From 2026 to 2029: Winning strategy for Sajith and Namal

QUALITY US periodicals are running cover stories of the front runners in the 2028 Presidential race and the campaign strategy of JD Vance.

- By Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

Can Sajith channel his father sufficiently to win in three years?

It is time that Sri Lankans began discussing our 2029 race.Realistically, the choice in 2029 is between the two Opposition front-runners Sajith Premadasa and Namal Rajapaksa. From now on in, our primary political considerations should be:

I. Who has the knowledge and best policies to extricate us from the ‘twin traps’ comprising the debt-poverty nexus, through simultaneous rapid growth and upliftment of the unprecedented numbers in multidimensional poverty?

II. Who is the best Gladiator to fight President Anura Dissanayake (or any substitute candidate) and the increasingly autocratic, latently totalitarian JVP-NPP in the politico-electoral arena and defeat them? Sajith leads in I, Namal in II.

For Sajith to win in 2029

Sajith must place the SJB on a competitive footing able to generate and win the decisive populist ‘swing vote’.

Even after the UNP was defeated in 1956 by SWRD Bandaranaike, creating the island’s two-party system, there was no rethinking and reorientation. Therefore, though reelected to office in 1965, the UNP was swept away in 1970 resulting in the first ever Government with a 2/3rds majority in Parliament. That shock caused a three-way fissure in the UNP between the Senanayake faction, J.R. Jayewardene and R. Premadasa. Premadasa’s was the most conspicuous rebellion, with:

■ A new developmental / ‘Third Paradigm’ (his April 1973 Colombo West Rotary Club lecture).

■ The first Populist formation from within the UNP camp, the Puravesi Peramuna, or Citizens’ Front.