The countdown begins

With the presidential election due next Saturday, campaigning is now reaching its peak and must end by Wednesday midnight leaving two clear days before the polling begins. Postal voting by public servants and others on election duty has already closed and the counting of these votes will only start when the counting proper begins upon the close of the poll. There is a widely held perception that, for the first time at a presidential election here, none of the contestants will clear the 50 percent plus one hurdle to be declared elected on the first round and the counting of preferential votes polled by all but the two front runners must follow. But all that remains to be seen.

Most commentators and observers agree that the front runners are President Ranil Wickremesinghe, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa and NPP/JVP Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake in no particular order. Wickremesinghe is running mainly on a platform of having restored a degree of stability after the post-Aragalaya chaos two years ago although he himself is freely on record that much more remains to be done.

Not having won even his own parliamentary seat in Colombo at the previous general election in August 2020, when the UNP was reduced to a single national list seat, Wickremesinghe was the surprise choice of former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to succeed Mahinda Rajapaksa as prime minister when the latter quit days before his malli fled the country and resigned the presidency from Singapore.

According to the record, RW was not the first choice for prime minister when MR quit. Wickremesinghe himself has repeatedly said that the offer had been made earlier to Sajith Premadasa who funked taking it up. There have also been unconfirmed reports that Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka, whom the Rajapaksas jailed, had also been approached.

But by GR’s account, Fonseka had sought the position. However that be, Wickremesinghe according to both himself and his supporters, bravely accepted the challenge, soon to become more challenging when Gotabaya resigned and the Rajapaksa party elected Wickremesinghe to succeed him as president for the balance term.

The miles long gas and fuel queues, the power cuts and accompanying blackouts, the unavailability of basic essentials, rocketing cost of living, plunging exchange rates and much more are too recent to be forgotten. No wonder then that Wickremesinghe, who has chosen the gas cylinder as his election symbol, has a lot going for him at this election as he ensured a degree of near normalcy.

Critics stress that much of this was possible thanks to the fact that most of the country’s debt servicing and loan repayment obligations have not been met. Nevertheless, Wickremesinghe doubtlessly made the lives of most Lankans easier during his current tenure.

As for Premadasa, when Wickremesinghe conceded the UNP ticket to him to run for the presidency against GR in 2019, he did not get the party leadership he considered his entitlement. History was repeating itself as in 1970, when Dudley Senanayake made JR Jayewardene the leader of the opposition, he (Dudley) retained the party leadership.

The recent parallel was the creation of the breakaway Samagi Jana Balavegaya that took away the vast majority of UNP MPs in the then parliament. Indisputably, the votes the SJB polled at the August 2020 election were UNP votes with party supporters like the UNP parliamentary group opting for Sajith rather than Ranil. Hence the UNP’s and RW’s sorry performance at that election.

Both Wickremesinghe and Premadasa have attracted the majority of the SLPP’s ministers and MPs, many of them bad eggs, to their camps; RW more so than Premadasa. The Rajapaksas, now out of hiding, have been left with the rump are running Namal, more with an eye on the next election than this one.

The question now is whether defectors can deliver votes to the ticket they are backing. The ‘frogs’ as the Jumping Jacks have been aptly labeled are looking more at their self-interest at the parliamentary election that will follow the presidential race.

Accommodating them in the various party lists can only be done at the sacrifice of serving organizers. As far at the runners in this presidential election are concerned, that problem is one for later resolution. Right now the objective is winning the forthcoming presidential contest.

As for the NPP/JVP, the party indisputably has the best organization among those running at this election. This has been clearly apparent during the current campaign. It has meticulously cultivated different constituencies of the electorate including the business community. Undoubtedly it has to live down its violent past but many of those voting next Saturday were not even born in 1971 when the Rohana Wijeweera-led first insurgency rocked the country. The violence of 1988-89 on both sides was much worse. But that was 35 years ago and the then JVP leaders are now history.

Having demonstrated a three percent share of the national vote at the most recent elections, they have a vast gap to bridge. Part of that has clearly been covered. But questions persist on whether the party has the capacity to run the country. There are those who believe that the NPP/JVP is more likely to attack corruption at the top with more gusto than other players who have in one way or another consorted with the corrupt. But totally ridding the country of pervasive corruption from top to bottom will be a very tall order.