{"id":90502,"date":"2019-06-17T15:36:58","date_gmt":"2019-06-17T22:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=90502"},"modified":"2019-06-17T15:36:58","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T22:36:58","slug":"a-sure-sign-of-desperation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/06\/17\/a-sure-sign-of-desperation\/","title":{"rendered":"A sure sign of desperation"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The yahapalana government is like an aircraft whose engines and landing gear have both failed in mid-air. Worse, there is a big fight in the cockpit with the pilots tightening their grip on each other\u2019s jugular. It is on a wing and a prayer. Nothing short of a miracle can save it.
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President Maithripala Sirisena is in a dilemma. His luck ran out years ago and nothing seems to go right for him. He wanted to destroy the Rajapaksa family politically. He spared no pains to achieve his goal, but his efforts came a cropper. It is said that if you can\u2019t beat them, you have to join them. So, he joined forces with the Rajapaksas again in a bid to oust Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, but in vain. His relations with the SLPP have since turned sour, and he has fallen between two stools.
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At present, with his term coming to an end, President Sirisena apparently does not seem to know what to do. It was only the other day that he indicated to a group of UNP Ministers that he was willing to consider backing the UNP provided that it fielded a young presidential candidate. His party, the SLFP, says he will seek a second term, and the general consensus is that he will. Odds, however, are stacked against him with the UNP and the SLPP planning to field their own presidential candidates. He has been blowing hot and cold about his second term bid. Maybe he thinks it is disadvantageous for him to show his hand early. Prevarication has become second nature to him.
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In a dramatic turn of events, we are now told that President Sirisena is planning to hold a referendum in a bid to conduct a general election before the next presidential polls. Details of his modus operandi are not known and some political analysts have pooh-poohed the idea. The President\u2019s Office has chosen to remain tight-lipped about the issue.
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Speculation was rife, following President Sirisena\u2019s abortive bid to hold a general election, late last year, that he would consult the people directly at a referendum whether they needed parliamentary polls. He baulked at doing so. Now that he is in a quandary over the upcoming presidential election, which is a worrisome proposition for him, he may have sought to buy time through a referendum, as claimed in some quarters. It is also possible that his camp has floated the referendum story by way of a trial balloon. It is a sure sign of sheer desperation.
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Even if the people overwhelmingly endorse at a referendum a move to hold snap parliamentary polls before the next presidential election, such an outcome will be legally binding on no one. The government can carry on regardless in such an eventuality, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Such an endorsement, however, can be used to cast the government in a bad light as an administration that stays in power against the will of the people. Most of all, a referendum might derail the arrangements the National Election Commission is making for the conduct of the presidential election in December. One cannot think of any other benefits that may accrue from a referendum to the President.
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The referendum issue has stood the UNP-led government in good stead in that it has eclipsed the postponement of the Provincial Council elections. The Provincial Council system has failed. It has neither solved the problem it was intended to nor helped develop the rural areas which have been long neglected. It only serves as a refuge for some politicians who fail to enter Parliament and, therefore, it does not make any sense to maintain them at a huge cost to the public. One may not make an issue of the Provincial Councils having no elected representatives, but the problem is that the people have been denied their right to vote. The postponement of elections have on democracy the same devastating effect as terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editorial Courtesy The Island The yahapalana government is like an aircraft whose engines and landing gear have both failed in mid-air. Worse, there is a big fight in the cockpit with the pilots tightening their grip on each other\u2019s jugular. It is on a wing and a prayer. Nothing short of a miracle can save […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90502","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=90502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}