NPM, The Patriots, Aren’t They All

The ‘Alternative’

This is neither about regime change nor electing their (West’s) preferred candidate. This is beyond all that. This is about how western states attempt to shape our politics. But who’s been helping them get there? We need to investigate these western-money funded networks targeting voter blocks and driving them elsewhere, away from political parties, towards illusions of ‘new alternatives’ or ‘system changes’. We need to better understand the threat we are facing before it’s too late.

Months back, may be early as last January, certain Colombo Sinhala-Buddhist types started muttering about a mystery candidate just as people started talking more seriously about Gotabaya Rajapaksha coming into the political fold with the intention of running as a candidate for the next Presidential elections, slated for 2020. And this mystery candidate was explained in all hush hush terms as a viable alternative to hitherto corrupt and nepotistic Rajapaksha clan or the UNP which for many represents break up of our country.

The Mystery Candidate

This so called mystery candidate was described as a highly educated young engineer turned lawyer a good Buddhist from a good family background now living in London etc. And said to be a pretty Bodhisathwa like character.

At least for me personally his profile was too good to be true. But people who spoke of this mystery candidate related to ‘him’ as explained by Dr. Ajith Kollonne, first in a TV interview. I know Kollonne well enough as I have known him since 1998 and had worked alongside in several occasions.

He came out with this candidate in a sensationalist interview soon after the Easter Sunday attacks and at that time for many he had sounded the only sane man around. Well, I think otherwise.

Let’s leave aside Kollonne for now and let’s focus on this candidate.

By June, 2019 it was pretty evident we were heading for Presidential elections indefinitely and Gotabaya Rajapaksha was rumored to be fielded by SLPP and in turn SLPP was riding high on populist terms or least among the majority Buddhists and among certain sections of the minority communities, even though this was a pretty micro community among the minorities, albeit influential.

There were many articles on fringe websites and multiple Facebook posts shared among all citing this mystery candidate and when dug deep enough, all tracked back to one single source ; Ajith Kollonne’s interview with Derana TV. And thus, Ajith Kollonne became the only credible source for this mystery candidate for many months.

In mid August , all hell broke loose and Gota had already being christened by SLPP for its candidacy and the same people who I cited at the beginning started dropping dates, saying ‘they’ will come out with their candidate on September the 29th. Why wait that long, or why that date was never explained and mostly hinted that it was due to sensitivities concerning the safety and security of the ‘candidate’. Constant quarries as to who ‘they’ consisted of or represented went unexplained.

By then, a motley crew of former civil servants and pseudo academics including Kollonne were out, talking about ‘their’ candidate sans a political party and then Kollonne was seen giving speeches at JVP gatherings too. By this time, JVP’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake had come out as the JVP’s candidate and was already on the campaign.

National Peoples Movement

Weeks later in September came the big launch. And then the cat was out. What was basically called the National Peoples Movement was indeed a well organised entity and had several (prominent to an extent) individuals representing it but none were seen leading it in a political party type way. There were many events under the NPM’s name organised in Colombo and several other districts and in some places they had district or provincial level structures. It was pretty much organised, well funded and on top of it, unlike most other fringe parties (or to that matter mainstream parties like SLFP / UNP) they had a very sophisticated communications and PR machine.

Their narratives were very concise and clear, and each message or communiqué was aimed at a certain section of the society. For people in the non-state sector, this way of communications had an NGOish feel to it. And it should be so as it calls itself a civil society movement said to be comprising of 20 ‘island wide’ civil society groups “which represent different roles in their social and political activism”. Deshodaya Movement and United Professionals’ Movement are leading the way of NPM, its website describes. Who or which comprises this civil society groups of 20, its not know.

Sarvodhaya?

If you dig a little deep, go beyond the veneer of the NPM, you will clearly see why there is an NGOish feel to it. That’s where Sarvodhaya ( or Deshodaya) Movement comes in , very much out in the open. But there are others too within this entity. They are somewhat hidden from the view as to prevent the real drivers of this movement from being identified and with their ideology known. But Sarvodhaya is not a stranger to Sri Lanka, led by charismatic Dr.A.T Ariyarathne, it has chapters and members all over Sri Lanka and activity, all in the gloss, doing good for the society but as long as President R.Premadasa’s NGO commission report is kept under wraps.

The Candidate

September 29th came finally and we saw the former Army chief Lt. Gen Mahesh Senanayake coming out and announcing his candidacy through the National Patriotic Movement. Finally the Cat was out and the bag was even more colorful than we expected.

It’s very clear; all this is not about Mahesh Senanyake or any other individual. This is about a diversion, an influence operation that might go down in our political history as one of the many funded and managed by the international community or in other names the western states, namely US and UK (among others) but one that succeeded in causing damage far beyond our imagination.

Believe me when I say this, as repercussions will come to bite us for the years or decades to come. But this is also a very significant turning point in another way, as it signifies the level of influence; external forces have on our society. Indeed a grave matter but yet, not many seem to pay attention. Very notion of fielding an alternative candidate, 50 or so days before the elections, expecting to win the support of the majority is somewhat absurd, borderline suicidal. Or is it ?

Why an Alternative Candidate

Idea of fielding this so called “alternative candidate “is in fact two fold and the main focus here is to split Sinhalese majority votes and deny both UNP and SLPP what’s called the ‘floating vote’ mostly consisting of first time voters and around a half a million or so block of votes who are ‘disillusioned’ with main parties – individuals who are somewhat educated and elderly. Combined, this is an election winning vote block and this is exactly what NPM aims at; the denial of this block to both the main candidates in the upcoming Presidential election.

Secondary and even more ulterior motive transmit a far more detrimental effect to Sri Lanka as a country. This is all about discrediting the Security Forces from within, focusing mainly again at the majority Sinhala community (of which the effects already starting to see as it emerges within the social media ) and portraying Sri Lankan polity (again mainstream Sinhala polity) as a militarised one, with significant number of candidates (‘leaders’) emerging from formerly military backgrounds.

This provides fodder to allegations of anti Sri Lanka International lobby and Tamil Diaspora entities who continue to cry for alleged ‘war –crimes’ against the Sri Lankan state, and provides enough credence to ‘highlight’ that State structures in Sri Lanka are not to be trusted as they have no democratic credentials and are mainly influenced by the ‘powerful military’.

There is a biased and well concerted effort among international lobbyist working against Sri Lanka to paint the Sri Lankan polity in the same colors of modern day Myanmar or Thailand or what was effectively the regime of Indonesia prior to the fall of Suharto’s.

Denial Campaign and the Numbers

So why a denial campaign against the two strongest candidates? Well, it’s in the numbers to plainly. There are no magic vote blocks that will emerge from the earth nor there will be any external out of the country voting in the upcoming Presidential elections. We all know the last election, the 2010 Presidential election where Mahinda Rajapaksha received approximately 5.2 million votes which was slightly under what incumbent President , Maithreepala Sirisena received.

Factor in that there is a significant voter block consisting of minority votes which will go mostly en mass to the UNP candidate, what any wining candidate requires is the floating vote, or basically the first time votes and the ‘educated elderly’ vote. Deny that and Gotabaya Rajapaksha, the SLPP candidate ends with little more than what his brother received in 2010 while on the other hand, UNP will be able to garner the second vote, caste by all the fringe parties, including the PNM or its surrogate party.

NPM who?

But who is in this National Peoples Movement and its associated organisations? Let’s start with the main character Dr. Ajith Kollonne. I first met him in 1998. He was a brilliant guy then, focused on doing his bit to find ways in defeating the elamist ideology. He later joined MoD around 2002 when former IGP Cyril Herath was the Secretary to Defence. Cyril Herath went on the establish the National Intelligence Service (NIS) as it was known then, and later named State Intelligence Service (SIS) and wanted to supplement the intelligence apparatus with a ‘think tank’ and there we have Kollonne joining as a Deputy Director and where he survived until late 2016 when he was finally forced out after the 2015 regime change.

There at the MoD, Kollonne survived mostly because his ability to take the back seat, stay out of sight and his English writing skills (among Civil Servants who were mostly political appointees with little or no higher/advanced education). He is neither known for any spectacular Intel coups nor uncovering any ‘smoking gun’ evidence against the LTTE. That’s Kollonne until he propelled himself to an ‘Intelligence Tsar’ aftermath of the Easter Sunday attacks. (A post script here is that THE only Intelligence Tsar is Maj. Gen (rtd) Kapila Hendawitharana who was Sri Lanka’s version of India’s legendary R N Kao of RAW).

Then we have others, the likes of Dr. Vinya Ariyarathne who is the Chairman of Deshodaya Movement, former Auditor General Gamini Wijesinghe, Dr. Dayan Rajapaksha being more or less the public faces or perhaps the only faces. They are all described as ‘Members of the Leadership Committee’ of the NPM, while there is no indication of its membership. There have been neither publicised events where members were enrolled nor a general assembly of this movement taking place, hence begs the question of the so called ‘leadership committee’ . Who selected the members? Who appointed them to the said committee?

And what about Organisations said to be behind the NPM? Well, there is only one umbrella organisation that provides the infrastructure, logistical and financial support to the NPM. It’s the Deshodaya Movement, an affiliate of Sarvodhaya movement of Sri Lanka and is headed by Dr.Vinya Ariyarathne , the son of Dr.A.T Ariyarathna, the head of Sarvodhaya Movement. Sarvodaya-Deshodaya is a father-son venture but since this is effectively a so called ‘civil society’ organisation, questions of family led ventures and accountability (financial and operational) are not important issues.   It is famously known secrete that Sarvodaya is a foreign funded NGO.

However, there are other ‘silent’ partners in this venture. NPM secretariat is effectively based within the HQ of Deshodaya Movement in Colombo. its communications team currently shares individuals who are also part of Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) run social media based new journalism arm , the Groundviews. Its Sinhala and Tamil versions are also part of the CPA and some of the staff members are currently co-located within the Deshodaya HQ, supporting NPM’s secretariat.

NPM , The Political Party

And so we have now the National Peoples Movement with its candidate, the former commander of the Army, Lt.Gen. (rtd) Mahesh Senanayake leading the way towards the Presidential election of 2020 but what about a political party, since the election law stipulates any candidate has to represent a registered political party? Enter National Peoples Party registered to Srinath Perera. Well, Srinath Perera is a Member of the Parliament, elected under the UNP.

Mahesh Senanayake, the Candidate

Lt.Gen (rtd) Mahesh Senanayake was the 22nd commander of Sri Lanka Army, retiring in August 2019. He has under his belt, more than thirty five years of experience, holding active combat and command positions within the Army including stints with non-military civilian authorities. While it’s said that he left the Army following the defeat of then Commander Field Marshal (rtd) Sarath Fonseka’s failed bid as the UNF candidate in 2010 Presidential elections, what’s not said was that he was seen as a UNP’er within the Army hierarchy during 2010 and was basically forced out following a witch hunt led by then Rajapaksha administration.

Defeat of Rajapakshe’s brought back Mahesh Senanayake to Sri Lanka and into the command of the Sri Lanka Army. Where he was during the interlude time is much more interesting. Its claimed that he had spent time based in Dubai, working for a leading US Defence Contractor National Air Cargo Ltd., a company specialising in providing aviation logistics, registered in the US with its HQ in .

Since the destruction of LTTE in 2009, many former Military personal have left the forces, joined private sector or not for profit sector. There are ex-senior officers now working for UN and prominent INGO’s, including organisations supporting or carrying out the western led revenge crusade against Sri Lanka. Employment doesn’t necessarily mean these individuals have turned against their own country and may be even working quietly to mend minds.

However, the position of Mahesh is slightly different. Immediately after he was removed from the Sri Lankan Army due to his political works while in the uniform he was employed by an American Company.  When he was reinstated by the US backed Yahapalana government there was no so called international community or NGO protest for war crime allegations for Mahesh similar to his war time colleague Shavendra Silva. Seems, unconfirmed reports says that Mahesh had met few times the US Ambassador prior of his presidential candidate.  It can infer that American funds are flowing to Mahesh’s presidential campaign from America through the Sarvodaya.

The Perfected Trojan horse 2.0

To reiterate again, issue here is not about the individuals. This is not about Mahesh Senanayake or Ajith Kollonne. Nor this is about Gotabaya Rajapaksha. This is about the externally led covert influence program that’s using these individuals into believing they are indeed creating an ‘alternative’ ‘third force’ in Sri Lankan politics.

But who’s bankrolling them? Deshodaya in its ‘Vision Declaration’ calls for a radical overhaul of the existing political system of Sri Lanka and it’s a registered charity that receives around Rs100 million annually from USAID and UK DFID. That’s a good place to start looking.

This is neither about regime change nor electing their preferred candidate. This is beyond all that. This is about how western states attempt to shape our politics. But who’s been helping them get there? We need to investigate these western-money funded networks targeting voter blocks and driving them elsewhere, away from political parties, towards illusions of ‘new alternatives’ or ‘system changes’. We need to better understand the threat we are facing before it’s too late.

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