Style, Emotion & Rhetoric Of The Maithri Presidency
By Sarath de Alwis –October 17, 2015
Sarath de Alwis
Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men. – Plato
This correspondent entertained no illusions when voting for the Swan – symbol of the common opposition candidate on 8th January 2015. It was a vote for what the swan stood for. The candidate was incidental. On 31st December 2014 exactly a week before the epochal change of the Presidency, I wrote in the print media: “The current political discourse is not about choosing a captain to lead our nation state. It is about electing a president for our Republic. On 8 January we should not and must not elect a captain who will rule, lead and command. Instead we should elect a president attuned to the rhythm of the age of information.
We now find that we have elected a preachy President rich on rhetoric and short on delivery. Hence this retrospective search for clues in understanding the paradox of Maithripala Sirisena Transformative President, indulgent father of Daham Sirisena, caring brother of Kumarasinghe Sirisena and hardnosed succorer, salvager of his party the SLFP.
It now seems that this president is not as attuned to the rhythm of the age of information as we hoped. If he was, he would have been far more receptive to the public abhorrence of nepotism, cronyism and profligacy.
By appointing his brother as the head of Sri Lanka telecom and taking his son to New York as a member of the official delegation to the General Assembly sessions he has determinedly excluded siblings and offspring as falling within the compass of nepotism. May be. It may just be, that the double helix structure of DNA allows some presidential double standards on nepotism as applicable to Thamankaduwa today and Giruwapattuwa yesterday.
