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MR on his mark, gets set to go
Leader of the House Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva said it best when he told Parliament on Tuesday, “The Supreme Court has given an excellent judgment.”
Now with the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling, a vehement ‘yes ‘resounded ten times round the table for added comfort, the sibilant squeaks of moribund dodos that peeped out of the deadwood to hold otherwise have been silenced; and the way has been cleared of lingering nettles, for President Mahinda Rajapaksa to contest for a third consecutive term of presidential office without any legal bar to give him the blues.
The only question left for him to ask now, and, this time, receive answer not from the Supreme Court but from the entire nation, is: “Contest against whom?”
Whilst the President has conducted his affairs impeccably and has shown himself to be a decisive man of action by voluntarily requesting the judicious hands of Supreme Court judges to lift the pall of murky doubt as to his eligibility to contest again and reveal the true landscape in legal light, there is Bedlam in the opposition camp.
Adorned in the whitest white of legitimacy’s softest fleece and sashed with the purple seal of supreme approval, the President has presented himself at the starter’s post and is already on his mark; whistle in hand, ready to blow the race to a start. As things stand in the opposition locker rooms, he might as well sound it and get the sprint over with.
So what’s the problem bedeviling Siri Kotha?
For starters, unlike Mahinda whose surfeit of success came to be nearly considered as a penalty and almost condemned him out of the running, Ranil Wickremesinghe’s unbroken record of smash flops is held by his party to make him perpetually qualified for the post of official UNP presidential candidate, as a sort of ex officio position and perk as Leader of the UNP. Thus on that front no party constitutional bar exist for Ranil; and he is graciously spared from having to take recourse to any supreme executive council in his party and seek an opinion from his party men to establish his qualification to contest. On the contrary his party offers it to him on a platter but still he tarries to embrace it.
One month ago, on October 10, at the UNP’s 20 member presidential election committee meeting, party leader Wickremesinghe was asked by his deputy Sajith Premadasa whether he was willing to be the party’s presidential candidate and, if so, whether he would confirm his acceptance.
Mr. Wickremesinghe accepted. The resolution was proposed and seconded and the UNP officially declared Ranil Wickremesinghe as the presidential candidate of the UNP, the single largest political party in the island. Seconding the proposal, the UNP General Secretary, Tissa Attanayake said that henceforth, party members should give up “double agendas of planning to support a common candidate from the opposition as the party leader would now be the common candidate from the largest opposition party.”
Ranil Wickremesinghe reaffirmed the pledge he had given to the election committee, publicly for the first time at a meeting held at Hyde Park on October 30th in front of more than 10,000 polling booth agents of the party. “I am ready to take on President Rajapaksa at the next election and defeat him,” he said and, in a moment of Napoleonic flush declared: “Tell the villagers, the elephant has risen. It is marching majestically to bring down the Rajapaksa regime.”
The elephant may have risen from its deep slumber but is it on the move? Or, having seen the first banana bunch it had often dreamt in sleep, has it stopped its march to munch? Has it halted for a KitKat break when what is required is a red bull to charge ahead?
The question needs to be asked for since the Hyde Park rally, the fire in Ranil’s belly seems to have fizzled out. Apart from a lukewarm speech given to the UNP’s Rail Union members on November 4, where he called for the overthrow of the Rajapaksa regime but urged that members of the SLFP should be handled with kid gloves, his presidential ambitions seems to have hit the buffer. Suddenly this week, in the midst of reports of Karu Jayasuriya being the latest Jack in the Box, and the president calling him and wishing him the very best of poll luck — glad perhaps he has a rival, any rival for that matter, to give credence for the race or else it would end up literally as an asinine one horse non event — Ranil Wickremesinghe is reported as welcoming Chandrika as a suitable common candidate.
It maybe that Ranil, along with the other opposition parties, are casting red herrings in a bid to fool the president and keep him guessing until the last moment. But apart from the fact that the President is more than politically savvy and keeps his antenna well tuned to the political grapevine, the sole aim of the UNP should not be to fool a past master at political chess but to convince the public of the virtues of their chosen man and the merits of their manifesto.
At the moment the UNP is doing nothing of the kind. It is merely joining in the opposition’s chorus harping for a change in the constitutional lyrics. Ranil’s idea of constitutional reform is to introduce the 19th Amendment to the constitution. But what is the 19th amendment to the constitution? Is it the ‘sheep in wolf’s clothing’ set proposed by the JHU which on examination does not even reduce the real powers of an executive president in the slightest? (See Sunday Punch November 1st 2104.) If it is so then it will suit Ranil’s aim of seeing preserved the powers of an executive president intact to the letter, for the JHU proposals do not call for the executive presidency to be abolished, it only asks that the president should be limited to an unspecified number of portfolios and that the cabinet should not exceed 25 ministers, as if the present incumbent and any future president would find himself rendered impotent as a result.
On Thursday, the Jathika Hela Urumaya’s said that it had not yet taken any decision to join the common opposition or had any discussions with opposition political parties on a common candidate to be fielded at a Presidential Election. Its General Secretary and Minister of Science Chamapika Ranawaka said they will be waiting until the President makes his proclamation on the 19 of this month to make their decision. “We have only had discussions with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA).The discussions had shown a positive outcome so far. Our attempt is to make the government accept JHU proposals.” The JVP also has announced that it will wait until the 18th when they are scheduled to hold a major rally to announce their decision as to whether to join a common opposition front.Chandrika Bandaranaike, who has not announced her plans so far, maybe still in front of the mirror, flirting with the idea and practising her disarming smile that charismatically launched 3 million votes in 1994 to sail in her direction and may make a late, late grand entrance, past the eleventh hour.
All know that they need the UNP elephant to hitch a ride, to take them somewhere on the road to power. Only the UNP does not seem to have realised the power they wield, being more bent on picking up hitch hikers than arriving at the winning post. More effort, more ruthlessness, more self promotion, more planning, more vision, more articulation and, perhaps, more honesty are demonstrated at a regional Lion’s Club elections to elect the club president or even the current Bar Association elections, than the UNP and Ranil Wickremesinghe have displayed so far. Instead of seeking the nonexistent strength of the obligate parasitic clinging creeper to rise, the main trunk of the UNP tree must find its own inner strengths to tower over the existing high rise oak that has taken deep root. Dependence on this motley bag that calls itself the opposition will only sap the energies of the host UNP and force deviations from the set course to electoral success.
The fates have brought Ranil to the helm of the UNP leadership, and whether he thinks he likes it or not, whether he thinks and despairs to taste the bitter lemons of defeat is irrelevant. Apart from resigning his leadership, the choice is not upto him. He has to face the music, be it a Beethoven symphony or some Harlem rap. He should take to heart the ancient Vedic wisdom of philosophical India, heed what Krishna told Arjuna on the threshold of internecine battle when the latter despaired; the gem of wisdom Vishnu’s Avatar spoke of when he recited the Bhagavad Geetha, India’s Song of Songs: “Thou has a duty to Act: Right Action, without attachment to the fruits of the action.”
From the UNP’s Tower of Babel there emits a confused mixture of voices and views in deciding who should be the presidential candidate, even though it was officially decided a month ago to make Ranil the candidate. Before a higher power foils their settled plans and forces them to abandon their anointed task, the UNP must rise to the occasion and take up the gauntlet. They may not have another opportunity again for a long time.
The people welcome the Supreme Court ruling for it gives them greater choice as to who should lead the nation for the next six years. In the same manner, they expect the opposition to provide them with a suitable candidate to give them an alternative to the present incumbent, who they can elect instead if they so choose. The UNP, being the main opposition party in Lanka, owes a duty to the people to discharge that high responsibility. Ranil as the leader of the UNP must cast aside his fears and dare the gulfs of defeat and step into the fray, irrespective whether it brings victory or defeat.
If only to give the President the gratification that he fought with a worthy adversary and won. Or the solace that he lost to one who deserved to win.
| Paba’s eyes on Dilan
SUNDAY PUNCH 2 The most envied minister in the UPFA cabinet this Sunday morning must undoubtedly be the Minister for Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare Dilan Perera. Not only for his dashing looks and his jet black hair for a man of his age but mainly for receiving presidential benediction and special dispensation for his Badulla election flop. It came in the form of 30-year-old Kuwait-born television actress, UPFA MP Upeksha Swarnamalie, better known as Paba after her popular screen role, charged with the presidential warrant to keep eyes focused on Dilan and his ministry and to monitor progress. At the arranged affair held at the ministry hall, seated on a plushy couch, the couple posed for the obligatory photographs to record their historic day. An excited Paba told reporters how it was on her own initiative she was appointed to be Dilan’s monitor. “I requested the president for this appointment to work for the ministry,” she said, “and following my request, the President appointed me as monitoring MP. My duties include overseeing the work of the ministry which comes under the purview of Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare Minister Dilan Perera,”  The minister and the monitor: Dilan in the hot seat with bespectacled Paba as his monitor Paba who contested the Gampaha district in 2010 and won the UNP seat soon crossed over to the more comfortable UPFA couch. She lived her glamour girl role and voted for the 18th Amendment though she confessed she did not have a clue as to what it was all about. Since then, however, she seems to have dusted off her stardust days and adopted a more homily, sari clad, prim and proper, middle class housewife image. The glasses she wore at the ceremony are, undoubtedly, to keep a keener, clearer eye on her new charge, Dilan Perera. Well, some guys have all the luck. Out of favour Minister Mervyn Silva who — appearing as a judge at a TV Glamour Reality show in which Paba was a contestant — publicly expressed his strong desire to be in Paba’s arms suckling at her breast, must be feeling positively cold shouldered and would have sunk five feet lower in his self dug grave, hearing of Dilan’s good fortune to have close encounters with a monitoring MP of the Paba kind, in the line of duty to better discharge his ministerial responsibility to the nation. The only question that remains to be asked is who will be keeping the glad eye on whom at the ministry? Will it be the monitor on the minister or the minister on the monitor? |