resident Sirisena has openly rejected the UNP Government’s proposal to form a National Government with a single member of the Sri Lanka Muslim Council (SLMC) in Parliament.
Reporting on the speech made by the President at the Independence Day celebrations, the DM Online web reported the same morning, “….it was not correct to form a National Government just to give more Ministerial portfolios” as having been said by the President.
Meanwhile, in a lame bid to shed the green shawl, TNA Spokesperson MP Sumanthiran had told a media briefing in Jaffna on Independence Day, that the TNA was vehemently opposed to the undemocratic attempt by the UNP to establish a National Government.
As reported on Tuesday by the news website Sri Lanka Mirror, Sumanthiran had told media, the TNA opposed such a move before and would do so again.
The TNA stand on a National Government as reported in the website is that a National Government should be established by the two main political parties and a political solution to the national question should be reached by them.
The two main political parties as perceived by the ITAK leadership in TNA are the UNP and the SLFP, which is a total political error in today’s context.The UNP is one main political party, not because it is the largest single party in Parliament, but because it retains a sizeable percentage of the Sinhala constituency, even when they are miserably defeated at elections.
In 1956 April, they retained 27.9 percent of the votes though reduced to 08 seats as against 14 seats the LSSP won with only 10.4 percent polled. The SLFP was that in 1977 July elections when it was reduced to eight seats from 91 in 1970, but polled 29.7 percent in 1977. The SLFP retained such status up to the 2015 August election. While the UNP with 106 seats polled 45.7 percent, the SLFP with its allies led by Rajapaksa polled 42.4 percent winning 95 seats.
During the past 42 months, all that has changed.
The SLFP has not only lost their numbers in Parliament but could not retain a decent share of the votes polled at the last February LG Elections.
While the UNP managed to retain 29.4 per cent, slightly more than it polled in 1956, the SLFP could poll only a dismal 12.1 percent as against the SLPP led by its de facto leader Rajapaksa that polled 40.5 per cent.
This is the political reality now. Today the two leading political entities are the UNP and the SLPP. No more is the SLFP the
second biggest.
Though Sumanthiran is a total newcomer, what the ITAK leadership with Sampanthan should know from their 69-year history is that the two major Sinhala political leadership in Parliament could agree and compromise on political solutions as in 1957 with the B-C Pact and in 1965 with the D-C Pact.
But it is the Colombo Sinhala Buddhist campaign outside Parliament, that decides the outcome. Sinhala leaders have always reneged on all promises at all times during the past 71 years, since the British left.
The ITAK leadership should know, mere compromises with leaders of major political parties cannot resolve political issues of Tamil people. That can only be resolved with the consent of the Sinhala moderate majority.
Thus, it is the moderate Sinhala constituency outside Parliament that can and should be engaged with.
The Tamil people have a story of their own to tell the Sinhala South. That has to be told by the Tamil people and not throughproxiesto the South to achieve political consensus.
In plain language, it is the Sinhala South the Tamil leadership should engage with.
They have not and do not. This, in fact, is what the emerging alternate Tamil leadership, the TPA leader Wigneswaran is also missing out on.
His statements made exclusively to the Northern people, who are politically abandoned by the TNA and extreme slogans of appealing to the UN Secretary-General will not provide answers to any of the issues the Tamil people want to be resolved.
It is this major political blunder in alternate Tamil politics that tries to be rhetorically “better and more Tamil” that allows TNA to continue with their political demand for a National Government with the two major political parties in the South. A failed experiment though.
It is not only the TNA that has been completely stumped out by the changing scenario but the UNP too. During the marathon debate to have the 19th Amendment passed before midnight, a UPFA member in Parliament during the Committee Stage debate said the UNP’s proposed “National Government” as mentioned in the draft would have to depend on an SC ruling for its definition.
PM Wickremesinghe then told Parliament it could be defined as the Unity Government between the two largest political parties in Parliament.
Sadly today, the second largest party in Parliament cannot muster the numbers the ad hoc Joint Opposition (JO) can, under Rajapaksa.
That is the reason why Rajapaksa is now the Opposition Leader. Thus, on PM Wickremesinghe’s definition of a National Government, there is no more a second largest party in Parliament the UNP can tie up with to form a National Government.
It is this inability to have a major Sinhala party as a partner for a National Government that exposes the UNP in their bid to have a National Government with the SLMC that has just one single MP from Batticaloa district.
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"Today the two leading political entities are the UNP and the SLPP. No more the SLFP
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It is the Colombo Sinhala Buddhist campaign outside Parliament that decides the outcome"
As very aptly said by the President, this proposal the Leader of the House Minister Kiriella has given notice on was nothing but an attempt to accommodate more Ministers and Deputy Ministers. Such is the democratic fraud played out on the people.
The biggest fraud in society though is the role played by the foreign donor funded NGO activists in Colombo, who project themselves as civil society.
This is their recent history. These funded groups organised continual protests in Colombo during the October boomerang only to have the UNP Government back with Ranil Wickremesinghe as PM.
A decision made by the powerful diplomatic lobby in Colombo too.
They said democracy cannot be compromised with.
Their high moral slogan was Not Ranil, but Democracy. They alleged MPs were traded for millions of rupees and dollars for Rajapaksa to gain a 113 member majority in Parliament.
Yet, they did not say there was trading to stop MPs from crossing over as well, a common sense assumption
in such immensely corrupt Parliamentary politics.
Trading either way or both ways, all those were allegations of mega corruption, even beyond the Central Bank Bond Scam.
The Bond Scam is now accepted as an almost proven fact with no leading figure in this Government left as Mr Clean with many other allegations too on corruption.
Yet, it is this Parliament with the UNP Government the donor-funded civil society groups wanted to continue with democracy as they define.
Their next journey with PM Wickremesinghe was when he lashed out at media calling some,
black media.
They marched into selected private media houses to teach them media ethics, least bothered how the Government handles State-owned media and exposed themselves again as Semi Government Civil Society.
Their democracy doesn’t include PC Elections as they know the UNP and the foreign diplomatic lobby in Colombo do not want PC elections this year before the Presidential Election.
Their form of democracy prefers to target President Sirisena on “release of land to legal owners in Kepapulavu and Vanni with deadlines attached” and makes certain the Wickremesinghe Government is left out with no responsibility on that issue.
With that same myopic interpretation of democracy which reversed the pet slogan “Not Ranil but Democracy” into “Not Democracy but Ranil”, these semi Government civil society campaigners are completely silent on the “National Government” the UNP wants to establish with the SLMC.
The UNP leadership needs to provide more perks and privileges to their men and women to keep them satisfied till the end of the year. Thus, the UNP leadership has kept these Colombo men and women off the roads on PC elections and the National Government.
That keeps Colombo urban life satisfied and silent and the media speculating on dud coins as possible Presidential candidates.
Possibilities the media keeps the urban middle class guessing upon are, a Rajapaksa though not Mahinda, a pious and a less noisy Sinhala Buddhist icon and if that is not enough, another with a father’s heritage and then an untiring leader who anyway keeps going.
None from a corrupt free, democratic political party, if there is any and with a track record that can guarantee effective democracy, clean governance and a manifesto for socio-economic development.
With such hollow and bankrupt politics what matters, who comes and who goes?
Except that the Colombo civil society Reps would not want Rajapaksa, but any other to rob, ruin and rule this island like a Panamanian island and call it Democracy-whatever they mean by the word democracy.
