Proving the dynamic nature of politics, in that there are no permanent friends or enemies in politics but only permanent interests, the United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) are preparing to form an alliance that many Sri Lankans never expected to witness.

This week, the UNP announced that an agreement has been reached between the two parties to form the said alliance to contest the upcoming Local Government (LG) election. While the UNP will contest under its traditional elephant symbol in certain areas, in other areas, it will contest under the SLPP’s lotus bud symbol, or under a new common symbol. The SLPP too has publicly acknowledged that it has built a certain relationship with the UNP, based on the co-operation that exists between the two parties at present.

The motive behind this move is obvious – both the UNP and the SLPP want to secure political power at the Local Government level, which could be advantageous to them in retaining and furthering the political power that they already hold at the national level. However, the latter form of political power has been greatly challenged during the past few months, and both parties have been extremely defensive about their powers in the Government, which depends on President and UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe’s support to the SLPP and vice versa. In this context, garnering as many votes as possible at the upcoming LG election will play an important role in the two parties’ desperate need to retain power.

Alliances are an inseparable part of Sri Lanka’s politics, and alliances between political arch-enemies are not uncommon. However, when two opposing forces come together, especially to face elections, their motives usually revolve around their political and personal interests, which may be unfavourable to the interests of the nation or to their own voters. The country has witnessed several such alliances that did more harm to the country than good, with one example being the Government that was established in 2015, which comprised a United National Front-led Cabinet of Ministers and governing party MPs, and a President from the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. 

Although the two forces united to form a government, they did not maintain the degree of unity and transparency that was required to govern the nation, which resulted in the historic Constitutional crisis of 2018, as well as several disputes that were publicly aired – and are said to have contributed to the failure to prevent the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings. The two parties knew at the time that they were compromising their principles when they formed an alliance, but their political aspirations apparently outweighed their principles and ideologies.

That is why it is crucial to judge political parties based on not just their ideologies and principles, but also on whether they have proven able to maintain an uncompromising stance on said principles. This is a very valid concern in the case of the UNP-SLPP alliance, because, in order to form the alliance, the two parties have chosen to ignore the inadequacies they saw and highlighted in each other’s principles and actions just a few months ago. Up until quite recently, the UNP was an ardent critic of the SLPP’s management of the economy and national policies, while the SLPP called out the UNP as a party that contained the architects of the so-called Central Bank “Bond Scam”, and a party on the brink of extinction due to Wickremesinghe’s leadership. Ironically, it is the latter – whose leadership was questioned by the SLPP – who leads the present Government, with the SLPP continuing to be the ruling party, from which come the most Cabinet Ministers – whose decisions were questioned by the UNP. In other words, both parties have chosen to compromise the principles they claimed to uphold mere months ago.

The UNP-SLPP alliance would contest the upcoming LG election as a new alliance, regardless of how odd it may look. However, this is yet another message to voters that ultimately, political parties will not hesitate to prioritise their own interests over those of the voter.