A Janus-Faced Charade Or Are The Timbers Wrenching Apart? Is There A Gota-Mahinda Split?
Prof Kumar David
Everybody has an opinion about which way the ship is listing, and I have mine, but the answer to the question in my caption is important; it will set the national course for the coming months. Let me add that I take no side in this purported sibling row as I am implacably opposed to both. Rather, my effort is to read the signs, summarise arguments of pundits and punters, and to think through what either the great-deception, or a parting of ways will mean in the medium term – say next 12 months.
If Lanka was a normal political dispensation, where what leaders say could be taken as frank, and not as deception and sham calculated to deceive, then there is a searing deadlock in government. No government can survive with such an intractable conflict on the major policy issue of the day. Symbols of the opposed positions are the President (presumably supported by majorities in Cabinet and parliamentary group) on one side, and on the other his brother, the Defence Secretary with the shrill and strident backing of a cacophony of monks, extremists and the military(?) Imagine if this was Obama and Secretary Kerry on Middle East policy, or Singh and Minister Anthony on India’s military stance to Pakistan; the survival of such governments would be untenable. (Don’t be misled that Gotabaya is not a minister, he is more powerful than any Cabinet Minister; who else in the SLFP could challenge government policy so plainly, and even to key visiting dignitaries – Menon for example – and still retain control of the armed forces and the police?)
The core of the conflict is all too well known. The President has, or has been compelled, to proclaim the formation of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) and instruct that elections be held in September. In the interim no changes will be made to 13A. That is now settled policy and can be reversed only conspiratorially – say by inciting an agent to pray court that NPC elections be postponed and quietly making the regime’s wishes known to the ever obliging courts. Short of conspiracy, or rigged elections, come late September we will have a TNA led NPC Administration in place. Read More
