Rajpal's Column

7th November 1999

Being the tallest in political pygmy-land

By Rajpal Abeynayake

Perhaps, Amunugama figures that he can be both in the UNP and the PA. It's a high wire act, but if the tide is turning towards Ranil Wick-remesinghe as the elections approach, Amunugama and his tribe have left their options open to 'cross back.' A 'double cross' kind-of.

The United National Party, which at the moment at least, is looking like a lame duck even before the campaign got started, is said to be meeting at the Mustangs tent to plan strategy to counter the cross overs.

Sorry, the Siri Kotha. Ranil Wickremesinghe plays at the tarot board , hypothetically, at Siri Kotha and speaks to some of his long gone UNP leaders -- now dead, but not averse to talking through the tumbler.

Apparently, Gamini Dissanayake says that if he was down there, he would have won the election by now. Gamini feels that the gap between blouse and the sari of the young married today was wider than the gap between the People's Alliance and the UNP - at the provincial council election held this year.

He says he would have first got Mahinda Rajapakse onto his side. Then he would have used his considerable influence on Ashraff. Then, when he was done with Ashraff, he would have worked on Anuruddha Ratwatte as well..

But J R Jayewardene comes on the tarot board and says something different. He says, the best thing is to go to the outskirts, talk to the masses make some endearing jokes, and get hold of the police. (Arumugam Thondaman should also be told that he is being made Vice President of the UNP). Wickremesinghe has been impressed, so far, but he says that everybody including the press is pulling in his direction.

"That's right,'' says Gamini Dissanayake. " Everybody is pulling in your direction, but in which direction are you pulling?" Mr Wickremesinghe is flustered, but he says that power will be thrust upon him.

" Power was thrust upon me by you,'' he tells the old man, "and then power was thrust upon me in the Premadasa cabinet because he did not like the face of Dissanayake and Athulathmudali. So, power will be thrust upon me this time -- despite the cross over and the cross atmosphere."

But, putting the tarot cards aside, its important to take Gamini Dissanayake's assertion to try and dissect things objectively. In a country where the economy is not very robust, and there is nothing dynamic happening in the political firmament except rhetoric, it would have been, objectively, the UNP's playing field . A bad economy aside, the PA has displayed a remarkable arrogance that has sent its political appeal on a nose-dive. The media has been heavily antagonized, which theoretically would have been unwise for a media minister who is a good public relations man, even though he shoots his mouth and thinks his proclivities should qualify him for the Presidency. (Well, almost.)

The media minister however maybe overruled by other media czars closer to a President who seems to act almost entirely on the buddy system and who is almost alien to the concept of merit, competence, fairplay and other considerations.

It has been a vacuous period of government, built almost entirely on prevarication and political expediency. ( Didn't somebody write a book about the President's father, titled " the expedient politician.")

Infrastructure development has been almost zero during the tenure of this government, apart from the telecommunications system, which the President took almost a good ten minutes to boast about, in her recent address to the nation.

Normally, a colourless and effete tenure of government (politically frigid ?) would not sit well especially with people who are eking out an existence in an economy that has not offered any real scope for employment generation and rapid development. Unless, the opposition is more politicaly frigid and closer to political impoteny.

That translates this way: politics these days is left to a bunch of pygmies, who are made from a different mould to the politicians of the pre-Jayewardene era who displayed flamboyant political personalities combined with monumental political ambitions. ( N M Perera, Colvin R De Silva, J. R Jaye-wardene, R G Sena-nayake etc.,) Political inertia in this climate is not surprising, which is why reactions such as " who cares -- they are all the same', sound like the common refrain.

A moribund political culture at the end of a millennium is depressing and certainly not a prospect that engenders much hope for the next century in Sri Lankan politics, unless the barrenness of the political climate itself throws up some leaders; people with new ideas for a jaded nation on the threshold of the millennium.

But even the radicals, these days are effete. There is no electrifying political presence in their ranks either -- certainly not even in the JVP which seems to be suffering from a pathetic lack of inspiration.

So -- Chandrika Kumaratunga, the taller pygmy, will probably rule pygmy land..unless power thrusts itself upon the Leader of the Opposition, that is.

Hulftsdorp Hill

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