By N Sathiya Moorthy

At last, SJB leader Sajith Premadasa's announcement that his party (or, is it he?) will be working with the parent UNP may have set the tone for the nation-wide Provincial Council polls, which the Government now says will be conducted ahead of the Sinahala and Tamil New Year's Day, falling in mid-April.

In cultural terms, Avarudu and Puthandu as the two communities respectively refer to their New Year Day, which invariably fall on the same day, or one of them delayed at best by a day, marks a new hope in everybody's life – and the centre-Left Government leadership too seems hopeful of cashing in on the sentimental cut-off day – between the past and the future.

Over the past months, the ruling JVP-NPP combine was said to have been upset about their low vote-share in the Local Government (LG) elections as against their enviously high scores in the parliamentary polls only months earlier. Now, however, their fresh analyses seem to have hinted at a now-or-never situation. One, there is internal apprehension that if delayed further, their LG vote-share could go further down.

There is added anticipation that given adequate time, the divided Opposition could make up, with the sole aim of defeating the ruling combine in as many of the nine PCs as possible. And there is no question of them being able to push the PC polls indefinitely until the end of President Dissanyake's five-year term, ending in 2029.

Trading off, which way

Clearly, the Government combine is weighing the politico-electoral options, in terms of performance, too. No thanks to their abiding faith in the IMF regime and World Bank findings on the economic front, the JVP-NPP is surely losing a substantial share from their traditional vote- bank(s), especially organised labour, that too in the State and allied sector, who are the most unionised segment in the country – and possibly across South Asia as a whole.

Time used to be until not very long ago, when student unions and trade unions ensured that the JVP's popular protests became successful, one after the other. To cut the long story short, they formed the core of Dissanayake's victorious presidential poll outing, and a major segment of the combine's parliamentary poll tally, especially in terms of vote-share.

Today, the Government is at loggerheads with the trade unions, mainly because it has no experience and expertise in handling the likes of IMF and the World Bank. After the Aragalaya-centric economic crisis, this Government does not have the pleasure of fooling around with the IMF after signing the debt-deal, by whatever name called. Their predecessors have done precisely that – promising not to increase public sector jobs, promising to raise taxes and tariffs, et al, but doing exactly the reverse.

Now, the Government is under greater pressure, so to say, after agreeing on the fourth tranche from the IMF, and the World Bank, almost simultaneously talking about what is still fundamentally wrong with the fundamentals. Trade union members, especially in the likes of Colombo Electricity Board (CEB), are already restless about the IMF-mandated restructuring. So are trade union in other SOEs where such restructuring is on cards.

The Government is confused over trading off one against the other, the IMF mandate vis a vis constituency interests. All of it has sent the trigger on impending price rise, if not commodity shortages. The impact goes beyond the trade union sector, and down to the rural masses, who are dependent on the farm sector – which is erratic, to say the least. Naturally, the ruling combine does not want to bet on their Luck too much, too far.

Longer rope

Yet, there is no denying a sense of the younger generation across the country, across ethnicities, willing to give the JVP-NPP a longer rope than the traditional polity in the country is willing. Naturally, the latter has their own politico-electoral axes to grind. In their anxiety to recapture power even before the present dispensation had settled down, the likes of Ranil Wickremesinghe and Sajith Premadasa -- and not many others, incidentally – kept haranguing that this Government was going away tomorrow morning, purportedly under the weight of internal contradictions.

Yes, there may be internal contradictions. But in having to retain power, the JVP-NPP leadership (or those of their multiple partners in the latter) too are as keen as the rest of 'em all, who stuck together, despite contradictions and corruption charges, only because they did not want to leave power. In the case of the JVP-NPP, individual MPs, almost from the first one, may feel insecure about their ability to win a second term without having something to show for their collective achievement.

In principle, this means that the parties, leaders and ideologues would not want to upset the apple-cart, so early in the day, after they had waited out for decades before being able to reach there, the democratic way. In realpolitik, it means President Dissanayake is on a stronger wicket than most or all of his ideological compatriots / competitors put together.

This would show up the Government combine as being stable for most if not all through the five years of the Dissanayake presidency. In comparison, the divided Opposition may have nothing much to show, barring words, statements and joint protests, if at all.

Divided Minorities?

In all this, the nation's minorities too seem to have been caught in between. And within each of the three communities, namely, the Sri Lankan Tamil (SLT), Upcountry Tamils and Muslims, the last one, both Tamil and Sinhala-speaking. Like the majority Sinhalas, they too have been tired of their divided leaderships taking mass opinion for granted, and influencing their electoral choices, more through emotions than logic.

Not that there was much logic in it, but the perceived young minority voters' preference for President Dissanayake's JVP-NPP in the parliamentary polls reflected a pattern that they did not want to be the coat-tails of their ageing leaders, who do not think about the respective community's future but only about their continuance in the pinnacle of the party – and as ministers in any non-JVP set-up, at least in the near-future.

Such calculus, in turn translates as the minority political leaderships wanting the JVP out as they have no place in the ruling combine's scheme. If anywhere, the rulers want them all inside prison, as then and then alone can the latter breathe easy, and make up for their inherent inadequacies without learning it the hard way.

Afraid of losing

The JVP, which had ploughed a lone furrow through the past 60 years of existence, in two innings – first militant and then democratic – now suddenly finds itself more insecure than when they were a hopeless Opposition, or an Opposition party without any hopes. Now, they are over-desirous and over-ambitious about keeping what they have got, and fear losing it for good if they lose it once. This thinking seems to be shaping the JVP-NPP thinking in all matters electoral, and the PC polls, starting with when to have them, have become problematic for them.

This contrasts with the fear of losing that had dominated the PC poll thinking of previous rulers over the past decade-plus. Yes, they too did not want to lose, but they were not as afraid of losing as the present rulers are. And in this case, this fear has percolated down three layers, beginning with the presidential poll, if you want to add it to the list, and is waiting to pass, or pass through the fourth and final – namely, the PC polls.

Then and only then can they breathe easy, yes, but they would still be more strained by the possibility of having to face the next round of presidential poll in 2029 – just three years after the PC elections, that is, if they hold it next year, as promised. One advantage in all this is, once it has had gone through the PC polls, the JVP leadership, starting with President Dissanayake, would have three full years to govern without having to fear another election – and that is saying a lot, in terms of shaping the future of the nation's economy, politics and society – whatever be the outcome of the PC polls!

(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: ...)

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