HUNDREDS of supporters of legislator Sajith Premadasa gathered outside the Colombo headquarters of Sri Lanka's main opposition party, the United National Party (UNP) on Dec. 12, 2010 and cheered lustily when crucial reforms in the party constitution were announced. Premadasa, 43 year-old son of the late, assassinated President Ranasinghe Premadasa, is making a pitch for party leadership and has been opposing plans by current leader and former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe for a selection of party leaders solely by the party's main policy-making body, the Working Committee, which is controlled by the latter. After months of debate and internal bickering which has transformed the country's main alternative to the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa into a party of ‘contradictions' and ‘inconsistencies', the Premadasa-camp succeeded in changing the party constitution to provide for a secret ballot if there is no consensus in choosing the leader of the country's oldest political party. “I'll contest the leadership,” declared Premadasa, at a press conference a day after the UNP meeting, flanked by his supporters who include legislators like Ms. Rosy Senanayake (a former beauty queen), Sujeeva Senasinghe, Dayasiri Jayasekera and Buddhika Pathirana. Ironically, all of them were Wickremesinghe-loyalists who have switched camps, criticizing the party leader for delaying reforms and failing to win previous elections. While the Premadasa-camp is confident of a victory at the soon-to-be-announced party polls where the new leader would be announced or elected by consensus or a secret ballot, the wider national issue is whether a new, rejuvenated opposition can make it difficult for an extremely popular Rajapaksa regime to govern. Or get ousted. Since 1994, when a SLFP-led coalition won parliamentary and presidential polls against the UNP which had been ruling from 1977, the UNP hasn't been able to break the stranglehold by the SLFP in governing Sri Lanka except for the period from December 2001 to April 2004 when Wickremesinghe's party was in power. However President Chandrika Kumaratunga from the SLFP in a dispute with the UNP-led cabinet, sacked the ministers and called a fresh poll which was won by her party. Under Sri Lanka's political system, presidential and parliamentary polls are held at different times. The president is the executive head of state and head of the cabinet and it was the first time in 2000 when the country witnessed the president and the governing party (UNP) coming from different parties. That ‘experiment' which many Sri Lankans hoped would work and lead to a united country instead of a fractious nation and a peaceful end to the ethnic conflict, didn't work. Since then, the SLFP and its allies have held onto power for the past 16 years with such rule not ending till 2016 when the next round of parliamentary or presidential polls are due, making it a total of 22 years in which the SLFP will govern – unless something happens before that. Much of the UNP's inability to win back power has been blamed on Wickremesinghe's weakness as a national leader, particularly being unable to garner support from the village or rural parts of the country where 90 percent of the country's voting population lies. “He is more an urban politician but weak as a national leader and unable to match the power of Mahinda Rajapaksa as a populist leader,” one political analyst said. So will the change of leadership result in gains for the UNP and also create a more effective opposition? Not so, argues Dinesh Dodangoda, a former UNP legislator and now an academic. “A change of leadership alone will not help the UNP in being an effective opposition and lead it to win elections.” Dodangoda, who has a Ph.D in terrorism studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland and is a Visiting Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Colombo, says a national program of action with a well-thought out propaganda strategy is badly needed for the party. “Without this a new leader in the UNP will find it difficult to win the hearts and minds of the people.” IN November 2005, Rajapaksa won by a whisker against Wickremesinghe, securing just 50.2 % of the vote against the latter's 48.4 % – largely due to minority Tamils in northern Sri Lanka boycotting the poll. The UNP was banking on the Tamil minority vote to win the election but two days before the poll, Tamil rebels forced a boycott of the poll threatening residents not to vote. With Rajapaksa seeking support from allies that represented nationalistic agendas and were opposed to any peace initiatives which Wickremesinghe had done through a peace-and-ceasefire pact with the rebels (which however collapsed in 2003), Tamils were seen more supportive of Wickremesinghe. Dodangoda believes that what the UNP needs is a balance of capability, maturity and experience (Wickremesinghe) and popularity (Premadasa). “That would be the best combination the party can have toward defeating the government,” he said. Premadasa has built himself up as a populist leader with a series of vote-catching, social programs across the country. Rajapaksa has virtually been untouchable as a leader since government troops won – what was regarded as an unwinnable war – against Tamil separatist rebels in May 2009. In the January 2010 presidential poll, chief opposition candidate and former army commander Sarath Fonseka lost badly to Rajapaksa who triumphed by a wide margin of 57.8% of the vote against Fonseka's 40.1%. It was the highest ever winning margin at such an election. The opposition alleged vote-rigging and computer-manipulation of the vote but were unable to prove these allegations when an election petition was filed some months later against the verdict. The petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court. Fonseka was subsequently jailed after a military tribunal found him guilty of influencing tenders in the army, and stripped him of his rank and pension rights for engaging in politics while in service, a move the opposition says is an act of revenge by the president. While the developments in the UNP have lifted the party and provided the momentum it needs to give the Rajapaksa administration, now struggling with an unpopular rise in the cost of essential goods and commodities, a run for its money, any change in government is only possible in 2016 when the next round of elections is due. Till then opponents of Rajapaksa have to grin and bear unless they take Wickremesinghe's post-Dec. 12 statement that “we'll change this government before the next election” more seriously and work on it. The only way Rajapaksa could be ousted is through the opposition wooing more government legislators to its side, and seeking to remove the president on the grounds of incompetence, corruption or inability to rule, through an impeachment motion in parliament. A tall order indeed in a legislature where 2/3rds of the 225 parliamentarians are either members of the ruling coalition or support the government from other parties! – The writer is a political analyst based in Colombo __
