MR, MS and SI
Editorial-March 5, 2014, 8:48 pm
Attempts are being made in some quarters to pit Ven. Maduluwawe Sobhitha (MS) Thera as a Single Issue (SI) candidate against President Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR) at the next presidential election with a view to effecting a regime change. The prelate is reported to have indicated his willingness to contest. Even if he runs for president, he won’t be the first SI candidate to do so.
At the last presidential election, it may be recalled, all opposition parties campaigned on a single issue platform in all but name. They sank their differences and banded together in a bid to oust President Mahinda Rajapaksa; their vows to abolish the executive presidency, rid the country of corruption etc were all peripheral to that goal. They failed to camouflage their real intention with pro-people slogans. The rest is history.
The JVP wanted President Rajapaksa defeated at any cost as he had taken it for a ride after obtaining its support to win the 2005 presidential election. Desperate to avoid a crushing defeat, the UNP was looking for an outsider to challenge its bete noire, President Rajapaksa. Tiger sympathisers including the TNA and some NGOs were all out to take revenge from the President for crushing the LTTE. Western governments sought to dislodge the Rajapaksa government and install a puppet regime. All of them joined forces to back the person who, they thought, was capable of accomplishing that task—former Army Commander Gen. Sarath Fonseka, who, piqued and furious, was determined to avenge himself on the Rajapaksas who had allegedly short-changed him.
Sobhitha Thera is trying to achieve what the war winning former army chief, backed by the entire Opposition, the NGO circuit, some foreign governments and even the overseas Tigers, failed to accomplish in 2010.
The TNA, with an enclave mentality, as it were, is not likely to back any ‘outsider’ ever again as a common candidate, especially a Buddhist prelate, after its impressive win at the last NPC polls. The SLMC-SLFP relations have reportedly turned sour and their honeymoon may not last till the next presidential election, but the SLMC won’t be able to support a Buddhist monk in the presidential fray for obvious reasons.
The UNP is not likely to repeat the colossal blunder it made in 2010; its support for Gen. Fonseka cost it dear electorally as was seen from its pathetic performance at the last parliamentary polls. But for Ranil Wickremesinghe’s decision to go it alone at the general election in the teeth of resistance from within the UNP would have been further debilitated or perhaps nothing would have remained of it by now. However, it has lost a sizeable chunk of its vote base to Gen. Fonseka as evident from last year’s PC polls results.
Therefore, the UNP will have to field a candidate at the next presidential election if it is to avert disaster. UNP Leadership Council member Mangala Samaraweera has already declared that the next common presidential candidate will have to be from the UNP! It will be an exercise in futility for an opposition alliance without the GOP as a constituent to take on the UPFA at a presidential election. The game is not worth the candle.
The Democratic Party will have to go it alone at the next presidential polls as its leader Gen. Fonseka has been ditched by his former allies. The government is very likely to grant him a full pardon, enabling him to contest elections so as to cause a rift in the Opposition.
The challenge before Sobhitha Thera is to muster the support of the main Opposition parties and cobble together a coalition stronger than Gen. Fonseka’s grand alliance in 2010 let alone sell his single issue to the people and mobilise them to win the presidency. Whether he is equal to the task remains to be seen.
