off would be for switching sides. He said he was president of a student union during his university days (dentistry) and then joined the SLFP. When he realised that socialism was not the answer to the country’s economic problems, he accepted the open economy and joined the UNP.
He left the Greens with Karu Jayasuriya because Mahinda Rajapaksa could win the war. Then he left that government in 2015 and persuaded Maithripala Sirisena to do the same because MR “did not live up to expectations”. In 2022, he saw President Wickremesinghe bring stability to the nation and “I am here to support him now”. Rajitha Senaratne is not the only one puduma satha (strange beast) in the current political spectrum. Prof. GL Peiris, despite his undoubted academic achievements (Rhodes Scholar, Law Professor, Vice Chancellor) and skills, would be a strong competitor for Senaratne in the crossover game. In fact, the number of those who have held offices on both sides is so high that it is difficult to count them.
Although there are legal provisions against defections after the introduction of the proportional representation system, these have been difficult to enforce. MPs Harin Fernando and Manusha Nanayakkara, who went from SJB to become ministers in the RW government, recently lost their parliamentary seats because of this, but other defectors have not paid the price. Many MPs have become vulnerable in this regard in recent weeks, but it is doubtful whether their parties will continue to push the issue with the general election approaching soon. It might be convenient to ignore defections for now and de-list the culprits next time.
The arrest of the secretary and other functionaries of an officially recognised but unknown political party last week for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 30 million for nominating a candidate for the upcoming election raises another question. The candidate was the whistleblower. His deposit for candidacy, it was reported, was paid by the same Honourable who was arrested! Remember Diana Gamage entered Parliament through the SJB national list? She then switched sides and became a Minister of State.
She “earned” her parliamentary seat by giving away a recognised political party that she supposedly “owned” to Sajith Premadasa and Co. Sajith and his supporters, who had defected from the UNP and desperately needed a recognised party to contest the last general election, rewarded Gamage with a parliamentary seat in return for this arrangement.
It is urgent to remove the sign board parties from the register of recognised political parties at the Electoral Office and to increase the minimum deposit threshold for participation in elections in order to prevent dubious candidates from running for their own reasons.
