{"id":74154,"date":"2018-01-29T09:11:27","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T16:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=74154"},"modified":"2018-01-29T09:11:27","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T16:11:27","slug":"unuth-ekai-munuth-ekai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/01\/29\/unuth-ekai-munuth-ekai\/","title":{"rendered":"Unuth ekai, munuth ekai \u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editorial\u00a0Courtesy\u00a0 The Island<\/strong><\/b><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Monday 29th January, 2018<\/b><\/p>\n

President Maithripala Sirisena has admitted that his new-found allies are as bad as his erstwhile comrades. Speaking at a UPFA election rally, he declared, the other day, that he had left the Rajapaksa government, which was corrupt, in a bid to usher in good governance, but those with whom he joined forces to achieve that lofty goal were no better; they had robbed the Central Bank within days of coming to power, he said.<\/p>\n

President Sirisena, faced with the uphill task of steering the SLFP to victory at the forthcoming local government (LG) polls, is trying to show both the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and the UNP in a bad light. He wants to project the SLFP as the only clean party in the fray. He seems to be using the catchy local slogan unuth ekai, munuth ekai\u2014which, roughly rendered into English means \u2018those are hopelessly bad and these are no better\u2019. The people who know politicians for what they really are will tell the SLFP big guns, thopith ekai (\u2018you are also the same\u2019).<\/p>\n

No one with a modicum of intelligence will buy into President Sirisena\u2019s claim that it was pure altruism that motivated him to leave the Rajapaksa government and run for President. The much-touted yahapalana campaign was as queer as a three-dollar bill owing to the presence of many rogues among its proponents. The SLFPers who threw in their lot with Sirisena were as corrupt as others in the previous government. The UNPers were no angels either. Among them were unsavoury elements responsible for various crooked deals under previous UNP-led governments, which fell mainly because of their sordid operations.<\/p>\n

Sirisena would have had no qualms about remaining in the Rajapaksa government if President Mahinda Rajapaksa had refrained from holding a snap presidential election and\/or appointed him the Prime Minister. If he had realised that the Rajapaksa government was corrupt he shouldn\u2019t have waited till the announcement of the a presidential election to break ranks with that administration and launch a good governance campaign. He has gone on record as saying that he warned Rajapaksa against holding presidential polls in 2015. What if Rajapaksa had heeded his advice and completed the second term? The country would have been under the Rajapaksa government for about two more years!<\/p>\n

President Sirisena also faulted the Joint Opposition (JO) and the UNP for having colluded to prevent Parliament from taking up for debate the bond probe commission report before Feb. 10 LG polls. He said they had got together as he had also presented to Parliament the report of the presidential commission which probed serious acts of fraud, corruption and abuse of power, state resources and privileges under the previous government. They, he said, were wary of facing a parliamentary debate before the polls because they feared that public opinion would turn against them and have a devastating impact on their electoral performance. President Sirisena dared the JO and the UNP to have the debate before Feb. 10. Interestingly, it was the SLFP which sided with the UNP to have the debate on Feb. 20 and 21 as evident from the media statements by Ministers Mahinda Samarasinghe (SLFP) and Lakshman Kiriella (UNP)!<\/p>\n

It may be recalled that President Sirisena dissolved Parliament in 2015 to prevent Parliament from debating a COPE report on the first bond scam before the last general election. He did so in support of the UNP at the expense of the SLFP-led UPFA, whose campaign he is leading today. Having made the UPFA\u2008lose then, he is now striving to make it win! It is a supreme irony that he is now accusing others of trying to avoid a parliamentary debate.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Prime Minster Ranil Wickremesinghe has said he will summon Parliament on Feb. 08 to take up the aforesaid reports for debate. The UNP has obviously buckled under pressure. However, even if the promised debate comes to pass the public will still be none the wiser, given its timing. Campaigning will have to end 48 hours before Feb. 10 and there won\u2019t be any time for a public discussion on the outcome of the debate to be held. Needless to say the Opposition won\u2019t be able to gain any political mileage out of it due to election laws. There is also the likelihood of the UNP provoking the JO MPs into throwing the House into turmoil during the debate so as to scuttle the debate.<\/p>\n

If the JO and the JVP are really keen to have a parliamentary debate on the reports at issue, they ought to demand that Parliament take it up latest by Feb. 05. President Sirisena, as the head of government, for his party, ought to ensure that there will be a decent gap between the parliament debate and the polls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editorial\u00a0Courtesy\u00a0 The Island Monday 29th January, 2018 President Maithripala Sirisena has admitted that his new-found allies are as bad as his erstwhile comrades. Speaking at a UPFA election rally, he declared, the other day, that he had left the Rajapaksa government, which was corrupt, in a bid to usher in good governance, but those with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74154","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=74154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}