POLITICAL SKETCHBOOK                  by Rajpal Abeynayaka  

Incredibly, UNF says the President is not credible
Chandrika Kumaratunga says that the people should give her a massive majority, or else if they are giving a slender one, then give it all to the UNF.

Without any majority at all Chandrika Kumaratunga dissolves parliament. I wonder what she will do with a "massive majority.'' Dissolve the parliament building?

Or might she not dissolve Ranil Wickremesinghe in a vat of acid - and then say that he wanted it done in the first place?
But first Chandrika Kumaratunga will make a promise that she will do no such thing. Ask her -- there is no thrill in breaking a promise without making one.

But seeing that the UNF will continue to trust her we need to find the genesis of this problem. WJM Lokubandara says the whole problem is "we trusted her'' not to dissolve parliament. But he and his colleagues said there was a breach of trust when she went back on the written undertaking given to the JVP to get rid of the Executive Presidency.

They said "we shouldn't have trusted her when she promised to appoint Mark Fernando Chief Justice and the very next minute appointed Sarath Silva instead.'' No wonder Lokubandara is soon becoming the ex-Minister of Justice. There is a concept in the law that says there is no liability in the case of voluntary exposure to imminent danger. Volunti non fit injuria, it is. Maybe Lokubandara might remember it departing the Ministry of Justice. Don't bang that door too hard on your way out... The great imponderable is why the UNF became so gullible? In other words, the question is, how many suckers makes up a UNF Cabinet?

But, the secret of it lies probably elsewhere. There are so many lies the UNF parroted out- and they still think the people believed them, right? When they said that LTTE's killing of informants is not a ceasefire violation, that it will be taken care of by the normal law of the land, the UNF got used to the idea that even damned lies are meant to be believed.

The concept got stuck in so hard in their heads, now they believe their own lies. And they even believe the lies of the President. As the UNF thinketh, so it has become.

So the UNF tells the people "believe us - we believed her.'' When they say, as Lokubandara says "believe us we believed her,'' the first 'believe' rises to a high register. He says - plaintively - "believe us, we believed her. '' Poetic isn't it?

When the UNF was lying about the informants they thought the people were naive, they would believe them. Now, they want the people to believe they were naïve -- so naïve they believed the President. Methinks they were naive to believe the people were naïve. But they were still more naive to think that the people are going to believe they were naive which is why they believed the President.

We don't know these days whether the UNF is lying or being naive. It is hard to tell the difference - maybe we should request them to raise their hands up each time they are being naïve only and not being both naïve and deceitful. But the following can be said of the UNF: It is easier to make gullibles of the naïve. Just what they thought they could do with the people - and were naïve enough to believe it…


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