Phoney – Honey politics makes a bow

By Lucien Rajakarunanayake

(November 21, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Ranil is now throwing the gauntlet at the President over his latest obsession of the Common Candidate to run for the presidency. He has challenged President Mahinda Rajapaksa to call for a Presidential election adding that the United National Front (UNF) will reveal their common presidential candidate soon after it is announced that a presidential election will take place next year. He obviously enjoys a sense of cheap drama, this guy. He is not concerned about the public, who will be the deciders at the polls, wanting to know who the CC will be; is more interesting in keeping it a hardy veiled secret, until the President announces the poll. The more he speaks, the more he shows how distant he is from the people, and what they think, feel and need.

If and when a presidential poll is announced ahead of a general election, it will be because Mahinda Rajapaksa thinks it best to do so and not because of any taunt by Ranil W or any hastily got up alliance, which is yet to make up its mind of either a common candidate of a common policy.

But what intrigues one is that Ranil W is so short in memory, especially about the consequences of calling for an immediate presidential poll. He has clearly forgotten what happened to him and the UNP in November 2005, after a presidential poll was called when the Supreme Court decided that President Chandrika Kumaratunga had come to the end of her term, despite her thinking otherwise. Although "storming" the office of the Commissioner of Elections after that huge farce of a march from the South to Colombo – done more by luxury car than on foot - to call for an immediate presidential poll, Ranil was caught on the wrong foot, when the Supreme Court ordered it, not at his request but on a petition by others who took the legal path, and had no truck with the UNP or RW’s green elephant trumpeting.

In the end when the votes were counted, exactly four years ago on November 18, 2005, it was Mahinda Rajapaksa who was elected, and Ranil W was left to weeping and whining, with so little grace or statesmanship, about how the presidency had been snatched from him. He had everyone around to blame for defeat but himself, his poor leadership, and all those blunders he made while on the campaign trail, which are far too many to be recalled here.

Ranil & Co are now to Phoney – Honey in politics. Neither Ranil, the leader not wanted by his own party, nor the so-called coalition he pretends to lead, seem to know anything of what they are doing or where they are going. Take the first condition laid down by Ranil for Phoney – Honey to be the CC. He must agree to a six month caretaker government. Now, how on earth is this to be done, unless the Constitution is to be changed? Does, anyone think, despite all the patriotism that Phoney - Honey claims he is oozing with, will allow him to stand down from the Presidency just six months after election (presuming he is elected, at all), and hand over the reins of power over to Ranil – stupid! It just can’t be done. The sitting president cannot nominate his successor and stand down from office, that’s elementary and Ranil just does not know that – despite all his years in politics.

It is not worth bothering to consider whether General (rtd) Fonnie, who so hastily shed his uniform to serve the country, as he says it, will be ever so willing to hand over all the power if the Executive Presidency, to the nephew of the man who created the office, but is not being run by his own party to be elected to that office? Such inquiry is only meant for those who take their politics seriously.

Has Ranil or anybody else in the new coalition of opportunism, inquired from the JVP, the masters in the politics of self-destruction, who sadly for us believe in destroying the youth before destroying themselves, whether they would arrange for such a quick transfer of power from Fonnie to Ranil? Not bloody likely is it, with all the militarism and racist triumphalism they are getting to be more known for today, than the work of Che Guevara or Marx-Engels – Lenin or Mao Tse-tung.

And what can Ranil and his great surprise CC Phoney-Honey have to offer the Tamil people? Is it the extreme Sinhala rhetoric that Gen (rtd) Fonnie was so eager to utter in uniform, or the racist manipulations of the UNP that stoked, promoted and saw through the dark and bloody days of July 1983?

There is much more that the people will want to know about this CC out of uniform that Ranil & Co are touting, albeit from behind flimsy veils, whom Ranil insists will be an ephemeral figure in the presidential politics of Sri Lanka. It was many decades ago that Philip Gunewardena described the declining LSSP, which he helped found, as a monument rather than a movement. The UNF of today s6tands out as a monument to the absurd in politics, unable to find a politicians from its own ranks, and running to hang on to an uniform that has been discarded, and brass from which he shine is fast fading away.

I am thankful to the reader, Ranjit Gooneratne from Kandy, who on reading my column last week, sent me this description of the new coalition that is demanding a presidential election, whose candidate will be announced only after the poll is announced.

"In Iraq there was a Coalition of the Willing —— this motley mob is a Coalition of the Dying.

Totally rudderless and no course to charter —- the furthest they will get to will be Pamankada

Those who mistook Alimankada for Panmankada and Kilinochhiya for Medawachchiya, and were shouting that Thoppigala was just a mound of no strategic importance, all to ridicule Major General Sarath Fonseka,

who was leading the Army, when all of those fell to Sri Lankan forces, are now doing a maypole dance round the same man sans his uniform. They revel in their foolishness that today’s Phoney- Honey sans his uniform can take them even to Pamankade, from the political nowhere they are in. Because that will be the furthest the Politics of Kollupitiya, of the

Ranil,Ravi, Mangala and Hakeem brand can take them. The days of Phoney-Honey Politics will have more farce on parade very soon.

-Sri Lanka Guardian