Both government and opposition becoming hither and thither
It’s looking quite Kafkaesque
The indispensable link for stability of the government Won’t the opposition love to disrupt it!
by Kumar David-March 26, 2016, 5:53 pm
Let’s start with the government side. Yes any explicit rift between President and PM is being very carefully and intelligently managed and avoided; anything like that will be suicidal, both know that and to a degree they may be playing good-cop bad-cop. Nevertheless one would have to be blind to miss that on two matters they are taking contradictory stands. Sirisena is playing straight to the Sinhala nationalist gallery and struggling to keep his head above water in the SLFP survival game. In the ‘foreign judges or no foreign judges’ tribunal issue he is trembling before these champions. He has firmly declared that no war-crimes were committed, human rights were not violated on a large scale and the military is sacrosanct. In that case why HIS government agreed in Geneva to any investigative process at all beats me. Why not come clean and declare: "We were pushed into investigations, but we have no intention of doing anything serious about it; watch and see how we sweep everything under the carpet"?
Ranil and Mangala have a different take on the matter. They are prisoners of undertakings they gave the entire world standing on the Geneva podium. Their problem is how to wiggle out but still retain at least a shred of Sri Lankan credibility. "B-C Pact, Dudly-Chelva Deal", some people mutter, "just doing it one more time." Well it is more difficult for two reasons; first the sucker to be taken for a ride this time is the whole international community though now that regime change is done Western governments, not human-rights activists, are more concerned to protect that gain than commiserate with sniveling Tamils. The second difference is that Sinhala chauvinism is comparatively weaker now than it was in 1958, 1977 and 1983 and the new government less accommodating. If only the race mobs come on to the streets to loot, rape and burn they can be soundly thrashed. Pity they prefer Hyde Park rallies!
To return to my theme, yes there is a game of good-cop bad-cop, but that is not all. There seems to be a mild parting of ways between Sirisena and Ranil-Mangala. So the processes will drag and a via media will be worked out without cashiering war-criminals. Have no doubts about that.
The other issue on which bedlam prevails is chaos in the SLFP. The Sirisena faction threatened to fire anyone who attended Mahinda’s mutinous Hyde Park rally, then backed down in a funk when about 30 SLFP ‘Joint Opposition’ MP’s defied the threat. Point and set to the Rajapaksa side and egg on the face of Maithripala Sirisena, President of the SLFP and Sri Lanka. The SLFP is about evenly split - one corrupt, opportunistic lot in cabinet raking in the stuff, another corrupt chauvinist lot, baying for the blood of their President. There is some speculation that the UNP, or at least sections, are glad of the crisis in the SLFP and are promoting chaos so as to weaken or split it. This is very unwise; if the Sirisena faction declines to a shadow of itself it will be fatal for the government both in parliament and outside.
