They all did one thing well - what's that?
A good deal of cliché has been unearthed after the recent political rumpus that has been created by the new Alliance. Everybody is talking about signing on the dotted line, and about the lady who is looking good, and of shotgun marriages and the like.

So there is nothing like a good cliché to get your message across in these times. This is why when Vijitha Herath, the JVP's own pudgy version of the political everyman comes on television, you have to collect it all cliché by cliché -- because he really says nothing of substance when all is over.

He says the opposition is afraid of the new political alliance, which is why the opposition is talking about it all the time. When the subject of discussion is the new political alliance, the opposition can hardly talk about Rohana Wijeweera's beard. But this practicality is not important to Vijitha Herath.

But not that Vijitha Herath is being given very much by way of substance to meet either. The latest is that each party is damning the other for "corruption'' and "scandal.'' The way this works is fun. It is as if to say "as long as there was no corruption on our watch and there was corruption on your watch, we are happy.''

So in the end everybody is happy that there has been corruption. Nobody has been happier that the other side had been corrupt, because it gives them a handle to beat the other side to a pulp. So you should see the sheer ecstasy on Vijitha Herath's face when he says the other side was corrupt, or the sheer ecstasy on the face of one UNF lawyer who says the other side (the SLFP side in the alliance) was corrupt. The only thing they didn't say so far was "you should have (expletive) the masses more when your were in power -- that would have made us happier.''

Which of course brings us to that incidental point in all of these discourses - - they are not about the masses. We are waiting for the day in which these discussions are not window dressed - - but appear as what they are, which are party jousts in which the masses are only staring at the goldfish bowl and are not meant to be relevant in any way.

If the correct conditions are created, the truth will be well told. We are waiting for the day in which it will be actually possible for one party man to get there under the glare of the spotlights and actually say ''we cheated the people more subtly than you did -- therefore we are the better politicians by far.'' Even the moderator would scarce forbear to cheer at this point.

Of course somebody might turn around and say that the JVP has not been in government yet, but then getting into an alliance must probably be like marrying a whore. You have to keep making excuses all the time, probation period counted.

Karunasena Kodituwakku says of the new alliance 'we are watching it from the sidelines with a smirk on our faces.'' We have to throw that one right back at him. The masses are watching all of them including Kodituwakku the sidelines, with a smirk on their faces. That's until they take the remote control and turn the whole thing off halfway. And to think that Vijitha Herath thinks he owns the remote control…..

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