TNA’s Choices: Justice Wigneswaran For NPC; No, Thanks, To PSC
Rajan Philips
The TNA’s choice of retired Supreme Court Judge C.V. Wigneswaran as candidate for Chief Minister of the Northern Provincial Council is a good political example of that trite management phrase: ‘thinking outside the box’. If all goes according to plan, Justice Wigneswaran will be literally landing from outside the box into Lanka’s political fray. The choice and its anticipated outcome throws open a wide range of possibilities. I think this is the first time a retired Supreme Court Judge will be running for an elected office in Sri Lanka. This is also the first time a high-profile candidate would be contesting a Provincial Council election after Chandrika Kumaratunga’s successful venture in the 1994 Southern Provincial Council election.
The TNA made another choice last week. It chose not to participate in the government’s latest parliamentary select committee exercise. If someone did not understand the meaning of the maxim that one cannot fool all the people all the time, the PSC is a good example of it. The example also shows that those who try to fool others all the time ultimately end up fooling themselves. President Rajapaksahas exhausted everyone with his ‘shape koraladanne’ politics and parliamentary select committee mechanism. He was knavishly expecting the TNA to naively become party to a PSC process that has been ‘exclusively set up’ to manufacture ‘consensus’ for either severely diluting or totally repealing the 13th Amendment. The TNA like everyone else who has listened to the President’s promises was not going to be fooled anymore.
The President made his usual appeal to New Delhi to persuade the TNA to join the PSC and even managed to briefly meet with TNA leader, R. Sambanthan, after standing him up for almost over an year. The TNA politely said, ‘no, thank you,’ and made the counter but positive move of its own by nominating Justice Wigneswaran for the Northern Provincial Council election. Regardless of the electoral considerations, the choice is objectively positive on a number of counts.
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