Political Column

Political Column

By a special correspondent

Hakeem ups the ante - says 'catch me if you can'

'Athaullahs may appear, Athaullahs may disappear but I go on forever.' That's about the slogan that SLMC leader Rauff Hakeem is using the days, but what are slogans but statements of intent? What has Rauff Hakeem done in the concrete to ensure that Athaullahs may come and Athaullahs may go -- but that he goes on forever?

Anti- climaxing is hard

Sometimes, there is so much intrigue in Sri Lankan politics that when an anti climax comes it really hits the actors hard.

It happened last week. Minister Ravi Karunanayake had been queried about a golf course in the suburbs of Colombo for which he says land was alienated by the PA government. But it was the President under whom the PA government which did this alienation, who was querying.

But the President loves to take the wind off the sails of the UNF, and this is exactly what was done last week. She never arrived for the cabinet metting on Friday, even though her detractors were spoiling for a fight and had researched all the material to give the President as good as they get.

The President has also alleged that the UNF had devised a new and dangerous way of practising patronage politics. Minister Rajitha Senanrtne, no mean lover of Presidential bashing, she said, had contrived a land alienation bill with which land can be alienated with Ministerial approval.

Earlier, this has been the prerogative of the President and therefore, the President said there is a sinister motive behind this move to alienate state land to UNF supporters and henchmen in return for political favours granted.

The President as if to give the message to the UNFers that she is concerned with weightier things, was concentrating on picking holes in the UNFs relations with the Norwegians, and elicited a response from the Norwegian embassy that Norway was only acting at the request of the Sri Lankan government on the matter of the VoT radio.

Well placed civilian sources say that Shantha Kottegoda is the man that the UNF establishment relies on to keep the army on an even keel, even as the Prime Minister publicly took a shot at the army top brass for 'waging war over the newspapers and thereby jeopardising the peace process.'

To many analysts this seemed to be the week that the simmering feelings of mutual antipathy between the Wickremesinghe administration and some sections of the army came to a head. This is not to say that there was a full frontal confrontation between the government and the army, but there has been more talk of armed forces reform - - and all of that has now been given a very vocal punch by the Prime Minister by his saying that the army should not wage its battles over the newspapers. You can't say that the Prime Minister has declared war on the army, but you could say that he has sought to give the army a very serious warning call.

The story is that he launched a two pronged media blitz. One is that he grabbed every media opportunity that came his way, appearing on television and making his voice heard in all ways imaginable.

But, in a subtle way, the UNF media machine has been at work, and who is to say this has not been at the behest of Rauff Hakeem? Athaullah and his men have been finding to their chagrin that their newly acquired celebrity status is no more. It is by now well known even to a man from Mars that the media is by and large owned and commandeered in this day and age by UNF faithfuls.

So it did not take Hakeem much time to ensure that the media portrays his version and blots out that of Athaullah almost completely.

The so called Athaullah faction therefore was not so bravefaced as it used to be, and therefore, last week two or three Athaullah faction movers were seen lurking at a tea party that was thrown by the Prime Minister to all those who were present at Temple Trees to wish him well for the New Year.

One of those present was Mr A.J.M. Muzammil who has been a great mover and shaker on behalf of this faction , being also well endowed with finances so that he can usually outsmart most without this kind of financial advantage. But even he was not able to buy too much media support for his faction which all seemed to be commandeered by Mr Hakeem.

Mr Hakeem was not just hogging the media, but he was also playing a very calculated game in which he positioned himself as being against the UNF leadership for not taking the SLMC too seriously. He said if this trend continues, it will strengthen the hands of those particularly in the East who are working overtime to wreck the peace process.

To Muzammil and his other Athaullahites, the tea party was more of a public relations exercise, and they could not elicit the advantage that they expected from it with the Prime Minister, except to give the Prime Minister the message that they have not yet counted themselves out of his book.

Latterly Hakeem has been coming in for a good deal of flack from party insiders and outsiders on what is perceived as the personality factor. The first person to put the finger on this was Ferial Ashraff who said that she will certainly have not expected her husband to behave in this

way which was not good for the unity of the party. Ashraff would have held the party together was the general refrain after that.

Someone recently asked Hakeem whether he has not learnt any lesson from Gamini Dissanaayke. Gamini Dissanyake left the UNP, launched a notorious impeachment campaign against the president and almost brought down the government of the day.

However, within a month of his return to the UNP ranks, he had brought everybody within the fold including the wife and son of the man whom he tried to impeach. Asked whether he cannot do a similar neutralisation of the Athaullah faction, Hakeem pondered and said 'sometimes you need to wield the big stick too - -and you need to send out a different message.''

Hakeem also predicts that the forthcoming round of talks in Thailand will be the toughest yet because of the issue of the high security zones. Even though Defence Secretary Austin Fernando tried to paper over the issue by saying that the LTTE has not asked that the high security zones be removed, it was clear by the end of the week that the issue of the HSZs will be the toughest yet of all the issues to face the negotiators.

But, Hakeem was not the only one who was bracing for a fight. The entire Dinesh Goonewardene lobby of (by now ineffectual) protectors of the Sinhala identity were gearing up a campaign to keep the North and the East separate. And there were agitations in other quarters about a Tiger movie being released. Apparently this was not the first movie that was released by LTTE Pproductions Inc., Actually it was the tenth, but it was also coming close on the footsteps of 'In the name of the Buddha' which was a movie that got the goat of many Sri Lankans living abroad for instance as it is supposed to have been done under LTTE agency.

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