That was the sorry story of the Joint Opposition (JO) and its ‘Janabalaya Colombata’ protest campaign last week. In the aftermath of the campaign, public sentiment ran high against the JO for severely inconveniencing the public on a busy working day- and having very little to show for it. There is, of course nothing inherently wrong in opposition parties launching protest campaigns against incumbent governments. It is part and parcel of a live and vibrant democracy.
We have no quarrel with that. However, such campaigns should be disciplined, have a just cause and must operate within the parameters of democratic dissent.
It appears, the JO, dizzy and intoxicated with its success at the local government elections earlier this year and assuming that they would be running the government again, threw caution to the winds and attempted to violate all accepted norms of a democratic protest campaign. In the lead up to ‘Janabalaya Colombata’, there was a lot of rhetoric emanating from the JO camp. Some of their stalwarts boasted about laying siege on “President’s House” and “Temple Trees”, while others spoke of bringing down the Government. Fortunately, the masses were not naïve enough to believe them. Had they done so, the consequences could have been disastrous. The Government too, initially made a mess of it but later got its act together. Perhaps, panicking at the prospect of the JO bringing hundreds of thousands of people to Colombo, they attempted to restrict buses plying to the City.
The Police tried to obtain restraining orders on public gatherings at key locations which they believed would be the focal point of the protest. They failed because the courts rightly refused those applications. In the end, sanity prevailed on the government side.
The protest was allowed to proceed and orders went out to Police to be firm but non-combative. If there were serious injuries or a death, the JO would have taken maximum advantage from such a tragedy. As it turned out, the Government need not have worried. The turnout for the protest was only a fraction of what was envisaged. Inadvertently, the Government may have done the JO a favour by refusing major venues for a rally. Had such a venue been booked, the JO would have had difficulty in filling it up.
When the protestors converged on the Lake House Roundabout, there weren’t enough numbers to make a convincing impression. Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was reduced to making a brief, impromptu speech. There was no fiery oratory from Vasudeva Nanayakkara. Nor was there racy rhetoric from Wimal Weerawansa. Udaya Gammanpila didn’t put forward his ridiculous arguments. Even by JO standards, the roadshow was pathetic.
There seemed to be one item on the JO agenda though. That was to parade Gotabaya Rajapaksa before the public conveying the impression that he was the JO’s next presidential candidate.
There were cries of ‘anaagatha janaadhipathithumata jaya weva’ (or, victory to the future President). We admire the man for his military nous and his tenacity in prosecuting the Eelam war to a finish, but last week would have taught the former Army officer that politics is an entirely different ball game.
There were sections of his own camp questioning his credentials and his prospects. He may be the frontrunner among the JO’s potential field of candidates but he has several question marks hanging over him, which is why he is busy these days making visits to the Police providing statements and attending courts, answering charges. Besides, he is still a citizen of the United States of America. Some in the JO have come to realise that putting all their eggs in the Gotabaya basket might be quite a gamble.
That is why they are trying to reinvent the 19th Amendment to make it sound as if it didn’t apply to Mahinda Rajapaksa’s two previous presidencies, suggesting that he could run again. During ‘Janabalaya Colombata’, others were asking where Basil Rajapaksa was.
He was overseas but many a bitter stalwart was complaining that, had he been the organiser of the protest instead of the rookie Namal Rajapaksa, the outcome would have been different.
Clearly, they saw the campaign as a flop, dragging the JO back, and negating the gains it had made at the local government elections earlier this year.
The parading of Mahinda Rajapaksa as the ‘Great Leader’ and Gotabaya Rajapaksa as the potential successor before the pubic raised another question: Can the JO, or its political avatar, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) be led only by the Rajapaksas? Is your surname, and not your ability, the biggest qualification to become party leader or a presidential candidate? The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) of which the SLPP is an offshoot, was led for fifty years by one Bandaranaike or another: S.W.R.D., Sirima and Chandrika. Now, it seems, the Rajapaksas want to rule for the next fifty years. It was this attitude and outlook- and the realisation that he could never become party leader, no matter what- that prompted then General Secretary Maithripala Sirisena to defect from the SLFP in November 2014.
Unfortunately, the Rajapaksas do not seem to have learnt from that experience. Now, the JO is trying to cover up the disaster that ‘Janabalaya Colombata’ was, by blaming the Government for surreptitiously introducing milk packets into the protest, leading to stomach ailments among its protestors.
That is as poor an excuse as you will get. Even if, just for arguments sake, the Government did try to make mischief in that manner, shouldn’t the JO have checked where their refreshments came from? Surely, a party which is blaming the government for compromising the country’s security and a party claiming to be the protectors of the nation should be able to ensure the safety and wellbeing of its cadres for half a day? That is the ridiculous depth to which arguments about ‘Janabalaya Colombata’ have sunk to, now.
So, if anyone is wondering what ‘Janabalaya Colombata’ achieved, it is to plant a seed of doubt in the minds of hundreds of thousands of ‘ordinary citizens’ as to whether they should entrust the government to this lot at all.