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TIMES POSTCARD
Speaking to the chattering classes
By Rajpal Abeynayake
The President sounds like a housewife, maybe a schoolteacher, maybe a matron (some say a village voice, whatever that means) but she is in most people's eyes, not seen as a politician.

She has the manner of the walauwa madam ordering around the fishmonger - - or of the lamatheni regaling the konde bendampu cheena with a tale…..
Her delivery last week was that and more.
She said 'if they want they can go', and without wasting for the applause line, she went right ahead to say "there are more folks in my party who are interested in killing me than Prabhakran is.”

All this sounds much more septic -- pithy -- in the Sinhala. She not only plays raconteur, but gets the audience to play the foil also, by asking "Isn't that so?''….

Her saree was appropriately yellow. Her performance was therefore an approximation of a modern bana, even though the diction was not quite that of a Buddhist monk. But she created the suspense and made it sound all serious enough for the politicians to take it seriously….. which brings us to the point at which we began with. Is she a politician or a schoolteacher/a windbag??

Her manner is that of a schoolteacher, which is why it makes her the most consummate of all politicians that exist in this land - 'a speaker with a kink', like Muralitharan with the doosra.

Ranil Wickremesinghe gets by all his life by being one person -- Chandrika knows how to keep people guessing in which mode she is -- schoolteacher, fisherwoman, or female Superintendent of Police.

She presents a saucy all-in-one in contrast to Wickremesinghe's one size fits all. Or in contrast to Wimal Weeerawansa's knock-the-garage-door-down bomb oratory. (You can also call it mob oratory, or just choose whichever is more evocative…..)

So if Weerawansa uses all the tricks in the book to mesmerise his audience - - Kumaratunge uses all the tricks outside the book not to mesmerise, but to get her message across.. I bet she chooses her saree colour accordingly - - and in this, she has the advantage, because Weerawansa can't exactly go out there in maroon and beige. J. R Jayewardene used to pretend to be tone deaf when he wanted to convey certain things -- but Chandrika Kumratunge takes that one better and reasons that it pays sometimes to pretend that the audience is tone deaf. And dumb too -- in every sense.

But that way she ensures one thing, as that famous Arthur Miller character says in his best play. Which is: "attention must be paid.'' It has the Janatha Vimukthi Permuna not only paying attention - - but finally, paying pooja.

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