{"id":65812,"date":"2017-05-06T02:11:03","date_gmt":"2017-05-06T09:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=65812"},"modified":"2017-05-06T02:11:03","modified_gmt":"2017-05-06T09:11:03","slug":"post-may-day-blues-for-the-blues-and-greens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/05\/06\/post-may-day-blues-for-the-blues-and-greens\/","title":{"rendered":"Post May Day blues (for the blues and greens)"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

May Day (in Sri Lanka) is not about workers.\u00a0 It\u2019s about show.\u00a0 This time it was about challenges thrown and accepted, oneupmanship and bragging rights.<\/p>\n

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The regime-thinking was abvious.\u00a0 They believed the JO could not fill Galle Face Green.\u00a0 They did.\u00a0 Although the Joint Opposition (JO), perhaps in the permissible magnanimity of euphoria, thanked the regime for providing Galle Face Green for its rally, the tongue-in-cheek is unmistakable considering the challenge, \u2018let\u2019s see if you can fill up the place!\u2019\u00a0 If May Day shows allow for an assessment of regime-approval, we have to conclude that disillusion is the word on the street.\u00a0 Local Government Elections, if held soon, would put the issue beyond doubt. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Pandula Nayana Bandara, a prolific and colourful political commentator on Facebook captured \u2018May Day\u2019 thus:\u00a0 They didn\u2019t catch the thieves. They mollycoddled them. They made deals.\u00a0 Bigger crooks were birthed.\u00a0 The practice of offering contracts to the near and dear didn\u2019t stop.\u00a0 It continued.\u00a0 The people were not heeded when they voiced grievances.\u00a0 They were ignored. The Rajapaksas were continuously vilified, but for two years they failed to prove they had a cogent programme.\u00a0 They were unable to manage natural disasters.\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t resolve urgent issues following disasters.\u00a0 They compromised the trust in the Police.\u00a0 The law bent only to punish the Opposition.\u00a0 Forget making the state media independent, they didn\u2019t even come close to doing it.\u00a0 Journalists were subjected to veiled threats.\u00a0 The people were asked to tighten belts, but it was made possible for ministers to enjoy luxurious lives.\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t secure the confidence of investors, but there were many joy rides abroad.\u00a0 Those who criticized nepotism paved the way for family members to make big money.\u00a0 There were band-aid solutions for the problems faced by\u00a0 farmers.\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t take the country one step forward from where it stood when the Rajapaksas were defeated.\u00a0 In fact they went backwards.\u00a0 This is the result.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

\nHard times made harder by the errors of omission and commission<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
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Today, SLFP and the UNP spokespersons are in damage-control mode, fiddling with numbers to counter the JO claims including the hilarious claim by Bandula Gunawardena that 2 million came to Galle Face.\u00a0 The truth is that Campbell Park was full, as were the BRC Grounds (JVP rally) and the Getambe Grounds (SLFP rally).\u00a0 The telling stat, then, is the respective areas.\u00a0 Getambe is 2.4 acres, Campbell Park 3.8 and Galle Face Green 18.7.\u00a0 Says a lot about who won and lost the game of mobilizing supporters.\u00a0 If we factored in the obvious advantages of incumbency (advantages unabashedly used by both the SLFP and UNP notwithstanding this running counter to yahapalana<\/i> rhetoric), it makes the JO show even more ominous. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Not \u2018ominous\u2019 in terms of imminent regime change of course.\u00a0 Ominous, mostly, for the political project of the yahapalanists.\u00a0 <\/i>\u2018Political project\u2019 as in pacts with India, the Eelamist embrace via federalism etc., but not the bread and butter of yahapalanaya<\/i> or \u2018good governance\u2019 which is about democratization, transparency, accountability and showing the door to things such as nepotism, cronyism, political patronage, corruption and the abuse of state resources.\u00a0 Such things, we can forget because the regime is no longer interested. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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The coverage of May Day rallies by the state media should convince the doubters that the yahapalanists<\/i>weren\u2019t really serious about yahapalanaya<\/i>.\u00a0 The silence of the most ardent advocates of good governance who announced their objection with shrill howls of horror during the Rajapaksa years also shows that they weren\u2019t serious either. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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What\u2019s most important is that these realities would considerably hamper the pernicious moves by this government or rather the UNP faction of the yahapalanists<\/i> to push through agreements with India and legislation to concede political ground to the Eelam Project via federalism.\u00a0 This is not because the objectors are cognizant of the theoretical arguments against such projects and are empowered by relevant knowledge of history, the \u2018objections\u2019 posed by geographical, demographic and economic realities, but the simple \u2018need\u2019 to trump any big move by the regime.\u00a0 It\u2019s just like dressing an economic grievance in ethnic garb in order to grab more visibility.\u00a0 It\u2019s politics. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Politicians recognize all this, even though not all of them respond with reason.\u00a0 Fear, often, is a better driver even though emotion increases the probability of error.\u00a0 The President, it is reported, has spoken about appointing a committee \u2018to iron out differences between the SLFP and the UNP\u2019.\u00a0 It was also reported that overtures are being made by the SLFP leadership to the JO.\u00a0 On the face of it, then, it is the SLFP that seems to have been most disturbed by the JO\u2019s May Day show.\u00a0 However it is the UNP that has shown the greater irritation. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Rajitha Senaratne was, true to form, agitated.\u00a0 He let slip that the late Lasantha Wickramatunga, celebrated in some circles as a principled and indefatigable campaigner for media freedom, was in fact a Sirikotha lackey.\u00a0 We have to believe that Senaratne was lying if not for anything but the fact that Lasantha is not around to defend himself.\u00a0 He ranted against the Rajapaksas, quite forgetting that he was a minister in Mahinda Rajapaksa\u2019s government.\u00a0 He swore to bring wrongdoers to book (did someone scream \u2018b.o.r.i.n.g!\u201d?).\u00a0 Sarath Fonseka, also speaking for the UNP swore that Mahinda Rajapaksa would not be sent to the electric chair but would be hanged by his own \u2018saatakaya<\/i>\u2019.\u00a0 Quite yahapalana-like, what?\u00a0Champika Ranawaka, for his part, was adamant that there\u2019s a job for Fonseka to do.\u00a0 Fonseka can and must be allowed to crush trade unions, Ranawaka said.<\/div>\n
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What is all this if not brave chest-beating by the politically beleaguered?\u00a0 These UNP politicians are essentially acknowledging that they\u2019ve lost faith in \u2018due process\u2019.\u00a0 They are talking as if they are fighting for their political lives.\u00a0 Ranawaka, most of all, should know how the 1980s unfolded, from the July 1980 strike to the 88-89 bheeshanaya <\/i>unleashed by the party he now represents and its companion-of-sorts, the JVP, and the escalation that took us from the one to the other.<\/div>\n
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The tempting option for both the SLFP and the UNP would be to go for an 88-89 repeat.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s too late to consider any other option or (hopefully) maybe it’s just they are not able at this point to think of anything else. The \u2018other option\u2019 is to summon whatever residual intellectual and ethical resources at their disposal and revert to the original yahapalana<\/i> project with quantities of energy and commitment unlike anything they\u2019ve so far demonstrated they\u2019ve possessed.\u00a0 It could be called a tall order, but then again, it could be the one thing that will save both regime and project because, at this point, it is hard to imagine that even cold-shouldering India and shelving constitutional reform would blunt the momentum of the JO. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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As for the \u2018Fonseka Option,\u2019 those who are advocating it would do well to remember that although the vast majority of those who were killed in 88-89 were unarmed young people unfortunate to have been born in the sixties and early seventies, many high-rankers of the then UNP regime also perished in the fires ignited.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.\u00a0 <\/i>Email: <\/i>malindasenevi@gmail.com<\/i><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 Twitter: malindasene. \u00a0This article was first published in the Daily Mirror (May 4, 2017)<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE May Day (in Sri Lanka) is not about workers.\u00a0 It\u2019s about show.\u00a0 This time it was about challenges thrown and accepted, oneupmanship and bragging rights. The regime-thinking was abvious.\u00a0 They believed the JO could not fill Galle Face Green.\u00a0 They did.\u00a0 Although the Joint Opposition (JO), perhaps in the permissible magnanimity of […]<\/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-65812","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\/65812","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=65812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}