There are two countries, but where are they?
In the new rendition Romeo and Juliet, the Capulets give their son Romeo a deadline. He has to not just call off any liaison with Juliet, if he does not produce her corpse before the 15th of June midnight, they will quit as his parents.

The JVP wanted the President not merely to have nothing to do with the idea of a tsunami mechanism with the LTTE. They also wanted the P-TOMS in corpse form. They wanted her to say the idea is dead before it was born.

It brought out the Red Adiar in Chandrika. She decked herself up in fire-fighter crimson, wore a bulging pendant and tore into the innards of the JVP political machine -- which is now sans ministerial seats and sans their pliant media.

It was a thorough one-woman show, to the greatest extent at least up until Amunugma and Maithripala Sirisena gave some side support as relief firemen with extremely low-pressure hosepipes…..
What would have been an almost boring administrative exercise, has been now made into an epic political showdown that will determine which forces are winning: the liberal international backed forces of appeasement, or the nationalist fringe of political wannabes ie: hyper nationalists on the make.

With Cecille B. De mille gravitas, the newspapers have already cast the show as a national watershed event. The issue will define the future of Sri Lanka, they say, and it will decide not just who leads the country next (…the Walauwwa Bandaranaikes or the party apparatchiks of the Red and angry left..) but also into which exact slot the country will fall (…failing-state doing a frenzied last-stand against the international agent provocateurs and their proxies the Liberation Tigers, or a country with a half chance as an economic force which is nevertheless running the risk of being divided and ruled under the diktat of foreign powers and their agents.)

Kumaratunge’s show after the JVP quit her alliance gave the JVP a window from which to assess its future. Somanwansa Amarasinghe wants Chandrika Kumaratunge like he wants a rash on his face. He left an opening for her in his speech however, when he said ‘’its not the last alliance that the JVP will have with the SLFP.’’

Kumaratunge lambasted the JVP, and then she crept half through that opening, when she said “we want them to come back.’’ Its difficult to see such a robust President fade out of the limelight, taking all her Wallauwa like semi-cute people friendly public relations smarts with her to retirement in some foggy quarter at the bottom of London’s roadmap.
This is the JVP’s biggest worry also: will she or won’t she really truly quit?

Last week in this space this writer mused that none of the major actors in this drama are poised to really truly quit. Many of the openings that they have left for a future reconciliation seem to confirm this situation. How is this as a love spat, a tentative separation -- there is no decree nisi granted on this divorce?

However, Kunmatunge’s constitutional maneuverings have been forestalled because even the one person who would swear by them Jayampathy Wickremeratne seems to have told her that the only way she can constitutionally maneuver herself into remaining in power is if she becomes Imelda Marcos and throws all democratic nicety into the dustpan, and takes to wearing too many shoes for her own good – one pair each day to boot out her opponents.

But in a country in which the next potential candidates for power are candle flames in contrast to Chandrika’s solar powered charisma-quotient, is it likely that a healthy robust and sanguine -- and I daresay still physically pleasant leader (I take a bow here to the Sunday Leader’s sub-Editors who insist on publishing her bad-hair-day photographs…) will pass on the mantle to a less than mediocre successor who is bound to reverse her legacy -- whatever her legacy is?

Its more likely that Kumaratunga will position herself as Lee Kwan Yew like elder statesperson, who works the levers of power through a puppet of the political supporting-actor variety such as Rathnasiri Rajapakse or even Dilan Perera??

She seems to have a personal stake in doing that. Some others will think that the country has a personal stake in making her do that.
The political establishment feels that the JVP having staked their claim to power and got in the door in the manner of the barbarians who breached the outer wall, and are now positioning themselves for that last vault into becoming the paramount political force in the country.

This they feel is the end of the country. When this writer asked Somawansa Amarasinghe “there is a view that the JVP is contributing to one of the worse economic slumps in the country with its pre emptive destabilizing political tactics,’’ and fobbed off the questions with the line “Kawada mewatta wagakiyanne’’ a titter ran through the room, and Amarasinghe self consciously smirked and tentatively replied “if this document is signed, we have to talk of the economies of two countries.’’

But, the South seems more worried about the two countries within the one country that’s the South of Sri Lanka – the one led by the forces of the working class and peasantry who are knocking at the door of power and are hoping to overhaul the elite led political culture that has been the dominant instrument of governance in this country since even before independence.

So, when writers frame the discourse for you today in terms of “this is her most important political decision - - whether she is going to oppose the obscurantist forces within her own party and open a channel to the impossible LTTE’’ what they are in fact thinking without saying it out loud is “will she beat these JVP hicks who are trying to upset the applecart and take our comfortable realties down with them?’’

Some analysts will perhaps say that there is nothing wrong with yearning for some of those comfortable realities. Compromising to the diktat of foreign provocateurs and their proxies the LTTE, sometimes, is expedient. But, they will ask -- is expediency always a bad word?
Certain compromises, such as the tsunami mechanism with the LTTE, the political establishment feels, is going to buy the country stability, and economic survival. In crude terms, this is the ability to live to fight another day - - or even more cynically put, to live to run another day. …

They feel the JVP is ham-handedly and with hick’s finesse trying to upset this last chance. They see Chandrika Bandaranaike, however unlikely she is to aspire to that position, as the Mahathir or Yew like elder-statesperson, who can effectively countervail these forces - - even in semi-retirement, by pulling considerable strings from somewhere behind her embroidered and retired sari pota.

They want Red Adiar Chandrika in other words and not so much a walrus mustachioed pretender successor who hated those JVP hicks and now wants to compromise with them. At least they have excited themselves, by seeing the discourse framed in these terms - - this is the un-stated reality for a good section of the viable political elite.

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