Who will be President on Sunday

 What the country really needs is a leader who can be president for everybody

Anura Kumara Dissanayaka born 24 November 1968, the current leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, has impressed many people in the city with his no-nonsense approach to governance. Unfortunately for Anura he is not representing either the UNP or the SLPP. He can however be a big spoiler. 

Many people don’t know that Anura in his 30s had served for a time as the Cabinet Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Lands and Irrigation. Dissanayake became the leader of the JVP in February 2014. He joined Parliament like Sajith Premadasa in September 2000. Many of the surveys are showing that Anura will attract the protest vote of people who are disgusted with both parties. 

The UNP has run the administration in partnership with SLFP for the last five years, and is not popular; that is hurting Premadasa. The UNP has only itself to blame for not being decisive and results-oriented. The Government in desperation launched a new campaign called # progressingsrilanka to tell the public the amount of work they had accomplished. When the Prime Minister was asked why he did not do this earlier, he had said ‘we did not want to squander money like the last Government to talk about our achievements’.  Many of the big businesses are unhappy with the Government; some weeks ago they all wanted them out. But many of them are now sitting on the fence, because they are not sure if the pad man or the American will win on 16 November.

UNP struggling 

When businesses were complaining that interest rates were too high for businesses to do business, the Government did nothing for two years, when the private sector was pleading to reduce the taxes, the Government increased it. When the shipping community was pleading for more time for liberalisation to take place the finance ministry took the high road, fortunately common sense prevailed later. But a little too late. The pharmaceutical industry was given a huge blow when price controls were introduced. The Health Ministry was not willing to listen. Later they extended the price control to hospitals angering the owners of the hospitals.  The poor however benefited and they will surely vote for the Government. But some of the owners who are livid are now working to get the SLPP candidate elected. While these owners now can vent their frustrations in public, they are bound to lose the very freedom they now have and face the stick in the future. 

The Government certainly suffered because of the President’s irresponsible behaviour, the worse being not taking action to prevent the Easter Sunday attack. The President should certainly be held responsible for the carnage. Young Premadasa even though he is the nominee of the UNP, he has cleverly distanced himself from the UNP economic team that arrogantly put their hand into every policy decision and failed to act decisively on many fronts. 

SLPP’s problems

The SLPP candidate Rajapaksa was on a roll until his pathetic press conference. The ill-timed attack on young Premadasa, who is nearly 20 years younger than the SLPP candidate, on his pledge to give menstrual products free and make it easily available in public schools, as well as in homeless shelters helped Premadasa to catch up. Once again the opponents of the SLPP candidate are claiming the Federal Register denouncing the individuals of their US Citizenship has been released with Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s name not in it. 

They claim Rajapaksa will remain a citizen of the United States of America and will not be able to function as President even if he is elected into office. That argument will surely dominate the political discourse this week. Not that Gota is not popular. He definitely is, next to his elder brother Mahinda, who rules the roost in the popularity stakes in the south. It’s not the popularity contest that he has to worry of when it comes to entertaining his chances of being the first to past the post at the election.

The concern is of his ability to jump over the insurmountable barrier of the legal hurdles from citizenship to bribery and murder charges placed before his course in this high stake political steeplechase that faces him today. Gotabaya Rajapaksa who has promised to bring in technocrats, has so far only brought those people who sent his brother’s government packing. He needs to get some good names to the front to show that he is a man who walks the talk. Unfortunately, bringing back the scoundrels of the last regime who amassed mass wealth, will not help him to look new, something that Premadasa too is struggling to deal with. 

Conclusion

The National People’s Power movement will clearly become the third force in Sri Lankan politics. In the absence of other credible alternatives with mass appeal, the evolution of the JVP from its smaller beginnings in the late ’60s as a rural grassroots party – critical of the governance system and capitalist economy, cannot be ignored when considering the future of the country. The political and policy platform being advocated by the leader, at this time bears testimony to the maturity that the JVP has achieved. 

People need to vote wisely on the 16th because there is a good possibility of returning to an authoritarian government with curtailed freedoms led by the deep state, if Rajapaksa gets elected. The same space to criticise may not exist for those Colombo 7 elite and those rich puppies who have taken over their ancestors’ business houses who are promoting nationalism to exercise its democratic right to criticise publicly government policies. Sajith needs to very clearly tell the country that the UNP’s crony capitalism led by the Royal College elite will disappear for good. He too is from Royal. That brothers and sisters of the UNP ruling elite won’t be appointed to run critical SOEs and they won’t have their hand in every contract to support their grandiose plans and urges. Perhaps for many a toned down version of the current UNP capitalism would still be far better than family rule once again.  People when they go to vote must not vote only for the benefit of the Sinhala heartland, because the country must move on. Both the main contenders have two solid national leaders who can provide solid leadership to the security forces to protect the nation from future Easter Sunday type attacks. What the country really needs is a leader who can be president for everybody.