The President's 'new reality’
President Maithripala Sirisena’s ‘neutrality’ at the upcoming Presidential election has created a buzz of sorts in the country. What ought to have looked a noble, apolitical, and non-partisan act is enveloped in suspicion, intrigue and questions on motive. Unfortunately for the incumbent President, his credibility as a leader is shaky, to say the least. His contradictions in both word and deed too numerous to mention, his political somersaults earning him many a sobriquet, the least offensive arguably being “Aiyo Sirisena”.
He began in January 2015 with a flourish. He had promised to end the Presidency by being a one-term President. One can say he kept to the latter part of that promise, but not the way he intended. Like many elected to the high post of Head of Government, high hopes led to high expectations. The rainbow coalition he led was meant to usher in a new era of bipartisan politics. It has ended in shambles, the President falling between two stools and spending his last few days in that exalted office planting trees for the future.
It was not just in hindsight, but even at the time President Sirisena took office, coming as he did as the ‘common candidate’ from the then Opposition, many felt and indeed requested the newly elected President to be ‘neutral’. They hoped he would reject the ‘thattu maaru’ system of partisan brinkmanship between the traditional foes, the UNP and the SLFP and usher in a brand new political culture. It was not to be.
Someone advised him, or he advised himself, that he must take over the chairmanship of the SLFP. He has only led the party to almost a point of no return, left himself stranded and his remaining MPs and supporters, in the lurch.
There distinctly was an anti-Rajapaksa element in the SLFP. Fuelled and fanned by the former President Chandrika Kumaratunga, the few embers of the SLFP still flicker. At Elpitiya last week, even though negligible, 12.7 per cent voted for the SLFP, not the Rajapaksa led SLPP.
But returning to the ‘neutrality’ of the President at the ongoing campaign for the Presidency, it was clear to political observers that His Excellency was trapped between a rock and a hard place. He was unsure whether to support the Rajapaksas, his bitter-sweet political colleagues of yesteryear, or was being pressured from ‘powers behind the throne’ to back a UNP candidate, but only if it was Sajith Premadasa.
His vacillation till the 11th hour was patently obvious. He said his political career is not yet over. It seems it is not yet the time to fulfil his pledge to a group of editors and publishers in 2015 that he would retire to his beloved Polonnaruwa and spend his time in blissful retirement by the bund of a tank. He has now got Cabinet approval for an official Colombo bungalow, which he is, of course, entitled to as a former President.
His neutrality, which should be otherwise welcomed as an act of principled politics, is tainted by his seeming ambition for a life after November 16, and by his hedging his bets on a place with whoever wins.