Columns

In these days of gloom and doom in Sri Lanka and Britain where a tiny ray of sunshine is so welcome and the sound of laughter enlivens life, a message I received from Colombo a few days ago was sweet music to the ears.

It said that President Sirisena announced he is writing a book which will be released by January 9, the day he begins another year in the presidency. One must surely be proud to have a man of letters as the country’s president.

How many countries can boast of having a head of state who can turn out a book in a month or so in the midst of multiple chores including such weighty matters as having to decide who should run the nation and how.

There are those who say the only thing the President can write is a gazette notification and there have been several such epistles to the government printer in recent weeks. Remember the one about dissolving parliament and holding new elections.

The less said about it the better since seven wise judges are studying it — but not for its literary merits or stylistic features. While the learned judges turn their minds to the constitution, dissolution and elections, I read in awe  President Sirisena’s announcement that he intends turning his talent from gazette writing to books.

Not that I doubted President Sirisena’s ability to turn his gazette-writing talent to something more expansive, and encompass his knowledge in 500 pages as he apparently wants to do.

I don’t think it is fair to downgrade the President, as some so often do as Mr Sirisena himself admits, calling him a grama sevaka, a farmer and other names. After all, what is wrong in being a farmer?  Was it not Robert Knox who said that if a Sri Lankan farmer is taken from the field and given a good wash, he would be fit to be a king?

Now I doubt whether being a king these days does much good unless one is the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia who can order one or two things to be done which members of other Royal families cannot or would not. But that’s another story.

The book that the President's daughter wrote

Personally, I don’t doubt President Sirisena’s ability to churn out a book or two in the next six weeks or so. They can be so useful, especially, if he is planning to go for a second term.

Okay, okay I know what you will say. He is a man who seemed to have abhorred the idea of going through the inauguration process a second time and promised to pack his suitcase and go back to Polonnaruwa where he could add his name to the list of kings who ruled the place.

There have been many who have asked whether one could trust someone who blatantly breaks one of the main pledges he gave the people at election time in 2015.

But, then, cannot a man change his mind? Even those umpires at cricket matches used to do so quite often, not because they were fixing matches, but simply because they changed their minds.

Whether match-fixing, as some claimed, or not, the ICC put an end to that by having a third umpire and all that jazz.

So why should not politicians change their minds and decide to hang on to the position, especially if it allows the head honcho to travel the world often with family in tow, all at state expense?

There are 193 states/nations in the world today (at least there were yesterday) and it is not easy to visit all of them in just five years. I mean if one stopped over in Colombo just to change one’s suitcase before heading off elsewhere, it still would take more than five years.

As someone once said, travel broadens the mind; so why not make certain that one’s progeny broaden their minds, too, whatever there is of it.

Anyway, to get back to the political impasse in Sri Lanka, President Sirisena said at some event last week: “Today I saw the UNP debating without the government in parliament. They were treating me like a plaything.”

Hang on for a moment. How can anybody debate if there is no one to debate with? Who asked the ‘government’ to boycott the sittings? If the ‘government’ side absents itself from the sittings of its own free will, then who should accept responsibility for it?

The President has said he will write the book referred to earlier, on the subject of his failed political marriage with his Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. He said for 3 ½ years or so he had tried to make it work but could not.

I was reminded of the words of Shakespeare in one of his sonnets:

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds  

Admit impediments. Love is not love  

Which alters when it alteration finds,  

Or bends with the remover to remove…”  

So the President has given warning that he will disclose the details of his political marriage with the UNP that brought him to the presidency by defeating the incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa.

It would, of course, round up the political story if he added a few pages on what he said about Mahinda Rajapaksa during the election campaign and thereafter. Mr Sirisena was among those who castigated Mr Rajapaksa accusing him and his inner circle of corruption, fraud and a host of other crimes.

But, today, he has entered into another marriage hoping that he could continue to warm the presidential seat for another five years and a decree nisi will not be slapped on him.

As the Bard says in the sonnet quoted above “Love is not love/ Which alters when it alteration finds”.

Emails and messages that have been in circulation ridiculing President Sirisena, asking, among other things, “who will ghost-write his book?” Personally I have no idea; but this attempt to downgrade the President’s capabilities is unfair. It more than implies that he cannot write his own story.

Yet it cannot be denied that literary talent runs in the family. Not too long ago Maithripala Sirisena’s daughter Chathurika wrote a book on her father called Janadhipathi Thaththa (Presidential Father). Here is the proof, if proof be needed that the Sirisenas can write.

When I happened to mention this to one of  those who contacted me to desecrate our president, he replied, saying daughter Chathurika did not write the book, that it was ghost-written by somebody called Sachini Navarathne.

Well it is difficult to believe such allegations unless one has irrefutable evidence not just suspicions. After all, we are talking of the presidential family though not the First Lady.

So now President Sirisena is readying himself to tell it all. He is prepared to throw bell, book and candle at his former prime minister. That sure should provide exciting reading.

What would really stir the pot would be if Wickremesinghe and his UNP colleagues are also collecting and collating information that would splatter mud all over Sri Lanka’s political world.

Who knows where the mud would stick and on whom? Would they be facts, fiction or spin that even our respected Muralitharan would not be able to match on a turning wicket? The President said recently that he does not believe in the politicians in Sri Lanka. Well, the President, who has been a politician for several decades, surely knows best. But then the people already know that.

Speaking to members of the Foreign Correspondents’ Association, the President is reported to have stated that even if the UNP has the majority, he has told the UNP not to bring Ranil Wickremesinghe before him.

But, then, I read somewhere a couple of days ago that Sirisena was to have a tête-à-tête with Ranil Wickremesinghe. If that is true then all this is a grand hoax. We must be ready for an acrimonious battle of words before all this ends — hopefully without bloodletting.