The packaging of Wickremsinghe for Lankan presidential poll

The packaging of Wickremsinghe for Lankan presidential poll
NIRUPAMA SUBRAMANIAN

COLOMBO, DECEMBER 17: When President Chandrika Kumaratunga announced presidential elections one year ahead of schedule, her main opponent Ranil Wickremesinghe was thought to have no chance.

Analysts predicted that in spite of an unsatisfactory five years in office, Kumaratunga's smile and charisma would steamroller the 50-year-old Wickremsinghe, perceived by many as effete and awkward.

Today, the leader of the United National Party (UNP), Sri Lanka's GOP, has managed to narrow Kumaratunga's lead over him so much that it is now a neck-and-neck race for the country's top job. "Ranil seems to have at least got over the no-win factor," said P Saravanamuttu of the Centre for Policy Alternatives.

So how did Wickremesinghe close the gap? The main reason is certainly the oft-quoted political aphorism that oppositions don't win elections, rulers lose them.

But Wickremesinghe has also benefited enormously in the last two months by being "packaged" as a strong and capable leader in a campaign that according toconservative estimates has cost about 250 million Sri Lankan rupees (US $ 3.5 million) and is almost entirely managed by advertising professionals, the first time in a Sri Lankan presidential election.

"Ranil Wickremesinghe's USP is that he is a clean politician, but that by itself was not enough. There was a public perception that he was not a forceful leader and we have tried to address this issue in our campaign," said Irwin Weerackody, UNP member and managing director of the advertising company Phoenix.

Kumaratunga too has hired the agency Bates Strategic Alliance, but the hand of the ad man is more obvious in the packaging of Wickremesinghe.

Whether it was tips on public speaking and personality projection from Margaret Thatcher's advisers Harry Thomas and Timothy Bell or the wording of his manifesto, Wickremesinghe consulted experts right through the campaign.

The main strategy has been to market Wickremesinghe as an efficient and experienced leader, and his manifesto, entitled "My Pact With thePeople" as the programme of a supposedly new, people-friendly UNP, different from the one that presided over the repressive 80s.

Besides publicising it through full page advertisements in newspapers, nearly five million copies of the eight-page manifesto in Sinhala, Tamil and English were printed in tabloid form and distributed throughout the island, which has a literacy level of more than 90 per cent.

"It has become a talking point. Even the Daily News (the state-run English daily) has to say something about it everyday," said Weerackody, who believes in the adage that bad publicity is better than no publicity.

In tune with Wickremesinghe's image of a 21st century leader, his accent on science and technology and his partiality to modern management techniques even for running the country, he is usually clad in jacket and tie as opposed to the Sri Lankan political uniform of verti (dhoti) and tunic.

His photographs in the campaign have been deliberately chosen to portray him as a warm and caringman to counter the perception that he is aloof and withdrawn and not a man of the people.

Nearly all of them are candid outdoor shots taken in morning light and as Weerackody put it, "always with people, people, people". In one rare picutre, which the UNP has used in a calendar, Wickremesinghe appears with his photogenic wife, giving the impression of a caring husband and family man.

"A good photograph with a simple message works as well in Sri Lanka as it does in Great Britain," said John Earl of the British Conservative Party.

The Tories and the UNP, its "sister party" have had links since 1995 and Earl is here along with another member of his party to advise Wickremesinghe's backroom boys on some aspects of campaign strategy.