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Why beards are not politically correct
By Rajpal Abeynayake
We do not have blood on our hands, the President said, now back in aggressive mood. You hold hands with someone who has blood on his hands, what do you get? Blood on your hands. It's a physical sort of thing. Matter spreads and percolates, and for sure, if you hold hands with somebody who has blood on their own, you are bound to end up with crimson palms too. She has something against beards also these days.

Lalkantha is one of those people the President characterises as having blood on his hands. He says subsidies are alright, and it is his party that wants to revamp all the tanks in the rural sector, The President does not want to go for this tank-campaign inauguration at all. She has said she is particular busy days and that's before she left to stare at a new office complex premises for the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

She has been told that the SLFP soon will have to build an office, because an office will be the only thing that the SLFP will have to show for its existence pretty soon. She needs a new office complex to find new insults to harangue the JVP with. She probably needs a new office complex also to evolve a new brand of political science.

The good old days, it seems, when she started politics, governments used to fight an opposition. But who thought bearded politicians (who are not Muslims) will be turning the country upside down. Who thought that the government will become the President's chief opposition. Lalakantha may appear on television aiming his missiles at Ranil Wickremesinghe but it is Lalakanatha who had a beard, and Ranil Wickremesinghe who is clean-shaven. Ranil Wickremesinghe is not only clean-shaven he is also lilywhite. But he is not like Lalkanatha or Bimal Ratnayake who will argue with the President word for word. Ranil Wickremesinghe will only finger his blazer and "why did you do this?" (or that?)

But when you have blood on your hands you cannot be so genteel. They do not have names like Ranil Wickremesinghe either. KD Lalkantha. It sounds like the name of a hardware store not music at all to the ears of a President who is the picture of gentility, when she is not using the colorful language that she picked up those days at the Attanagalle fish market.Losing to Ranil Wickremesinghe is one thing. Losing to Lalakantha is different.. That's what the mother said too when she lost to Premadasa. Losing to J R Jayewardene is one thing it's a kosher kind of blow. But losing to Premadasa from Jinthupitiya she never quite recovered from that blow.

So these days she is devoting her energies full time to those who wear read headbands, grow beards and have names that sound like hardware stores. She must be mooning for the days when those who wore red bands and beards had names like Bernard Soysa (how very unlike a hardware store that name) or even Vasudeva Nanayakkara. Can't remember he complaining of beards at that time.

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