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The emerging crisis of cohabitationlogoThursday, 18 June 2015As
the Sirisena-UNP cohabitation crosses the six-month mark, the
minority Government formed on 9 January faces a struggle for
survival against an increasingly assertive SLFP. At the mercy of
the presidency once again, the UNP looks set to relive its 2003
nightmare, when then SLFP President Chandrika Kumaratunga ended an
uneasy political cohabitation with an elected Ranil Wickremesinghe
administration by grabbing three key ministries and calling snap
polls that the UNP lost badly.
With battle-lines drawn on 20A, no-faith motions against the Prime
Minister and the Minister of Finance, and the prospect of
Parliamentary elections being further delayed, both President
Maithripala Sirisena and the UNP have big decisions to
makeUntitled-6A strange revelation was made this week, after
President Maithripala Sirisena appointed four new Deputy Ministers
in his continued efforts to consolidate power within the Sri Lanka
Freedom Party.
SLFP MPs Sanath Jayasuriya, Thilanga Sumathipala, Wijaya Dahanayake
and Eric Weerawardana were sworn in as Deputy Ministers by
President Sirisena last Wednesday, two days ahead of a massive
rally in Matara calling for former President Mahinda Rajapaksas
return as Prime Minister.
The new additions raise the SLFP tally of portfolio holders in the
Sirisena Administration to 36, against the UNPs 35. Nine other
Ministers and Deputy Ministers hail from other political parties in
the rainbow coalition that ushered President Sirisena to power in
January. President Sirisena, who expressly pledged to limit his
Cabinet to 25 members in his election manifesto, now presides over
a whopping 80 Cabinet Ministers, State Ministers and Deputy
Ministers, batting not too far below the average of his
predecessor.
In a topsy-turvy political twist, it now transpires that the
President has drawn his biggest ministerial cadre from the party
which strove hardest to defeat him in the January election. Put
another away, the party leading the Opposition in Parliament now
commands the most number of ministerial portfolios in the ruling
Government.
In the past week, the SLFP has managed to assume a majority in the
Sirisena administration and set the legislative agenda on electoral
reform. The Presidents proposal for the 20th Amendment to the
Constitution which replaces the current electoral system based on
district Proportional Representation (PR) with a purported hybrid
between First-Past-the-Post and PR systems, recommends the increase
of Parliamentarians to 237, after the SLFP insisted on more MPs to
be elected on the First-Past-the-Post system.
Despite UNP misgivings and opposition, and crying foul by minor
parties, including the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, it is this
version of the draft amendment that was gazetted yesterday by the
Government Printer. The SLFP-led UPFA has the numbers in Parliament
to pass this amendment independent of UNP or minor party
support.
For all official purposes, the SLFP continues to function as the
countrys official Opposition. Flexing its Parliamentary muscle, the
party is threatening the UNP minority Government with two
no-confidence motions one against the Prime Minister and the other
challenging Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake. With the UNP Prime
Minister out of the picture, the SLFP is confident equilibrium will
be restored, and the former ruling party will be back in the
governing seat again. The UNP decision to oppose 20A in its current
form has strengthened the SLFPs hand.
The SLFP will now offer its full legislative support to President
Sirisena to enact the electoral reform package, while the UNP looks
likely to side with the smaller parties, and possibly the TNA, in
opposing the amendment in its present form. Any amendments brought
to 20A by the UNP or minor parties when the bill goes into
Committee Stage can be defeated on the floor by the SLFP-led UPFA
with a simple majority.
No more than 225: UNP
The UNP is confident that increasing the number of elected
representatives in Parliament will not find favour with the public.
So when a senior UNP delegation met President Sirisena at the
Presidential Secretariat on Monday, they recommended that the
matter of 237 Parliamentary seats be put before the people at a
referendum.
UNP office bearers Karu Jayasuriya, Kabir Hashim, Ravi Karunanayake
and former Party Chairman Malik Samarawickrema met with the
President on Monday to communicate to him the decisions taken at
the partys Working Committee meeting last Friday. The delegation
suggested that instead of a Cabinet paper, a white paper should be
presented to the people to decide on the proposal to increase the
number of MPs in Parliament. The white paper will serve to inform
voters about the reasons for an increase Parliamentary
representation to 237, the UNP believes.
The Party feels its position will have judicial backing, since a
Supreme Court bench led by former Chief Justice Neville Samarakone
in 1981 held that any changes to the Constitution of the Sri Lankan
Parliament would require both a two-thirds majority in Parliament
and a referendum since the amendment affected the peoples
franchise. The determination prevented former President J.R.
Jayewardene from enacting an amendment to the Constitution,
creating a two seat allocation for the Kalawana electorate by means
of a two-thirds majority alone through a Parliament in which his
party held a five-sixths majority.
According to Deputy Minister and UNP Legislator Eran Wickramaratne,
the UNP will not allow the number of MPs to be increased even by
one. We cannot change the rules of the game when we have been
elected under a certain set of rules, Wickramaratne told the Daily
FT. The Lawmaker explained that increasing the number of
Parliamentary seats created a serious problem of
proportionality.
If this is our attitude, that we need more and more
Parliamentarians, then India which has one billion people and 50
times Sri Lankas population will have to have 10,000 MPs to provide
adequate representation, Wickramaratne argued. He said that
increased representation in Parliament also made provincial
councils and local government redundant, since these units were
already offeringrepresentation at different regional levels.
Tamil National Alliance Legislator M.A. Sumanthiran agreed with
this perspective during a lecture on the 20th Amendment at the
Colombo University on Tuesday, saying his party believed that
representation needed to be increased at local and provincial
levels in order to de-centralise power. Conversely, increasing
representation in Parliament served to concentrate power in the
Centre even further, something his party, the TNA, strongly opposed
since they were advocating a federal system for Sri Lanka,
Sumanthiran argued.
Untitled-7Early dissolution
The UNP delegation also informed the President on Monday that the
party strongly favoured early dissolution of Parliament to make way
for a Legislature that better reflects the mandate of the people
following the 8 January election.
The third issue to be taken up at Mondays meeting were the two
no-confidence motions brought against Premier Wickremesinghe and
Finance Minister Karunanayake. The UNP delegation argued that the
no-confidence motions were an affront to the Sirisena Government
and were highly unethical in light of SLFP members also holding
positions within the administration.
President Sirisena is reported to have repeated his remarks at the
Cabinet meeting last week to the UNP stalwarts, informing them that
he would not allow the no-faith motions to proceed under any
circumstances. In this the President appears to be considering a
variety of legal options available to him, including the
prorogation of Parliament, which would allow motions on the Order
Paper to lapse if he continues to favour delaying the general
election.
The UNP stand against the 20A in its present form and the partys
decision to stand against President Sirisenas proposal for
electoral reform has breathed new life into the SLFP. On Tuesday,
the partys MPs, Provincial Councillors and Pradeshiya Sabha members
met at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute for discussions with
President Sirisena. SLFP MPs were euphoric after the meeting,
because they claimed President Sirisena had decided to appoint a
six-member SLFP committee to foster unity within the party a
decision they interpreted to mean the incumbent was seeking to
build bridges with his predecessor, Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Convinced that a divided SLFP will lose badly to the UNP if
President Sirisena decides to call elections within the next few
months, party members are engaged in a desperate bid to unite the
two warring factions and make the blues a formidable force in the
coming election. SLFP Spokesman Dilan Perera, who quit the Sirisena
Cabinet earlier this month, said the party was hoping to form a
government before the Parliamentary elections, technically
scheduled for April next year.
The JHU calculation
The Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), a small but significant constituent
member of the alliance that supported President Sirisenas candidacy
for the January poll, has reinforced these SLFP hopes, calling on
the President to appoint a new government to see 20A through if the
UNP was refusing to cooperate.
JHU strongmen Athuraliye Rathana and Champika Ranawaka may be
making a strategic calculation in issuing this call, political
analysts point out. As a party with a miniscule electoral base, the
JHU will have to forge an alliance with one of the two main parties
to contest the Parliamentary poll. Ideologically, the UNP falls too
far from the JHU ideal as a coalition ally. The SLFP is the
nationalist partys best hope. Bolstering the SLFPs election chances
could therefore indirectly benefit the JHUs own polls bid.
Interestingly, the JHU is one of the only minor parties to support
the 20A in its current form, even though it will be badly affected
by the reforms, which will almost certainly strengthen only the
SLFP, the UNP and the TNA in the Northern Province. The reasons for
this could be twofold.
On the one hand, the JHU, unlike many other smaller parties, knows
it can only win seats in Parliament if it contests in a political
alliance featuring one of the main political parties. Unlike the
JVP or the CWC, since 2004 the JHU has commanded too small a
percentage of the vote to hope to win any Parliamentary seats
contesting as an independent group.
Secondly, from an ideological perspective, the JHU would rejoice in
the prospect of cementing major (Sinhala) party dominance in the
countrys south and Tamil National Alliance dominance in the north.
Critics of 20A express serious concerns that the new system will
definitively polarise Sri Lankan politics along ethnic lines,
stirring communal tensions and encouraging divisive political
discourse. But this is a scenario the JHU knows its brand of
politics will thrive in, so it will strongly back 20A even though
it may well be sealing its own political fate if it finds it can no
longer ally with the SLFP for some reason one day in the
future.
Pre-8 January status quo?
The delicate balance between the minority Government and the
presidency held by Maithripala Sirisena therefore looks poised to
shift. Ironically, should matters develop as indicated this week,
the pre-8 January status quo will be restored, with the UNP backed
into a corner with the minor parties in Parliament against the 20A
in its present form and the SLFP-JHU-UPFA banding together to enact
the Presidents electoral reform law.
If it plays out, the shifting power balance would indicate that the
anti-Rajapaksa camp led by the UNP and strongly backed by other
parties in Opposition, including the TNA and the JVP, made a
grievous miscalculation ahead of the 8 January poll. Opposition
strategists assumed that the SLFP-led UPFA, so disgruntled and
frustrated with Rajapaksa leadership themselves, would fall in line
with President Sirisenas reform agenda. The common Opposition never
fully realised the dangers to the Sirisena presidency and a
supportive UNP Government from a strongly pro-Rajapaksa Parliament
that held a massive majority in the House.
The assumption made by the common Opposition was that the SLFP,
that had been so meek and mild under Rajapaksa leadership, would
fall in line under a Sirisena presidency. Legislative blockades by
the SLFP were never considered, and the UNP made the calculation
that any such obstacles could be overcome by a President beholden
to the Greens, who held the power to dissolve Parliament at a
whim.
Had these Opposition strategists calculated the dangers of this
road, they may have pushed for swift Parliamentary elections, while
anti-Rajapaksa sentiment and euphoria at their overthrow were at
its zenith. Immediate Parliamentary elections, with the promise of
Constitutional reform at the conclusion of the poll, would have
enabled the Sirisena led coalition to eradicate the Rajapaksa
threat almost entirely, with a 1-2 punch that could have taken the
former President and his ex-ruling cabal much longer to recover
from.
Time of reckoning
Today, with the gloss fading from their January victory, both
President Sirisena and the UNP have major decisions to make. Both
President and his minority Government face almost impossible
choices. The UNP must decide if it will continue to be a lame-duck
minority Government, bulldozed and threatened by the SLFP at every
turn, increasingly unpopular for its failure to deliver within its
100 days and beyond on a host of election pledges, including
economic relief and good governance.
Some UNP seniors claim the party has drawn an imaginary line in the
sand, a deadline as it were for dissolution. Without dissolution at
the end of June, the UNP realises it will face two no-faith motions
it has no hope of defeating and acute embarrassment for its Party
Leader who can only avoid the humiliation of being ousted if
President Sirisena bails him out with prorogation or by forcing the
SLFP to withdraw the motion.
On the other hand, a resignation of the UNP Government is equally
unpalatable for the party. Stepping down from the Government
creates the very real risk that President Sirisena could form a
SLFP Government and govern with the group until as late as April
next year. By that time, all memory of the UNPs contribution
towards the ouster of the Rajapaksa regime will have faded and the
party will be relegated once more to face the polls as an
Opposition party. The UNP leadership may decide that making a
pretence of being in Government could be preferable to wasting away
in Opposition once again, this time under a presidency the party
had actively ushered into office.
President Sirisena faces serious moral questions of his own. The
UNP is pushing him into an election his own supporters within the
SLFP do not want, political analysts point out. These SLFPers, many
of them Ministers, fear an election could lead to a return of
Mahinda Rajapaksa when the party performs poorly at the polls.
Recent UNP history provides ample evidence that election defeats
lead to serious leadership struggles within political parties that
adversely impact their electoral fortunes in a vicious cycle that
can take decades to reverse. Analysts argue that pro-Sirisena
factions of the SLFP fear the party will blame the President for
playing into the UNPs hands and push for the return of the
ex-President as party leader.
Minister Rajitha Senaratne for instance, who is President Sirisenas
closest confidant in the Government, is strongly opposed to quick
elections, expressing an opinion privately that Parliamentary
elections could even be held after September 2015. On the other
hand, President Sirisena has what some would call a moral
obligation to the UNP and his corresponding election pledges to
dissolve Parliament and effect meaningful Constitutional reform.
Constitutionally, nothing prevents President Sirisena from neatly
extricating himself from the alliance with the UNP and forming a
SLFP Government to govern until April 2016. Arguably, the move
would also restore political stability since the SLFP-led UPFA also
holds a strong majority in the House.
For a President who spends most of his time fighting fires between
his own party and the party he has chosen to govern with, the move
could also result in fewer headaches, as he tries to balance
competing interests. But to abandon the UNP and govern with the
SLFP would also signal a major distortion of Sirisenas 8 January
mandate, and possibly alter his image as the all round good guy.
Instead, that decision would make President Sirisena look expedient
and treacherous, more politician and less statesman. The latter is
the image President Sirisena has actively sought to build, and it
is unclear still if he will choose to throw it away for the
SLFP.
Poor history of co-habitation
Historically, co-habitation has gone tragically wrong for the UNP.
Chandrika Kumaratunga proved faithless and derailed the UNP
administration that won power fair and square in 2001, by grabbing
three key ministries from Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and
calling snap elections only four months later. After it lost its
leverage as an incumbent Government, the UNP could no longer
withstand the opposition to its peace-process from nationalist
forces within the country then actively cultivated by the
Kumaratunga administration in its bid to defeat the UNP.
The UNP Government of 2015, just hurtling past its sixth month in
office, is well on course to face a new crisis of co-habitation in
the coming weeks. Serious dysfunction plagues the UNP
administration, as it struggles to overcome the Central Bank bond
scandal and the downward spiral of the rupee that is driving up
costs and negating the effects of the economic relief package
rolled out in February.
In the meantime, bogged down with playing party politics and
consolidating his power against the growing threat from the
Rajapaksa cabal mobilising at Abayaramaya, President Sirisena looks
to preside over a governance crisis of his own, caused by atrophy
and inaction, that threatens to further postpone the delivery of
tangible changes he promised on his election stages.Posted
byThavam