THOUGHTS FROM LONDON BY NEVILLE DE SILVA

As deadlines approach and Wednesday’s fascinating election story is still to unfold fully, what has emerged from the battle for ballots needs to be told even briefly.

Many results are still to come as I write this. But one need not be a psephologist to unravel some of the trends already emerging to say who killed Cock Robin and turned Sri Lankan politics on its head.

One might tire of repeating ad nauseam that tourism blurb writer’s sales pitch promoting Sri Lanka --- “a country like no other”.

But even if one were to repeat the cliché it fits the purpose right now. For the first time in Ceylon/ Sri Lanka’s parliamentary history one of its oldest and leading political parties decided to commit hara kiri with its leader wielding the weapon that killed the party and himself.

True, it had been a long time coming. The signs were all there. But when it came last Thursday it seemed like a political tsunami had swept the UNP away with the flotsam and jetsam of minor political irritants

As seen from a distance right now, two things stand out like beacons on the beach.

One is the sweeping victory of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) which like a juggernaut has pushed most other contending parties out of its way to record an outstanding parliamentary electoral victory.

If ultimately it turns out that the SLPP does not get the two- thirds majority that the party leadership strove for, Mahinda Rajapaksa said the other day that there are ways and means of achieving that end result.

The target of such a majority is to do away with provisions some perceive as pernicious articles of the 19th amendment which do exist as several constitutional experts have pointed out.

That is part of the end game that the SLPP leadership is expecting to achieve before the day is done, as it were. What should be repealed and could stay with changes must surely have been discussed by the party hierarchy in the days gone by and when it should be put before parliament which is said to sit for the first time on August 20.

If the SLPP wishes to adhere to other provisions of the constitution just as much as it endeavours to get rid of some, one would hope that the President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Mahinda Rajapaksa working in tandem would decide to limit the cabinet of ministers to 30 members as seems to have been the original intention of the drafters of the constitution.

The cabinet should hardly be a stable for pack animals who often contribute little or nothing intellectually which is not what Gotabaya Rajapaksa wanted from those in his close circles as politics began to have a new appeal to him.

Mahinda Rajapaksa also would not forget his childhood days when his father D.A. Rajapaksa quit the UNP and joined hands with SWRD Bandaranaike to form the SLFP which eventually won the 1956 parliamentary election in a landslide victory with a two-thirds majority.

Then in 1970, Mrs Bandaranaike, in a coalition with the political Left won a decisive parliamentary election that virtually wiped out the UNP, which if I remember correctly, was left with eight seats in the House.

Surely Mahinda must recall the days when that two-thirds majority provided the political ballast for the government to try and push through progressive reforms.