{"id":50405,"date":"2015-12-22T16:38:31","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T23:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=50405"},"modified":"2015-12-22T16:38:31","modified_gmt":"2015-12-22T23:38:31","slug":"conspiracies-galore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/12\/22\/conspiracies-galore\/","title":{"rendered":"Conspiracies galore"},"content":{"rendered":"

Island Editorial<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

December 22, 2015, 7:49 pm<\/span><\/p>\n

President Maithripala Sirisena, speaking in Jaffna on Sunday, vented his spleen on some unnamed extremists for blocking the path to reconciliation and conspiring to dislodge the government. He vowed to defeat those sinister plans. He seems to be troubled by a sense of being encircled with his erstwhile boss, Mahinda Rajapaksa, indicating his readiness to go on the offensive.<\/p>\n

President Sirisena\u2019s consternation is understandable. He finds himself in an unenviable position, struggling as he does to unify the SLFP; he will have to lead the SLFP-led coalition\u2019s local government election campaign in a few months. He will have to ensure the UPFA\u2019s victory if he is to consolidate his power in the SLFP. This is a tall order, especially for a person who has engineered the UPFA\u2019s defeat at previous elections and weakened the SLFP in the process. The President\u2019s task will be to win the LG polls without the backing of Rajapaksa. By leading the UPFA campaign he will place himself on a collision course with the UNP led by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.<\/p>\n

There is no guarantee that the political marriage of convenience between the UNP and the UPFA will last until 2020. Some SLFP heavyweights in the Cabinet are already promising to form an SLFP-led government before long while the government leaders are busy papering over the cracks. Holding a government together with a bunch of highly ambitious, strange bedfellows stepping on one another\u2019s toes and pulling in different directions is no easy task.<\/p>\n

There is said to be a presidential system in this country, but, in reality, Parliament is still stronger than the executive president. If the president and the prime minister happen to represent two rival parties and be at logger heads the latter becomes the more powerful to all intents and purposes. What we experienced from 2001 to 2004 with President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe at each other\u2019s jugular may serve as an example.<\/p>\n

Now that there is no constitutional provision for the President to sack a government within one year of its formation, there is no way he or she can tame or get rid of a hostile prime minister from a rival party. The 19th Amendment has weakened the President\u2019s position as never before; he will be reduced to a mere figurehead in the event of a power struggle between him and Parliament.<\/p>\n

Is President Sirisena seeing crocodiles in a glass of water when he accuses his rivals of hatching a plot? Or, is he trying to gain public sympathy? We believe he has read the political situation accurately. Conspiracies are synonymous with Sri Lankan politics. The President himself was party to a plot, which dislodged the UPFA government last January. He broke bread (or hoppers?) with the then President Rajapaksa on the eve of his defection. His ambitious, revengeful rivals are biding their time. But, it is highly doubtful whether either of the two UPFA factions will be able to form a government though some SLFP ministers are bellowing rhetoric to that effect.<\/p>\n

The UPFA is divided and, therefore, cannot hold itself together let alone win over 18 more MPs to gain a working majority in Parliament. The UNP can rest assured that it will have the backing of either the Sirisena faction of the SLFP\u2008or the UPFA dissidents. Even if the Sirisena loyalists\u2019 honeymoon with the UNP were to come to an end, the UPFA dissidents are likely to enable the UNP to remain in power so as to undermine the President\u2019s position. The UNP with 106 MPs is short of only seven seats to muster a working majority in Parliament. Enmity between Sirisena and Rajapaksa has stood the UNP in good stead and its political fortunes are not likely to be affected by the conspiracies the President is crying blue murder about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Island Editorial December 22, 2015, 7:49 pm President Maithripala Sirisena, speaking in Jaffna on Sunday, vented his spleen on some unnamed extremists for blocking the path to reconciliation and conspiring to dislodge the government. He vowed to defeat those sinister plans. He seems to be troubled by a sense of being encircled with his erstwhile […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50405","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=50405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}