Next chapter with Weerawansa

Wimal Weerawansa, the indefatigable leader of the Jathika Nidahas Peramuna (JNP) is back in the limelight even though he is languishing in remand prison, announcing that his party is leaving the United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance (UPFA), the coalition from which it contested the August 2015 general election.

The announcement is seen as a strategic ploy by Weerawansa to test the political waters as well as to garner some publicity for his party. It is in no way to be interpreted as a parting of ways between the JNP and the Joint Opposition (JO) faction of the UPFA. In fact, it is aimed at strengthening the JO.

Difficult to keep out of the headlines

Whatever his faults, even his harshest critics would concede that Wimal Weerawansa is difficult to keep out of the headlines for long. On that score, he operates on much the same principle as former Minister and maverick extraordinaire, Mervyn Silva: that any publicity is good publicity. Skilled at producing racy rhetoric at will, Weerawansa has revelled in controversy even when he was reviled as a result of it.

Hailing from Kalutara, Weerasangilige Wimal Weerawansa began his political journey in the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). He first attracted attention as a journalist, writing under the pen name of Wimalasiri Gamlath.

Weerawansa’s initial forays into politics met with only limited success. As a 29 -year-old young man he contested the general elections in 1994 from the Colombo district but was defeated, polling a paltry 300 votes. He was first elected to public office three years later, being elected to the Colombo Municipal Council from the JVP. Then, though unsuccessful at the provincial council elections in 1999, he was chosen by his party as an appointed member to the Western Provincial Council.

Weerawansa’s big break came in 2000. He was elected as a Member of Parliament on the strength of the nearly eight per cent of the vote polled by the JVP in the Colombo district. The number of preference votes polled by Weerawansa was an unimpressive 13,000 in an electorate of more than one million people. Since then, Weerawansa has been in Parliament for the past seventeen years and has maintained an increasingly high profile.

In 2004, then President Chandrika Kumaratunga formed a ‘probationary’ government with the JVP. Four JVP parliamentarians - Anura Kumara Dissanayake, K.D. Lalkantha, Vijitha Herath and Chandradasa Wijesinghe - were offered ministerial portfolios and four others-Bimal Ratnayake, Samantha Vidyaratna, Sunil Handunetti and Nihal Galappathi- were appointed deputy ministers but Weerawansa was not among them.

Perhaps it was the realisation that, despite Weerawansa’s undisputed value as a much sought after public speaker, he was low in the pecking order within the JVP that prompted him to chart his own political course. Shortly afterwards, in 2005, Weerawansa launched the Patriotic National Movement. As its general secretary, he shrewdly projected himself as a champion of the majority community at a time when the war against the Liberation Tigers of Eelam (LTTE) was raging in its full intensity.

It was in the same year that Mahinda Rajapaksa launched his bid for the Presidency and Weerawansa’s pro-Sinhala nationalist ideology had a close resonance to Rajapaksa’s own campaign slogans. The JVP had endorsed Rajapaksa’s candidacy and Weerawansa emerged as one of Rajapaksa’s main platform orators. It was a partnership that was to be quite productive for Weerawansa in the years that followed.

By 2008, the mainstream JVP was having serious differences of opinion and disagreements with Rajapaksa’s style of government although they still supported his war effort against the LTTE in principle. Weerawansa meanwhile was increasingly aligning himself closely with Rajapaksa.

Hunger strike

Their inevitable separation led to the birth of the JNP in 2008, with Weerawansa as its leader. The JNP joined the UPFA government in December 2008. Weerawansa was re-elected to Parliament at the 2010 general election and was appointed Minister of Construction, Engineering Services, Housing and Common Amenities by Rajapaksa.

Never shy of being in the limelight, Weerawansa gained international notoriety as a maverick in July 2010 when he staged a hunger strike outside the United Nations office in Colombo to protest against the appointment of the Panel of Experts for alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka by the then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon.

Despite promising to “fast unto death” Weerawansa’s hunger strike lasted less than three days. He tamely ended the protest after Rajapaksa visited him and requested him to call off the fast, offering him a glass of water. Many saw this as a publicity stunt by Weerawansa to cultivate his image as a ‘patriot’.

Weerawansa held his ministerial portfolio until Rajapaksa’s defeat in January 2015. Since then, he has had mixed fortunes. He was returned to Parliament at the August 2015 general elections, heading the UPFA preference list with over 300,000 votes, over 100,000 more than the second placed Udaya Gammanpila. However, he was also slapped with several charges and is now in remand prison.

Among the accusations levelled against Weerawansa are that he misused government vehicles and that he abused his position as Housing Minister to distribute houses to close associates at prices well below their market value. He has also been investigated regarding discrepancies in his passport.

It is on the charge that he misused over 40 government vehicles that Weerawansa is being held in remand prison. At the last court hearing, he was re-remanded until March 6. Weerawansa’s wife, Shashi, is also currently under investigation.

As Wimal Weerawansa struggles to survive in this political maelstrom, the JNP and the JO are strategising together to recalibrate the balance of power in Parliament to try and create a breakthrough for Mahinda Rajapaksa to regain control of the SLFP.

When the JO initially identified itself as a distinct entity in Parliament in February last year, it requested recognition as the main opposition party. They even demanded the position of Leader of the Opposition. After giving due consideration to these requests, Speaker Karu Jayasuriya declined such recognition.

This was on the basis that, even though the JO numerically constituted the largest political group opposed to the government, they were elected on the UPFA ticket and the UPFA was part and parcel of the National Unity government. As such, Speaker Jayasuriya reasoned, UPFA parliamentarians couldn’t be afforded the luxury of having one of their own as Leader of the Opposition, while some of them were enjoying the privileges of government as Cabinet ministers.

Smaller parties

The Speaker’s ruling made sense of a challenging situation. Had he granted the JO’s request, all of the smaller parties within political alliances would have requested to be identified as separate entities, opening the floodgates for a plethora of party leaders in Parliament demanding their attendant privileges in terms of allocation of time during debates. This would have made normal business in Parliament very difficult.

Apart from the motive of annexing more parliamentary privileges, Weerawansa’s decision to withdraw the JNP from the UPFA is also aimed at emasculating the latter. This could well be the first step in a grand scheme where other constituent parties such as the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna, the Communist Party and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party all withdraw from the UPFA, leaving the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) remaining in the Alliance. Whether this is a politically astute move is a moot point. It is no secret that while the UPFA projects itself as a broad coalition of parties with like-minded ideologies, the vast majority of its support base is derived from the SLFP. Even if the UPFA is shorn of its allies, as long as it retains the support base of the SLFP, it will be a force to reckon with.

The other conceivable reason for the JNP leaving the UPFA is to enable it to formally join ranks with the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the fledgling party now headed by Rajapaksa loyalist G. L. Peiris, the former minister who has held many a portfolio.

The strategy appears to be to recreate a ‘mirror UPFA’ within the SLPP, sans the encumbrances of the original UPFA, the legal office-bearers of which are still loyalists of President Maithripala Sirisena. The SLPP is of course a front political party for Rajapaksa to launch his bid to return to power.

Wimal Weerawansa might be in prison and the JNP may have left the UPFA but it is certain that this isn’t the last we hear of this move. It is but a first step in a different direction, a path which is a political gamble both for Weerawansa as well as the Joint Opposition- a gamble on which it is very difficult to place a bet on.