Opposition must get its act together

Parliament in session

Sugeeswara Senadhira-Friday, May 28, 2021

In a democracy, the Opposition’s role is not limited to criticizing every action of the Government and it has a vital role in offering constructive criticism to rectify the Government’s errant ways if any. From a democratic perspective, Government–Opposition relations in times of crises may entail contrasting implications.

On the one hand, Government–Opposition consensus on crisis measures increases their legitimacy among the public. On the other hand, the Opposition’s criticism is important as a catalyst for public discourse, which is vital for democracy, especially in times of crisis when Governments are prone to seek more powers and to weaken the checks.

In Sri Lanka, the main Opposition party is in an unenviable disarray and unless a third force emerges to take over, the democratic checks and balances will vanish from Parliament in due course.

The first party to govern Sri Lanka, the United National Party (UNP) has been reduced to a most pathetic position as it has been totally eclipsed from Parliament of which the party once held a five-sixth majority (in 1977). Today, the UNP is unrepresented in Parliament and the Party is even unable to come to a consensus on naming the lone MP the party has been allotted under the National List, though Party Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe is widely tipped to fill the vacancy.

The UNP’s decline in its party democracy ended exactly 51 years ago with the resignation of UNP leader Dudley Senanayake on May 28, 1970, after the party was defeated at the General Elections held on May 27. The SLFP won 90 out of 151 seats in the House of Representatives. The UNP won 19 seats in the House of Representatives.

Following the defeat, there was internecine warfare in the UNP as there were open differences of opinion first between Dudley and J.R. Jayewardene and later between Dudley and Ranasinghe Premadasa. The disunity in the party took a heavy toll on Dudley’s health and he died on April 12, 1973. A massive crowd which gathered to pay their last respects to the democratic leader gave an opportunity for JR to revive the dying UNP. He gave a moving speech at the funeral and bade goodbye to Dudley stating, “May the angels sing for him,” and returned to Sirikotha Headquarters to get a firm hold on the party by sacking all Senanayake loyalists including Dudley’s  nephew Rukman, who left the party to form a new party, only to end up in political wilderness.

Since then JR captained the UNP with an iron fist disallowing any inner democracy in the party. Ranasinghe Premadasa too continued the same tradition and got rid of opponents including Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake, ridding the party of capable intellectual leaders with a proven capacity. Although the party structure changed for a brief period during D.B. Wijetunga’s brief tenure, new leader Ranil Wickremesinghe governed the UNP for over two decades and did not allow any inner party democracy. He refused to resign as the Leader of the UNP even after the party was reduced to zero in Parliament at the August 2020 General Election.

Within the last two years, two new political parties emerged in the national political scenario to grab the top two positions reducing the UNP and its traditional opponent, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), to becoming minor parties. Thus two new political parties eclipsed the two major national political parties that were in the limelight dominating the entire political sphere since independence in 1948.

The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) showed its strength winning the Local Government elections in February 2019 although the party was only a few months old at that time. The SLPP continued its success story winning the Presidential Election on November 16, 2019 and the General Election in August 2020.

The UNP fared very badly at the elections and its breakaway group – the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) headed by UNP Deputy Leader Sajith Premadasa – became the main Opposition in Parliament.

Thus the UNP and SLFP, the two national political parties that ruled the country either as a single party or as the leading partner of an alliance for more than three decades each would end up as minor parties.

The SLFP was relegated to a minor partner in the 2015 Government, and within five years the UNP too was reduced to being a minor party, not even represented in Parliament for the moment.

 

 

The tragedy is that today’s Opposition is not in a position to agree on a clear policy when the nation is faced with an unprecedented disaster in the form of COVID-19. In every other country all the political parties have united to support their Governments to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. But unfortunately, the SJB is not in a position to take a firm decision. While some leaders of the SJB say they would extend support to the health drive of the Government, many others are not only opposed to the move, but also carry out disinformation campaigns to score brownie points among their supporters.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a crisis situation that requires extensive Government action. Government–Opposition relations during a crisis can range from consensus seeking to being strictly adversarial. The COVID-19 pandemic presents a special type of crisis: primarily a public health crisis, but one with important social and economic consequences. It directly affects the daily life of many citizens as well as work in Parliament, impacting the way in which Governments can be held to account. Hence, it is the duty of a democratic Opposition to extend the fullest support to the Government.

It is therefore important to understand how Opposition parties behaved during the first months of the COVID-19 crisis. When a pandemic develops, and the nature of the crisis changes from an acute public health crisis to a mix of public health, social and economic crises, the Opposition parties’ duty is to act in the national interest. However, when the Opposition’s Parliamentary behaviour is analyzed, more specifically their expressed sentiment vis-à-vis the Government in Parliamentary speeches, the expressed sentiments had become negative at the most urgent and severe stage of the public health crisis.

Research on European opposition parties during the COVID-19 pandemic by Taylor & Francis Online concluded that its analysis showed that the opposition parties’ expressed sentiments in Parliamentary debates on COVID-19 started out relatively positively towards the Government’s actions and policies and then increasingly became negative.

Many Opposition politicians cited the need for cooperation across the aisle when countries were faced with an exceptional public health crisis. Their findings are in line with those observed in military crises and possibly also the longer-term dynamics in economic crises. In the short term, one can observe a ‘rally effect’, while in the longer term the negative consequences of the crisis result in more negative opposition party expressed sentiment. The finding of more positive Opposition sentiments early on in the crisis is also in line with a ‘rally around the flag’ effect in public opinion that was observed, to a varying extent, in many countries.

When it became clear that the COVID-19 crisis would not be over in a matter of weeks or even months, opinions on policy actions started to diverge. Moreover, the crisis broadened from a public health situation to social and economic crises, which are traditionally more politicised issues. Another explanation might be that Governments reached out to the Opposition early on during the crisis, which resulted in positive sentiments from Opposition politicians.

Interestingly, the analysis of Parliamentary debates shows that this was particularly the case in the United Kingdom as well as in Germany – in the latter case the need for federal coordination is an important factor. In contrast, in the Dutch case we see a few Opposition spokespersons refer to Opposition inclusion in COVID-19 policy making, at least not beyond what is considered normal.

The Parliamentary actors interpret and address the crisis and its consequences within established competitive strategies. Where critical questions were asked of the Government, these largely originated from the parties’ existing priorities.

The crisis is no longer ‘new’ and Governments have had more time to prepare and some issues around the handling of the pandemic now seem to speak more to longstanding ideological differences. Sri Lanka’s Opposition, especially the SJB could learn from the results of the European Parliamentary Opposition’s behaviour during the COVID pandemic as to how to behave at a time of a national crisis