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President Anura Kumara Dissanayake awoke on Friday morn to find the country painted red, and that he had been thrust with a thumping two third majority in Parliament much against his wishes.

After casting his vote on Thursday morn, President Dissanayake told the media: “We do not want a two-thirds majority. A strong Parliament will suffice. A two-thirds majority is expected to enact laws detrimental to the people. In 2010, the then government obtained a two-thirds majority and enacted the 18th Amendment to the Constitution by repealing the 17th Amendment. In 2020, the 20th Amendment was introduced by repealing the 19th Amendment under a two-thirds majority. The political forces used a two-thirds majority to enact laws that violated people’s democratic rights. Such a clamour for a two-thirds majority belongs to a different political camp.”

But whether he fancied it or not, the sovereign people of Sri Lanka had endowed him with the power, which J.R. Jayawardene in 1978 described as the “power to do whatsoever one wished, except make man a woman or woman a man.” With such absolute trust and confidence placed upon his shoulders by the people, in expectations of a ‘Rich country, a Beautiful Life’ to be delivered as promised in his manifesto, a greater burden of responsibility must occupy his mind as he faces the challenges ahead.

THE PRESIDENTIAL SIGN: President Anura Kumara shows the typical Churchillian V for Victory hand sign, after casting his vote at Thursday’s elections

The epicentre of the brewing economic storm is the crucial IMF agreement, which he has promised to renegotiate in Lanka’s favour, and the looming threat of the Damocles Sword that is arrayed to fall in three years’ time should Lanka fail to start repaying her debt to international creditors. No doubt, the powerful mandate he has received from the people will strengthen his hand and stand him in good stead at the negotiating table.

The NPP’s election result of 141 seats from 22 districts was further boosted by the addition of 18 seats received through the national list to clinch a commanding 159 seats in the House, enabling the party to obtain a two-thirds majority in Parliament.

Caretaker Prime Minister Harini set a new personal record of gaining from Colombo, the highest number of preferential votes amounting to 655,289, thereby toppling Mahinda Rajapaksa’s record of 527,364 won in Kurunegala in 2019. Alas, this record was shattered a few hours later when Gampaha district’s preferential results revealed fellow Minister Vijitha Herath had won a record-breaking 716,715 votes.

Nevertheless, the astounding result leaves parliamentary power completely in the unbeholden hands of the ruling party. And any outside force will be at its mercy, for it possesses the unlimited power to legislate the conduct of all branches of the State.

In the Colombo district, the NPP claimed 14 seats while the SJB bagged the remaining four, with none to the Ranil-led NDF. Out of the four, Sajith Premadasa, followed by Harsha de Silva, Mujibur Rahuman, and S. M. Marikkar, gained entry to Parliament.

In the Kalutara district, NPP’s Nalinda Jayatissa secured the highest preferential votes, with the party gaining eight seats. SJB’s Ajith Perera and Jagath Vithana won a seat each in the House. Apart from a lone seat to NDF candidate Rohith Abeygunawardena, who crossed over from the SLPP to Ranil’s alliance before the presidential election, SJB turncoat Rajitha Senaratne, who had followed suit, failed, along with Vidura Wickemanayake, to secure a place in Parliament.

In the Gampaha district, the NPP’s Vijitha Herath topped the list of 16 party members who had secured the seats in parliament. The remaining three were bagged by SJB’s Harshana Rajakaruna, Kavinda Jayawardana, and Amila Prasad.

There was no sequel to ‘One Shot’ movie actor Ranjan, who flopped dismally at Gampaha’s box office when his United Democratic Voice remained unheard by the masses. A thoroughly disappointed Ranjan, who had played the leading role—who else?—blamed in one shot the deaf masses when he borrowed an Imran Khan quote to arrogantly declare, “My people need to be educated to hear my voice’.

In the Kurunegala district, a dozen NPP candidates laid legitimate claim to enter Parliament while the SJB’s Nalin Bandara, Dayasiri Jayasekera, and J.C. Alawathuwala did the same. In the Kandy district, Lal Kantha ruled the NPP roost to secure, with eight other comrades, seats in Parliament. Muslim Congress leader Rauff Hakeem, representing the SJB, as well as SJB Kiriella’s daughter Chamindrani Kiriella, stepping into her retired father’s shoes and contesting under the SJB banner, secured their seats in Parliament. So did Anuradha Jayarathne, the lone NDF candidate.

Military forces and the police went on high alert as Thursday morn broke out as 17 million people headed to their polling stations to cast their ballots for the party of their choice and share amongst the candidates of that party their three preferential votes. Despite the Met Office issuing a weather advisory warning of the country being deluged with rain in the afternoon, the weather gods, however, held their peace.

The Election Commission had announced that a total of 8,888 candidates were contesting in 22 districts to win the race to Parliament. With only the first 225 runners who passed the post gaining entry to the winners’ enclosure, thousands of broken hearts will be found littering the track to Diyawanna Oya.

Indeed, there were. Many notable names found they had been ignominiously rejected by the people, given short shrift at the elections. Former SLPP’s hatchet man Mahindananda Aluthgama received the chop. So did fellow party candidate Kanchana Wijeysekera, who had also jumped likewise from the SLPP to the Ranil-led alliance, received his comeuppance.

ITAK partner, TNA’s attorney-at-law Sumanthiran, who had fought many Supreme Court battles on behalf of the people, also found to his dismay that the people’s verdict had gone against him at the polls.

But while many top guns had been flattened by the NPP steamroller, one lone NDF candidate had miraculously escaped being crushed. Rohitha Abeygunawardena, who had betrayed his self-proclaimed allegiance to Mahinda Rajapaksa and staked his lot with Ranil Wickremesinghe—as his mother had advised him, for a mother knows best—to contest from his alliance, the NDF. He had wept in public, unashamedly wiped away the falling tear, at the imminent prospect of certain defeat at the general elections. Yet he had proved that gold, not diamonds, is forever, and is still the sure-fire way to win people’s hearts. He hadn’t been wrong. Raththran Rohitha had remained a people’s best friend.

Whereas Namal’s pathetic plea to the people to vote for the SLPP out of heartfelt sympathy and Ranil’s call to the masses, before the presidential elections, to vote for him out of a deep sense of gratitude for restoring a semblance of normalcy so soon after Lanka’s economic collapse, fell flat on stony hearts.

Rohitha’s win-or-die dash to Diyawanna’s Parliament was ably assisted by his Kalutara electorate’s grateful people, who crept through party lines or waded across party banks to cast their non-partisan votes on this ‘raththran’ man to duly enable him to pip the Parliamentary post.

To paraphrase the biblical line, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither is pride of place to men of skill, nor gold to the most deserving but bribery and corruption will  happen to them all.

In the countdown to one of the drabbest and most uninspiring of elections ever seen in recent years, coming fast on the heels of September’s presidential elections, where a people’s long-starved appetite for a change of scene had been fed to excess and still remained fully satiated having feasted on a surfeit of lies from various political quarters, it is of little wonder that the nation had monotonously voted for the NPP to further strengthen their hand to fulfill the promises they had made before the general elections, leaving them no excuse for failure. The people had answered their call. It was left to the government to deliver.

Lo and behold! The Age of Renaissance had dawned on the hastily drawn new cultural map of Lanka, when it became suddenly chic and fashionable to renounce all previously held political views and arts as evidence of the accursed decay and decadence that had set in to a nation’s fabric for the last 76 years. Vivid public recollections of canards hurled at foes were publicly denounced by political artists who denied  authorship to such works of great fiction. The pristine age demanded old past political practices  that had run their natural course, to be discarded into the trash bin of history or burnt in a bonfire, lest they resurface and pose a threat to the new order.

But even as the President finds that more uneasy lies the head that must wear a heavier crown than last week, he’ll be wary of the over flowing lava presently erupting harmlessly from  a dormant Aragalaya volcanic mount, almost as if in awe at the sudden advent of a host of saviours to lead the country out of economic bankruptcy but has the frightening tendency to explode and spew out molten rock to solidify and turn the selfsame idols into monoliths, as found on Easter Island, should they miserably fail to fulfill the people’s great expectations

Lady Gaga paid 10m dollars to endorse Kamala on stage Lady Gaga bagged a cool 10 million dollars for a brief performance on the final night of Kamala Harris’ all-female rally and for endorsing Kamala on stage as her genuine choice for the presidency. LADY GAGA: Celebrity star on final Harris rally In her brief endorsement, she declared, “For more than half of this country’s life, women didn’t have a voice. Yet we raised our children, we held our families together, and we supported men as they made the decisions. But tomorrow we are part of that decision-making process. I cast my vote for someone who can be a president for all, for all Americans.” American women truly believed this was Lady Gaga’s spontaneous feelings straight from her heart. It was only after the elections that it became known to the American public that the singer had been paid 10 million dollars to say this carefully contrived endorsement on stage. The lid was blown on the scandal when it was revealed in the media that Kamala Harris had busted the billion dollars Democrat supporters had donated to her election kitty within a week of her announcement of her stepping into the shoes of the withdrawing Democrat candidate, Biden. It was further revealed that Kamala, having already overshot her billion-dollar budget, had been forced to incur a 20 million dollar debt to finance the megastar-studded concert on the final night of the elections, which included payments for celebrity endorsements. The New York Post reported on November 8th that members of the defeated Harris team told the newspaper that the concerts had a ruinous effect on the Democratic campaign’s coffers and that the fact was no secret—with one planned performance by ’90s alt-rock goddess Alanis Morissette getting scrapped to save money. The seven swing-state concerts on election eve featured performances by Jon Bon Jovi in Detroit, Christina Aguilera in Las Vegas, Katy Perry in Pittsburgh, and Lady Gaga in Philadelphia’s last rally. Oprah, who hosted the star-studded show and constantly chipped in to pledge her support for Kamala, also collected over a million dollars for publicly endorsing Kamala Harris. Accosted by an American journalist while walking to her car, she was asked if it was true she was paid a million dollars by the Kamala campaign for her endorsement. Oprah emphatically replied, “Not true. I was paid nothing ever.” But her denial was debunked by FSC filings showing two payments of 500,000 dollars each had been received by Oprah’s company. Yet despite the paid propaganda disseminating from the Kamala camp, nothing could or did stop Trump’s destined, unstoppable march to the White House.