By Shyamon Jayasinghe –
Shyamon Jayasinghe
This time it is a diverse strategic manipulation. The master stroke of picking Maitripala Sirisena as Typical Candidate had an air of ethical good quality: offered that Maitri had to threat his neck and given that the then President have to be stopped in his damaging track it had been a sort of relief operation. This time, the ethical air has to be evoked with some difficulty and amidst immense controversy.
Official sources urge that a National Government has be formed with the United National Party and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party within a single fold, below the President. The idea of National governments is both salutary and sine qua non in instances of crises. War is the common occasion. Sri Lanka has, for now at least, completed the war. The most crucial national duty is to eradicate the Executive President system. Revd. Maduluwawe Sobitha, Jayamapathy Wickremaratne and a host of other individuals should be credited with possessing developed the necessary social consciousness for the modify. Left to the political parties, the latter would have preferred to engage in musical chairs for the workplace of (executive) President. The far more educated classes, experts, and writers had been quick to sniff the require for radical adjust. Revd. Sobitha’s movement gave leadership, path and technique to achieve the need to have that was flourishing in demand.
The guarantee was created formal in the course of election time that the new government under the widespread candidate will within 100 days exorcise the devil in the constitution. It might be Mahinda Rajapaksa then but could be one more subsequent. The point is that there had been increasing realization that it is the constitution that is the root result in. The constitution offers space and chance for even very good males or women to be monsters. Just before he became President Mahinda had been a really sporty guy but with huge energy in his hands he morphed into one thing foreboding and frightful in possibility. Mahinda did one particular signal service: to bring to the public notice the danger of our constitution. The danger was felt below its creator, JR, and beneath CBK and Premadasa but that was not palpable danger. Under Rajapaksa the danger came out into the open. MR carried the function to its logical and disastrous end like in a fated Greek tragedy.
Quickly after Maitri’s victory all opposition rallied round with promises of assistance for the one hundred-day system and the changes to the constitution that have been spelled out. Nonetheless, as time went on-not months but only days- that enthusiasm dropped and faded away. The possibility of a return of Rajapaksa wearing the same stage costume became a reside 1. Even a government companion, the JHU kept nudging that they by no means wanted the executive Presidential system to go and that all they wanted was for the “excessive powers “of the President taken away. In so attempting to differentiate themselves Minister Champika Ranawaka and other isolated JHU personnel did not understand that to start with Mahinda Rajapaksa had been content to occupy the reduced finish of the spectrum of power presented by the constitution. Seeing the opening available at the other end MR moved swiftly to boost the energy of his office toward plain absolutism. The bigger than life portrait of the Absolute President that now presented itself suggested that he could make a criminal an innocent and an innocent a criminal overnight. He could at will make the living element of the dead and he could make the forthright and honest a cringing and servile particular person worshipping at his feet and asking for morsels. Sri Lanka became the land of the Absolute Star!
In the face of a desperate need for numbers to pass the amendment to the constitution sans modification the Maitri-Ranil government had to devise some move. The option had been frightening to conceive of, namely go to the polls right after the 100 days nonetheless with the constitution unchanged and the possibility of a return of a devil at some future date. Maitri would most possibly not be the devil. Somebody else soon after him? Imagine a Wimal Weerawansa in the function? As the cliché states the government was amongst the devil and the deep blue sea. The ‘devil’ in this case is literal.
“So let’s play the devil’s own game,” would have been the considering of the now duo buddies-Maitri and Ranil. They place their heads with each other and got a page off the former President. Induce the necessary numbers from the SLFP and then we are shaped! In this instance, the inducement was status or ‘thaththwaya.’ The likelihood for generating anything is not there.
In came the old pole vaulters from the SLFP. One particular senior MP was appropriately assigned the portfolio of Minister for Disaster Management. One particular former senior lout was fortunately not place in charge of his former haunt. He hasn’t much muscle now to strip CBK naked and send her on the streets crying. Except for just one portfolio provided to a cultured but term-expired character, all others provided as benefits to the new cross-overs constitute innocuous positions. This is the merciful element of the operation.
It all shows what a lot it indicates to our pollies to be deemed a Minister. In countries like Australia, exactly where I live, there is not this hankering following Ministerial portfolios. The answer is, I suppose, in the nature of the economy. Great jobs are available and excellent space for organization is obtainable to men and ladies who have some standing. In Sri Lanka there is the added possibility of milking portfolios for money and perks.
Be that as it may possibly. The move by the government is bad and smelly when looked in isolation from context. But, then, one particular does not interpret events without having the relevant context. In contextual terms the move can only have justification as a signifies to a noble end and as a short-term arrangement to get more than a crisis. The Devil’s Game can, certainly, extricate the devil from our constitution.
From the snares of the devil in the constitution totally free us , Oh Lord!