Nalin de Silva Courtesy The Daily News

 The single issue common candidate for the Presidential Elections in 2014 was a non issue from the very beginning. What is not realised by the pundits is that an executive president on his/her own cannot change the constitution. It is the Legislature and not the executive president that possesses the mechanism to change the constitution. However much the executive president may be powerful, it is the Legislature that can change the constitution including abolition of executive presidency.

 The opposition was seeking a so called common candidate to abolish the executive presidency as if Ven. Maduluwawe Sobhitha Thera could do it on his own, without a two third majority in the Parliament. The pundits did not discuss how a Parliament that would abolish the executive presidency would be elected.

 Ranil Wickremesinghe is not a single issue candidate by any stretch of imagination, and neither Chandrika Kumaratunga is. The other single issue candidate available is Shirani Bandaranayake. No political party leader or for that matter a member of a political party either at present or in the past qualifies to be a single issue candidate as it is the impression in the minds of the people that matter, and not what the candidate promises.

 Single issue candidate

 Who would believe that Ranil Wickremesinghe, Chandrika Kumaratunga, Sarath Fonseka, Anura Disanayake or Wigneshvaran or even Britto Fernando (those who have heard of him) of Deans Road episode that involved officials from foreign embassies, is a single issue candidate? In the minds of the people they talk of everything under the sun and sometimes under the bridges as well.

 Only candidates such as Ven. Maduluwawe Sobhitha Thera and Shirani Bandaranayake can talk of good governance, abolition of executive presidency, or eliminating drought as a single issue and go before the public, though without the political clout there is not much that they can do.

 Rights issues

 However, for the public a Presidential Election is not a single issue affair as they by experience know that single issues are tested at referenda and not at other types of elections which they are familiar with.

 It was not difficult to see that the local opposition as well as the foreign opposition operating from Western embassies were interested only in one issue. It was not the abolition of the executive presidency as such but the defeat of Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa at the presidential elections to be held most probably in 2015. If the US embassy is interested in abolition of executive presidency they should begin at home and amend the constitution accordingly.

 The United States has inherited as white Anglo Saxons all the hypocrisy from the English and they would preach to others what they do not practice. The ambassador for US should be reminded of the Sinhala stanza “ova thenu parahata thama sammathehi pihita sita” (one should preach others after one acts according to good practice). Let the Americans get rid of the executive presidency that kills innocent people everywhere in the world in order to maintain the hegemony of Western Christian culture.

 The US that got involved in the Deans Road episode and England have only one objective. The hypocrites are not interested in the human rights of the Tamils, Muslims or any other community living in Sri Lanka, but hide behind the rights issues in order to topple the Mahinda Rajapaksa government. If Mahinda Rajapaksa was a dependent on the Western Christian ideology as Ranil Wickremesinghe is there would not have been rights issues in Sri Lanka.

 We all know how the latter with Prabhakaran tried to betray the country. Though Norway was in the forefront of so called peace talks they were supported by local “peace lovers” who were against humanitarian operations, including those who talked of human qualities of Prabhakaran but not of the Sri Lankan soldiers who rescued thousands of innocent Tamils from the stranglehold of the terrorists, it was the big two on either side of the Atlantic, England and US that led the operations against the President and the country.

 If the West is genuinely interested in the human rights of people they should have looked into the violations of human rights of JVP youth by the UNP governments of JR Jayewardene and R Premadasa. The West did not appoint international commissions to investigate into the petitions against the government but only paid lip service with their stiff upper lip. The JVP was involved with murder of innocent people and it is not my intention to condone Wijeweera and his men among whom one could find Anura Disanayake, Vijitha Herath and others still at large.

 The West and their local cohorts

 If the President had bowed down to the pressure of the big two, there would not have been a search for a single issue common candidate. The big two want to oust the President and produce him (Mahinda Rajapaksa without the Presidency) before a so called international tribune and humiliate and bring to disrepute the Sri Lankan armed forces and the Sinhala Buddhists in general.

 The West wants to take revenge for the defeat of the LTTE, their agent in weakening if not destroying Sinhala Buddhist culture and they are now thinking of filing a case against the Defence Secretary who is supposed to be a US citizen as well. The question here is not the citizenship of Mr. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa but the extent to which the West will go to punish those whom they do not like for political and other reasons.

 The West and their local cohorts wanted a single issue common candidate for the simple reason that Ranil Wickremesinghe cannot defeat Mahinda Rajapaksa at the next presidential elections. However, what the US Ambassador and others do not realise is that neither Ven. Maduluwawe Sobhitha Thera nor Shirani Bandaranayake is capable of delivering the goods. None of them have a political base and the English speaking anti Sinhala Buddhist elements cannot direct the election campaign from their armchairs in Colombo. Any one of them would poll less than what Sarath Fonseka polled in 2010 even if the West is prepared to pump dollars and Sterling Pounds into the campaign.

 The West does not have any idea of the Sinhala Buddhist culture and the Sinhala Buddhists do not vote for a Thera merely because he is in robes. This is something that the so called political commentators do not understand and with or without the actions of Ven. Galaboda Atte Gnanasara Thera, Ven. Sobhitha had no chance of becoming the President of the country.

Political hara-kiri

 Now the hunt for a single issue common candidate is almost over except in the dreams of anti Sinhala Buddhist elements whose dreams have been stolen (sihina horu arang) and the irony is that they do not know what they are dreaming of.

 There will be no common candidate against Mahinda Rajapaksa at the next presidential elections and we would be able to go through the common drama of having more than one candidate from the opposition. Ranil Wickremesinghe even if he is supported by the JVP with its three hundred thousand of votes is bound to do a political hara-kiri and the UNP and the opposition would have to think in terms of the presidential elections that will be held in the twenties.

 Both Mahinda Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe would be in their seventies or eighties in the twenties and the electorate will have to think of a uncommon candidate who could go beyond Mahinda Chinthana in ten to fifteen years.

 Mahinda Rajapaksa himself is an uncommon president and not different from Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranayake who was also an uncommon prime minister. They were able to stand up to pressure from the West and the uncommon candidate after Mahinda Rajapaksa leaves the political stage should also be able to wither away any Western political storm.