{"id":46454,"date":"2015-08-02T07:37:14","date_gmt":"2015-08-02T14:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=46454"},"modified":"2015-08-02T07:37:14","modified_gmt":"2015-08-02T14:37:14","slug":"chandrika-the-bomb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/08\/02\/chandrika-the-bomb\/","title":{"rendered":"Chandrika the Bomb"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Malinda Seneviratne<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

A question was asked from the former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, during his final breakfast meeting with media heads last year.\u00a0 \u2018Who is your real opponent, Maithripala Sirisena, Ranil Wickremesinghe or Chandrika Kumaratunga?\u2019\u00a0 He did not hesitate in responding: \u2018Chandrika!\u2019<\/p>\n

This became the lead story in all newspapers the following day.\u00a0 The headline in almost all newspapers was \u2018Chandrika is my real opponent!\u2019 or else versions of that same line.\u00a0 What happened next is interesting.<\/p>\n

The Maithripala Sirisena campaign quietly sidelined Kumaratunga.\u00a0 It must be remembered that it was this lady who flanked Sirisena when he announced his presidential bid.\u00a0 Many who were close to Candidate Sirisena expressed the view that she did more harm than good.\u00a0 Her entire speech was full of invective and littered with revenge-intent, quite in contrast to the campaign theme (Maithree-Paalanayak or \u2018Compassionate Governance\u2019).\u00a0 Perhaps it was hard to flush the bad news down the toilet at the time, but Rajapaksa\u2019s assertion tipped the scales, so to speak.\u00a0 She was essentially restricted to Gampaha.\u00a0 The fact that she could not even deliver the \u2018ancestral seat\u2019 of Attanagalla speaks volumes of her political worth.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, after declaring that she was his true opponent, Rajapaksa focused on attacking Sirisena.\u00a0 Had he succeeded in turning it into a Mahinda vs CBK affair, he may have fared better, one can speculate.<\/p>\n

The fact is Chandrika is bad news for whoever she supports.\u00a0 It is fashionable these days to tag \u2018corruption\u2019 to anything associated with the Rajapaksas.\u00a0 Yes, not just corruption but thuggery, abuse of power etc., etc.\u00a0 It makes sense if it is a matter of defeating a Rajapaksa-led coalition of course, but if one stands back and does not pretend to have been born after 2005 then one must concede that the dark days began long before Mahinda Rajapaksa became President.<\/p>\n

Not only did Chandrika do nothing of significance during the 11 years she was President, her reign was marked by absolute incompetence in managing the economy, unprecedented election violence (remember the Wayamba Provincial Council Election), political victimization, harassment and murder of journalists (remember the \u2018Satana\u2019 editor, Rohana Kumara?) and of course a cluelessness about dealing with the LTTE.<\/p>\n

Victor Ivan called her fp!r \/csk (\u2018Chaura Regina\u2019 or \u2018Thieving Queen\u2019).\u00a0 Diehard UNPers and even the holier-than-thou JVP would feel embarrassed to talk about the CBK-days, but a short visit to the National Archives would help unearth all they had to say about the lady before Ranil and Anura Kumara Dissanayake saw her as ally as per the classic thesis \u2018my enemy\u2019s enemy is my friend\u2019.<\/p>\n

Political parties have to weigh merits against demerits.\u00a0 There are costs and these are checked against possible benefits.\u00a0 This is why, perhaps, Sirisena came to the party almost clinging to Chandrika\u2019s sari-pota and this is also why he dispatched the lady to Horagolla not long afterwards.\u00a0 He would have sensed that she is a liability.\u00a0 He probably was savvy enough to figure out that what politicians might forget (and forgive) the electorate may not.<\/p>\n

Today, more than six months after the Presidential Election, the euphoria of the \u2018venasa\u2019 (change) is but a distant memory.\u00a0 Sirisena came with promises.\u00a0 The delivery van after some hopeful spluttering came to a halt not too long after.\u00a0 His \u2018abdication speech\u2019 essentially delivered the SLFP vote base to the man he ranted about and whose defeat he sorely needs, Mahinda Rajapaksa.\u00a0 The UNP might believe that the January 8 result (and all the votes) were green in color, but that\u2019s wishful thinking.\u00a0 The flak for all that was not done after January 8 (20th Amendment, Right to Information Act, Code of Conduct for MPs) and what was done (the Central Bank bond scam) got credited nevertheless to Ranil Wickremesinghe\u2019s party simply because Sirisena took a back seat during the period.\u00a0 So when Ranil says \u2018Chandrika will return and some bombs will explode\u2019 he is showing desperation.<\/p>\n

There are bombs that Chandrika can explode.\u00a0 She did toss some grenades (as we mentioned) and they almost wrecked Sirisena\u2019s face.\u00a0 This time, if we go by her now obvious party preferences, she will be closer to Ranil than Mahinda.\u00a0 No prizes for guessing who is more likely to get hurt.\u00a0 The point is, Chandrika does not carry bombs with her.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t need to.\u00a0 She\u2019s one.<\/p>\n

Politics in Sri Lanka, then, is a strange game.\u00a0 For years, Ranil was Mahinda\u2019s best friend and vice versa.\u00a0 Chandrika could have been Mahinda\u2019s best friend but he didn\u2019t market it right, as explained above.\u00a0 Ranil needed Mahinda to split the SLFP and perhaps this is why he was slothful in investigating the wrongdoings of the previous regime.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t help that his buddies were busy making bucks using connections of course but that\u2019s another story.\u00a0 Sirisena and Ranil were friends and still are one supposes, but Sirisena in trying to affirm loyalties played into Mahinda\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

Chandrika thought Sirisena was a friend and believed that he would somehow ensure that Mahinda would not get nominated.\u00a0 He read it all wrong.\u00a0 She was peeved.\u00a0 She left in a huff.\u00a0 Ranil thinks Chandrika is a friend and has been since Mahinda effectively turned her from a Somebody into a Nobody in 2005, but she is his worst enemy.<\/p>\n

One thing about her, though.\u00a0 She adds color.\u00a0 She makes things interesting. It\u2019s more fun when she\u2019s around than when she\u2019s absent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Malinda Seneviratne A question was asked from the former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, during his final breakfast meeting with media heads last year.\u00a0 \u2018Who is your real opponent, Maithripala Sirisena, Ranil Wickremesinghe or Chandrika Kumaratunga?\u2019\u00a0 He did not hesitate in responding: \u2018Chandrika!\u2019 This became the lead story in all newspapers the following day.\u00a0 The headline […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malinda-seneviratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}