SJB’s own goal

Wednesday 21st July, 2021

The defeat of the SJB’s no-faith motion against Energy Minister Udaya Gammanpila yesterday in Parliament came as no surprise. As for winning the vote, the Opposition had the same chance as a cat in hell. The SJB may have sought to give a boost to its anti-government campaign with the help of its no-confidence motion. It has to remain politically active and be seen to be so to bolster its supporters’ morale. It also held a protest near Parliament on Monday. But its no-faith motion was ill-timed and ill-advised; it was an own goal.

The SJB’s no-faith motion reminds us of an apocryphal story of a cop who undertook to shoot a dog which a group of hospital workers had tied to a tree because they thought it had rabies. The policeman with a flair for melodrama came, and having ensured that all eyes were on him, knelt, took aim and fired. Much to everyone’s surprise, the dog sprinted away. The bullet had hit the rope holding the animal to the tree! The cop cut a pathetic figure.

The government has once again demonstrated that is has a two-thirds majority, and must have been more than happy to do so because it has been left with hardly anything else to flaunt, at present. However, parliamentary majorities do not necessarily translate into popular support where vital issues affecting the public are concerned.

The yahapalana government also consolidated its power in Parliament so much so that it could torpedo the illegally formed Mahinda-Maithri government in the latter part of 2018. It secured the passage of all its bills in Parliament with ease. But it was highly unpopular outside Parliament, and the UNP could not win a single seat at the last general election; the JVP and the TNA also lost a considerable number of seats as they had been supportive of the UNP-led UNF government. Sajith Premadasa was wise enough to break ranks with the UNP and form the SJB.

The Mahinda Rajapaksa government (2010-2015) also had a two-thirds majority, which it abused to steamroller its controversial bills through Parliament. It was also thought to be popular among the voters, but the truth was quite otherwise, as evident from the results of the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2015.

The government’s victory in Parliament yesterday is an indictment of the SLPP grandees whose allegations against Gammanpila became the basis of the SJB’s motion of no confidence. They held Gammanpila responsible for the fuel price hikes, and demanded his resignation for having embarrassed the government and caused difficulties to the public.

Curiously, even the SLPP MPs who condemned the fuel price increases and raked Gammanpila over the coals, yesterday voted against the motion of no-confidence against him. Thus, it may be argued that in so doing these MPs voted against themselves. They also claimed that the fuel prices would not have been jacked up if Basil Rajapaksa had been in the country at the time of the price revision. Basil has come back and been appointed the Finance Minister, but there has been no fuel price reduction. Is it that the government is actually capable of reducing the fuel prices but does not care to do so?

The SJB’s political strategists do not seem to know what they are doing. But for their no-faith motion, Minister Gammanpila and SLPP General Secretary Sagara Kariyawasam would have continued to fight at the expense of the government’s unity. In a way, the Opposition did the government a big favour by bringing the warring SLPP MPs together, albeit unwittingly. This is why we argued in a previous comment that the SJB leaders apparently had not read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, wherein it is said that one should not interrupt one’s enemy when the latter is making a mistake.

It behoves the government, which is cock-a-hoop at its latest win, to bear in mind that it may be able to make short work of the Opposition in Parliament, but the issues over which parliamentary battles are fought will not go away. What really matters in electoral politics is not the ruling party’s parliamentary majority but public opinion, which can make or break governments.