1 week Ago By Thilina Walpola
Saturday 26th April, 2025President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who is leading the NPP’s local government (LG) polls campaign from the front, while urging his rivals to sink their political differences and help achieve national progress, would have the public believe that winning the upcoming mini polls will be a walk in the park for his party. He is being overconfident and overoptimistic.The NPP’s huge victory in last year’s general election is still fresh, and therefore the government is thought to have a better chance of winning the LG polls, but nothing is so certain as the unexpected in politics.
Whoever would have thought Maithripala Sirisena would beat Mahinda Rajapaksa in the 2015 presidential race?The fact that President Dissanayake has had to address even what are generally considered village level meetings in support of the NPP candidates indicates that the government is aware that winning the LG elections will not be a cakewalk. He and his party are doing everything possible to consolidate their power by scoring another electoral win. The Opposition has lodged complaints with the Election Commission against the President and the NPP over alleged election law violations.
What we are witnessing on both sides of the political divide are standard election practices, including an exchange of allegations, and bellowing rhetoric. It is doubtful whether anyone will pay much heed to politicians’ claims, counterclaims and pledges. However, something that President Dissanayake has said about the Opposition is of interest.
President Dissanayake has given some unsolicited advice to the Opposition. He is reported to have said at a recent meeting in Puttalam that the Opposition will never be able to make a comeback unless it mends its ways, and the only way it can turn the tables on his government is to better the NPP. The subtext of his gratuitous advice is that the NPP is far too superior to the Opposition and attempting to outdo it is an exercise in futility.
He is entitled to his view. After all, every President has had a very high opinion of his or her government since 1978.However, there occur situations where the Opposition does not have to better the government in power to make a comeback.
We have witnessed instances where massive protest votes propelled weak Opposition parties to power. The UNP’s mammoth victory in 1977 is a case in point. The same goes for the victory of the SLFP-led People’s Alliance (PA) in 1994.
It was circumstances rather than anything else that led to the meteoric rise of Chandrika Kumaratunga in national politics and the PA’s victory.In 2015, the UNP-led UNF won a parliamentary election not because it was any better than the UPFA; its victory was due to the people’s resentment at the Rajapaksa rule. Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the presidency in 2019 because the UNF government had become extremely unpopular, and President Sirisena had cooked his goose by neglecting national security and failing to prevent the Easter Sunday carnage (2019).
The NPP, which had only three seats in the previous Parliament, came to power with a steamroller majority, not because the people had any high regard for its leaders or their capabilities, but because they were extremely furious at the SLPP government, which had become a metaphor for corruption, abuse of power, etc., and, most of all, ruined the economy, causing untold hardships to them. The people found themselves in what may be called an any-port-in-a-storm situation, and the NPP tapped their anger effectively and infused them with hope by making as many promises as possible.
The challenge before the NPP government is to live up to the people’s expectations.If the NPP government makes the same mistakes as its immediate predecessor, the SLPP, and ruins the economy, the resentful public will take to the streets, demanding its resignation, and the vociferous leaders of the incumbent dispensation will have to head for the hills as fast as their legs can carry them. Therefore, instead of proffering unsolicited advice to the Opposition and indulging in self-righteous pontification, the NPP leaders had better tread cautiously, avoiding the mistakes of its predecessors.
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