brand logo

Are the Rajapaksas losing the rural folk?

19 Jul 2021

By Rajpal Abeynayake Are the Rajapaksas losing the rural masses – their base vote that’s primarily rooted in issues of nationalism, personal popularity, and the idea that a progressive force is better than a right-wing cabal? The Opposition and other anti-Government elements including so-called civil society operatives seem to think so. But it’s a far more complicated issue than what meets the eye. The chemical fertiliser ban is also not some kind of “one trick pony” working to the benefit of the Opposition, turning the tide of opinion against the Government as some people assume. Anyway, to assume that all farmers and cultivators are in unison up in arms against the industrial fertiliser ban is also the height of Opposition optimism. The rural poor were never as badly ignored as they were during the five-year period of the United National Party (UNP) rule. In that context, at least in terms of a relative assessment, the rural base vote of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) would remain intact. However, others may say that’s only in theory. The post-Covid economy has hit everyone hard and the rural dweller – rich, poor, middle class, what have you – has been no exception. There has been far less trickle down from the urban economy to the rural, and that’s obvious. But the rural voter has seen his ups and downs and is less likely to abandon the Government they voted into power because of what they know as the impact of a contagious disease. It’s too early days, then, to say that the rural vote base has been completely alienated from the Government. But some pundits have already decided this happened, and among them can be counted those who write to the English newspapers, such as Dayan Jayatilleka, Rajan Phillips, and the lot. They mustn’t get too carried away with their own wishful thinking, but then they are generally prone to do that. That’s not to say that the rural base is secure for the SLPP no matter what. This writer would go to the extent of saying that there may be a kernel of truth to what these writers say in the sense that there may be rumblings in the rural vote base that should cause some alarm in government ranks. These are still early days. The impact of Covid will surely pass as the days progress, and the prediction that the Government cannot reverse the current economic trends which are largely due to the pandemic are utterly wishful and aren’t based on any objective analysis. This, the reader would remember, was exactly what they said when the war was ending in 2009. In the first place, most folk such as the aforementioned lot – not all of them, but the majority – predicted that the then military campaign of the government wouldn’t succeed. They also said that even if it would, the government would never be able to recoup the financial losses incurred in the prosecution of the war, and that the country was doomed as a result. Didn’t happen, and remember, whatever happened later, then President Mahinda Rajapaksa won a second term after the war with a massive majority. If there is a reasonable recovery from the Covid-hit economy the rural masses may in fact reward rather than punish the Rajapaksa Government. The rural dweller has that inherent sense of gratitude: “You did one for me, and we will return the favour.” It’s a sanguine sense of moral obligation. That was evident in the election immediately following the war victory, needless to say. However, having said all that, the criticism directed at the Government may constitute a modicum of truth. Covid is not the war, for starters. The people felt the economic setback from the war was justified because they had enough of the terrorism, the insecurity as a result of endless hostilities, and the blow to national pride. Covid, though it is seen by most as a dangerous disease largely because they have been told it is, is on a different scale altogether. The people may feel the damage inflicted was not justified and that sentiment would carry more weight – if there isn’t a sufficient economic recovery over time. The pundits are sure that such a recovery is not possible, but that’s plain alarmism on their part, and here is why. There is a foreign exchange crisis, etc. at the moment and it’s all down to Covid, and most people are intelligent enough to understand that. But there is nothing to say the forex crisis would last. There is bound to be a recovery with tourism coming back, and foreign remittances reaching healthy pre-pandemic levels. The economy has been badly hit, no doubt, strangely even more severely than it was during the war and its end phase. However, that’s not so strange on the other hand. The war so called was confined to this country, but the pandemic and its fallout are global, and the impact on the economy would naturally have to be more severe than it was during an internal crisis, however damaging that may have been. But yet, the global economy cannot be in the doldrums forever. It will recover and all predictions are that a recovery is on the way. If that happens and the domestic economy recovers in tandem, the rural dweller and the urban dweller would have far better prospects and the rural disenchantment that the Colombo-based analysts predict may never really come to pass. The pro-Opposition analysts, however, are banking on the current set of circumstances to vindicate them and their prognostications. For example, they feel that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa enjoys less political capital among the rural poor than Mahinda Rajapaksa, and that as a result, the rural voter would abandon the SLPP if there is no economic recovery. The Gotabaya administration has, to an extent, been tone-deaf, and that’s the reason to see it as being relatively autocratic. There is no doubt about it. The much-heralded arrival of Basil Rajapaksa is surely an admission of that, and an admission additionally that a correction was very quickly needed? Why is the GR administration in fact tone-deaf? Well, the first thing is, if it is, it is. The benevolent dictator if he delivers is benevolent. If the benevolent dictator doesn’t deliver, he is no longer benevolent and that should be axiomatic, correct? No, this writer is not saying GR is in fact a dictator. He couldn’t be – he is working within a democratic structure with the courts, the Legislature, etc., actively playing their roles, even though that may sound trite under the circumstances. But he is perceived as being relatively dictatorial, and there isn’t much that is wrong with that assessment because of the simple reason that he is so convinced of his own ability. He said as much once. He said: “If I change, I will not be Gotabaya anymore” – or words to that effect. He was responding to some folks who had suggested that he should be a better listener and should forge consensus. This was during the campaign, when he had not yet been elected President. The reader gets the drift. There is an inability inherent in GR/the GR set to brook a third way, or at least to acknowledge that the optics need to be corrected. If that’s the case, the rural voter may feel it in his gut too – that they voted for Mahinda Rajapaksa and got someone else. GR and his immediate circle of admirers may contest that claim, and say that GR stood for election and won in his own right. A new entrant in politics, such as, say, Sirimavo Bandaranaike never would have won in their own right. Mrs. Bandaranaike won her first election as the weeping widow because of her late husband and there wouldn’t be a single person so foolish as to contest that. Yes, she won subsequent elections in her own right, but that’s after she had established herself and given birth to her own political brand, if you will.  Any voter, rural or urban, could be put off by the GR Government’s elementary misreading of these realities. There is in fact no need to talk about the rural voter in particular, in this context. (The writer is a former Editor-in-Chief of three national English language publications and a practicing Attorney-at-Law. He is an Editors’ Guild award-winning columnist, and contributing writer and columnist for the Nikkei Asian Review and South China Morning Post, while his editorials have been published in The Australian)


More News..