President Sirisena Or Alice In Wonderlad?
Prof. Kumar David
The initial title of this piece was “Requiem for a President” but Tuesday’s developments have left me flummoxed for a title; it is a most unusual constitutional wrangle when a President declares that he will not appoint someone as PM even if he secures a majority in parliament. Additionally, the leader (MS) of a party (SLFP), showers imprecations on the head of the person (MR) leading that party’s electoral campaign. Alice in Wonderland stuff! MS has to take the blame for this circus because when he nominated MR for the slate of the party he nominally leads, he put himself on collision course with the declarations that he now pronounces. If the UPFA gains adequate seats there is no power on earth that can prevent MR from becoming prime minister. How can MS constitutionally refuse? True the UPFA has little chance of winning; but hypothetically, if it does, what is MS’s way out, short of a constitutional coup? Didn’t I warn you that the two-competing-centres-of-power provision in 19A was a huge blunder!
Mind you, I like President Maithripala Sirisena. He is a decent man who has won respect for Lanka on his overseas assignments, is scrupulously free of corruption and has kept many promises. Unlike his predecessor he is not a fraudster, he has not woven protective wraps round drug scullions, nor is he feted as overlord of a Mafia State. What a pity he vacillates like a straw in the wind. One grievous defect in a good man can be fatal.
So oft it chance with particular men
Carrying the stamp of one defect
His virtues else be they as pure as grace
As infinite as man may undergo
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault. The dram of eale
Doeth all the noble substance oft adulter
To his own scandal.
And what is his defect? Not that of Hamlet, who dithered over the MORAL dimensions of his choices – “thus conscious does make cowards of us all and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought” – but rather, the high price that MS now has to pay is for a dearth of boldness in the aftermath of 8 January. His first misjudgement in his Indian summer was failure to follow up the alleged coup in the early hours of 9 January and stalling the arrest of those incriminated, MR included. The next let down is not bringing to book venal politicos of mega-corruption infamy (and now nominating them); how painful and slow the Basil and Gota cases. The third mistake was holding on, in 19A, to an elected presidency with semi-executive powers. A ceremonial president, whatever the electoral outcome, would not now be treading water. To what extent Ranil shares blame for these flops will be known only when the archives of oral testimony burst into the open one day.
