The Three Musketeers: Debutante Celebrations Galore Champika, Sajith And Anura Kumara
Prof. Kumar David
There have been three grand coming-out events in the last 12 months. To be a more precise two debut-balls and in the case of Sajith a still ongoing feud whether to anoint him Deputy Leader or let him languish outside Uva for a little longer. The guy is hogging headlines and some, more outside than within the UNP, are excited by a youthful pretender. For the record, all three bambinos are under 50, their birth years: Champika 1965, Sajith 1967 and Anura Kumara 1968. Obama was just 44 when first elected but belongs to a different rank. Nevertheless, the fate of these three will give telescopic insight of things to come and the political playing field in the next decade. Ranil, Rajapakse, Dead Left and Sambanthan are jointly and severally well past their useful shelf-life. Indeed the conjoint age of DEW, Tissa, Vasu, Ranil, Mahinda and Sampanthan exceeds four and a half centuries, reaching deep back into the mid-Portuguese period in the history of this country!
In Alexander Dumas’ novel, D’Artagnan is not one of the three; an outsider, a country bumpkin who travelled to Paris to join the high stakes game with Athos, Porthos and Aramis: “All for One! One for All!” So that myth holds too! The fourth of this generational cluster, the Tamil Prabaharan, was an outsider to this same Sinhala nationalist battle cry that binds Champika, Sajith and Anura Kumara.
AKD
We are on the brink of a profound generational shift in political leadership, most obviously on the left. Dead Left leaders hanging on with a tenacity that perks, privileges and portfolios alone can explain have obstructed a next-generation which may challenge them, albeit at the gates of the morgue. Secondly, leadership in the small-left is barren, a desert as dry as the Kalahari. There are a dozen minuscule entities with ‘Socialist’ or ‘Revolutionary’ or an equivalent on their name boards, but no leader of national stature and none likely to gain that stature. Speaking candidly, and with no bias one way or the other, it is a walkover for the JVP on the left; a takeover of the whole left space just for the asking. Will it still manage to screw up the opportunity anyway? I am not sure, but it seems so far so good with Anura Kumara. (This should not be read as uncritical endorsement, which is a separate matter from objective evaluation of prospects). Does anyone see a credible alternative challenger to share mass left-space with the JVP? Read More
