SRI LANKA THE MID-TERM REPORT

By Gomin Dayasri
Symbolically the bloom has faded away from the national flower (“Nil Manel”), which grows in the mud in shallow waters. Beside sits Sri Lanka, stranded in such sludge in troubled waters. Rajapakse pulled a patriotic genie out of an iron helmet during the war but it’s fast becoming a fading gnome - unless an intense heart massage can revive the spirit of patriotism, which is the last trump in his pack of card tricks.

Navigating nationally, ground realities give a more kaleidoscopic visual than a statistical survey on the results of the last provincial council elections, which were staggered. Picture gets distorted, placed against the background of an election map spread across the country, on a solitary day’s polling round, as at a presidential election or general elections. A government with a 2/3 majority has a gait to look the size of a sleeping giant but its thought process carries the dimension of a teeny-weeny peanut. UPFA is a rainbow coalition created by an arranged marriage than a love match. Such a union needs weeks to assemble and days to disintegrate.

 Sri Lanka’s immediate future lies on its way to bloom or gloom on the broad and slim shoulders respectively of regime’s apparatchiks- P.B.Jayasundera and Nivard Cabraal. The eye of the oncoming cyclone is focused on the economy. Coming close to a pre-empted election year, economic platform is set for a make or a break situation; never has the executive been dependent on so few for so much. Were the Two Big Lads – often at variance- hamstrung to decline the options available in deflecting the many obstacles they encountered? They have no choice but to take the nuclear option with the lights blinking red. Fate of a government hangs on their individual decisions.

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