Crowds as a guide

Newly elected American President Donald Trump appears to have something in common with the Joint Opposition here in Sri Lanka. The JO seems to have this obsession with crowd attendance at their rallies and measures its popularity in the numbers. Trump too, it seems, is swayed by crowds and took umbrage when the media allegedly understated the crowd numbers at his inauguration. Donald Trump drew less crowds than Hillary Clinton at his election rallies but won the polls in the end. Now Trump is accusing the media of giving out a truncated figure of the actual crowd presence at his swearing in at Washingtin DC. Trump complained that the media placed the crowd at a mere 250,000 whereas, in his estimate, some millions were present for the grand event.

Comparatively speaking, the Joint Opposition, which is a great fan of Trump, too likes to have the crowd attendance to its rallies in the hundreds of thousands and flaunt the numbers as a measure of its popularity. JO stalwart MP Rohitha Abeygoonawardena says that they were planning to bring a crowd of 500,000 to its Nugegoda rally, come Friday. Going by the MP’s claim, one Sri Lankan in every forty would be present at Nugegoda to cheer lustily at the JO speakers. Perhaps, as an added incentive to draw in the crowds, claims are being made of a number government ministers mounting the JO platform at Nugegoda and that Priyankara Jayaratne had already fired the first salvo, with Ven Ratana Thera distancing himself from the government. This, the JO contends, will trigger a snowballing effect, with more government ministers joining.

Commonsense would make anyone, with a nodding acquaintance with politics, realise how untenable this claim could be. To begin with, the government today commands a two thirds majority in parliament and those, whom the JO says are planning to mount the Joint Opposition platform wouldn’t want to commit political harakiri. National elections are four years away and a loss of a few government members to the Opposition is not going to make any significant dent in the regime’s stability. For any major shift to occur, the SLFP members in the government have to defect en masse and no one in their right minds would bet on some 45 members of the SLFP to cross over in one go, to bring down the government. Besides, no member would throw away their ministerial portfolios to join a movement which has no leader. That is, a leader who could one day be President or Prime Minister. They would not want to join a band of aimless drifters.

On the other hand, the Nugegoda rally is being touted as the inaugural rally of the ‘pohottuwa’ party, which is a party formed to oppose the government, and no government minister or MP would want to risk being expelled from the party (SLFP) and subsequently lose their parliament seat, with no election in the horizon. They only have to reflect on the fate that befell Prof. G.L. Peiris, who was expelled from the SLFP upon assuming office as the General Secretary of the fledgling party.

Be that as it may, crowd attendance at political rallies have never been a barometer for popularity of a political party. If that were the case Rohana Wijeweera would have been the first Executive President of Sri Lanka and not JRJ. Such was the crowd drawing capacity of the bearded Marxist. During the last Presidential election, Mahinda Rajapaksa was so carried away by the crowds at Polonnaruwa, the pocket borough of his rival, that he declared it a historical moment in the context of the crowds at a political rally in Polonnaruwa. Rajapaksa lost the seat by over 30,000 votes. On the other hand, the Common Candidate won handsomely in electorates where he was not even permitted to erect a stage, let alone drawing crowds.

Both, the UNP and SLFP, traditionally have a bloc vote of almost equal proportions and it is only the sizable floating vote that decides the outcome of an election. This is what was witnessed at the last Presidential election where the undecided voter turned the tables. Political rallies are usually attended by the hardcore supporters and are shunned by the silent, disaffected voter. Hence no accurate assessment could be made how crowd attendance reflect an actual vote count at an election.

Hence what is being planned on Friday is an exercise to impress television viewers with crowds, with some stations even going to the extent of doctoring the TV footage to amplify crowd attendance.

The JO, it is reported, has planned many such rallies across the country, with perhaps the same crowds bussed in to all the venues. It has also devised various strategies to boost the popularity or perhaps make Mahinda Rajapaksa a heroic figure. A pro-Opposition newspaper had reported as its main story the other day of Mahinda Rajapaksa being asked to quit politics by two powerful countries. This way, the JO hopes to portray the picture of a Rajapaksa, who not only has to contend with the government, but also powerful nations.