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Only President Rajapaksa is campaigning for President Rajapaksa!
Often, the essence of a political situation is captured by a story. This story says President Mahinda Rajapaksa was in his element at a campaign rally in Kurunegala and asked his audience what they wanted. “We want boats”, they shouted. Puzzled, he asked why people in Kurunegala were asking for boats. “Ayi sir, api Matara ney…” came the reply. They had been brought from Matara for the rally!
That is the state of the President’s campaign now although my unseen friend Raja Pakshikaya believes that the President is on his way to an easy re-election. His argument is based mostly on the defections of two people, Tissa Attanayake and Udaya Gammanpila-and let me deal with that first.
Opposition Candidate Maithripala Sirisena addresses a campaign meeting at Matale
Even Raja Pakshikaya admits that Attanayake did not win elections for the UNP in the ten years that he was general secretary. And look what a merry mess he has now landed the UPFA in. He claims that he was privy to a ‘secret agreement’ between Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe.
I am sure Tissa has to sing for his supper and was only doing his Master’s bidding but even a schoolboy can see that the ‘agreement’ is fake and now we have an opinion from no less a person than former Chief Justice Sarath Silva saying Tissa’s antics are an election offence and could compromise Rajapaksa, even if he wins and Tissa could end in jail. So now you know why we let Tissa leave!
If cross-overs are Raja Pakshikaya’s yardstick of popularity, why did Rishard Bathiudeen and Ameer Ali of the All Ceylon Muslim Congress switch loyalties? The UPFA did everything to pacify Ali, including sending him to Parliament through the National List after getting A.H.M. Azwer to resign.
Ali became an MP, then jumped ship! Faiszer Musthapha is next in line to change his colours and Rauff Hakeem’s Sri Lanka Muslim Congress will follow, I am told. The UPFA is reaping what it sowed: the seeds of animosity among communities, particularly in relation to our Muslim brethren.
Raja Pakshikaya must know by now that the UPFA campaign is slipping badly from one blunder to another. Only President Rajapaksa is campaigning for President Rajapaksa. They didn’t get their manifesto out on time and its release date was changed several times. They were waiting to see what Maithri says in his to do a one-upmanship. Instead, they are engaging in needless intimidation of opponents: Wimal Weerawansa’s mob at Sirikotha and Nishantha Muthuhettigama’s men in Wanduramba ran amok this week. These are the UPFA ‘hit-men’, and I mean literally too; All the President’s Men !! That’s the only politics that the UPFA knows to do.
Thuggery has been part and parcel of this regime for some time and these incidents only prove that. What was different though was the resignation of the Wanduramba OIC after Muthuhettigama’s fiasco. The top brass of the Police wanted to charge him for cowardice – make him the scape-goat and then lets him slip out of the country before he become a greater embarrassment to the UPFA. He will return only if the 
President is re-elected, I’m sure. But as that won’t be the case he will have to stay in Singapore forever. Since when did we have a Police officer declaring in public that he was quitting because of political interference? It can only mean that even the Police know the winds of change are imminent. The outcome of a recent meeting of retired senior police officers will be of interest to the government’s intelligence sleuths.
As for Muthuhettigama, he sings ‘apey ratey minissu, kelinney pissu’ at a concert and takes wing to Singapore through the VIP lounge of the airport, while there is an arrest warrant out for him. We shouldn’t be surprised, should we, when murder suspects were also flown to Singapore. So, this government’s reward for intimidating its opponents is an air ticket to Singapore and a bed at Mount Elizabeth hospital in that city-state.
Are these the signs of a victorious President, Raja Pakshikaya? All the President can do is hark back to a familiar theme: how he won the war and how there is an international conspiracy to destroy him now. Pardon me, Raja Pakshikaya, but do you think our intelligent voters will buy that any longer? If they are to believe that, Sobhitha thera, Rathana thera and Champika Ranawaka are part of this ‘conspiracy’!
Raja Pakshikaya is critical of the involvement of Chandrika Kumaratunga in Maithripala Sirisena’s campaign. As I have said, I am no admirer of the lady and its best she keeps her mouth shut, but when S.B. Dissanayake says that she will be paraded naked on the streets it tells us firstly, the calibre of people this governments retains and secondly, the depths to which the UPFA has descended. That is why decent men and women in the SLFP too feel that enough is enough and that if they are to save the SLFP, the Rajapkasas and his hangers-on must go.
Raja Pakshikaya is critical of Maithripala Sirisena’s manifesto saying it says ‘nothing about nothing’ and that it is ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’. What does Mahinda Rajapaksa’s manifesto say? Surprise, surprise, he promises to prune the powers of the Executive Presidency!
So says Mahinda Rajapaksa, he who repealed the seventeenth amendment which took away the overarching powers of the Presidency and he who introduced the eighteenth amendment which theoretically enables him to run for President for ever and ever. And you want us to believe him, do you, Raja Pakshikaya? This is nothing but a lie, wrapped in a farce inside a charade, I daresay.
Raja Pakshikaya, I feel a sense of déjà vu these days. Having been a very active UNPer when JR was leading the election campaign in 1977 against Sirima Bandaranaike, I feel the same sense of fervour, anticipation and expectation I felt then when I attend Sirisena’s rallies and speak to people now.
JR was also trying to banish a leader who had a family tree, a leader who changed the Constitution and someone who thought she was popular just because she was head of the Non-Aligned Movement. Today, we are trying to remove a leader who has a family forest, someone who manipulated the Constitution and someone who heads the Commonwealth.
So, Raja Pakshikaya, I believe history will repeat itself. Mahinda Rajapaksa will be defeated in a few days. I only hope he would retire to Medamulana (as he says in his television advertisement), just as gracefully as Ms. Bandaranaike did when she lost that election thirty six years ago.