{"id":46723,"date":"2015-08-09T19:28:55","date_gmt":"2015-08-10T01:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=46723"},"modified":"2015-08-09T11:44:20","modified_gmt":"2015-08-09T18:44:20","slug":"if-president-mahinda-rajapakse-did-not-enter-the-election-ranil-would-have-won-by-landslide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/08\/09\/if-president-mahinda-rajapakse-did-not-enter-the-election-ranil-would-have-won-by-landslide\/","title":{"rendered":"IF PRESIDENT MAHINDA RAJAPAKSE DID NOT ENTER THE ELECTION, RANIL WOULD HAVE WON BY LANDSLIDE!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By M D P DISSANAYAKE<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The President Sirisena, Self-appointed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe and redundant Chandrika Bandaranaike did every political manoeuvring to prevent President Mahinda Rajapakse entering the General Election of Sri Lanka.\u00a0\u00a0 The harsh reality is that if MR did not enter the contest, it was a foregone conclusion that Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe would have roped home with almost 70% or more\u00a0 of the seats in the 225 seats Parliament.<\/p>\n

The trio never expected MR\u00a0 to enter the fight, assuming the resurgence of public support for MR will diminish with the passage of time.\u00a0\u00a0 The illegal government headed by Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe wanted to buy time till next year, so that many allegations MR government could be brought before the Judiciary, via FCID.<\/p>\n

RW STRATEGIES\u00a0 BACK-FIRED BY MR’S INTELLIGENCE:<\/strong><\/p>\n

(a)\u00a0 The original draft of the\u00a0 19 Amendment to the Constitution had several clauses, empowering the\u00a0 Prime Minister to take control of the state of affairs and reduce the level of President to an almost a ceremonial role.\u00a0 The briefless Barrister Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe recruited a replica of Jayampathi Wickremasratne, to do the legal draftsman’s duties.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The MR camp had other strategies.\u00a0 They made several amendments to reduce the powers included in the original draft, to prevent RW becoming a “dictator”.\u00a0 Without\u00a0 the support of the MR camp, the 19 amendment would not have secured the 2\/3 rds majority of Parliament.<\/p>\n

(b)\u00a0 The MR camp was not in favour of 20th amendment.\u00a0\u00a0 With a General Election to be held in the near future, the existing system favours UPFA much more than the UNP.\u00a0\u00a0 Hence, several delaying tactics were adopted to prevent the passage of 20th amendment.<\/p>\n

(c)\u00a0 MR camp was more inclined to have the General Election, following a dissolution as early as possible.\u00a0 RW insisted passage of 20 amendment before the Parliament is dissolved.\u00a0 RW wanted to buy more time to firm up his authority.\u00a0 RW’s blunder of appointing a Tamil Singapore citizen to head the Central Bank and the subsequent allegations that Arjun Mahendran squandered billions of state funds reached nervous headlines for the self-appointed Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

(c) MR camp could have initiated action during March or April to bring a no-confidence motion against the Prime Minister.\u00a0 But it was not the correct timing. The Central Bank fiasco was the ideal scenario to justify a no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MR camp knew that RW will lose the motion and therefore exercise the option of recommending the dissolution of the Parliament.\u00a0\u00a0 MR camp achieved its overall plan at a time RW was totally unprepared to face an election.<\/p>\n

(d) Having had his “house of cards” tumbling down at an unexpected time, RW had to seek salvage from CBK.\u00a0\u00a0 Neither UPFA Secretary Mr Premajantha nor SLFP Secretary Priyadarsana Yapa did take part in any of the “bring back Mahinda” campaign pioneered by Messrs. Weerawansa, Gunawardene, Nanayakkara and Gammanpila.\u00a0 After the dissolution of the Parliament, both secretaries publicly declared their allegiance to Mr Mahinda Rajapakse, which was a death blow to Chandrika and Ranil.<\/p>\n

It appears very clearly that both Ranil and Chandrika are extremely angry and upset by the change of events within a short period of time. If MR did not enter the election, Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe would have won by a landslide,\u00a0 as there was no other alternative political leader in the SLFP to take on RW.<\/p>\n

The Prime Minister is fearing the publication of COPE report after the election and possible legal actions against him.\u00a0\u00a0 This will be the last opportunity for MR Ranil Wickremasinghe.\u00a0\u00a0 The UNP candidate from Hambantota will be eagerly waiting to take over the leadership of UNP.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By M D P DISSANAYAKE The President Sirisena, Self-appointed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe and redundant Chandrika Bandaranaike did every political manoeuvring to prevent President Mahinda Rajapakse entering the General Election of Sri Lanka.\u00a0\u00a0 The harsh reality is that if MR did not enter the contest, it was a foregone conclusion that Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-m-d-p-dissanayake"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46723","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=46723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}