It doesn't matter whether you have this kind of pap for breakfast or for dinner. This is the country's doctored talk show culture. When politicians are the moderators of news shows and commentaries, what passes off for analysis is only their own fogged and fuddled wishful thinking.

If the analysis is that the UNF government will not fall - then there is some merit in that one. The Swedish Academy has given Jimmy Carter the Nobel Prize, and the world is not quite in the mood for warmongers, bloodhounds and plain old Presidents on the rampage.

They simply do not want the old paradigm of Western backed 'conflict resolution' to disappear. In Sri Lanka they have found a docile country which is still trying to make peace the old- fashioned way, while in some other countries the leaders are asking for heads to roll - before you can say 'regime change.'

Nobody under these circumstances will want Sri Lanka's cosy Wickremesinghe - Balasingham applecart to be upset by the common political dynamics of democratic governance. One way or the other, they will ensure that Wickremesinghe stays on in power.

Ranil Wickremesinghe may have exhausted all his options. The 19th amendment is off because there are no numbers - whatever the breakfast and dinner pundits may say while you choke at the laughability of it all over your cereal or your fruit platter. Word of caution: I do not watch breakfast with Mr Partisan Political Animal, because I'd rather be in bed dreaming sweet dreams. Why talk about the "problem of cohabitation' if the numbers are there in parliament for the UNF to pass the 19th amendment? If the numbers are there for the UNF as Mr Breakfast says, (in his dinner chat show mind you - - when I say I do not watch his breakfast gig, I mean it… ) there is no "cohabitation problem' is there? Why is the need then to talk about 'cohabitation' until the cows come home?

If the UNF cannot get the numbers - and as Mr Breakfast's own newspaper said last week, is thinking of going for an election, then where does that place the UNF government?

By the way, isn't all of this so curious that you can split your sides laughing at what passes off for political analysis - and also laugh at the gullible nature of Sri Lankan viewers, if they indeed take Mr Breakfast and his newspaper to be the gospel on these matters. One week the banner headlines are that the UNF is going for an election, or at least something to that effect. Next week the oracle comes and announces at his dinner gig on the tube, that the UNF has the numbers to pass the 19th amendment, and that Rajitha is talking to the President next week because - well, they are feeling sorry for her!

If Ranil Wickremesinghe has exhausted all his options (an election at this time is also not possible for various reasons) what he can seek is accommodation with the Executive President. That is the political reality that Mr Breakfast who is foremost a political animal (how can you be a politician and a journalist at the same time anyway?) doesn't want to divulge, because he thinks if you are gung-ho about these things, the MPs are going to vote with the UNF anyway. Tell them there are numbers, and the numbers will materialize! Perhaps the UNF government can still survive if it is made very uncomfortable for the President to dissolve parliament.

Basically one can count on Prabhakaran to make sure that Mr. Wickremesinghe stays in power. Basically, the Jayewardene constitution has solved the North-East conflict by default, by making sure that the minority parties will decide at given time which Sri Lankan government is in power.

It is within the power of the SLMC and the TNA to decide that Ranil Wickremesinghe will remain in power, and to a considerable extent this will make the President's power to dissolve parliament quite irrelevant. What alternate government can she possibly install, without the active support of these two parties?

There are other elements in the equation too. The President has shown that she is not in a position to assiduously gather all the forces around her and attempt to form a new government. She is too piqued by the UNF's "success' to think straight. All she can attempt to do is to bring down the UNF by brute force - that is by dissolving the parliament and installing her own government, when she regains the power to do it after the UNF's year is up. (Brute 'constitutional' force it is.)

But, changing governments by brute force is almost impossible, when there has been a paradigm shift in Sri Lankan politics that has already taken place. The LTTE is basically 'in power' in Sri Lanka, ever since the Tamil National Alliance was formed, and the Tamil MPs in parliament declared the LTTE to be the sole representative of the Tamil people.

It is this pincer movement by Prabhakaran that seems to have nailed the war for good - and forced the Sri Lankan polity, whether for good or for ill, to consider peace on Prabhakaran's own terms. In the end, killing Neelan Tiruchelvam had more real value in it for Prabhakaran than overruning the Pooneryn camp. He has neutralized democratic Tamil opposition to him in the South, and sought to exploit the political advantage offered to him by the way the Proportional Representation clauses in the Jayewardene constitution places the minority parties in a position to make or break governments.

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