{"id":65483,"date":"2017-04-23T17:16:13","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T00:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=65483"},"modified":"2017-04-23T17:16:13","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T00:16:13","slug":"the-enemy-of-joint-opposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/04\/23\/the-enemy-of-joint-opposition\/","title":{"rendered":"The Enemy of Joint Opposition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Janaki Chandraratna<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

I like to comment on the discussion featured in the Island Newspaper on the enemy of the Joint Opposition, in recent times.<\/p>\n

Needless to say I respect Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke and Dr. Mahinda Pathirana for raising this issue, as very often people are misguided by the contradictory statements in the media by the Prime Minister and the President on matters of national interest.<\/p>\n

I believe that the support of intellectuals like Dayan and Mahinda are important to save our country along with Gota, Mahinda and other patriotic leaders from the threat of division through the forthcoming constitution changes. Their union can also be a solution for a better economic future. The knowledge, experience and the clarity of arguments are exemplary. There is however a need for this passion to be used to consolidate the opposition rather than weaken it by veering in different directions.<\/p>\n

As Dayan says we need to identify the enemy first. It is my view that anyone who brings propositions inimical to the sovereignty of our nation either directly or implicitly is a traitor to our country. The President may appear to be helpless and be manipulated by the PM but we must not forget his repertoire in recent years. To begin with the President, as publicly stated, had planned his exit from the previous regime for over four years. His focus had been to destabilize the govt. and challenge his leader at the next Presidential elections. \u00a0To keep such a scheme under covers for that length of time is a tough challenge for any reasonable person. He managed however to pull through this pretense by agreeing with peer decisions and singing hosannas to his leader through out that time period.<\/p>\n

Apart from the many autocratic decisions he had taken after his win as the President he was able to manipulate the EX-President for his support for the August 2015 election and discard him on the eve of the polling day by his declaration to the public that Mahinda would not be made the PM even if he wins a sizeable majority. To my mind it was the ultimate betrayal and a very low blow that anyone could have embarked on any moral standard.\u00a0 Even today the President is quick to lambast Mahinda for every failure of the current Government. He has also publicly stated that he would not entertain either Gota or Mahinda in his govt. The political witch-hunt undertaken against this duo is no secret to the electorate. People are no doubt sick and tired of this deception and do not want Mahinda to fall into the same trap as he did in August 2015 in joining the President.<\/p>\n

Yes, I agree with Dayan that Basil may have been unpopular, he is not a strategist but a good organizer, and was disliked by many including the current President during the previous regime. Indeed there is a possibility that the knowledge of current President\u2019s schemes of betrayal of Mahinda during the previous regime would have contributed to this toxicity. But what we currently need is for the opposition to merge all skills at hand, at least in the short term, to defeat the referendum on constitutional changes if our country is to survive as a sovereign nation. We need to encourage a conscience vote on the future of the country rather than a party specific ballot. Brexit referendum in Britain and Trump victory in Britain were based on such a conscience vote.\u00a0 Once the referendum on constitution changes is defeated, I believe that the current political landscape can change and there would be plenty of opportunity for the current President to rethink the role of SLFP and JO to solidify its strength for future elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janaki Chandraratna I like to comment on the discussion featured in the Island Newspaper on the enemy of the Joint Opposition, in recent times. Needless to say I respect Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke and Dr. Mahinda Pathirana for raising this issue, as very often people are misguided by the contradictory statements in the media by the […]<\/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-65483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65483","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=65483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}