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Inauspicious
signs for Avurudda The mis-management, the inefficiency the nepotism, and the corruption -all part and parcel of Government will now begin. For starters, as we said last week, President Kumaratunga has effectively de-stabilised the country with last week's elections. Clearly, the mass of the people voted for her, at least those in the 'south', but what we have today is a minority government very much like Premier Dudley Senanayake's 1960 government that lasted just three months in office before another election had to be called. The JVP clearly recognises this anomaly in the election results and quite astutely has opted to field its second-string to fill the cabinet portfolios designated for the party. And not the least, after already having fired their first salvo at the President for appointing a Prime Minister who was not of their choice. Despite the euphoria of having defeated the Ranil Wickremesinghe government, the PA-JVP Alliance has had little to rejoice about. They fell eight seats short of a majority in Parliament and were forced to start chasing the minority parties straightaway to survive their first test - on April 22 when they elect the new Speaker to Parliament. Their complaint that the proportional representation system being unfair is natural, but were they, especially the JVP, to take a historical view of this complaint, they would have had zero seats in Parliament under the former system in all these years they rightfully used Parliament as the platform to build themselves up as a democratic political entity in the country. The PR system has its many flaws, but it still provides the Legislature with a fairly equitable distribution of seats in proportion to the votes received by any party. Attempts to throw away this system must not be to throw the baby with the bath water. The more frightening prospect of all however has been the break of hostilities in the East this week among the rival North vs. East factions in the LTTE. Our Defence correspondent last week predicted just this. That LTTE's now disputed leader Velupillai Prabhakaran will go get his Eastern commander Karuna no sooner the elections were concluded. This will no doubt be a fight to the finish, and Prabhakaran who is not new to this kind of cleansing his stables of renegades will be the likely victor unless some kind of 'divine intervention' comes to the assistance of Karuna. But the more significant aspect of this is Karuna's recent interviews where he categorically says that Prabhakaran who he knows best, is preparing for war - and taking everyone else for a ride. He says his difference with Prabhakaran, quite apart from the treatment of his Batticaloa fighters as second-class guerrillas, is that Prabhakaran wants war and he wants to work in some political framework. Our news story today says that the UPFA Government which even went to the extent of saying that the Ceasefire Agreement signed between Prabhakaran and former Prime Minister Wickremesinghe is illegal, is still valid. But as our defence correspondent says this week on the opposite page there is continued feet-dragging by the incumbents of the defence establishment with no aim and no target in the midst of the shooting that has started in the LTTE-controlled East. The signs are indeed inauspicous for the Aluth Avuruddha. We can only wish the people of Sri Lanka good luck and hope for the best. |
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