March 3, 2013, 8:23 pm
The cold war among some ambitious government bigwigs has, of late, shown signs of hotting up. No less a person than General Secretary of the SLFP and Minister Maithripala Sirisena has publicly claimed that his life is in danger and blamed unnamed enemies, presumably including his rivals within the government ranks for trying to destroy him. Wimal Weerawansa makes it a point to vent his spleen on Treasury Chief Dr. P. B. Jayasundera at every turn and the latter was quoted by this newspaper on Saturday as having told the Colombo-based foreign correspondents that he, too, was close to the President. Thus, we now have a situation where the king’s men are fighting sabre duels in the king’s court! The Opposition’s jubilation is understandable.
A government that keeps on aggrandizing itself is bound to dig itself into a hole and bring about its own downfall. One of the main symptoms of a dispensation in the self-destructive mode is the fiercely fought intraparty tussles among its heavyweights. What befell the seemingly monolithic UNP regime which remained in power for 17 long years virtually unchallenged by the mainstream Opposition, in the early 1990s, is a case in point. Centrifugal forces unleashed by prejudices, ambitions and animosity at the highest levels of the Premadasa government rendered its centre rather weak and caused things to begin to fall apart and the assassination of President Ranasinghe Premadasa and the attendant political upheavals precipitated its collapse. What one gathers from the utterances of the Opposition big guns at the launch of their membership drive over the weekend is that they are fatalistically waiting for the government to fall. They do not seem to have assessed the current political situation properly.
The SLFP’s infighting has, no doubt, taken a turn for the worse. But, Prime Minister D. M. Jayaratne has, albeit unwittingly, solved President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s biggest problem by bouncing back courageously after being bedridden with an array of illnesses and obviating, in the process, the need for the latter to select one of the many contenders for the coveted post of prime minister. However, the appointment of the next prime minister is sure to aggravate the SLFP’s internal battles someday. Reconciling the prime ministerial hopefuls all out to ruin each other’s chances is no easy task as we pointed out quoting Machiavelli the other day: "Men rise from one ambition to another; first, they seek to secure themselves against attack and then they attack others."
One of the main reasons why the Opposition has failed to capitalise on the government’s political difficulties which are legion, gain some traction and eat into the SLFP’s vote bank is the prevalence of external threats to the country. The government’s support base consists mainly of nationalistic masses in semi-urban and rural areas, who account for about 85 per cent of the population and with their support the ruling party could trump the Opposition electorally or otherwise. The Eelam campaign in Tamil Nadu, New Delhi’s hostility, the LTTE’s Sri Lanka bashing overseas and the determined efforts by some western government to launch a war crimes probe pose formidable challenges to the UPFA coalition internationally, but paradoxically they are a blessing at home in that the government uses the hostile international campaign to retain public sympathy and win elections. The harder it gets bashed in Geneva, the more popular it becomes among its supporters at home! When the much publicised US-sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka is taken up shortly at the UNHRC sessions with India backing it, most Sri Lankans antipathetic to such duplicitous diplomatic moves which benefit only the LTTE and its backers in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere will forget their economic woes, sink their differences and rally round the government. This is the political reality whether one likes it or not.
The Opposition predicts a breakaway of some disgruntled government bigwigs sooner or later, but the question is whether anyone currently savouring power would ever want to jump from a sailing ship to a schooner in the doldrums with a mutiny onboard. That would have been possible if the UNP had sorted out its internal problems and made a comeback as a robust political force holding out the promise of capturing power in the near future.
island.lk
The cold war among some ambitious government bigwigs has, of late, shown signs of hotting up. No less a person than General Secretary of the SLFP and Minister Maithripala Sirisena has publicly claimed that his life is in danger and blamed unnamed enemies, presumably including his rivals within the government ranks for trying to destroy him. Wimal Weerawansa makes it a point to vent his spleen on Treasury Chief Dr. P. B. Jayasundera at every turn and the latter was quoted by this newspaper on Saturday as having told the Colombo-based foreign correspondents that he, too, was close to the President. Thus, we now have a situation where the king’s men are fighting sabre duels in the king’s court! The Opposition’s jubilation is understandable.
A government that keeps on aggrandizing itself is bound to dig itself into a hole and bring about its own downfall. One of the main symptoms of a dispensation in the self-destructive mode is the fiercely fought intraparty tussles among its heavyweights. What befell the seemingly monolithic UNP regime which remained in power for 17 long years virtually unchallenged by the mainstream Opposition, in the early 1990s, is a case in point. Centrifugal forces unleashed by prejudices, ambitions and animosity at the highest levels of the Premadasa government rendered its centre rather weak and caused things to begin to fall apart and the assassination of President Ranasinghe Premadasa and the attendant political upheavals precipitated its collapse. What one gathers from the utterances of the Opposition big guns at the launch of their membership drive over the weekend is that they are fatalistically waiting for the government to fall. They do not seem to have assessed the current political situation properly.
The SLFP’s infighting has, no doubt, taken a turn for the worse. But, Prime Minister D. M. Jayaratne has, albeit unwittingly, solved President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s biggest problem by bouncing back courageously after being bedridden with an array of illnesses and obviating, in the process, the need for the latter to select one of the many contenders for the coveted post of prime minister. However, the appointment of the next prime minister is sure to aggravate the SLFP’s internal battles someday. Reconciling the prime ministerial hopefuls all out to ruin each other’s chances is no easy task as we pointed out quoting Machiavelli the other day: "Men rise from one ambition to another; first, they seek to secure themselves against attack and then they attack others."
One of the main reasons why the Opposition has failed to capitalise on the government’s political difficulties which are legion, gain some traction and eat into the SLFP’s vote bank is the prevalence of external threats to the country. The government’s support base consists mainly of nationalistic masses in semi-urban and rural areas, who account for about 85 per cent of the population and with their support the ruling party could trump the Opposition electorally or otherwise. The Eelam campaign in Tamil Nadu, New Delhi’s hostility, the LTTE’s Sri Lanka bashing overseas and the determined efforts by some western government to launch a war crimes probe pose formidable challenges to the UPFA coalition internationally, but paradoxically they are a blessing at home in that the government uses the hostile international campaign to retain public sympathy and win elections. The harder it gets bashed in Geneva, the more popular it becomes among its supporters at home! When the much publicised US-sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka is taken up shortly at the UNHRC sessions with India backing it, most Sri Lankans antipathetic to such duplicitous diplomatic moves which benefit only the LTTE and its backers in Tamil Nadu and elsewhere will forget their economic woes, sink their differences and rally round the government. This is the political reality whether one likes it or not.
The Opposition predicts a breakaway of some disgruntled government bigwigs sooner or later, but the question is whether anyone currently savouring power would ever want to jump from a sailing ship to a schooner in the doldrums with a mutiny onboard. That would have been possible if the UNP had sorted out its internal problems and made a comeback as a robust political force holding out the promise of capturing power in the near future.
island.lk