Columns

Last Sunday the nation’s lone political elephant made a grand appearance to a roaring welcome at a massive comeback rally held in Kuliyapitiya, after four long years in the wilderness, loitering on the outskirts of oblivion.

As it emerged from the forest fringes, it would have found the landscape vastly different, the territorial sweep it once commanded, usurped by a kindred herd who’d gone rogue. But in its gallant comeback stride, it held trunk high and trumpeted its resolve to reclaim lost ground.  Its very survival was dependent on it.  Could it pull the polls off was the real question that now stared in its face and stood poised on its lips.

In fact REALITY was the name, the theme, the signature tune that was unmistakably stamped on every facet of this reality show. From the dais to the gallery, from speeches that revived old emotions to the soul storming applause that followed, reality was confronted on many fronts.

The reality of the opposition’s solutions, the reality of political slogans shouted, the reality of fulfilling aspirations of a nation with home grown remedies spurred by faith in a Jewish Marxist messiah; and, above all, the inescapable reality of its own gnawing doubts if it could make a successful return to the uplands of power in this clime and mood. This was certainly a realistic question that, no doubt, resounded in the hearts and minds of all those present.

But when again those funny familial forgotten feelings, unfailingly began to rise in their collective minds at the manifestation of their leading light on centre stage, they could have been forgiven if they still believed in miracles. For here stood the man who epitomised in flesh and blood that nothing was impossible.

Ranil Wickremesinghe had taken his sabbatical leave not to mourn his party’s debacle in 2020 but to defend, in patriotic name, the fort of the political foe who had won the popular mandate.  From his seeming downfall, Fate had turned the tables and nothing could prevent his lone meteoric rise to the top. Good fortune had placed the elected crown on Ranil’s head but left him prisoner of his enemy’s chains.

COMEBACK: Ranil Wickremesinghe, flanked by UNP deputy leader Ruwan Wijewardene to his right and Akila Kariyawasam to his left, sit beneath the party’s towering elephant symbol and election theme ‘SABAWA’ or Reality.

But whilst in the SLPP camp, he had danced for his gruel and sung their anthem for his bread as lustily as he had sung the Thomian College song in the opposite Thomian tent last Saturday at the SSC grounds. As a student of ancient history, he, undoubtedly, knew that, when in Rome, to do as Romans do was best.

Now he was back. Taking a well-deserved break from his tightrope walk on the old burning bridge to address those who had remained loyal to the United National Party through thick and thin; and justify his twisted wayward ways of hunting with the hounds to his faithful old guard of hares.

He had returned not with the Golden Fleece to ascend the throne with divine ease but with a great store of credit pinned on his sleeve for breathing life into the comatose economy and earning timely IMF reprieve for the nation. At the forthcoming elections, it would be his biggest star point.

But what of the damning negative charge that he had not used his presidential powers to bring SLPP rogues to justice? That he had looked askance and let corruption thrive? He had – it must be said in all fairness – emphasised right at the outset, his only occupation on the president’s seat would be to set aright Lanka’s ‘economy, economy, economy’, and nothing else. The country’s social ills could wait. The man who had lost his own seat at the last election, knew the extent of his own brief as caretaker head of a government not his own.

This oft-repeated mantric chant, may not have charmed the spiraling snake of high living costs or corruption to coil right down to its basket but it certainly served to pull us back from the precipice’s perilous edge and restore a semblance of normality to day-to-day life.

A blind eye to corruption with the other focused on the economy, may, perhaps, have come in handy to squeeze grudging approval to enact unpopular financial bills from those who had constitutionally elected him to high office and held the reins of parliamentary power. With the economy foremost in mind, he hadn’t become President to play a policeman’s role.

As he said, in his speech last week, ‘I have left corruption to be dealt with by the laws of the land.’  Indeed, he has. ‘If an offence is committed,’ he said, ‘let action be filed in court. I have never tampered with the judiciary.’ Indeed, he hasn’t.

RANIL: Roaring welcome

But he has let SLPP Ministers and MPs freely roam down corruption’s road and done naught to stop them. Under his hawk-eyed watch that feigned to look askance, he has let a whole bunch of greedy men be inextricably entangled in a web of corruption they had spun for themselves.

He had not deterred them from their illegal acts but left them all to be publicly skewered and fried in the fat of their own sleaze. He had only followed Napoleon’s advice: ‘Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake’; and damned them in the public eye beyond the pale of redemption.

Thus triumphant did Ranil return to the UNP bosom to show how he, in his two-and-a-half-year odyssey abroad, had played the Trojan Horse in SLPP’s Troy and routed the enemy from within.

Or was it just sour grapes, as his detractors state, when the Rajapaksas seem to have denied him another lease of leash, determined to go down alone without borrowed feathers? Has he really escaped unscathed while trying to pull SLPP chestnuts out of the fire? His two contenders maintain he has emerged as men oft do when they lie down with mangy dogs.

But it is not the universally condemned SLPP nor the emerging JVP – which, though it has come a long way, still has a long way to go — that troubles him the most. It’s the Sajith-led SJB. The ‘bete noire’ of his political existence.

And it was for Sajith, who has repeatedly refused to return to the fold and come under his thumb, that he reserved the bulk of his vitriolic political venom in his maiden campaign speech last Sunday.

In a hard-hitting speech, he let off steam, declaring Sajith had become a puppet in the hands of former SLPP academic Professor G.L. Peiris who has crawled his way to the SJB fold. He referred to GL with the choice epithets of being Mahinda’s ‘sattambi rala,’ or king’s toilette cleaner and as ‘goda perakadoruwa’, or an unqualified lawyer giving Sajith advice.

He accused Sajith of ignoring party members’ advice and not answering his plea — made to all parties — to attend the all-party review of the IMF deal. Except Sumanthiran, none in the opposition did.

Yet in the end, his appearance on the UNP stage may have been more in the role of a parish priest coming to collect his tithe, and not to stay for good. Two and a half years as President, may have made him regard the UNP’s ramshackle jalopy as being road unworthy for a fast ride to power and he may now have his sights set on another’s sports Lotus.

As close associate Ravi Karunaratne said, they believed he would contest as a common candidate and not as one from a particular party. What’s meant for mankind, should not be for a few to exclusively own.

Perhaps, Basil summed up best when he said, he believed both the SLPP and the SJB had the organisation and people power to win the presidential election but not the candidate. The UNP has neither organisation nor people power to win but has the best candidate in Ranil. How wonderful it will be for the nation, if all these three factors could meet together under one same roof, he mused.

As things ironically stand at this moment, it appears that the SLPP is desperately searching for a most bankable candidate other than from their own stock, while the most bankable candidate is desperately seeking a party other than his own. Has Mr. Fix It come to iron out the details of a shotgun betrothal? Or will Sajith find himself under a Ranil presidency?

One question though: Will the UNP be left as the poor cuckolded spouse for the coming six years as well?

Brothers’ battle for limelight: Basil’s advent or Gota’s book?

No one can say for sure whether Basil’s return to Lanka’s sun-kissed shores to spend another brief stint to stir up SLPP hopes of a polls triumph was eclipsed by brother Gota’s new book, ‘Conspiracy’, his explosive damp squib?

Compared to Gota’s book, ‘Conspiracy’ — released two days later — which could well have been ghostwritten by famed ‘international conspiracy’ theoretician Weerawansa, and may possibly make Booker’s best work of fiction list this year, the bets had all been on Basil’s return with a new miracle stashed in his hand carried luggage. In SLPP’s starstruck eyes, he was the sure winner.

After all, nothing like the prospect of a miracle for all downhearted souls to add a funky stride to their step and put a pep to their pulse. Miracles do not die nor do they fade with passing years but eternally spring evergreen, even in Mahinda Rajapaksa’s breast.

He went early next morn to brother Basil’s home, anxious, no doubt, to discover what magic elixir the returning hero had brought this time from the United States to sprinkle on the party’s bud that obstinately refuses to bloom.

With the nectar elsewhere, Gota sat with his book alone at home, sulking. No party members made a beeline to his door nor did the Rajapaksa family publicly call. To be fair by them, let’s admit it, his book was as interesting as yesterday’s fish-wrapped newspaper, and he was bad news. The jinx in the family pack of cards, who had brought the house down.

At best, his book is nothing more than a paranoid account of how a gaggle of international conspiratorial geese had laid siege outside his door and quacked to oust him from presidential office; and how he had succumbed. He saw conspiracies hidden everywhere and, short of nature’s calls to the loo, in everything and everyone.

He saw an international conspiratorial hand in the confusion that reigned throughout police and army ranks, he saw the same hand behind the teachers’ strike for pay increases whilst Covid still raged; and says he saw, ‘strange things happen in the county’. In short, he was a victim of an international conspiracy. The spectre dogged his whole brief reign until at last, in despair, he caved in. But he did so only, as he, in humble modesty, explains, ‘to end the oppression of the people.’

As he writes in a press statement to plug his book: ‘What this book explains is the firsthand experience of an internationally sponsored regime change operation. As such I believe this book will be of interest not only to Sri Lankans but also to foreigners.’

It would have had, indeed. Had it contained names, venues, dates and facts to give credibility to his claims, it may have possessed some value and may even have become an international eye-opener. But, alas, bereft of all those essentials, it’s no better than a book by Weerawansa on the many international conspiracies he found lurking down Alice’s Wonderland.

At worst, his book is nothing but the confessions of a failure, who shabbily attempts to cover his palpable weaknesses by shifting the blame to unnamed powers and airily holds them as the anonymous architects of his downfall.

If discretion had been the better part of his valour or diplomatic niceties had forbidden him from exposing the whole truth or imagined threats of foreign conspiratorial white vans coming at night for him, should he completely blow the lid, had made him cringe in fear to hold his peace, far better if he had taken his secret to his grave than spinning in print a fantastic yarn to become the laughing stock of the world.

Had his book been titled ‘Mea Culpa’ or ‘through my fault’ and contained an honest account of the mistakes he made, and how he miserably failed, at least it would have been of some useful value to those wishing to avoid the same errors of judgement. Instead, by calling it ‘Conspiracy’ and filling the pages with unsubstantiated claims, he had added another pig’s breakfast to his already full plate of follies. Poor him.

By contrast, take brother Basil.  There he sits in his own gold lounge, peddling his miracles to all SLPP comers in the manner of a second-hand car salesman in the US selling life insurance as well. As he said in a TV interview on Thursday, ‘I’ll prefer a general election first for I can help many unlike a presidential poll where I can help only one.’ No wonder they are all at Basil’s door to sip from his fount of vote-restoring waters.

One question though: Will his exit from the island be as grand as his arrival?