(October21, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The opposition’s leadership crisis is reflected no better than in the one single episode in which Dayasiri Jayasekera, UNP member of Parliament, has been quoted as saying that there is no significant rise in the number of tourist arrivals into the country after the end of the war.
The clincher to this reasonable enough statement was that Sri Lanka is currently being besieged by cash-strapped Indian tourists “who turn out Roti in their hotel rooms with their electric irons.’’
Jayasekera has proven that by and large he is ignorant, that he is a bigot, and that he can amply alienate and upset a useful and friendly neighbour, all in one fell stroke.
This worst type of stereotyping represented by the Roti jibe, is particularly clumsy and dunderheaded at a time when every ten-year-old knows that India has a burgeoning cash-flushed middle class that is battened by the nation’s significant recent economic growth.
Now, any fool can say anything, but what is significant is that Jayasekera has recently been counted as one of the frontline UNP young Turks who could give the party strongman, that serially incompetent liability going by the name of Ranil Wickremesinghe, a run for his money.
But fact remains that Jayasekera quickly folded his tent, and was seen to be slinking away and merging into the Sri Kotha scenery after Ranil Wickremesighe threatened to sack him from the party if he led others in the UNP to function as independent members in parliament.
The Roti statement shows that Dayasiri Jayasekera is a politician of the common or garden variety, notwithstanding the fact that each politician is entitled to his or her fair share of bloopers. However, Jayasekera has so far not denied the Roti quote, which fact can do nothing except solidify his common or garden credentials.
UNP’s second-tier leadership
Hence, while reserving comment on Sajith Premadasa, who is yet to prove himself, the simple lack of serious contenders in the UNP’s second-tier leadership, offers a depressing picture, considering particularly that it may mean that the hapless Ranil Wickremesighe could continue at the party helm until his teeth fall out.
The entire sorry saga of UNP ham-theatre is also a very strong indictment on the incompetence of Sri Lankan national elites, particularly the powerful professional and entrepreneurial backers that are supposed to be the repositories of real power in any democratic process that has at least reasonable functionality and credence.
Any competent democracy is made up of contending power elites who are the real interested players that parley to positions of power, proper political leaders who can effectively lead the political formations that essentially represent the interests of these elite groups.
In effect, for instance, Sonia Gandhi or the Congress party backroom political-hacks did not pick Rahul Gandhi as the chosen man to lead the fortunes of the Congress, which represents primarily the interests of India’s liberal entrepreneurial elite.
On the contrary, this elite as a political formation made Sonia Gandhi and the Congress figureheads pick Rahul Gandhi as their man of choice, to lead India into the future and the brave new world.
Such a political elite exists, and certainly it exists as a definable political formation behind the figurehead power structure of the UNP which consists of the Working Committee and the top party leadership.
There is hardly the need to state it in abstract theoretical language. The former Kingmakers of the UNP such as the departed and much lamented Esmond Wickremesinghe, were not acting on their own when they anointed past leaders in the UNP, but were in concert with the business elite of that time consisting of whoever backed the UNP then, be they transport tycoons or arrack rental magnates or owners of extensive plumbago mines and southern plantations.
It was this business elite, along perhaps with some interested others of the professional top echelon, that met in conclave and made the secret deals about who the UNP figurehead leadership should appoint, nay anoint, to guide the party’s political fortunes in the electoral minefield, and in the parliament.
Whether it is the ideal practice in democracy or not being another matter, this is the way things have been done in most functioning democracies that we know of, for ages.
For examples one of Barak Obama’s authorized biographies by journalist David Mendell recalls how a Chicago-based business magnate close to the Democratic party narrated an incident. The gist of that re-telling is that Barak Obama, when he was yet an insignificant state senator running for the US Senate, had been told by this magnate at some Democratic party fund raising event, that the Democratic party torch carried by the likes of Edward Kennedy, would henceforth be passed onto Obama.
Therefore though it appears that Obama suddenly came down from the skies hurtling through the ionosphere in the manner of a rare comet, the reality is that he was identified by the political formations behind the Democratic party, long years before he launched his campaign to be president.
From relative obscurity
In truth, though it appeared that Mahinda Rajapaksa came in from relative obscurity and grabbed the SLFP leadership by sheer power of good luck and due to some preordained script written out in his destiny, the fact is that he was made Sri Rohana Janaranjana by the Southern Buddhist monkhood long years before the figurehead SLFP leadership had considered him a viable candidate to succeed Chandrika Kumaratunge in the party leadership.
That part of the Sinhala Buddhist elite political formation that backed the SLFP, identified, correctly, the real leader of the party much before anybody in the party hierarchy had realized that the man so much as existed.
The power elite behind the UNP, generally identified as an entrepreneurial and industry leadership, has badly failed the UNP in similarly identifying a leader that could take on the reins of the UNP, oust Ranil Wickremesighe in the first place, and guide the party’s future destinies.
If some of the so called promising party insiders such as Dayasiri Jayasekera have proved to be jokers who do not have the right stuff, the party leaders have not been able to take a walk outside, perhaps, and pick out the man or woman who fits the bill, and can do the job.
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