Monday, March 19, 2012

Politics: The great depths to which the Sajith faction is digging its own grave

Yesterday in Bandaragama. 

What on earth members of the Sajith faction, maintaining that Mr Premadasa was to attend a meeting at a senior UNP ex MP’s residence, were planning is anybody’s guess. Ostensibly it was to plan a commemoration for the death anniversaries of both Dudley and DS Senanayake, as that excuse is safe. This lot seem to spend their energy commemorating the dead, instead of giving life to the living a lost cause if ever there was one to pursue.

Anyway the real reason was to discuss the methods by which they could form an alternative opposition to overthrow the Leader of the Opposition, by getting people of the DNF of Sarath Fonseka, the JVP and disaffected UNPers to join them to form a number that would exceed those of the UNP to be the effective opposition as the Leader of the Opposition would be drawn from them, with the largest presence in the Opposition benches in Parliament. They have now determined that constitutionally they will never be able to topple Ranil Wickremasinghe.

Now pause for a moment and imagine they actually were able to pull it off. Then there is no doubt that Sajith would be the leader of the Opposition, and the SF faction would only agree to it if Sarath Fonseka was named the Party leader. One would be living on cloud cuckoo land to think that these two unlikely characters could work together on a common platform, far more difficult than just dealing with intrigue within the UNP. In short these schemers do not realize how ridiculous their actions, suggestions, and plotting is as it will make matters worse. Nevertheless these are acts of frustrated politicians who believe they can beat the system in place overnight, if you heard their rhetoric at that place.

Anyway in comes Ajith Perera after the meeting commenced as his people at the meeting initiated a scuffle inside to try and dissuade them from changing the original theme for which the meeting was held. Ajith being informed by SMS that something was amiss, promptly turned up from a few doors away where he lives. Ajith Perera is the UNP organizer for Bandaragama, where the meeting was and he was not invited!! Ostensibly this was because he was overseas, but he had returned. He was able to intervene and get his people to back off and calm was restored, but not before he was able to impress on this faction that what they were doing was against the constitution of the party and they were all liable to be expelled!

In the meantime Maithri Guneratne, a co-conspirator, as he is now mush in the UNP, was able to ensure that their version of events was promptly given to the press. It was tough for Ajith to get his version to the papers with the same alacrity, but he was able to get it in to a few after much trying as it was near the deadline.

I believe it was only one Newspaper that carried both versions side by side or more correctly one on top of the other!! So that was how the saga was played out. The opposition leader while hearing this just smiled and said this is what I have been saying all along, they are neither suited to run a party, let alone a bunch of garden gnomes. His contempt for Sajith and his blatant anti party stance just grew and said to the people around him, I told you so. “He is just not fit for leadership yet and honestly if he acts like this he could never take over the UNP”.

Then today the joker in the media pack Lal Perera( it is a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black) had the gall to say that Mangala Samaraweera who was virulently anti UNP and Ranil, when he was on the other side, is ruining the party, when Lal Perera when he was on the other side, has said far worse things. However as he Lal is an insignificant person, his sayings are not on record when he was on the other side, where as Mangala as a senior had his words recorded by the media to now be used against him.

In this exercise to fool people into wrong conclusions, Ranil has been steadfastly silent on the matter. This is so as he firmly believes that Sajith and his friends are only digging Sajith’s grave at every step, pointing out that potential statesmen do not sling mud at anyone. His actions of late have been defiant, against all requests of his party to desist from making statements on certain subjects. He has made statements on the LLRC, which is the sole responsibility of the Govt. to answer.

The LLRC that was Govt. appointed, not an all party brief, and sole prerogative of the Govt. so they reported to the Govt. and made recommendations to the Govt. and it is the Govt. that should carry it out and whether or not one agrees with the recommendations or any part of the report, the least one can request is for the Govt. to carry out the recommendations they have already promised to do.

It is with the poor track record of the Govt. ignoring recommendations of commissions they have appointed, that the International Community have raised the issue at the UNHRC, to press them to implement the recommendations without further delay, a very justifiable argument that has been turned on its head.

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