By Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) is at a crossroads. If it takes the wrong turn, there is no going back; the wrong turn leads to politico-electoral extinction. The SLPP is being pushed into a disastrously wrong choice not once, but twice over. One is voting for Ranil Wickremesinghe. The other is remaining with the Rajapaksas and indeed the Gotabaya brand. The two disastrous choices are merged into one – to vote for Ranil Wickremesinghe, the front person for the party and candidate of the Rajapaksas. That is the worst possible combination, and the most horrific possible branding for the SLPP. Will the SLPP remain the Rajapaksas’ pet “Pohottuwa”, now and forever reviled by the public, or will it return to its proper name the “Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna”, with its roots in the Joint Opposition (JO) and the country’s traditional Centre-Left? If I were an SLPP MP, I would opt for Dullas Alahapperuma over Wickremesinghe in the blink of an eye, and would go flat out to convince the party’s parliamentary group to do so too.  Here’s why.  If the SLPP makes the wrong choice, it will suffer the same fate at the next election as the United National Pary (UNP) did in August 2020. If it makes the correct choice, it can wind up like the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) in August 2020. If it is very smart and very fortunate, it could even be like the UNP in Oct-December 1988, a hugely unpopular ruling party barely escaping extinction by the skin of its teeth by switching its leader to a dissenting reformist who was more in tune with the demands of a radical uprising. If the SLPP makes the right choice, it will have a slim chance to wash away some of its sins and rebrand itself under a new, non-Rajapaksa leadership. That will bring it more in line with the SLFP and the 10 smaller parties (the group of 10, or G10), enabling a refloating of the country’s traditional Centre-Left, which is no guarantee of electoral victory at an upcoming parliamentary election or even in 2024/2025, but affords a chance to avoid a complete wipeout, as suffered by the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP)-Communist Party of Sri Lanka (CPSL) in 1977 and the UNP in 2020. What was the SLPP formed to fight for and against? It was formed to fight for the values of the  Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), which the SLFP at the time had betrayed by entering a coalition with – wait for it – Ranil Wickremesinghe. Its MPs and, more importantly voters, recoiled from that choice and went through with the crucially important stage of creating the JO, of which Dullas Alahapperuma was the national organiser, that crystallised as the SLPP. So Wickremesinghe is the very antipode of everything that the SLPP was formed to represent. But was that the real agenda behind the SLPP’s founding? Were there two agendas, one open and the other hidden? Hidden agenda Is the SLPP merely the platform for one family clan and a pod for its young successor someday? Or is it the platform for a certain ideology and intended to fill a distinct space in the island’s politics?  Today the SLPP is faced with a choice between the ideas and ideals of its voters and the hidden agenda of its leaders. This is the same choice that the SLFP faced a quarter-century ago. The SLFP was formed by S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike to represent certain ideas, values, and social forces that were not represented by the UNP. It was formed to constitute a Centre-Left in the country’s politics. Later, it degenerated into a vehicle for the Bandaranaike family, or more correctly the Ratwatte-Bandaranaike-Obeysekara oligarchy. The SLFP survived by changing its leadership, first to a rebellious Left-oriented member of the family identified more as Chandrika Kumaratunga than Chandrika Bandaranaike, and then switching from the Bandaranaikes to Mahinda Rajapaksa, and finally to Maithripala Sirisena.   The SLPP should do the same, with Dullas Alahapperuma having come forward. There is not only no better moment than now to do so, but it is also the very last chance offered by history to do so.    Ranil Wickremesinghe is a walking Chernobyl, utterly toxic for the SLPP, SLFP, and G10 voters. The SLFP split with the bulk going with the rebel faction of which Alahapperuma was a key personality, precisely because it opted to enter a coalition, not just with the UNP, but with the UNP of Ranil Wickremesinghe, not of Sajith Premadasa or Karu Jayasuriya. In 2015, it was Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (CBK) who pushed Maithripala Sirisena and the SLFP into the alliance with Ranil Wickremesinghe, instead of insisting on Karu Jayasuriya, as UNP partner. In 2022, it is the Rajapaksa clan that is pushing the SLPP into backing the same Ranil, with far more terminal prospects.  If the SLPP MPs back Wickremesinghe over their own candidate, Alahapperuma, they will be deserted by their voters, who will switch either to the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led National People’s Power (NPP) or the successor party to the SLPP, that those MPs who vote for Alahapperuma will doubtless establish on the morning after. Voting for Wickremesinghe means that the SLPP, which was founded to counter the SLFP’s 2015 option for Ranil and substitute for that parent party, will become the SLFP of 2015-2017, while the “Dullas Group” will become tomorrow, what the JO was in 2015 and the SLPP was in 2017. The SLPP is already facing the prospect of electoral elimination that the UNP experienced in 2020. Since the economic punishment that the Gotabaya administration meted out to the people was even more severe than that experienced under the Bandaranaike regime of 1970-1977, it will take much more than the 17 years it took for the SLFP to be elected to office. Furthermore, since Namal Rajapaksa has been an obedient son and loyal nephew, unlike CBK was in relation to Madam Bandaranaike, and since he is incapable of breaking away and forming an SLMP (Sri Lanka Mahajana Party) that CBK and Vijaya Kumaratunga did in 1984, it will take the SLPP at least two decades before it makes a comeback. It could take even as long as it took Bongbong Marcos, i.e., 35 years. Last chance for rebirth However, the SLPP doesn’t have to wait that long if it opts for Alahapperuma and defeats Wickremesinghe. Alahapperuma, unlike Wickremesinghe, is the guy who can understand the “Aragalaya” and dialogue with it. In the 1990s when I was working with President Ranasinghe Premadasa, Alahapperuma was on the other side, a brilliant political essayist in the new wave of leftwing tabloids of the 1990s.  I do not know whether he was ever a member of the JVP, but the tabloids certainly were a platform for the recovery and return of the JVP into mainstream politics, organisationally spearheaded by Kumara Gunaratnam. So, whether or not Alahapperuma was part of JVP, he and the leaders of the JVP and the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) could fairly easily dialogue or “trialogue” with each other. Few are aware or recall that the actual author of “Mahinda Chinthanaya” in its successive version, starting with the winning manifesto of 2005, was Dullas Alahapperuma. No Dullas, no Mahinda Chinthanaya or a very different one. Alahapperuma was the young, right-hand man – and more importantly, the ideologue – of Mahinda Rajapaksa when Mahinda was at his very best, during his first candidacy and in his first term.   Alahapperuma is also that rarity, an SLPP personality against whom there is no charge of corruption or the abuse of power. His house was spared by the public during the arson attacks of 9 May. The guy is known for his progressive views and non-polarising, non-confrontational personality. In a party that has the radioactive waste of Rajapaksa clan rule all over it, he is Teflon. What more could the SLPP need to survive and even recover? (The writer is a leftist Sri Lankan academic, diplomat, writer, and politician, and currently serves as a senior advisor on international relations to the Leader of the Opposition) ……………………………………………………….. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.