Comeback rally for UNP hero Ranil after walk on burning rope bridge
Last Sunday the nation’s lone political elephant made a grand appearance to a roaring welcome at a massive comeback rally held in Kuliyapitiya, after four long years in the wilderness, loitering on the outskirts of oblivion.
As it emerged from the forest fringes, it would have found the landscape vastly different, the territorial sweep it once commanded, usurped by a kindred herd who’d gone rogue. But in its gallant comeback stride, it held trunk high and trumpeted its resolve to reclaim lost ground. Its very survival was dependent on it. Could it pull the polls off was the real question that now stared in its face and stood poised on its lips.
In fact REALITY was the name, the theme, the signature tune that was unmistakably stamped on every facet of this reality show. From the dais to the gallery, from speeches that revived old emotions to the soul storming applause that followed, reality was confronted on many fronts.
The reality of the opposition’s solutions, the reality of political slogans shouted, the reality of fulfilling aspirations of a nation with home grown remedies spurred by faith in a Jewish Marxist messiah; and, above all, the inescapable reality of its own gnawing doubts if it could make a successful return to the uplands of power in this clime and mood. This was certainly a realistic question that, no doubt, resounded in the hearts and minds of all those present.
But when again those funny familial forgotten feelings, unfailingly began to rise in their collective minds at the manifestation of their leading light on centre stage, they could have been forgiven if they still believed in miracles. For here stood the man who epitomised in flesh and blood that nothing was impossible.
Ranil Wickremesinghe had taken his sabbatical leave not to mourn his party’s debacle in 2020 but to defend, in patriotic name, the fort of the political foe who had won the popular mandate. From his seeming downfall, Fate had turned the tables and nothing could prevent his lone meteoric rise to the top. Good fortune had placed the elected crown on Ranil’s head but left him prisoner of his enemy’s chains.
But whilst in the SLPP camp, he had danced for his gruel and sung their anthem for his bread as lustily as he had sung the Thomian College song in the opposite Thomian tent last Saturday at the SSC grounds. As a student of ancient history, he, undoubtedly, knew that, when in Rome, to do as Romans do was best.
Now he was back. Taking a welldeserved break from his tightrope walk on the old burning bridge to address those who had remained loyal to the United National Party through thick and thin; and justify his twisted wayward ways of hunting with the hounds to his faithful old guard of hares.
He had returned not with the Golden Fleece to ascend the throne with divine ease but with a great store of credit pinned on his sleeve for breathing life into the comatose economy and earning timely IMF reprieve for the nation. At the forthcoming elections, it would be his biggest star point.
But what of the damning negative charge that he had not used his presidential powers to bring SLPP rogues to justice? That he had looked askance and let corruption thrive? He had – it must be said in all fairness – emphasised right at the outset, his only occupation on the president’s seat would be to set aright Lanka’s ‘economy, economy, economy’, and nothing else. The country’s social ills could wait. The man who had lost his own seat at the last election, knew the extent of his own brief as caretaker head of a government not his own.
This oft-repeated mantric chant, may not have charmed the spiraling snake of high living costs or corruption to coil right down to its basket but it certainly served to pull us back from the precipice’s perilous edge and restore a semblance of normality to day-to-day life.
A blind eye to corruption with the other focused on the economy, may, perhaps, have come in handy to squeeze grudging approval to enact unpopular financial bills from those who had constitutionally elected him to high office and held the reins of parliamentary power. With the economy foremost in mind, he hadn’t become President to play a policeman’s role.
As he said, in his speech last week, ‘I have left corruption to be dealt with by the laws of the land.’ Indeed, he has. ‘If an offence is committed,’ he said, ‘let action be filed in court. I have never tampered with the judiciary.’ Indeed, he hasn’t.
But he has let SLPP Ministers and MPs freely roam down corruption’s road and done naught to stop them. Under his hawk-eyed watch that feigned to look askance, he has let a whole bunch of greedy men be inextricably entangled in a web of corruption they had spun for themselves.
He had not deterred them from their illegal acts but left them all to be publicly skewered and fried in the fat of their own sleaze. He had only followed Napoleon’s advice: ‘Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake’; and damned them in the public eye beyond the pale of redemption.
Thus triumphant did Ranil return to the UNP bosom to show how he, in his two-and-a-half-year odyssey abroad, had played the Trojan Horse in SLPP’s Troy and routed the enemy from within.
Or was it just sour grapes, as his detractors state, when the Rajapaksas seem to have denied him another lease of leash, determined to go down alone without borrowed feathers? Has he really escaped unscathed while trying to pull SLPP chestnuts out of the fire? His two contenders maintain he has emerged as men oft do when they lie down with mangy dogs.
But it is not the universally condemned SLPP nor the emerging JVP – which, though it has come a long way, still has a long way to go -- that troubles him the most. It’s the Sajith-led SJB. The ‘bete noire’ of his political existence.
And it was for Sajith, who has repeatedly refused to return to the fold and come under his thumb, that he reserved the bulk of his vitriolic political venom in his maiden campaign speech last Sunday.
In a hard-hitting speech, he let off steam, declaring Sajith had become a puppet in the hands of former SLPP academic Professor G.L. Peiris who has crawled his way to the SJB fold. He referred to GL with the choice epithets of being Mahinda’s ‘sattambi rala,’ or king’s toilette cleaner and as ‘goda perakadoruwa’, or an unqualified lawyer giving Sajith advice.
He accused Sajith of ignoring party members’ advice and not answering his plea -- made to all parties -- to attend the all-party review of the IMF deal. Except Sumanthiran, none in the opposition did.
Yet in the end, his appearance on the UNP stage may have been more in the role of a parish priest coming to collect his tithe, and not to stay for good. Two and a half years as President, may have made him regard the UNP’s ramshackle jalopy as being road unworthy for a fast ride to power and he may now have his sights set on another’s sports Lotus.
As close associate Ravi Karunaratne said, they believed he would contest as a common candidate and not as one from a particular party. What’s meant for mankind, should not be for a few to exclusively own.
Perhaps, Basil summed up best when he said, he believed both the SLPP and the SJB had the organisation and people power to win the presidential election but not the candidate. The UNP has neither organisation nor people power to win but has the best candidate in Ranil. How wonderful it will be for the nation, if all these three factors could meet together under one same roof, he mused.
As things ironically stand at this moment, it appears that the SLPP is desperately searching for a most bankable candidate other than from their own stock, while the most bankable candidate is desperately seeking a party other than his own. Has Mr. Fix It come to iron out the details of a shotgun betrothal? Or will Sajith find himself under a Ranil presidency?
One question though: Will the UNP be left as the poor cuckolded spouse for the coming six years as well?