{"id":92177,"date":"2019-08-12T14:15:06","date_gmt":"2019-08-12T21:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=92177"},"modified":"2019-08-12T14:15:06","modified_gmt":"2019-08-12T21:15:06","slug":"gota-wins-first-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/08\/12\/gota-wins-first-battle\/","title":{"rendered":"Gota wins first battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The SLPP is cock-a-hoop, having picked former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa as its presidential candidate while the UNP is still struggling to name its. The SLFP\/UPFA, which tried to coalesce with the SLPP to field President Maithripala Sirisena at the next presidential election, has been left with egg on its face.
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The SLPP, in a state of euphoria, seems to think everything is now copacetic, and the upcoming presidential race is going to be a walk in the park. But, an early start does not necessarily lead to victory in any contest. The outcome of the last presidential race is a case in point. President Mahinda Rajapaksa\u2019s re-election campaign had been on for years by the time that election was announced. Maithripala Sirisena was not even in the picture, at that time, but turned out to be a dark horse within a matter of a few weeks after being nominated.
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An early start can also prove disadvantageous if the contestant concerned fails to pace himself\/herself properly in the race. For election campaigns tend to slacken with the passage of time. The first challenge, before the SLPP, will be maintaining the momentum of its presidential election campaign for over three months.
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Having won his first battle on the political front, Gotabaya, on Sunday, said, inter alia, that the mistakes of the former administration had to be rectified. He said, “We must work towards achieving our long-term objectives whilst undertaking necessary course corrections swiftly and correcting the mistakes that have been made in the past.” This, in our book, is a textbook example of understatement or litotes. What characterised the last government were not just mistakes, but colossal blunders and serious wrongdoings, which were legion.
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The fact that the present dispensation has failed to make good on its election promise to throw some of the former rulers behind bars for corruption, abuse of power, etc. does not mean that all the allegations it levelled against them were baseless. They are lucky that their successors, upon savouring power, started making up for lost time and got exposed for the bond scams, among other things, which allowed them to secure a bridgehead and launch a devastating counterattack. The UNP and the SLFP\/UPFA have not recovered both politically and electorally.
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The former rulers have been able to bounce back not so much because they have become very popular but because the UNF government has ruined things for itself and failed to live up the expectations of the people. Good governance has become just pie in the sky; national security was neglected to the point of government leaders and top bureaucrats ignoring a warning of terror attacks, which happened on 21 April; the government expected funds to pour in from the countries that had thrown their weight behind it at the last presidential election, only to be disappointed; there has been no discernible development and the much-touted election promise to provide one million jobs to the youth has remained unfulfilled. The government has been in overdrive, making state sector appointments, for the last several months, but whether the method will yield the desired results in term of votes in sufficient numbers is in doubt.
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The UNP\u2019s strategy worked last time; it succeeded in bringing together the TNA, the JVP, the SLMC and the ACMC and harnessing their collective power to defeat President Rajapaksa. It may not be able to secure the JVP\u2019s support this time around, but the alliance it is planning to cobble together will be a force to reckon with in a nip and tuck. The SLPP will have its work cut out to win over the minority voters.
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Gotabaya will be put through the paces in debates, etc. in time to come and he will have to convince the public that he is equal to the task of hoisting the country out of the politico-economic mire it finds itself in. Defeating his foes is not the biggest challenge he will have to overcome; instead, it will be saving himself from the unsavoury elements who were responsible for Mahinda\u2019s downfall. On Sunday, some of them were seen crawling out of the woodwork. It was a disgusting sight!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editorial Courtesy The Island The SLPP is cock-a-hoop, having picked former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa as its presidential candidate while the UNP is still struggling to name its. The SLFP\/UPFA, which tried to coalesce with the SLPP to field President Maithripala Sirisena at the next presidential election, has been left with egg on its face. […]<\/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-92177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92177","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=92177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}