UNF turns tables on the PA and lame-duck President

To this end, the JVP and PA are making a rather ludicrous display. It's pathetic because half the PA wants to join the government.

But the obduracy of the PA and the JVP is such that it is sure to be counter productive to the two parties at least in the short term. Chandrika Bandaranaike and the JVP are in a moribund embrace. 

The UNF's peace efforts are another matter - but the fact remains that the party has managed to win the confidence of the people. In these circumstances, the wise thing for the opposition would be to offer the UNF a breather.

But, the Chandrika doctrine is now being stood on its head. Chandrika Kumaratunga lives by rumour and intrigue, but the canards she is spreading now on the UNF are seen to boomerang on her with rapid velocity.

This column has no intention of being oracle, but there is all possibility that Chadrika Kumaratunga will be politically considered a liability of the electorate at the rate she is being disruptive. The duty of the opposition is to oppose, but to creating roadblocks for petty purposes is not sanctioned in any book on parliamentary democracy.

In short, Chandrika Kumaratunga is Ranil Wickremesinghe's best ticket to popularity and a long political life. Strange considering that Ranil Wickremesinghe some time back had only himself to blame for the UNP's political defeats.

But the pendulum has swung back with vehemence. The local poll result is one sign, but the fortunes of the PA cannot be resurrected for a long time to come, and this is what is making the PA think-tanks want to commit political suicide.

In the process, the PA is losing all its political instinct. The PA is becoming the party that's losing all its moorings both nationally and internationally. Internationally, it is becoming a pariah in the eyes of the not very trustworthy Western liberal intellectual leaders.

But that would have been tolerable, if the PA was also not losing vast repositories public faith and confidence reposed in it. For being ineffectual, the PA is also losing the loyalty of those who are against the current UNF led peace process.

They see the PA as public enemy, not just because Chandrika launched the peace process, but because the party is seen to be prevaricating too much on the issue. This the PA necessarily has to do if it is to survive politically. There is no way that the President can Veto the peace process.

But the Sinhala lobby acts as if she can do it — but is somehow too weak and unwilling. You could say she is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't , but the fact is that the President could have taken a political breather, and stayed aloof of all current political developments, thus enabling her to come out of these recent scrapes with at least some measure of her dignity intact.

But the President knows not the art of the breather. If she was a rugby center forward, she would have hogged the shows at lemons. Perhaps the rugger analogy is not apt, but perhaps it is close, considering that the political situation that the PA is in now is like a rugger scrum gone mad. 

Mr. Wickremesinghe went out to win the elections. But because of Chandrika Kumaratunga, he may now even end up winning on the peace score – at least because the antipathy towards Kumaratunga is such that the LTTE would see nothing better than to see her licking her wounds. For Kumaratunga, that will be a fate worse than death by assassination.