The Island Editorial

It’s curtain-up

21 October 2016

 

The hurly-burly is not done. The battle is yet to be lost and won. Enter Sirisena with Dilrukshi’s scalp in one hand and a toledo in the other, strutting about with stylised steps and looking around triumphantly. On an escritoire richly ornamented with carvings yonder over lies a docket with the acronym, COPE, embossed thereon. Mahendran, drenched in sweat and shivering, is hiding behind an arras. One may have thus described the beginning of the Yahapalana play proper preceded by a number of insipid curtain raisers.

President Maithripala Sirisena has accepted Director General of the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) Dilrukshi Wickremasinghe’s resignation letter. The UNP may have sought to land the President in an embarrassing position and make him soften his stand by getting its civil society cronies to condemn his recent swipes at the CIABOC, the CID and the Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID) and by causing Dilrukshi to tender her resignation in protest. But, he has proved he is made of sterner stuff.

Those who claimed to have been instrumental in engineering last year’s regime change let out a howl of protest against President Sirisena’s remarks. They condemned what they called a surreptitious move to derail the ongoing investigations into corruption under the previous government. They may have thought the President would buckle under pressure. Cabinet Spokesman Rajitha Senaratne kept on saying until Wednesday afternoon that no decision on the CIABOC DG’s resignation would be taken until Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe returned from Brussels. Senaratune cut a pathetic figure a couple of hours later when it was announced that Dilrukshi was gone.

President Sirisena is being raked over the coals in some quarters for asserting himself at the expense of the interests of the UNP, which he is indebted to for his successful presidential bid. Yes, but for the UNP, which threw in its lot with him, Sirisena would have stood the same chance as a cat in hell in the presidential race. However, it is equally true that the UNP would never have been able to topple President Mahinda Rajapaksa without Sirisena’s help.

Having inveighed against the CIABOC, the President was left with no alternative but to accept its DG’s resignation letter. If he had chosen to do otherwise he would have had to eat his own words as regards his criticism of that institution. A similar situation occurred anent the government moves, a few moons ago, to reappoint Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran under a cloud; the President’s declaration in the run-up to the last general election that he had sought to drum out Mahendran when the first bond scam came to light, effectively foreclosed the latter’s reappointment.

Going by how assertive an otherwise mild-mannered Sirisena has become as the Executive President, what the situation would have been if the UNP’s efforts to enable former war winning, battle-hardened Army Commander Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka to secure the presidency had reached fruition in 2010 is not difficult to imagine. It may be recalled that the UNP also lost control over a tuk-tuk driver representing an independent group it got elected as the Colombo Mayor at the 2006 local government polls following the rejection of its nomination list. Having realised his mayoral dream, thanks to the UNP votes, he refused to toe the UNP’s line and, worse, subsequently, switched his allegiance to the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

President Sirisena has said the government would complete its full term and those who expect it to fall before that are only daydreaming. That may be so. The Joint Opposition grandees are licking their chops and the rouges of the former regime are now crawling out of the woodwork. But, all signs are that the architects of last year’s regime change will be able to shore up the ruling coalition. But, the question is whether a government afflicted with the political autoimmune disease, as it were, which causes it to attack itself is capable of carrying out duties and functions expected of it. The SLFP and the UNP in the ‘national unity government’ will have to face another game of chicken when they are required to act on the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) findings on the Central Bank bond scams.

Immediately after forming a joint administration last year with President Sirisena, Prime Minister Wickremesinghe likened thier political journey to an expressway ride. We warned in this space that the smooth drive was bound to end and the government had to brace itself for a bumpy ride thereafter. Having hit the rumble strip, it is now heading for a tortuous road full of bumps, dents and potholes.