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UNP cheer home and home match as Ranil outsources victory
Struggling to hold back the insistent tear, Mr. Maithripala Sirisena on Friday came out of the UPFA closet to declare himself as the UNP led joint opposition parties’ choice to challenge President Rajapaksa for the presidency of Lanka.
“My wife Jayanthi, my children Charuni, Dahranie and Dhaham, they all came to me and said thaththe, we are prepared to even die, thaththe you take any decision. We have seen the immense strains you have been under as the secretary of the party and as a minister of this government.Thaththe we know what you are thinking when you come home, know what you are thinking when you lie on your bed, know what you are thinking from the way you talk to us. If, the secretary of the party, the Sri lanka Nidahas Pakshaya that runs this government and a
President Rajapaksa: Facing a common candidate again
minister of this government can have this mental pressures then it is proof of what mental pressures the innocent people of this country must be suffering under this government”, Maithripala Sirisena said with a choke in his voice,, before picking up the gauntlet and climbing aboard the joint opposition howdah placed firmly on the back of the UNP elephant to ride to the starter’s post.
The opposition decision as to who the joint candidate will be had taken long in coming. But when it did, it took the nation by surprise. Many had expected it to be the UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. Or, in the alternative, the former president Chandrika Bandaranaike. But both seem to have laid to rest their own presidential ambitions to pave the way for a well known yet fresh face that may possibly garner the combined votes of both the SLFP and the UNP.
The deal struck with the UNP is that should Maithripala win, he will become the Executive President, charged with the avowed task of abolishing the executive presidency while Ranil Wickremesinghe would become the Prime Minister.
At the media briefing held at the New Town Hall in Colombo, the presidential candidate pledged to abolish the executive presidency within hundred days of taking office and thanked Ranil Wickremesinghe and the UNP for unanimously appointing him as the joint opposition candidate.
The silent prayers of Ranil Wickremesinghe to avoid another possible defeat were answered at the eleventh hour when Maithripala Sirisena appeared on the horizon and requested to join the opposition ranks with a troupe of other UPFA ministers and MPs following him. As Maithripala said in his speech, “I was surprised when I was offered the opportunity to be joint opposition candidate and I am thankful to Ranil Wickremesinghe and grateful to the UNP for unanimously endorsing the decision to support me.”
Now that its worst fears are over, the UNP can get down to that most satisfying business of enjoying the home and home match played out on the green; and wait for the spoils of victory, in the event of their man at the crease winning, to fall into their laps as they sit in the comfort of the
Man of the moment: Maithripala Sirisena
pavilion and perform the only chore asked of them which is to clap every run scored. For the UNP, true to style and in line with emerging trends, have outsourced their victory. For the UPFA captain however, it is quite a different matter and the long slog of doing it oneself has only now begun.
It was only on Tuesday, on the president’s birthday, that the Secretary of the Jathika Hela Urumaya Champika Ranawaka resigned from his post in the government as the Minister Of Science, Technology and Atomic Energy. So had one of the leading members of the JHU, Ven Athureliye Rathana resigned on Monday from the Divulapitiya Divisionional Development Committee and handed over his official vehicle to the Economic Ministry. Though still the JHU remains a constituent party of the UPFA, both members resigned from their respective posts since the government had not acceded to the constitutional reforms they proposed regarding the executive presidency.
With the all important UNP support firmly pledged, Maithripala Sirisena’s promise to abolish the executive presidency within 100 days will no doubt be welcomed by the Ven Sobitha Thera who had campaigned for its abolition and was even prepared to come forward as candidate to achieve that aim. The influential monk may move the powerful Buddhist clergy to extend their support to the UNP anointed Maithripala.
Mr. Sirisena’s stance on the constitution is not of recent origin. In an interview given in 2007 to the Daily News he said: “the factor that stands in our way is the present constitution. It is a constitution that destroys the nation. This nation can never prosper till this constitution remains in force. That is my personal feeling as a politician. This constitution needs to be changed to develop this country, be it we, or any other party that may come to power in the future. This constitution has messed up the strength in Parliament.”
Maithripala, may even capture the support of the JVP who might tender it to him for no other reason than for the fact that this eldest son of Polonnaruwa’s Village Headman, Maithripala was also jailed during the JVP’s 1971 insurrection for his progressive views, even though he was not a member of the JVP. With nothing of the Bodu Bala stigma staining his spotless white national dress or die hard Sinhala chauvinism to discolor his rustic charm, Maithripala may also be an acceptable candidate to the Tamils and Muslims whose vote maybe crucial to obtain the all important 51 per cent to clinch the presidency.
Providence also seems to have saved him for this occasion. In 2008 he narrowly escaped an LTTE suicide attack. It was carried out in Piliyandala when his car was heading towards Colombo. He escaped unhurt while 7 were injured and 1 was killed.
Sixty three year old Pallewatte Gamaralalage Maithripala Yapa Sirisena, born to a farming family in Polonnaruwa and trained as an agriculturist, joined mainstream politics in 1989 when he entered parliament as a member for Polonnaruwa District. In 1994, winning the largest number of preferential votes in the district, he was appointed as the Deputy Minister for Irrigation and Mahaweli River development. He was also appointed the General Secretary of the SLFP and holds the record as the longest serving secretary, marking 20 years this year. A committed anti tobacco activist, he served as the Minister of Health of the UPFA Government till Friday when he was stubbed out for lighting a smoke in public to show there was a fire raging in the party.
Maithripala Sirisena has come a long way. But he still has a long way to go.
It will be a long elephant ride for him until Election Day dawns on the 8th of January. It will give him plenty of time to muse over the meaning of the stanza of the Dhammpada The Appamada Vagga with which he began his speech on Friday which states: “Heedfulness is the deathless path; heedlessness is the path to death.” With so many mahouts conducting the elephant to the post, sometimes vying to lead it in different directions to reach their own different destinations, it would do Maithripala Sirisena well to determine first to whose wise counsel he would pay heed.