Ranil Wickremesinghe as widely expected held on to the post of Prime Minister – in spite of the efforts made by the so-called Joint Opposition which is de-facto being led by the former strongman President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The expectation of a win for the Prime Minister had nought to do popularity or ability to lead a party or a nation but all to do with political reality. Precisely it had everything to do with political survival.
The true test of the popularity lies in the result of the recently concluded local government elections. The United National Party and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party – led by President Sirisena – suffered a comprehensive rejection by the majority of the people. The new party on the block, the SLPP was the recipient of the nations’ frustration with the ruling coalition consisting in the main of the SLFP and the UNP.
That is the latest indication of the objectives of the voting public. Clearly one need not have a degree in politics to understand that the people of our country have been let down by the so called yahapalanaya government, big time.
Starting with the appointment of Arjuna Mahendran as the governor of the Central Bank and the subsequent scandal that erupted when the Prime Minister openly admitted to having asked his friend the Governor to change the system
of issuing bonds to the way in which the procurement of coal was discovered to be highly unusual if not downright suspect, to the negotiations conducted by Minister Kiriella with contractors bidding for Section 3 of the Central Highway project, to the imposition of a lob-sided ‘super gains tax’ the government of the Yahapalanaya movement did most everything wrong. That included putting on hold several development projects including the Chinese-backed Port City project which caused a rumpus in relationships with super power China.
There can be no gain in terms of moving the nation forward in terms of economic and social development and in terms of job creation locally simply because the Prime Minister has managed to stave off a spirited challenge to his role as the first amongst equals.
The fact remains that the Prime Minister won the NCM against him because of the desire of several members who saw the loss of their own power base if the Prime Minister was to lose the motion. Along with such a loss would be the loss of their own benefits. The Prime Minister’s own party members voted for him but approximately 50% more was obtained via his alliance partners – and a significant number – 16 – through his alliance with the TNA. That alliance is bound to be grist to the mill as it was extracted after agreeing to a series of demands made by the TNA.
Nevertheless, the Prime Minister has displayed the formidable master monouverer that he has become over the years honed by his leadership of the UNP to thirty electoral defeats.
That he has made the future of the UNP a lost cause for the youth of tomorrow appears to be lost on him. He has flirted in the past with significant controversies including of course the matter of the ‘Batalanda’ matter. That was his first appearance before a Presidential Commission several years before the Bond Scam of 2015 was even dreamt of.
Not long after the result of the NCM was announced by perhaps the most partisan Speaker of modern times, Karu Jayasuriya, a large crowd made its way to the vicinity of the Gangarama Temple in Colombo. The Prime Minister was
due to arrive there to offer thanks for the victory. Part of the Maharaja Group broadcasting complex is housed in the vicinity.
A group of people gathered nearby and hurled object at the building and threw fireworks into the compound before the security personnel at the complex managed to draw the steel shutters across. Several hundred people work at the
complex and safety measures kicked in to protect the most vulnerable – young women and men who were moved to a secure area.
The incident could have been blamed on the exuberance of the crowd if not for the fact that the leader appeared to have been a UNP local Council member. It did not help the mitigating process when the same individual was seen within minutes after the intimidation at the Maharaja complex, in the company of Ranil Wickremesinghe. He was seen for the entire country to witness, seated alongside the Prime Minister at the Gangarama temple.
The station was inundated with calls of support and the next morning the staff were joined by a number of politicians several of whom had been featured by the network. It was time they declared for unity and they declared rightly that there was no place in our society to attack the media under any circumstance.
The attempt to intimidate the network was not lost on those concerned for the breakdown in established process and procedure in Sri Lanka. Newsfirst has highlighted wrong doing after wrong doing where each item has been fact based. None of the exposes have been challenged for being inaccurate and at least two stories – the bond scam and the expressway matter – were deemed sufficiently important for a parliamentary statement by the Prime Minister himself.
It appeared that the past was being revisited for Ranil Wickremsinghe. The allegations against him a la Batalanda, the ill treatment of a man who went more than the extra mile to protect him – Douggie Pieris – and several other such matters came to the forefront after the attempt to intimidate the MBC / MTV staff – who at the time were preparing to leave the complex.
Intimidating the private media is nothing new in Sri Lanka especially so by bankrupt politicians hell bent on hanging on to and abusing their political power. They lend themselves to being receptive to being not only influenced but also to being bribed materially.
Sadly for these politicians they forget that the MTV/MBC network has a track record for not being intimidated or influenced. On behalf of the people who regularly rely on those channels to be kept fully abreast of how well or badly their government is doing, we say “kudos and respect” to Team NewsFirst. And to those cowards who attempted what they did and to those bereft of gratitude and common courtesy and who left MTV/MBC to their own devices, we have only one word for them: SHAME.
