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Analyst sees frustrating possibilities and destructive scenarios emerging from elections
Mar 9, 2004, 00:16 [TNS]

Sri Lankan political scientist and analyst, Jayadeva Uyangoda in his weekly column in a Sri Lankan daily said that regardless of which party succeeds in forming a government, the post election scenario will be a frustrating and destructive one.

Whoever succeeds in forming a government, by hook or crook, the scenario of disaster can stay on for some time in other forms as well, he says.

According to the analyst, if the UNF is successful in outbidding the Alliance, then the former will have to work with an even more hostile president than they did during the past two years. If we interpret the signs that are visible at present, he says, President Kumaratunga and her colleagues would be utterly reluctant to let a new UNF administration to work in peace.

He added that the UNF might try to impeach the president in a pre-emptive and retributive move.

Similarly, if the president is successful in outbidding the prime minister after April, 02, Uyangoda said, the Alliance government is quite likely to make every attempt to make life difficult for Wickremesinghe and his friends, particularly those who crossed over from SLFP in 2001.

He says a disturbing scenario will develop if neither the Alliance nor the UNF obtain an adequate majority to form a government. A divided legislature would mean a continuation of political instability and uncertainly according to the University Professor.

The Professor had harsh words for the Presidents call for general elections and the election rhetoric of the two major parties. He called the president summon for the polls as an, absolutely self-centric push for power.

Commitment to making Sri Lanka ungovernable seems to be a quality shared at present by both the UNF and the Freedom Alliance, he said. The election campaign does not seem to create conditions for any healing among political forces, or among the people who are divided along party loyalties, he further said.

Key figures with the two parties, Kadirgammar, Peiris and Weerawansa, have all begun to project that element of hatred with all their skills in verbiage, he said. This I think is the source that is likely to provide much impetus for a period of ungovernability after April parliamentary elections, he added.

Minorities have cause for concern according to the Colombo University professor. In fact, some of the frontline propagandists and spiritual advisors for the Alliance, who are linked to the Patriotic National Movement, are essentially Sinhala supremacist ideologues who are pathologically anti-minoritarian, xenophobic and culturally vindictive, he said.

He slammed the Alliances founding document, the MoU between the SLFP and the extremist JVP, as an ideologically backward and intellectually uninspiring document, said that the document testifies that the Alliance appeared to be the highpoint of contemporary Sinhalese nationalist resurgence.

It also gives the impression that the Alliance was keen to obtain a mandate mainly from the Sinhalese electorate, he said.

If the Freedom Alliance is serious about forming a government after the April 02 election, there has indeed to be some fundamental re-thinking within the Alliance about its ideology, its promise, its understanding of the world and its agenda, he further said.

In our exceptionally corrupt electoral political culture, the period surrounding the April New Year would be one in which political corruption might reach awe-inspiring and scandalous proportions, he further said in his weekly column

Thanx: Tamil Eelam News