Sunday Times 2
Shuffling the pack
View(s):May is a very interesting month.
To begin with, there are the big tamashas staged on the first of the month, May Day – the International Workers’ Day which was intended to be a day of celebration for the labourers and working classes of the world.
May Day was established after the 1904 International Socialist Congress in Amsterdam called on the social democratic organisations and trade unions of all countries to energetically demonstrate on the first day of May for creating awareness to have established, among other matters, “the class demands of the proletariat and universal peace”.
Sadly for our country, this public holiday which was intended to be a show of solidarity and strength by the working people of our nation has been hijacked by our professional politicians (many of whom have not done a day’s honest toil in their lives) – who use the day to show off their political strength and support, vying to outdo those of other political parties by the numbers and publicity they can show off during their May Day rallies.
The Joint Opposition May Day rally at Galle Face Green.
While on that subject, I was musing about the conclusions that we citizens can draw from the various May Day rallies staged by our different political parties. The blue party had their show of strength in Getambe and the green party had theirs at Campbell Park – and the leaders and vote catchers of both these parties must be scratching their heads about the apparent massive show of support that Mahinda’s Joint Opposition was able to arrange at Galle Face Green.
Even Donald Trump was not able to organise such a large crowd at his inauguration in Washington!
Whether numbers at May Day rallies this month equate to numbers of votes at elections next month or next year remains to be seen – but the sheer size of the crowd at Galle Face must be having the strange bedfellows of our current “national unity government” (a government that is neither national nor united) quite worried.
With that in the background, I was musing about the president’s intention of re-shuffling his cabinet. Originally pledging to be do it before Vesak, the President last week changed his mind and re-pledged that he would re-shuffle the cabinet only after the Prime Minister returns from China on the 19.
Musing about what exactly he meant by his intention to “re-shuffle”, I decided I would look up the meaning of the word.
Shuffling, the dictionary tells me, is a process used to “randomise the cards in a pack of playing cards so as to provide an element of chance in a card game”. It also went on to educate me that a “shuffling is often followed by a cut”.
How apt, I thought, for the process of shuffling our current cabinet.
Our present very expensive Cabinet actually has more ministers than the number of cards in a pack of playing cards – and that is including a couple of well-known jokers as well!
“Shuffling” will allow the President and his Prime Minister (who have not selected this Cabinet of Ministers according to these ministers’ merits or capability or suitability for the job, but have had these ministers thrust upon them for reasons of political support or political expediency) to “randomise” the characters in their hands. “Luck by chance” as the saying goes, they may get a better hand by randomly shuffling the cards at their disposal, cutting out a few useless cards and making use of some of the jokers they have to accommodate.
While studying this subject of shuffling, I learned that there are various methods of shuffling a pack, such as the overhand shuffle, the Indian shuffle, the Irish shuffle and the pile shuffle (which last method does not really randomise the cards, but ensures that cards which were next to each other are now separated).
There are also methods of shuffling called ‘magician’s shuffles’. These methods are usually employed by card cheats and sleight of hand artists who use various techniques of shuffling whereby the deck appears to have been shuffled fairly – although in reality one or more cards (up to and including the entire pack) stays in the same position. A particularly effective form of this, attributed to the magician Herb Zarrow, is known as the Zarrow shuffle, whereby the spectators think they see an honest riffle shuffle but the entire deck remains in its original order!
Maybe the President will keep his pledge this week, maybe (as he has done so often since he was elected) he will not keep his pledge.
Although some people are calling him, not President Sirisena but “President Silly Sena”, Citizen Silva thinks he is not so silly.
After all he is proving that he is fulfilling the prime aim of any politician – which is to manipulate the situation so as to remain in power as long as possible!