By H. L. D. Mahindapala 

The politics of Maithripala Sirisena is bizarre, to say the least. He leaves the Rajapaksa regime because he was not given the premiership and his answer to his own problem is to abolish the presidency and appoint Ranil Wickremesinghe as the Prime Minister, empowered with executive powers of the presidency.

Where does this leave Sirisena? At the end of 100 days, when he  hopes to complete his demolition job, he will be left with nothing — neither the Presidency nor the Premiership. When he finishes his job of abolishing the Presidency and handing over executive power to Wickremesinghe (within 100 days, he says!) he will be creating only a My-three-pala-naya” of Wickremesinghe, CBK and himself, the non-entity in the troika. In the current context it is difficult to find three more monumental losers than this trio.

Sirisena’s My-three-pala-naya” indicates that he is a follower and not a leader. He has neither the  vision  nor the capacity to provide a viable alternative which would and should be  a refined/reformed status quo. Who else but a naïve political puppet would fall for a plan which will cut off the branch he holds and the destroy the branch on which he proposes to stand? (Al-lapu ath-thath naha, paya gahapu ath-thath naha.) What is going  to be his place in the hierarchy of the proposed  My-three-pala-naya”?

Those with eyes to see will agree that there isn’t a greater folly than getting trapped in the doomed politics of Ranil-Chandrika combo. They plotted in 2010 to pick Sarath Fonseka – a good General fallen among fools – to pit him against Mahinda Rajapaksa. Reason: these two failures knew that they had no chance of winning against Mahinda. So they picked Fonseka who had Buddhist and nationalist credentials to contest Mahinda. Everyone knows the results.

Now this combo is back again recycling their vindictive politics to get even with Mahinda. Having made use of Fonseka they dumped him like a hot potato because he is no longer marketable as a winner. So they baited Sirisena promising money to finance his campaign, cross-overs to demoralize the government, organizational support in the electorates and the backing of a motley of odd-bods, including TNA’s Sampanthan and JHU. (TamilNet (24/11) reported that CBK had secret talks to cut a deal with Sampanthan.)

Of course, TNA and JHU are strange bed-fellows. They make the bizarre politics of My-3-pala-naya” weird and unworkable. To begin with, if JHU is preparing to go to bed with TNA in the My-three-pala-naya” then they must be having a perverse craving to get some masochistic kicks out  of sleeping with porcupines. Not wanting  to face the TNA they might want to sleep with their backs turned to the TNA. But that is where the pricks will hit them. Bringing in Sampanthan – and it will be only on secret deals with TNA – will definitely take the nation back to the failed CBK-Ranil politics again.

More importantly, the anti-national actions of Wickremesinghe and Chandrika point  to the fact that they have been the best conduits of the West. So when Sirisena aligns himself with these anti-national forces, who have sold the nation down the river, he is signaling that he will reverse the post-Nandikadal gains and go back to the time when Erik Solheim and Prabhakaran dictated terms to the beleaguered nation. In his My-three-pala-naya” he not only plans to commit hara-kiri but also push Prabhakaran’s cyanide pill down the throat of the nation.

Of course, he is due to announce the details of his plans sooner or later – all of which will be proposed, drafted and written by CBK and Ranil. He will be merely the mouth-piece selected to parrot the words fed to him by CBK and Ranil for the simple reason that he has never shown the leadership qualities of thinking on his own two feet. He is no visionary leader who can carve out a new path to the future. So far he has shown only signs of going back to the failed past.

However, his qualities can be tested on the way he propose to deal with the following issues:

1. What will be his stand on the 13 Amendment?
2. Will he go with Ranil and CBK plan of implementing 13+ sponsored by India and the West?
3. Will he agree to withdraw the forces from the North to satisfy the demands of TNA in exchange for their votes?
4. At a time when USA continues to increases its global bases – 900 and counting – will he cut down the naval bases in the north to appease TNA?
5. Will he introduce cuts into the forces defending the territorial integrity and security of the nation?
6. Will he give in to the land policy of TNA to keep the north and the east exclusively for the Tamils, which may even include issuing visas under a revised P-TOMS plan of Chandrika?
7. After the Harvard University awarded him a Health Leadership Award has Michele Sisson used him as the head of the secret anti-national leadership campaign backed by the other two pro-American losers?
8. Does his My-three-pala-naya” include throwing principles of law and order into the dustbin in order to protect his son Gamaralage Daham the next time he runs amok in a drunken rage, assaulting even  Police officers appointed by the state to maintain law order and even sons of senior police officers?
9. Will he care to develop a new education program in geography to teach his new political partners in the UNP the difference and the distance between Medawachchiya – his political patch — and Killinochchiya?
10. Since he claims to be the man who plans to introduce purity into the administration will he begin by investigating the $300 million given to Ravi Karunanayake by the pro-Tiger billionaire in USA, Rajaratnam now serving a jail term in USA for insider trading?
11. Will Sirisena, under the influence of his main backers, CBK and Ranil, initiate a policy of deviating from the independent foreign policy of Mahinda Rajapaksa and go with CBK’s French connections and Ranil’s IDU dominated by anti-Sri Lankan David Cameron?
12. What place will be left open for him in the post-election phase in which he proposes to abolish the presidency and appoint the well-known failed leader in Sri Lankan history to run the country?
13. How does he propose to implement the promises he is giving the voters when he has already promised to hand over executive power to the biggest political flop in Sri Lankan history?
14. How does he propose to protect  the territorial integrity when he hands over his executive powers to the man who sold the nation to Prabhakaran?
15. Will he revive the P (pacha)-TO”N”S plans to hand over the North and the East for ten years for the Koti pups in the TNA to run the two regions with the compliments of his two main backers, CBK and Wickremesinghe?
16. Considering the anti- national political  players behind Sirisena isn’t he the next biggest threat to the unity, national identity and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka?

These are only a few selected questions that he must answer when he goes before the nation to get the votes. Many more are bound  to be raised once he reveals the details of his manifesto. These preliminary questions reveal that not only the Gamarala under his roof but even his political associates, like CBK and Wickremesinghe, are a serious threat to the future of the nation that is now settled on a course, with all its faults, heading towards a future, with a clearly defined path to progress, national identity, national security, territorial integrity.

Sirisena’s proposed My-three-pala-naya” presents a serious threat to the future of the nation. If executive powers are handed over to Wickremesinghe there is no guarantee that he will not move  heaven and earth to reverse the gains achieved by the Security Forces. He has intransigently pursued an anti-Sri Lankan policy, kow-towing to David Cameron and the West. His ambition is  to gain a place in history by rewriting and reversing the history achieved by the self-sacrificing forces that fought Prabhakaran and  his best buddy, Wickremesinghe, to the bitter end. Wickremesinghe and his henchaiyas haven’t yet apologized to the nation for ridiculing our heroic forces and selling the nation to Prabhakaran.

Clearly, in the coming election one of the key questions that the nation will face is this : did our heroic soldiers who were ridiculed by the UNP sacrifice their lives for Wickremesinghe to undo their achievements and hand over the territory liberated by them to the enemies of the nation?

Sirisena is on record saying that he will hand  over his executive powers to Wickremesinghe. How can Sirisena then control him and prevent the nation from being hijacked and taken back to the time when Wickremesinghe handed over the north and the east on a plate to Prabhakaran.

Wickremesinghe is led by David Cameron and not by Sirisena. Wickremesinghe will have no compunction in giving Sirisena the karapincha treatment. He will drop Sirisena like the way Chandrika dropped him, when he was bending into two before Bush in the White House.

But where will the Machiavellian manipulations at the top leave the people at the bottom?