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JO’s shadowy world of make believe vanishes in a puff of scorn but one vital question still remains: Whose bright idea was it?

In the manner of little children with nothing to occupy their time but play games of ‘Let’s Pretend’ saying to one another ‘Now today you be thaththa, you be amma, you be nanda, you be mama, before eating their sellam buth, the Joint Opposition last week decided to play their own game of pretence and appoint each other as minister of this and minister of that and minister of this and that.

Having failed to win the people’s mandate at last year’s general election to form a Rajapaksa led government under the presidency of Maithripala Sirisena, this 50 odd member breakaway SLFP-UPFA coalition sought to relive their past importance as ministers in a make believe word of their dismal night.

If the people had denied them their honorific tag lines as ministers then, in heaven’s name, what on earth was there to prevent them from conferring ministerships upon themselves? Even from the shadows where they presently dwell, and though but ghosts of their former selves, they would thus be able to saunter on air pretending that, even if they were not officially ministers due to a quirk of fate, they were still personages worthy of ministerial rank and were entitled to be held on the same level as those who presently occupied seats in Sirisena’s cabinet – a distinct cut above the run of the mill MPs.

Ah, see for yourself, the difference it makes.
Rather than being commonly referred to in the press, for instance, as “Mahinda Rajapaksa, the UPFA MP from the Kurunegala District, asked the Government yesterday, ‘are you happy?” how grandiose and full of gravitas it is when the same is reported thus: ‘Shadow Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa asked the Government yesterday, ‘oba than sathutu the?’” Or, “Bandula Gunawardena, UPFA MP for Colombo yesterday declared that the VAT increase was uncalled for” as against “Shadow Finance Minister Bandula Gunawardena yesterday declared that the VAT increase was uncalled for.”

This would have been the result had not the shadow cabinet locomotive hit the scorn buffers and derailed the cargo of pomposity it carried, prompting those aboard to hastily jump the doomed freight train to nowhere.

Ten days ago the nation was entertained to what might have been the composition of the government had the people voted otherwise. They were presented with the Rajapaksa shadow cabinet with almost each one in the Rajapaksa coterie made a cabinet minister, that’s 50 ministers. Never mind the fact that they had vehemently protested when President Sirisena exceeded the pre election promise of 30 ministers and now had 45 ministers in his Reality Cabinet – who is counting when it’s all a charade staged for mass consumption?

Heading the cast and chosen to play the lead role was the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, named in the list as the nation’s shadow prime minister. He was also to act the parts of the Minister of Defence, the Minister of Buddha Sasana and the Minister of Religious Affairs. Gone were his posts of Minister of Finance, Minister of Law and Order, Minister of Ports, Minister of Highways, Minister of Urban Development. Even in this shadowy game of let’s pretend, some streak of reality seems to have intruded through the drawn curtain in the wing: the realization that the multitude of important ministries he held when in power from 2005 to 2015, may have been one too many for one man to bear alone.

Thus the Finance portfolio which Rajapaksa held earlier had been given to Bandula Gunawardena, perhaps in recognition of the reputation he gained during his tenure as Minister of Education, of being a financial whizz beyond compare when he put to shame the country’s economic pundits at the Treasury by publicly announcing in 2012 that a family of three could easily live comfortably on a income of Rs 7500 per month – more than enough for food and lodging with some spare cash left for entertainment too.
Mahinda Rajapaksa has stated on many occasions after his defeat in the presidential elections last year that he had made many mistakes during his ten year reign and that he repented them all. Maybe his stubbornness to have held fast to the all important finance ministry post and not to have given it to someone of the caliber of Bandula Gunawardena was one. That perhaps may possibly explain the emergence of the now coconut dashing and Sirisena cursing Bandula Gunawardena from his O’ level economic tutory and his tutorage of the Educational ministry to take his position of eminence as the nation’s Finance Minister, even if it’s only as an airy insubstantial apparition.

The collapse of law and order in the country during the ten year period from 2005 to 2015 when Mahinda Rajapaksa was the Minister of Law and Order; the almost institutionalized practice of selective law enforcement which meant the Rajapaksa cronies were given immunity from prosecution – the faithful flock of sycophants who, in Rajapaksa’s own words were ‘ ape keneck’“ and thus were ‘shaped” – was one of the main causes which earned the Rajapaksa regime the opprobrium of the masses and led to the regime’s ignominious downfall. Not even two months after his defeat, Mahinda Rajapaksa publicly identified this as one of the prime reasons of his own downfall and asked the people to forgive him for allowing his ministers to run amok without fearing the legal lash. And he promised he will not repeat that mistake ever again should he return to power.

That may possibly be the reason why Udaya Gammanpila has been named as the Minister of Law and Order. More than any other person named in the shadow cabinet list, no one is more qualified than him to oversee law and order: no one more eminently suitable to adorn the mantle. He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing and his fleece is white as snow. How do we know? Because he says so.

No one wears a whiter sarong than he does. No one sports a whiter coat than he. No one speaks more of his own moral character than Udaya ungrudgingly does his own fibre; nor flaunts his immaculate conscience more than Gammanpila unabashedly flaunts his scruples, wearing it, as he does, not on the right arm sleeve of his spotless shirt but blazoned across his puffed up chest, running zigzag up and down and wrapping him round and round twice over, and many times more; until at last he is ensconced in his own bespoke straight jacket of soul bursting virtue.

What’s more, he has the experience to back his paper credentials, having had a taste of life in the slammer. Freshly released on bail from a remand cell where he had been held for two weeks on a charge of using a forged power-of-attorney to sell shares held by Digital Nominees Ltd and thereby causing a misappropriation of Rs 110 million, he last week rushed before the media cameras to exult with glee how much he had enjoyed his spell at – what he called – the government’s five star hotel and how much he hoped to return to his cloistered cell to do time, writing the three books, he says, he had started to write therein; having found in a Welikada pokey, divine inspiration to dip his nib in the ink of literature.

According to him, not even the ten months he had so far spent in Parliament amidst the people’s representatives had given him the rounded education he had received in prison in the company of the people held there on drug charges. That was an education received in the University of Life, he says with pride. So what more qualifications are needed than those Gammanpila possesses to be eligible to be the anointed one to keep the nation’s legal machinery smoothly running? It’s not every one who can emerge from a remand cell on bail and find himself made the Minister of Law and Order albeit a shadow one.

But the remand graduate will have to bide his time to play out his role as top gun in the shadow cabinet. So will 30 year old Namal Rajapaksa, presently remanded over a charge of misappropriating Rs 70 million from Krrish Company, India, have to wait before beginning his task of shadowing Mangala Samaraweera’s movements if not in body then at least in spirit; and embarking on his flight of fancy to Switzerland to attend the 32nd session of the Geneva UNCHR summit, and tell the international community, even as he has often told his supporters in Tangalle, that not only will there be no foreign judges in Lanka but there will be no war crimes probe at all, period.

What prompted the airy incorporeal insubstantial shadow cabinet proposal vanish in a puff was the sudden burst of laughter and disdain from the audience when it was first announced. Instead of it being considered a professional approach to modern day democracy to have an able ever ready opposition to take over the government at a moment’s notice as had been the practice of Britain’s opposition, the fact that a bunch of no hopers who were grossly below par in their performance while in power could serve with competence as shadow ministers was too much of a good spoof for the people to contain their laughter or conceal their contempt.

It was seen more as an attempt to aggrandize themselves with a new glorified handle to their names, to elevate themselves in importance and show the other UPFA members who had joined the Maithri group of power and were now awaiting delivery of their multi million bucks mega luxury vehicles to drive around to serve the people that, though bereft of the privileges the pampered receive from the pandering hand of power, they were of the same rank though manifested in silhouette.

There would also be practical problems internally. The concept of shadow cabinet meant that the renegade UPFA members would each have their own allotted ministry to shadow and monitor. They would have to brief themselves thoroughly on their pertinent subject in order to ask the meaningful questions and be the resounding significant voice of debate. They would have to master the subject. It would mean, for instance, that former film actress Geetha Kumarasinghe as the appointed shadow minister of Environment would have to burn the midnight oil to expand her environmental horizons beyond the Bentota beach and wise up to global warming and get high brow with Colombo Port City’s environmental impact on marine life, rising sea levels and coastal erosion. For many others who hadn’t gone past their O’ levels, it would be a daunting challenge to make the grade

Plus the shadow cabinet system also means that when an issue crops up concerning a certain ministry, its shadow minister will be given pride of place in the debate from the joint opposition ranks. Having even one of their own members hugging the spotlight will cramp the natural inclination of many politicians who are not averse to giving fulsome air to their opinions however inane and full of flatulence they may be, provided it makes the TV news and earns a newspaper headline.

Then, of course, there is the further complication which they may well have to contend with in the coming days. In a volatile ground situation, when freedom of movement of many dangle beneath a Damocles’ sword and their very liberty is under FCID siege, the shadow foreign minister may be detained abroad for a period longer than anticipated, the shadow law and order minister may find himself bound elsewhere and many more shadow ministers still to make their appearances may well find themselves tied down for reasons beyond their control.

How the shadow cabinet ship sprung a leak was when it floundered on the rock of derision. The laughs and scorn which resulted from its announcement proved the joint opposition’s latest gimmick had come a cropper. There were already too many reality ministers strutting about the political stage to tax the people’s tolerance. Another fifty more even as shadows were far too many for the public to stomach. The following day itself it was decided it had to be abandoned.

First to jump ship was no less than the shadow prime minister himself Mahinda Rajapaksa. He was soon followed by the rest with Kandy District UPFA MP Lohan Ratwatte, named as shadow City Planning and Water Supply Minister calling it a ‘joke’. He said, “Sri Lanka does not need a shadow cabinet. That is a feature observed in Western countries, not in ours. Here we have the privilege to criticize and observe whoever and whichever ministry or individual we want”. He added that he was not aware who had appointed him to be a shadow minister.

The day before he was arrested on a criminal charge of is misappropriation, UPFA MP Namal Rajapaksa stated that the Joint Opposition had not appointed a shadow cabinet but assigned its members ministries to observe the activities and shortcomings of the ministries. What’s the difference? A shadow minister’s job is exactly that. It is his duty as a shadow minister of a particular ministry to follow the ministry’s activities, to monitor its performance critically and to raise hell whenever it neglected its duties.
So the shadow cabinet may be dead twenty fours after being born. But one vital question remains to be answered. Whose bright idea was it in the first place? As things stand no one has come forward to admit responsibility for having fathered the dead infant. The corpse has become nobody’s child.

Mahinda Rajapaksa is the hub of the joint operation. It swirls around him. Its reason for existence is him. It would not survive the day if he is not there to give it leadership. He is its life and soul. And yet, apart from the terse announcement that he was stepping down as shadow prime minister, no statement has been issued by him as to why he was doing so. Surprising, isn’t it? If the shadow cabinet was not his brainchild then whose was it? If he had no hand in its appointments, then whose hand was it?

If Mahinda Rajapaksa as the JO leader did not know of its existence or of the appointments made then who dared to strip the former president of his finance ministry portfolio he held whilst in power and give it to Bandula Gunawardena? Who dared to strip him of his law and order portfolio and hand it to Gammanpila; or the ex president’s ports portfolio to Kumar Welgama or his highways portfolio to Prasanna Ranatunga? And who stripped the former president of his urban development portfolio but did not give it to anyone?

Who thought the former president, apart from playing shadow minister of defence, was only fit to hold the religious portfolios as shadow Minister of Buddha Sasana and Minister of Religious Affairs? Who dared to think that the former president would be satisfied in being saddled with only a figurehead role as shadow prime minister in the manner D. M. Jayaratne was said to hold in reality under the Rajapaksa presidency, whilst the top power ministries were doled out to others?

This gathering of Rajapaksa faithful who present themselves to the nation as the joint opposition of the country and claims to be the only outfit competent to govern the country wisely and with responsibility should come clean as to who fathered the shadow cabinet cock up and officiously made shadow ministerial appointments and grandiosely issued the list to the media for publication? Rather than washing their hands off responsibility and pretending they have no clue as to its origins or its demise, does it not behoove the joint opposition led by Mahinda Rajapaksa to also reveal who strangled the baby at birth merely because it was found to be born deformed and could cause embarrassment to the genealogical line?