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This was more a party, Sri Lankan style, a capital day out in Colombo where all had a jolly good time — a politically sponsored orgy of fun, sing song and dance followed by a sleep over at Galle Face Green which left them all with a splitting hangover and their hosts — the joint opposition leaders — with egg on their faces the following morn.

BAILA DANCING BY DAY: Crowds having a rollicking time of fun in the sun with JO rolling out the barrel

And whilst the party was in full swing in the midday sun on the streets with Joint Opposition leaders making cameo appearances to mark their roll call and disappearing into their cool limos, the rest of parliament members were attending to serious parliament business with the JVP presenting its views on the 20th Amendment draft bill.

In the build-up to this grand ‘Janabalaya Colombata’ finale, Joint Opposition leaders spared no pains, spared no efforts and left no earth unturned to portray September the 5th as the historic day on which power would return to the fold and adorn the rogues gallery once more.

Shunting aside their self-respect — no big deal, considering they had already flung it to the winds  during the previous regime, in which they served to make their kites of prosperity fly even higher — and concealing their red blushes as they spoke behind the saintly masks they wore to brave media’s TV glare, they  readily rose to give echo to their master’s voice which commanded them to  tout the September 5th afternoon ball, to be  jived on the streets with a record two hundred thousand throng in attendance, as the most spectacular live event of the 21st century which would salsa Rajapaksa to absolute power overnight; with his son and heir, the Prince of Ruhuna, anointed as the Master of Ceremonies whilst his  two ambitious uncles,  drooling in the shadowy wings and waiting for their turn to make an entrance on the presidential stage, were  demoted without notice, summarily sentenced to play second fiddle to their nephew’s jazzy saxophone.

First to kick the ball — which turned out to be an own goal — was the son of the Boralugoda Lion, Dinesh Gunawardena now turned from lion scion to a Rajapaksa fleeced lamb; his father’s once proud roar which made even S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike cringe reduced by his Rajapaksa dominated eldest son to a sheep’s bleat.

This Monday, he along with other JO members, promised a massive show of strength. Instead it turned out to be a profound revelation of the massive overestimation the JO hardcore cadres had made when all they could muster to lay siege on the capital on September 5 was not the 200,000-strong force they had expected to turn up to stage the coup but less than 35,000 hired hands who had come for the joy ride on the JO gravy bus and were half sloshed even before they could alight from it turned up staggeringly to topple a government duly elected by over six million people to serve a term of six years.

THOVIL DANCING BY NIGHT: Angampura to entertain the night time crowd and prevent them falling asleep

Pavithra Wanniarachchi, that endless ranting virago of Ratnapura town, perhaps put it best on JO’s behalf when she gave voice to the optimism prevailing in the Rajapaksa camp when she said this Tuesday: “Tomorrow we shall come to Colombo and surround Temple Trees and take the Government home with us.”

Wimal Weerawansa, her malefic male counterpart, went even further. He said, “We will cordon, surround and lay siege to Colombo and seize power.”

With such high hopes harboured in their breasts, no wonder the invite to ‘come let’s party and topple this government’ was sent by JO organisers to 200,000 people. On the menu was a free bottle of arrack as an aperitif and free chicken biriyani as the main course and, as an added incentive, free cigarettes, which, mind you, costs fifty bucks a stick. And, as any smoker will tell you, one fag won’t do, never mind doctor’s orders.

And thus the cost per head a thousand bucks, minimum, forgetting the transport expenses also borne by the Joint Opposition sponsors in their generous spirit as perfect hosts, to bring the rip roaring 200,000 mercenaries to the capital to lay siege on it whilst partying, and to topple the government whilst drinking and install Mahinda at the helm of a new government and raise their three quart empty gal arrack bottles as a toast to his inauguration as the new head of state, no matter what the constitution and the Supreme Court dictate.

While it’s only natural that Rajapaksa and his diehard followers’ hopes may spring eternal in their breasts, a few questions must be asked as to the unknown source of their good fortunes to fund this sort of santhosam parties on a regular basis these last three year and a half basis  merely to make their presence felt.

Let’s first take the arithmetic. If you are planning to celebrate your birthday in grand style next month and intend to invite a hundred guests, wouldn’t you first calculate the amount the food and drink will cost you and make provision for it before you send out the invites to those hundred? Irrespective of the number of friends who turn up to see you cut the birthday cake and blow the candles with a hushed wish?

NAMAL: Prince of the flops

In the same way wouldn’t the JO leaders have calculated the cost before inviting 200,000 to their street bash and made financial provision before announcing to the nation at large with the utmost confidence that all 200,000 will turn up to see the cake cut and the candles blown and the declared wish to see Mahinda enthroned in power again immediately realised? And at a minimum of thousand per head for food drinks and smokes would not they have realised that the attempt to coronate Rajapaksa against the laws of the land and celebrate his third coming through people power, not through the ballot of 12 million voters but through the power of coercion enforced by a relative handful of 200,000 laying siege to the nation’s capital, would cost them an estimated Rs 200,000 million for a one night only stand? Even though less than 40,000 turned up and left the party early with the mission impossible left unaccomplished, the budget to host 200,000 would first have to be provided for?

In the past, whenever the party in power — be it the UNP or the SLFP — lost and were sentenced to the wilderness for the next five years, the first years in the opposition had been the hardest.  The money, party supporters had handsomely contributed to the party in power to see it returned to the selfsame seat of office, had been spent on the election campaign; and with defeat not only did the party coffers, like Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, lie bare and exhausted so did the hopes of reviving the party’s fortunes by appeals to its well wishers lie futile and barren.

In those lean, mean poverty stricken days, the defeated party now in opposition could think naught but how to keep its head over the water mark and not go under. The very idea of mounting an immediate challenge to the newly elected party was unthinkable.

The prospect of reviving the exhausted coffers only come to cheer the faithful when the next elections come along when, like bats who desert a tree when its bare of fruit return to it in droves when it starts to show signs of fruition, the rich return to flock around the withered tree and strive to water it to make it leaf, flower and fruit again with the manure of money they bring in their bags to the old oak tree.

WASTED DAY AND WASTED NIGHT: A woman takes a selfie to take home as a broken souvenir of her Rajapaksa hopes

But surprise, surprise! Not even a month passed by after Sirisena was elected to office as President, the fallen Rajapaksa regime was able and empowered to launch a formidable challenge to the newly elected government. It was based on bringing people in hordes in bus loads to give the impression that Mahinda Rajapaksa may have lost but he was not down and out and that even in defeat he remained victorious, the king whose crown may have momentarily slipped but who had regained it without a slip and still wore it with the people’s blessings.

From the first Nugegoda rally in 2015 to this September 5  ‘cordon, surround, lay siege and by force capture power’ strategy, perhaps  more than a billion or two has been spent on keeping the Rajapaksa’s evergreen in public memory promoting Mahinda as the rightful heir to the throne of Lanka and branding Maithri as a usurper.

The question is where did the money come from? It couldn’t have been from the SLFP treasury, for Sirisena as the president of the SLFP party had control over it. Then from what money chest, from what cornucopia did the Rajapaksa wherewithal and power to wage expensive warfare stem from? Surely the manna did not fall from heaven?  Or grow on the trees in Medamulana garden?

Thus the first question: Why aren’t the government’s investigative units probing the source?  Why isn’t the Inland Revenue which pries into every private physician’s  patient log books, inquiring from the Joint Opposition leaders who have the resources to waste hundreds of millions on a single day in regular spending sprees to host street parties from where on earth the money they throw come from?

Snakes, rats and stray cats make regular visitations to garden homes only when there is an assured food source. Cut off the source and you will never see them again. The same applies to those who have a war chest to wage war. Get rid of the war chest and you get rid of their ability to wage war.

The second question is this: Haven’t the Government heard of the crime of sedition? Well, if it hasn’t heard of it so far, never too late to learn, is it?  The offence of sedition is defined in article 120 of the Penal Code in the following terms:

“Whoever by words, either spoken or intended to be read, or by signs, or by visible representations or otherwise, excites or attempts to excite feelings of dissatisfaction to the president or to the government of the Republic ….. shall be punished with simple imprisonment for a term  which may extend to two years.”

Now after this brief digression, let’s return to the scene of action, not to the protest that never was but to the swinging party that was. The revelers had been assigned different routes. One set had been told to assemble at Kiribathgoda on the Kandy Road. Another lot at Wattala on the Negombo Road. And another group was told to assemble at Mount Lavinia on the Galle Road, another at Nugegoda on the Ratnapura Road. Like Vijayabahu’s third and successful attempt with his three-pronged attack to capture Polonnaruwa from the Cholas in the 11th century, this seemed a four-pronged strategy to wrest control of Colombo from the Yahapalanists. Alas for the Rajapaksa faction, no one in the crowd knew, as was revealed later by the participants, whether they were coming or going and the grand plan was riddled with confusion. And the numbers were simply not enough. Instead of the much vaunted declaration that there will be a 200,000 strong presence on Colombo’s streets to show the Pohuttuwas’s strength, not more than 40,000 showed up.

The first inkling that all was not well came from the horse’s mouth when chief organiser of the affair Namal Rajapaksa told the media in the afternoon that hundreds of thousands travelling in buses were still on the way to Colombo. Later in the evening Mahinda Rajapaksa, seated in his car and giving a voice cut repeated the same, word for word, declaring that hundreds of thousands travelling in buses were still on their way to Colombo. It was obvious that both son and father were unhappy with the turnout but to save face had to resort to such declarations to keep the façade that all was hunky dory and their so-called historic effort will go down in the golden annals of Lanka’s history as one that had been an immense success.  Instead what will be written, if at all, is that it was the greatest flop ever recorded.

Rajapaksa even went further to mask his disappointment by stating that the campaign to oust the Government will be carried out with a sathyagraha till the following morning.  We will be spending a sleepless night to achieve our objective. “Suddenly he had turned the party to an afternoon-to-dawn party.

Alas that only made matters worse. If the midday show was bad, the night time sathyagraha was a disaster. A few hundreds gathered near the Lotus Road junction and were ordered to sit down and light candles and keep a midnight vigil till the sun broke the nighttime darkness with its rays of light. But the candles blew out long before Rajapaksa hopes ever did. Mahinda Rajapaksa made a brief 10 minute appearance to give a short speech before vanishing into the darkness to mourn alone his grief that what his Janabalaya Colombata intended to show his strength had turned out to be one that revealed his weakness and left him naked to public humiliation. The crowd, too, instead of waiting from morn to break and see a Rajapaksa government in place, left early in disgust.

So what indeed was achieved on that so-called historic day? Nothing. It was nothing more than a wasted day and a wasted night in a nation’s life.

Nothing but to bring the city’s commercial life to a halt since most business places closed shop by 12pm and sent their employees home early. Nothing, but to close down schools early with the principals of the city’s schools declaring half day holiday so students could return safely to their homes.

Whilst Mahinda Rajapaksa continually claims that the economy is in shatters under this Government, he should not forget the fact that numerous campaigns he had held during these last three and a half years had also had its impact in investor confidence and that he himself has been a major contributor to the Government’s dismal economic performance not to forget of course the billions of dollar loans he took for which the present Government has to pay for. A typical case of one having to pay for another’s sins.

But Rajapaksa won’t take no for an answer. He wants to do it repeatedly. And spend millions and millions to repeat its folly in all the districts of the country and, for some curious reason  expose his falling popularity to the nation.

It’s not only love that is blind. Blind, too, is the lust for power.