The belated but much flaunted coming together of the President and the Opposition Leader is the kind of stuff that Bollywood movies are made of: the bad guy becomes good all of a sudden for no apparent reason other than the severe beating he receives from his arch rival who in the end shows some mercy to his bloodied foe. Some flashbacks in the unfolding real-life movie centred round a girl called Chandrika and a boy called Ranil, who grew up and waltzed together but were separated by politics, are of interest.
President Chandrika Kumaratunga has been in power for eleven years with Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe in the rival camp. But they never thought of cohabitation before. Parallel to the war in the North, they were busy with a spate of political battles in the South. From 2001 to 2004, they were in the same government as President and Prime Minister and that was the ideal time for cooperation, which would have helped steer the country out of trouble–political, economic and military.
But they were at each other’s jugular much to the detriment of the national interest. Ranil, who now offers Chandrika a role–no one knows what kind of role!–after retirement didn’t even treat her to a Chinese roll at the UNF cabinet meetings, where she was in the same predicament as a university ‘fresher’ ragged by a group of good-for-nothing sophomores. Even her handbag–something which a woman usually doesn’t allow even her husband to touch–was not spared. Those of her former comrades who had a lot of private scores to settle with her made a sport of her by digging into her bag. It was fitted with a hidden camera, they clamoured. Not to be outdone, she made governance impossible for Ranil by putting, as she did, more often than not, a spoke in his wheel.
Ranil pretended that she didn’t exist when it came to crucial matters. He signed the CFA without her concurrence in spite of her being the Head of State, who alone is empowered by the Constitution to either wage war or make peace, Head of government and Commander-in-chief of armed forces. Ranil went public that his peace process had only three parties to it–UNF government, the LTTE and Norway!
Today, Chandrika says Ranil’s ceasefire has saved lives. But during the UNF government, to her the CFA was like a red rag to a bull. She went charging at it, supported to the hilt by the late Mr. Kadirgamar, who with his eloquence, sincerity and credibility, convinced the electorate that demerits of the CFA far outweighed its merits. When time was opportune, she took over three key ministries. Ranil, who was abroad at that time returned home to a hero’s welcome but failed to get the ministries back. (Who can wrest anything back from Chandrika?) He should have known better: Hell hath no fury like an executive president scorned! She went the whole hog. The UNF government was sacked. She took on board the Rathu Sahodarayas and saved her presidential skin by recapturing power in Parliament at the following election. To defeat the UNP, she roared, she would join forces with even the devil (Yaka). But today she is lamenting the Ratu Sahodarayas are destroying the SLFP.
Even previously, we had seen no cooperation between Ranil and Chandrika. When she presented her Package of Devolution in Parliament in 2000, Ranil and the Rathu Sahodarayas got together and shot it down. Ranil’s MPs went to the extent of setting the document on fire inside the House. The reason for the fireworks given by the UNP was that Chandrika wanted to enjoy the powers of both the President and the Prime Minister in the transitional period. The same UNP today offers her a ‘role’ in retirement! One is reminded of a popular local saying: Kabaragoya (water monitor) becomes Talagoya (land monitor) when one feels like eating it!
She also used to tear Ranil to shreds on political platforms over her son’s failure to have gained admission to Royal College. She blamed it wholly on Ranil, who had been the Minister of Education at that time. He had, she claimed, blocked it. He denied the charges. But she would go on inveighing against him in public.
One of Chandrika’s memorable contributions to Sri Lanka’s political lexicon was the phrase, Jaathika Aandu Valippuva (roughly put into English it means ‘epileptic fits caused by one’s over concentration on a national government’). She used to deride and disdain the proponents of a national government when she was reigning supreme.
In 1999, when Chandrika in the presidential fray was virtually at death’s door following an LTTE bomb attack, the UNP went all out to have the people believe she was incapacitated and, therefore, voting for her would be an exercise in futility. Ironically, six years later, the same UNP is offering that ‘incapacitated’ president a role even after retirement!
However, before October 1994, when the late Mr. Gamini Dissanayake was consolidating his power in the UNP, having returned from the DUNF, there was some cohabitation between Chandrika and Ranil as they went on the my-enemy’s-enemy-is-my-friend basis. And after a lapse of eleven long years, Chandrika and Ranil have, all of a sudden, realised the need to co-operate. Is it that today in lieu of Gamini they have Mahinda as their mutual bete noire?
Adversity, it is said, makes strange bedfellows!
http://www.island.lk/2005/10/27/editorial.html
