Blues red in tooth and claw

Wednesday 10th April, 2024

The latest internecine battle of the Blues, as it were, at Darley Road, has taken a dramatic turn. The anti-Sirisena faction of the SLFP held a politburo meeting, on Monday, and made some key appointments. They met at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute because the SLFP headquarters at Darley Road, Colombo 10 remained closed. Former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who is leading the battle against former President Maithripala Sirisena, was present there, as an ‘observer’, enjoying the drama directed by her.

The SLFP politburo members who were present at Monday’s meeting appointed Senior Vice President of the SLFP, Nimal Siripala de Silva, as the party’s Acting Chairman. That is the way, they seem to think, they can save the SLFP from Sirisena, but what they have chosen to do is like handing over a lamb to a tiger to save it from a wolf!

The Sirisena faction insists that Monday’s meeting convened by Senior Vice President de Silva was illegal. It maintains that the party Constitution does not provide for such gatherings and appointments. The SLFP is likely to be embroiled in another legal battle in this election year, when it has to remain maniacally focussed on strategising for the upcoming polls.

When SLFP National Organiser, Duminda Dissanayake, was asked in a television interview on Monday night whether he thought it was proper to have convened a politburo meeting without the party Chairman, he answered in the affirmative. He argued that circumstances had warranted such action; he asked rhetorically what the party was supposed to do in the event of the demise of its Chairman. But the SLFP Chairman is alive and still going strong despite an interim injunction barring him from functioning in that position temporarily. Have his rivals left him for politically dead?

The SLFP chairmanship is a straw Sirisena is clutching at to remain relevant in national politics, and he is not likely to let go of it without a fight. Yesterday, his loyalists went to the SLFP headquarters, and made a futile attempt to have the police open its main gate, which has remained locked for several days. They returned tit for tat; they padlocked the gate before leaving the place.

Now, neither faction of the SLFP can enter the party headquarters unless an amicable settlement is reached or the gate is forced open. Thus, the SLFP has shot itself in the foot while the SJB, the UNP and the JVP-led NPP are busy with their presidential election campaigns.

Those who claim to be on a mission to save the SLFP from each other have become its worst enemies; they are trying to settle personal scores and further self-interest at the expense of it. They are red in tooth and claw, and it will be a miracle if the SLFP succeeds in turning itself around in the foreseeable future.

Sirisena has flown to Bangkok, of all places, while the battle for the SLFP leadership is raging. Sri Lankan politicians’ wanderlust is notoriously insatiable. Not even devastating terror attacks prevented some Presidents from going on foreign junkets during the war. In 2019, Sirisena, who was the then President, Defence Minister and Commander-in-Chief, was overseas at the time of the Easter Sunday terror strikes although the defence authorities had been warned of the impending terrorist attacks. Old habits are said to die hard.

Chandrika has said she came under pressure from those who detested the Mahinda Rajapaksa government to run for President, again, in 2015, but she had Sirisena fielded as the presidential candidate instead; she now regrets having done so. Thankfully, she did not contest, but unfortunately Sirisena did. A third term for President Rajapaksa would have been equally disastrous. Chandrika will have her work cut out to convince the public that she is not making a fatal mistake again by siding with another bunch of failed politicians bent on grabbing the reins of the SLFP.

It looks as if the SLFP had to be saved from its self-proclaimed saviours.