Gavel hits chopper

Saturday 14th January, 2023

Thursday’s historic Supreme Court (SC) judgement could not have come at a worse time for the newly-formed Nidahas Janatha Sandanaya or the ‘Freedom People’s Alliance’ (FPA), consisting of the SLFP, some SLPP splinter groups and others. The apex court has ordered SLFP leader and former President Maithripala Sirisena to pay as much as Rs. 100 million as compensation for his failure to prevent the Easter Sunday carnage (2019). The new alliance claims that it is run by a leadership council, but in any coalition, it is the leader of its biggest constituent who calls the shots for all practical purposes. Thus, the FPA is an SLFP-led coalition and Sirisena is its leader in all but name. It has, in its wisdom, adopted the helicopter, of all things, as its symbol. The SC order has hit the FPA whirlybird, as it were, like a missile! Nothing worse can happen to a newly-formed electoral alliance ahead of an election than to have as its de facto head exposed as a leader, whose lapses caused the destruction of hundreds of lives in terror strikes that could have been prevented.

Sirisena was not a political asset even to his own party; he was not popular enough to seek a second term. Thanks to the SC judgement at issue, he will become a huge political liability to both the SLFP and the alliance led by it. How the FPA will seek to control damage and whether it will succeed in its endeavour, with only a few weeks to go for the local government polls, remain to be seen.

The SLPP and its allies made the most of the political fallout of the Easter Sunday attacks to return to power in 2019, but it will not be able to use the SC judgement against Sirisena to gain political mileage–– for two reasons. First, it coalesced with the SLFP led by Sirisena, who failed to prevent the carnage. Second, its MPs elected, as President, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was among the respondents against whom the SC was moved by the family members of the Easter Sunday terror victims, the Catholic clergy and others. It is thanks to the SLPP, which made him the President that Wickremesinghe was removed from the list of respondents because of his presidential immunity. Moreover, the SLPP and the UNP have now formed an electoral alliance.

The JVP will not be able to gain political mileage from the SC order, for the Easter Sunday attacks happened under a government it was supporting. It backed the Yahapalana administration to the hilt, having helped Sirisena secure the presidency in 2015, and went so far as to prop it up in Parliament vis-a-vis President Sirisena’s attempt to dislodge it with the help of the Rajapaksas, in 2018. The UNP and the JVP had an affinity for each other, and the latter’s MPs fought quite a battle to enable Wickremesinghe to retain his premiership during the constitutional coup by turning the tables on President Sirisena and the Rajapaksa family. The Presidential Commission of Inquiry, which probed the Easter Sunday carnage has held the entire Yahapalana government including President Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe accountable for the tragedy. Besides, two sons of a JVP’s National List nominee—Ibrahim Mohammed––were Easter Sunday bombers. The JVP claims to be privy even to confidential information concerning its rivals, and displays slews of files on what it calls corrupt deals under the Rajapaksa government, and therefore it will have its work cut out to convince the public that it was not aware of Ibrahim’s background.

The SJB consists of former UNPers who were members of the Yahapalana government, which compromised national security and therefore failed to prevent the Easter Sunday attacks despite having received repeated warnings of the impending terror strikes. Some of its seniors were in the Yahapalana Cabinet, and they are therefore collectively responsible for its serious lapses. It is doubtful whether they will be able to hoodwink the public.

Thus, it may be argued that although Thursday’s SC judgement has sent the FPA reeling, the SLPP, the UNP, the SJB and the JVP will not be able to capitalise on it because they themselves were involved in the Yahapalana government albeit to varying degrees or have closed ranks with those who failed to prevent the Easter Sunday tragedy.