Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Can Gotabaya be the unifier of SLFP?


2016-03-28
Last  week, there was this tantalizing proposition from  an anonymous member of the Joint Opposition, who was speaking on behalf of a group of MPs wanting to unify the divided SLFP, suggested to appoint Gotabaya Rajapaksa as a Member of Parliament. Gotabaya, the nameless MP beckoned, would serve as the unifier of the SLFP, now split between the loyalists of the incumbent President and his predecessor.   

Since April Fools’ Day is still a couple of days away, we are compelled to assume that this wasn’t a hoax. Someone who wants to bet on the good luck and charm of Gotabaya should be dead serious about that.Breast-beating Senior Rajapaksa seems to be less keen in a settlement of the internecine conflict though, he wants the government to hand the country back to him for he thinks the incumbent administration is clueless in those complex affairs such as fiscal management (for him read as piling up the exchequer with commercially borrowed loans to build his vanity projects). 

Public service resembles that proverbial hyper inflated frog mom about to explode thanks to  MR, who  turned  it into a job bank, expanding from the earlier 600,000 to current 1.4 million. He thinks it is a crowning achievement, no matter that  many of the new staff ended up being mere passengers.

Why it is believed that Gota is predestined to be the unifier of the SLFP is not fully established. But the theory goes like this:  SLFPers should like at least one of the Rajapaksa siblings, scions or someone in his  inner circle. If they don’t like Basil, Shavindra, Namal, Yoshitha or any other old goons such as Sajin Vas, why should they not like, at least Gota?  He defeated the LTTE and beautified the City of Colombo. So the people should like him!

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