{"id":49461,"date":"2016-11-09T05:18:04","date_gmt":"2016-11-09T09:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=49461"},"modified":"2016-11-09T06:31:38","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T10:31:38","slug":"ranil-wickremesinghe-will-neither-be-elected-president-nor-re-elected-as-prime-minister-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=49461","title":{"rendered":"Ranil Wickremesinghe Will Neither be Elected President nor Re-elected as Prime Minister Again."},"content":{"rendered":"

By
\nDr.Dayan Jayatilleka<\/strong><\/p>\n

So a great folly follows grand fraud, which is to say we are saddled not only with thieves but also fools. In its relations with our indispensable emerging superpower friend China, today\u2019s UNP has reverted to its worst traditions\u2014and those were symptomatic of one-term administrations. <\/p>\n

My father used to say, \u201cdon\u2019t start anything you can\u2019t finish\u201d. A Sunday newspaper reported that on his return from Delhi, Foreign Minister Samaraweera would \u201csummon\u201d China\u2019s ambassador to lodge the Government\u2019s \u201cdeep displeasure\u201d at the envoy\u2019s recent remarks (Which were but a clarification in defense of China\u2019s loans to SL, in response to a question). <\/p>\n

Such a move would be worse than wrong; it would be stupid. <\/p>\n

Given the way the Govt. laps up critical and prescriptive public pronouncements by the US-UK-EU, this selective sovereignty \u2018spike\u2019 is laughable.<\/p>\n

With the Sri Lankan rupee plummeting to 150 per US dollar, it is crass folly to antagonize Sri Lanka\u2019s staunchest, most consistent, and economically most capacious and forthcoming friend. <\/p>\n

Dr. Sarath Amunugama (Who supported by Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy) authored the Govt\u2019s smart pivot back to China, must be aghast at the folly of his infinitely less literate Cabinet colleagues. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Is it that Samaraweera and Karunanayake want to provoke Chinese retrenchment so that our great and friendly neighbor can own\/annex this island at bargain basement prices, or is this what Sanjana Hattotuwe calls a \u201csystemic breakdown in policy making\u201d?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the most important single factor after the COPE controversy has been the division, however temporary and reparable, in the governing coalition, and the contrasting lack of any such fissure in the ranks of its main electoral opponent the JO. <\/p>\n

The bond scam cover up attempt saw the fracturing of the January 8th Yahapalana bloc, what with the JVP and SLFP clashing with the UNP on prime time television.<\/p>\n

Certainly there will be, and already are, attempts to put Humpty Dumpty together again and Humpty may be glued back to face the Rajapaksas, but the fault lines are visible and the fall out irreversible.<\/p>\n

The JO is on the offensive, spoiling for an electoral fight. <\/p>\n

The official SLFP is critical of the UNP, in an electoral pre-emptive strike or an attempt to catch up for anti-UNP momentum lost to the JO. The JVP is taking its distance from the UNP while continuing to attack the Rajapaksas in a smart attempt to project itself as an Aam Aadmi Party type anti-corruption force, picking up dissenting young and even middle class Yahapalana votes and striving to retrieve its space as a Third Force. <\/p>\n

The JVP is not pivoting towards the MR\/JO pole of attraction, but it is certainly pivoting away from the UNP leadership, bidding to brand itself as the non-traditional \u2018new Opposition\u2019 while relegating the JO to its base vote as the traditionalist-nationalist \u2018old Opposition\u2019.<\/p>\n

The official SLFP and the JVP pivoting away from the PM and the UNP on the bond scam could be the consequence of any one or any combination of three factors: (a) the UNP\u2019s political behavior triggered an anti-UNP reflex action within these two traditionally anti-UNP\/anti-Right parties (b) public opinion is so strongly anti-UNP on the bond scam issue that the JVP and SLFP sought to surf that wave (c) public opinion is so anti-UNP that the JVP and SLFP felt it had no option but to take an anti-UNP stand, or sought to leverage the bond scam issue to revive their anti-UNP credentials.<\/p>\n

Mahinda Rajapaksa has played a shrewd hand. The formation of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (Sri Lanka People\u2019s Front) signals that MR has an option ready at hand to field a slate at any election. The launch of the People\u2019s Front could be a \u2018bottom-up\u2019 version of the SWRD Bandaranaike-DA Rajapaksa move of 1951, a necessary prelude to a replay of 1956 in 2020. Will the PF be a magnet to draw in and a successor vehicle to supersede the SLFP, or a battering ram-cum-catapult to take over the SLFP just as the breakaway SLMP and DUNF leaders Chandrika and Gamini took over the SLFP and UNP leaderships in \u201994?<\/p>\n

If the Executive Presidency is sought to be abolished or weakened, it may help the UNP but will certainly deprive the \u201cloyal\u201d SLFP of a power center and source of patronage. The official SLFP will disintegrate between the UNP and the pro-Mahinda opposition formation, with many of the MPs and most of the SLFP voters accruing to MR rather than the UNP, while disaffected UNPers, floaters and new voters may also be attracted by the newly emergent political project.<\/p>\n

The external power cartel (The Government\u2019s foreign handlers)and CBK are putting the Yahapalana band back together for one last blowout charity concert in the shape of the minoritarian, non-unitary Constitution and a special mechanism for war-crimes accountability.
\nWhat is crucially important about the new proxy party is that it provides a strong platform to mobilize a \u2018NO\u2019 vote at the upcoming referendum even if President Sirisena, the official SLFP and the JVP feel compelled to call for a \u2018YES\u2019 vote, thereby confusing and neutralizing a sizeable sliver of non-UNP Sinhala voters as in January and August 2015.<\/p>\n

One of the few smart supporters of Yahapalana, Asanga Welikala has rightly cautioned in a recent opinion piece that he coauthored, that the Government wouldn\u2019t last a day after losing a referendum on the Constitution.<\/p>\n

Instead of risking a referendum by attempting to smuggle in federalism without the \u201cism\u201d and facing the perfect storm of a fusion of a majoritarian nationalist backlash and a protest vote against economic hardship, the Government could resort to the much safer, more sustainable model of the 19th Amendment: Go beyond a mere two thirds in Parliament by suturing together an all-parties (i.e. national) consensus on reform. <\/p>\n

This of course entails dropping anything and everything that does not obtain such all-parties support, because even a draft reform package that garners a two thirds majority in the House will almost certainly be shot down in flames at a national referendum-so why bother?<\/p>\n

The striving must be for the least polarizing and destabilizing, broadest based, most viable reform possible, i.e. moderate reform. <\/p>\n

Bases could be the recommendations of the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Rights and the UN\u2019s Durban Declaration against Discrimination. <\/p>\n

This presupposes a pragmatic \u2018grand bargain\u2019: The Tamil Question would have to be accurately reclassified as a social one of minority rights\/equality\/integration, not political-territorial self-determination of a nation\/nationality.<\/p>\n

This is a shift from the Vadukkodai-Thimpu paradigm to a Soulbury on steroids paradigm.
\nWhen you have been consciously around politics, national and international, for fifty years (Thanks initially to your widely travelled journalist father), you\u2019ve seen a lot of stuff and you develop a sense of how things and people are likely to go. <\/p>\n

Watching Prime Minister Wickremesinghe exhibiting his characteristically intemperate arrogance at a televised media conference on the bond scam, pitching into former COPE Chairman D.E.W. Gunasekara -a widely respected senior politician- and seeing the latter retaliate massively the next evening on a TV newscast, I got the strong sense that Mr. Wickremesinghe is going to be a one-term PM at best, and is neither going to be elected President nor re-elected PM. <\/p>\n

This is as good as it\u2019s going to get. As in 2001-2004, he may not even last out his full term and may be evicted by an Executive responding to political crisis and rising public opinion.
\nIf Prime Minister Wickremesinghe lasts out his full term, the UNP will be drowned by an electoral tsunami in 2020, triggered by his polarizing personality and policies. What would be smart is for the UNP to opt for a dissenting younger, patriotic personality (populist or patrician), sooner rather than later-or for President Sirisena to do so on his Government\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n

Courtesy:Daily Mirror<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dr.Dayan Jayatilleka So a great folly follows grand fraud, which is to say we are saddled not only with thieves but also fools. In its relations with our indispensable emerging superpower friend China, today\u2019s UNP has reverted to its worst traditions\u2014and those were symptomatic of one-term administrations. My father used to say, \u201cdon\u2019t start …<\/p>\n

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