The Time Is Now

By Gamini Seneviratne –JANUARY 21, 2019

Gamini Seneviratne

Much has been written about a “coup” supposedly attempted by the President against a democratically elected government. The short answer to market capitalism and to its more useful instruments (which include, I should add, communalism, drug trafficking – including ‘prescription drugs’, money laundering as well as the mass media), has been given by my colleague, Mahalingam “Jolly” Somasunderam in his column last week. As he phrased it in his inimitable style, spiced too with lively referencing, “An Orwellian Replay: As Elections Were Not Held, Democracy Has Been Saved” just about sums up the foundation of Ranil Wickremesinghe’s claims to any authority whatever. I doubt any Lankan would contest the resulting wipe-out of all his and other goons in parliament.

The speaker and those who were on the divisional bench of the supreme court cannot act as though they are unaware of context in any matter placed before them: it’s possible of course that such ignorance is a precondition for achieving bliss though not that of Nirvana. (It’s hardly possible to confer caps to those titles which seem to seek to confer distinction on those who occupy such positions by the act of donning the horse-hair, or maybe some Chinese synthetic, wigs that are relics of British colonialism. But, even for such a mind set it would take slavishness of a particularly low order to invite a Member of the extended and mostly dysfunctional “Royal Family” to “Independence” celebrations here. An earlier manifestation of the illegitimacy of those who have run this regime was the gift of a super luxury holiday to the most despised Prime Minister in decades in Britain, Tony Blair and his greedy family: a crime compounded by Blair giving a lecture at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute.

I first saw Ranil Wickremesinghe some 40 years ago at his parents’ place in Thimbirigasyaya. His father, a newspaperman of long standing, wished to make a change in our dependence on Reuters et al and to launch our own news agency, Lanka Puvath. I had been shoved into ‘the Pool’ by the UNP and was available to undertake what he had in mind. Esmond Wickremesinghe was briefing me on all that when Ranil came in and seeing his father slunk along the wall and out of the room. Poor chap.

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