Sunny Sunil’s Column Of Critical Analysis

December 4th, 2014
 
Bearing in mind that the sensible and more discerning voters  in Sri Lanka are not usually in favour of ship jumpers, past leaders who have made grave errors towards the detriment of the Nation and messed up the economy fair and square and bungled their way through leadership add to which conundrum bi-partisan sections  of the Buddhist Clergy who would be better off carrying out  their role as priests and prelates rather than dabbling in politics where the Maha Sangha the legitimate Buddhist Hierarchy has always been with the President, it seems somewhat incredulous that opposition common candidate Maithripala Sirisena is already bragging about his anticipated Presidential win and what he intends to do or not to and strutting around like a peacock when all his aspirations could fall flat and the possibility that  he would  be a laughing stock alongside his mentors and promoters like Ranil Wickremasinghe, Chandrika Kumaratunga, the campaign supporters of the JHU, JVP and others who appear to have become glorious opportunists and wannabe legislators.
 
It seems a fair conclusion to arrive at, that all the rhetoric being pumped by this unlikely coalition on their election platforms towards dragging down the incumbent President may not necessarily work in their favour and a scenario of counting chickens before they are hatched prevailing at the end of it all!
 
So it seems short of conjecture and speculation that  the Joint Opposition’s Presidential candidate Maithripala Srisenahas has said with a touch of bravado that he would win the January 8th Presidential Election but would not step into the President’s House since he was committed to abolishing the Executive Presidency within 100 days.
It seems not only far fetched that abolishing the Executive Presidency will be within his reach as he hardly knows what the ultimate statistics would be towards his attempt to unseat President Rajapaksa let alone having a two third majority which will be needed for such an action and not surprisingly a cart before the horse type of mentality from an individual with little or no credentials towards becoming President beyond his eagerness towards an imagined victory egged on by the motley crew who have a stake in the imagined pie themselves which truly is in the hands of the voters who still love and respect the present President.
 
It also seens rank ingratitude on the part of Sirisena who was given so much respect and accord towards the position he held within the UPFA to literally back bite in his quest for unattainable power and attempt to create verbal chaos within a Nation emerging very successfuly albeit with great difficulty, from adversity and together with his  new found team with an ‘also ran’ track record distort much of the facts and figures relative to Government spending and citing the state of the Country as being in disarray  hardly realising that these past leaders in his entourage as well as some of the other deserters from the President’s camp are far more culpable of actions which at one time or the other resulted in financial chaos as well as a near betrayal of the Nation to the enemies who sought to destroy it whether inadvertently or not and surely people have not forgotten who delivered them from the axis of evil noe would they risk a second one which could well be the case once the UNP coalesces with their Western idealogues who have apparently been the inspiration for this sudden surge of animosities against President Rajapaksa. where many extraneous factors such as the UNHRC and the urgings of the Tamil Diaspora appear to play a dark and hidden hand!
Is Sri Lanka about to be betrayed a second time one might ask?

It is almost laughable that while addressing a campaign meeting at Hyde Park in Colombo, Srisena, who recently resigned as SLFP General Secretary and Health Minister has, said that he was on a mission to rescue the country from the abyss it had fallen into in the post conflict era with chaos and unprecedented lawlessness and corruption gripping the country which are mere concocted rhetorical riposts given the true nature of what Sri Lanka is today, furthest from being in an abyys when considering the acclaim of being” the Mracle of Asia” and somewhat of a joke also if an individual with no academia or intellectual high ground as his forte could match the attributes of President Rajapaksa and stand on a world stage like he has done towards all the aclaim he carries as a leader! not to mention the important rapport he with leaders like Narendra Modi of India, and the respect he has around the world particularly in South Asia.

Might not he have said for his own credibilities sake that  “If and when I am elected President on January 8, ( which is more wishful thinking at the present) I will not go to the President’s House” ( which is also speculative) with every likelihood that he may not have the opportunity to do so uninvited as there is every likelihood the present President will still be the occupant there. It is not a place him as he says because he may not find the  mandate from all Sri Lankans   needed to carry him to the presidency  or to abolish  the executive presidency within 100 days of his election and replace it with a parliamentary system of government where the legislature would elect the Prime Minister but a tough ask given the uncertainty of what the final tally of his support amongst the voter could turn out to be bearing in mind that there are many avid and devout supporters of the PresIdent  throughout the Nation from all walks of life, cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds unprepared to let a bunch of interlopers who are more than likely to cause greater problems for Sri Lanka than the blessings they promise if they gain access to the running of the country!
 
Srisena, who has picked the Swan as his symbol, appears to have pledged more than he could realistically deliver where his  aspirations  could fall well short of his expectations  relative to promises he seems hardly likey to keep and the Swan he has chosen as his symbol in every likelihood taking flight towards an unknown destination based on the speculative gamble he has chosen, taking his motley crew with him as none of them could accomplish what the President has done in post Tamil Tiger insurgency Sri Lanka today where all the negative rhetoric posted in the manifestos of the opposition seem insufficient to unseat the President.