If ministers Weerawansa, Nanayakkara and Gammanpila are so concerned about the plight of our energy sector and are worried about it being sold to American interests and that is why they are taking all this trouble, we raise our hats to them. However, there is an honourable way of doing it: first, resign from your Cabinet portfolios. After all, Gammanpila is the Energy minister, to boot!
That is the proper way to register your protest. If they do so, they wouldn’t be making history either. Sri Lanka’s parliamentary history is replete with ministers resigning from Cabinet on matters of principle when they couldn’t agree with a policy decision taken by the government.
We now know that this government is bad at managing the pandemic, the economy, fertiliser, gas distribution and electricity. That begs the question, what is this government good at?
They are good at staging dramas and convincing people- millions of them- into believing the unbelievable. Remember the ‘relics of Lord Buddha emerging from the Kelani river’ story just prior to the last election?
For those who have forgotten here is a quick recap: in the days before the 2019 presidential election, a story, complete with accompanying video emerged on the ‘Derana’ television channel. It would have made an amateur tele drama script writer cringe.
The story began with a young gentleman by the name of Udara Madushanka, a self-styled ‘expert’ on paranormal matters claiming that he had a premonition that the Kelaniya temple was to receive relics of Lord Buddha on the 9th of December, 2019, just ten days before the election, a claim endorsed by none other than Kollupitiye Mahinda Sangharakkhita, chief incumbent of the temple, a retired professor of Pali and Buddhist Studies and recently appointed Chancellor of the Kelaniya University.
On the night of the 9th, Madushanka dives into the Kelani river and emerges with what he claims are sacred relics of the Buddha. He says that while under water, he met a ‘naaga raajaya’ or ‘king of snakes’ who carried the relics in his mouth complete with a brass casket, from whom he retrieved the relics. Udara displays the snake for good measure- and the ‘king of snakes’ who brought forth the scared relics is held captive in a plastic bottle!
Kollupitiye Mahinda Sangharakkhita thero adds the necessary gravitas to the drama. He says he heard a ‘big bang’ followed by Udara emerging with the relics. The thero says the emergence of the scared relics is a ‘sign’ that the country will receive great leadership. How and why the ‘kingdom of snakes’ (‘naaga lokaya’) manufactures brass caskets is left unexplained by the learned monk but then, that is a tiny little detail!
The best is yet to follow. For the next few days, the ‘sacred relics’ retrieved from the ‘naaga lokaya’ are displayed to the public who throng in their thousands to catch a glimpse of this miracle. As they enter the temple, a monk hands them a lotus flower bud and tells them, ‘rata gena hithanna’ or ‘think about the country’. The lotus flower, of course, bears a close resemblance to the ‘pohottuwa’, the symbol of then presidential candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa. This entire episode got a lot of air time in the days preceding the election.
The rest, as they say, is history. As any advertising professional will tell you, this is brilliant marketing, tapping in to the psychological nuances and vulnerabilities of the voter in a masterful manner. Given Rajapaksa’s large margin of victory at the poll, it is reasonable to assume that he would have won regardless of such antics but the fact this story got traction from the electorate- when it should have been consigned to the annals of fairy tales- teaches us an important lesson about the Sri Lankan electorate: they are gullible like no other.
We repeat this story now, two years after the event, to alert the public to another drama that is being staged, albeit with different actors but with the same ultimate objective, that of ensuring the continuation of the Rajapaksa dynasty in power.
This is the drama enacted by Ministers Wimal Weerawansa, Vasudeva Nanayakkara and Udaya Gammanpila who are ‘opposing’ the sale of the government’s stake of the ‘Yugadhanavi’ power plant in Kerawalapitiya to an American company.
The ministerial trio initially spoke out publicly against the deal. Then, they went quiet for a while, apparently trying to convince President Gotabaya Rajapaksa (or is it really Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa?) to call off the deal.
In the meantime, several other parties including the Samagi Jana Balavegaya and other civil society activists went to court filing fundamental rights applications against the deal in the Supreme Court which have been granted leave to proceed. Now, the three ministers have filed documents in court, in support of these objections using private lawyers!
If ministers Weerawansa, Nanayakkara and Gammanpila are so concerned about the plight of our energy sector and are worried about it being sold to American interests and that is why they are taking all this trouble, we raise our hats to them. However, there is an honourable way of doing it: first, resign from your Cabinet portfolios. After all, Gammanpila is the Energy minister, to boot!
That is the proper way to register your protest. If they do so, they wouldn’t be making history either. Sri Lanka’s parliamentary history is replete with ministers resigning from Cabinet on matters of principle when they couldn’t agree with a policy decision taken by the government.
Besides, the continuation of the trio of ministers in the Cabinet of ministers defies logic because it is the Cabinet that finally sanctions the sale of the Yugadhanavi power plant. If you are part of the Cabinet, you are party to that decision. You cannot then be going to court against it!
That is why this whole saga has the whiff of a staged drama. Ministers Weerawansa, Nanayakkara and Gammanpila have some things in common: they are all leaders of ‘minor’ parties in the ruling coalition. More significantly, without the coalition, the sum total of their political clout is virtually zero, meaning that they wouldn’t be able to win any seats at a future election on their own steam. Besides, given the vitriol they have collectively spewed against the opposition, no opposition party will align with them.
Are we to believe then that Weerawansa, Nanayakkara and Gammanpila are staking their entire political careers over this issue? Even if Nanayakkara, only a few weeks shy of his 83rd birthday, may be able to do so, will the other two ‘youngsters’ do so? We would think not.
That is why we are convinced that this ‘protest’ and ‘opposition’ by the threesome are nothing but a drama staged for the benefit of the gullible voter. At the end of it, they will score some brownie points from the electorate for ‘standing up’ for the nation while the government will arrive at a settlement of some sort. All’s well that will end well and they will live happily ever after- until the next election.
Then remember, what we are seeing now is similar to the ‘big bang’ that Kollupitiye Mahinda Sangharakkhita thero described two years ago- the noise that heralds the drama, the event that convinces that this is all for a worthy cause. So, friends, Sri Lankans and countrymen, beware!
