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TIMES POSTCARD
Give me your ears, ten more years
By Rajpal Abeynayake
"The President has the courage and strength to steer through the next ten years of her political life..'' Mahinda Rajapakse said this at a book launch at which the Lake House Chairman Janadasa Peiris launched a hagiography about the President. Nothing strange about that, because Mr. Peiris has been doting on the President for a long time now.

But isn't life unfair? Why did Mahinda Rajapakse have to bite the bullet if Janadasa Peiris wrote the hagiography?

It's something like a forced confession under third-degree interrogation. The sort of thing where the suspect wants to say he is innocent, but being immersed in three bags of chillie powder, he blurts out "I did it, I did it, and I will name my accomplices also.''

But imagine Rajapakse, a man who is running for President, keeping a straight face when saying "she has the courage and the strength to steer through the next ten years of her political life'' when all he wanted to say was "let her fade away for the next ten years or better, forever….'' And, imagine most of all, the audience keeping a straight face when he is saying all this? Time was when the PM had a raspy voice, which he could put to good use on occasion. It had a lot of bite and zing in it - and it's a voice that's he used to deploy deliberately on overdrive, with a lot of intended special effects, like the man who prepares kotth-rotti and bangs too hard, metal on metal, so that all the eaters know who is in charge at the restaurant……

But this raspy voice - - the Prime Minister's 'roar', is now gone. Instead the Prime Minster sounds these days like Jackie Chan on a visit to Chinatown -- completely jaded. How can a man have a raspy voice when he has to say things like "she can steer with courage and strength…" (read, "only if she has the courage to fade away''….) and also things like "maybe the Lake House Chairman can write another book about her…" (read, "the next book has to be about me not her, but if one thing is for sure, its not Janadasa Peiris who is going to write it….'').

But these are days when everybody is being forced to do what they do not like to do. Look at the US for instance. John Bolton the worst critic of the United Nations has been appointed America's representative to the UN. This is like posthumously appointing Hitler the patron saint of all Jews. Maybe god brought John Bolton into the world to be a living example of contra indications. Just look at his face. He has white hair and a jet black moustache. Or is it the other way round?

Either way it's like his line of work. He is the UN's worst critic, now working with the UN as its largest donor's representative. He must think: "If only I was the worst critic of the White House -- I could have become President. They never told me the rule of thumb for success -- that if you want something badly enough you have to abuse it like a pickpocket - then it will be yours''

So why is Mahinda Rajapakse complaining? Maybe if he criticises the Bandaranaike's badly enough, they will make him a honorary Bandaranaike. Right now, as things stand, Sunethra Bandaranike is third in line to the Presidency before Rajapakse - - and she is not even running for the job. If Rajapakse is made an honorary Bandaranaike, his son might tell him ''Father, you are now closer to the Presidency than when you actually ran for it.''

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