The applause President Rajapaksa drew during his Tamil address in each of the rallies clearly showed that the long-suffering minorities in the North and the East have placed complete faith on the President’s promise to make their lives better. Obviously, they have judged him by the manner he kept his promises during the last five years, since the end of the dreaded war that made their lives hell and have displayed their faith in him.

Another important conclusion to be drawn from the cordiality the Tamil and Muslim masses extended toward the President is that they have grown out of being prisoners of divisive, regressive agenda of the TNA and the numerous ethnically-based Muslim parties. Nor do they seem to have faith in the Northern Provincial Council under the non-performing and inept administration of C. V. Vigneswaran.

The obvious signs of the Northern and Eastern minorities joining the political mainstream augur well for the nations’ future beyond the Presidential election that seems to be settled for all practical purposes.

Such subtleties of national significance however, are unlikely to preoccupy the mediocre and hateful minds of the Chandrika-Ranil-led retinue of foreign and local conspirators behind Maithripala Sirisena. They would have found the tightness of President Rajapaksa’s rapport with all peoples of Sri Lanka devastating to their morale; the sinking-in of the political reality at ground level seems to have accelerated the disintegration of an opposition campaign that never really took off the ground.

The merciful end to the assault on public’s sensibilities of ‘taste’ committed by dressing Sirisena in a Modi jacket” needs to be welcomed. Finally, it seems that Sirisena’s minders have woken up to the fact that the superficial, desperate tactic failed miserably.

The Modi jacket saga was only one faux pas of an unbelievably inept management of the common candidate’s challenge to President Rajapaksa’s re-election bid. The real contest” promised by the American corporate media and the subversive NGOs is fast turning in to a farce.

In its current form, the common candidacy campaign resembles a Vaudeville-like act of light entertainment comprising unrelated individual acts of failing political magic tricks, policy acrobatics and juggling; Support acts like the slag from Wellampitiya appears to be attempting to ease the tediousness of the main acts with vulgar, uncultured remarks. In short, the promised real contest” to President Rajapaksa has failed to materialise, rendering the whole challenge a farce with base characters and improbable circumstances.

The beginnings were inauspicious. The show-opening magic act of Maithripala Sirisena’s defection failed to materialise in the absence of any high-level” crossovers from the government as promised. The trick just dissipated in to thin air. The subsequent campaign performance of Sirisena has reduced him to a clownish parody of a man aspiring for a position far beyond his capabilities.

The shamefully partisan attempts of Sirasa TV Satana” to change this dynamic by attempts to ‘ceremoniously’ parade Sirisena to the applause of a studio-full of his campaign ‘roadies’, and to glorify him by a toadying host have failed to make an iota of difference in the country.

The obvious lack of public support and warmth towards Maithripala Sirisena appears to have caused the virtual disbanding of the disparate collective of individuals who backed the silly idea. Of course, Ranil Wickremesinghe is obliged to continue to ‘follow’ Sirisena, offering his ineffectual oratory to an incredulous public, and Chandrika Kumaratunga continues to run her own campaign in the pursuit of vested interests.

Others, from Maduluwawe Sobhitha thera who irresponsibly first floated the baloney of abolishing the executive presidency in 100 days – obviously without any understanding of the constitution – to Sajith Premadasa and Karu Jayasuriya appear to have quietly retreated to their own corners.

This has left Champika Ranawaka to champion the case of Sirisena. Ranawaka – with all the charm of a funeral director – has failed miserably to fill the void of strong leadership or to restore popular appeal of a campaign doomed from the very beginning; he has only been able to demonstrate the intensity of his bitterness about losing the Power and Energy Ministry. Ranawaka may scream until his throat bleeds, but the public have sternly refused, justifiably, to buy the trumped up allegations of a family dictatorship and rampant corruption from two people who were happily in the caravan for a considerable length of time.

Then there are interesting sideshows; the media management group made up of the ‘fallen brigade’ of Mangala Samaraweera, Rajitha Senaratne and Rajiva Wijesinha has proved to be nothing more than an excuse to keep away from Sirisena’s campaign. Samaraweera’s stupid idea of initiating a ‘black book’ designed to convince foreign embassies not to issue visas to government politicians only goes to show his inveterate submissiveness to foreign screws. Rajiva Wijesinha has never mattered in Sri Lankan politics and his recent performance is unlikely to change that circumstance.

A bungled manifesto

The sombre, poorly-attended gathering at the unveiling of Sirisena’s manifesto at the Viharamaha Devi Park typified the status of the campaign.

To add to the woes, the highlight” of the manifesto contradicted the raison d’être of the common candidacy. The dilution of the original promise to abolish executive presidency within 100 days to just scaling down” of its powers revealed an ‘emperor without clothes’. It is acknowledged in the manifesto that: The President needs the assistance of the Parliament to change the post of Executive President. That is because it is the Parliament which has the power to amend the Constitution.”

The policy acrobatic and the acknowledgement clearly shows that none in the camp had enough familiarity with the constitution to show the untenability of the idea when it was first mooted by Ven. Sobhitha and was grasped by a desperate Chandrika-Ranil led cabal. All the talk on introducing good governance” by such a mob is not worthy of serious consideration.

The rest of the promises in the manifesto are hardly worth considering in the light of the shameless reversal of position on the issue of abolishing the executive presidency. Just for the record, it is full of clichés determined to be useful in fooling the electorate. Examples include measures to set up a moral society, food security and stable development, healthcare for all, free education overcoming new challenges, international relations that defend the country, industries and services that eliminate unemployment, an advanced and responsible public sector, an energy secure Sri Lanka and a meaningful substantial media freedom”. The list goes on, worse than a bad joke.

The so-called manifesto is laced with rather humorous statements like development economic system will be put in place, where the needs of the common man are addressed while wasteful expenditure will be shelved”.

Expecting such inane motherhood statements -not accompanied by any detail on the exact mechanisms of achieving such worthy objectives, the costs, or how the costs would be met – to persuade the voter is an insult to the intelligence of the 15 million Sri Lankan voters.

Allegations of corruption reduced to election fraud

Just as the promises to abolish executive presidency – variously in 24 hours to 100 days – evaporated to thin air in the manifesto, the public’s rejection of rampant corruption in the government appears to have forced a toning down of wild allegations to just election rigging.

The transparent attempts by Chandrika and Ranil – supported by a mushrooming election-monitoring NGO industry – to seek refuge in a pathetically baseless campaign of ‘crying foul’ over the integrity of the election process reflects the crisis facing the common candidacy camp.

A concerted campaign of unsubstantiated allegations of prospects of election fraud by Chandrika Kumaratunga points to another tactic being dictated by the foreign forces behind the conspiracy. Her allegation of unspecified skulduggery” at the election and the invitation to ‘more and more’ foreign election monitors is aimed at preparing the ground to attribute the inevitable Rajapaksa victory to ‘election fraud’: The plot is similar to the plans to create civil unrest in the aftermath of the election as part of the strategy behind the 2010 Fonseka conspiracy.

Coupled with such tactics are the attempts to Americanise” the contest by Sirisena’s laughable ‘challenge’ to President Rajapaksa for a TV debate. The senseless challenge from his current lowly situation in the contest only points to the prescription in the US embassy coaching manual. The challenge deserves ridicule, rather than any serious response.

Other parties with vested interests are also continuing to seek ways to lend a hand to Sirisena. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu’s frantic attempt to ensure the continuing inflow of euros and US dollars has prompted him to publish the results of an Online survey on Sri Lanka’s Presidential Election 2015”. The overtly fraudulent methodology of the so-called survey – in addition to making it irrelevant – makes it a sad indictment of corrupt NGOs attempting to pervert the course of democracy.

The reported legal moves by the defected SLFP members against the annulling of their party membership demonstrate their absurd understanding of the concept of fairness. The expectation of retaining the membership of an organisation after defecting from it is a case of wanting to ‘have the cake and eat it too’!

What did Ranil learn at the MIT?

The pathetic state of the broader strategy, choice of candidate and the conduct of the anti-Rajapaksa campaign raises questions as to what specific training Ranil Wickremasinghe received at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) during his three-week residency there on regime change in April 2014.

It appears that every aspect of the operation” Ranil has implemented in this particular campaign is contrary to the lessons of history of American presidential politics since the formation of the new American Republic.

In consenting to be part of Chandrika Kumaratunga’s hate-driven agenda of forming a common opposition” to snatch political power goes against the warnings of the author of the US Constitution, James Madison, outlined in Federalist Paper Number 10 – on the risk of takeover of the fledgling republic by factions”.

Madison feared the takeover of America more than the return of the British Empire. He warned that, The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced by faction have been the mortal disease under which Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece perished.” Madison defined factions as a number of citizens with special interests… adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community” – a definition that perfectly fits the group led by Chandrika, Champika and Ranil himself.

There is another close parallel to the current anti-Rajapaksa campaign pinned on the contrived allegation of rampant corruption against the two-term President Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877). Grant who served as the Commander of the Union Army during the Civil War presided over the post-war reconstruction following his becoming president in 1869. The Southerners, bitter about the defeat at the Civil War, and Grant’s measures to protect the rights of the slaves, supposedly freed” by Southern slave owners, kept on levelling baseless allegations of corruption against him.

Despite such allegations, Grant won two terms as president as allowed under the party convention at the time. The failure of baseless corruption allegations by the southern slave owners against Grant should have alerted Ranil to the difficulties in making such allegations ‘stick’ against a president undertaking post-war reconstruction.

Ranil’s performance has showed his failure to learn from the history of his masters, or perhaps his CIA masters kept such relevant detail secret from him.

Either way, the Sri Lankan people will be the beneficiary of the failing opposition campaign that will ensure the re-election of President Rajapaksa with an increased majority.