A Government Committed To Comedy?

By Emil van der Poorten –March 28, 2015

Emil van der Poorten

As someone who was simply disgusted by the consistent performances of the likes of Dilan Perera over the years, the new spate of Cabinet appointments left me, if you would forgive the use of that expression, bewildered.

Here was a man who started his headline-grabbing by making a great deal of noise when Mahinda Rajapaksa appointed one of the earlier UNP “crossers’-over” to Cabinet while that man still had a capital charge hanging over his head in the death of an SLFP stalwart of the Sabaragamuwa province. Dilan Perera made a great show (for the media at least) of refusing to sit near his new colleague on the government benches. Mind you, his gallery-fetching ended with his moving to a seat farther away from the new member of Cabinet but god forbid that he should even threaten as much as a temporary show of principle by taking a hike across the great divide to the opposition benches! That would be a performance beyond the call of all that is holy in the church of self-seeking opportunism!

Bad enough in the matter of hypocritical gallery-fetching? The man’s next act intended to stay in the public eye and curry even more favour with Mahinda Rajapaksa was his abusive and boorish behavior towards the 43rd Chief Justice of Sri Lanka at the time his boss was in the process of railroading her out of the position in which she had not provided adequate proof of fealty to the man who believed that he was Lord and Master of all he surveyed. Her simple suggestion that an absolutely unconscionable piece of legislation, the simple legality of which was in question, should be put through something resembling “due process” was met with a Presidential hissy-fit of Rajapaksa proportions. And who, pray, led the parade of abusive sycophants playing uneducated and vile court jesters in this pantomime? Dilan Perera, no less, front, centre and on television screens in virtually every home in Sri Lanka.Read More