By Vishwamithra –

“Great is the issue at stake, greater than appears, whether a man is to be good or bad. And what will any one be profited if, under the influence of money or power, he neglect justice and virtue?” ~ Plato

Never was there such a high-stake political game. Never was there a situation in the country where the opposing political imposters, pretending to be serious-minded political thinkers, eyeing for the top job in the country. Never was there such a dearth of talent, wisdom, skill and intelligence in the arena at the highest echelons. Never was there a set of incompetent and corrupt political leaders vying for national leadership as patriots who have already been prejudged by the electorate and yet rejected totally and unequivocally. Never were the stakes so HIGH and the players so low, period.

If Ranil Wickremesinghe is one of the serious contenders, then the story could very well be foretold. This is his third attempt at the job at the helm. However, this time the electorate is much smaller than what once was. The country is not voting. Instead, it’s her elected representatives who will vote. When the country decided two and half years ago, Ranil did not get a single seat, leave alone an electoral victory for his Party – United National Party (UNP). He brought the UNP, a mainstream political party that has its roots to some of the real winners such as DS Senanayake, Dudley Senanayake, JR Jayewardene, Gamini Dissanayake and Lalith Athulathmudali to a humiliating defeat. That is Ranil’s legacy; a very forgettable and ignominious one

Surrounded by utterly incompetent fellow-wheeler-dealers in whose cushy coziness Ranil finds his comfort zone in political life, this man is once again trying to project himself as a savior of a beleaguered economy for which he himself is partially responsible. His close friends in high places in the previous Yahapalanaya regime, Arjuna Mahendran, Malik Samarawickrama, Sagala Ratnayake, Akila Viraj Kariyawasam, Vajira Abeywardana and Ravi Karunanayake have all contributed to the current morass. Their collective incompetence in the job in the Yahapalanaya era and absolute lack of empathetic demeanor towards the general public was rejected outright at the last General Elections in 2020.

Nevertheless, nearly after forty five years in politics, Ranil Wickremesinghe in 2022 met his coconspirators; coconspirators whose devilish ambitions and devious machinations have paved the way for national bankruptcy and sociopolitical decline. Judgment on those rascals, those political merchants who bartered the country’s coffers for a buck in their personal pockets, has already been delivered and the chief accused has fled the shores. But in the most inopportune circumstances, this fellow who was elected to power with close to seven million voters placing trust and confidence in could not find a place or country of refuge to accept him as one seeking asylum! The man who made his country somewhat a refugee camp is now seeking refuge in another land. A stranger irony would be hard to find.

Ranil Wickremesinghe’s cardinal sin of apathy has been compounded by his accepting the Premiership to serve to provide cover to the Rajapaksa family. Now he pretends to stand to save the country and that has been facilitated by virtue of the fact that he was the Prime Minister at the time of incumbent President fleeing the country. In the most inauspicious circumstances and in the most volatile conditions, the people of the country are awaiting the next phase of this strange national drama. What’s happening in Sri Lanka has made fact more akin to fiction than ever before.

But it is no joke. The country’s perilous fate is on edge; its unpredictability is estranging some really serious politicians away from the arena. In a wild potpourri of political mix, Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sajith Premadasa, Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Dulles Alahapperuma have thrown in their names for the control of the switch at the national helm. Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), better known as Basil’s Party is in a virtual disarray. For once, its Chairman, G L Pieris has found his voice. In a bid to defeat his nemeses, Ranil Wickremesinghe, he is challenging the alleged statement of the SLPP’s Secretary who most unceremoniously declared that the SLPP MPs would vote for Ranil Wickremesinghe, the fellow who backed the other fellow who ran away from the country. There was never any love lost between Ranil and GL.

Whatever all these traditional politicians are planning and plotting to achieve, they seem to have simply failed to comprehend the current mood in the country. Playing traditional games is not only naïve and meaningless at the present juncture, it could spell dangerously close to destruction of all our democratic structures that are still in operation. The sad irony of these political machinations is the total disregard of the Aragalaya-school-of-political-thought. Without paying any attention whatsoever to the demands and nuanced sounds of the plight of today’s youth that emanated from the widely spread-out Aragala Pitiyas, these leaders of the mainstream political parties are making every attempt at carving out an area of influence for themselves without offering even a modicum of solutions to the wide and varied needs of today’s youth.

History’s treatment of such sociopolitical traitors has been very unkind; its judgment along with punishment could be tremendously unmerciful and deservedly so. Failure on the part of all parties not to go outside the box and make room and provide space for a non-parliamentarian/s to stand in as a genuine representative of the youth’s wishes and aspirations would be perceived as unkind and cruel. What is necessary at the moment is not to appease the youth; it is to listen and pay serious heed to their perils and plight.

Having launched a mass movement whose end point was never forecast as cozy and comfortable in a traditional sense, these youth are now taking a well-deserved respite after the departure of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. But our traditional leadership, both inside the government and outside in the Opposition, are still engaged in a conventional game-playing. The youth’s focus is way outside that arena. Instead of carving out a piece of turf for oneself in each of the political parties, the entire set of Opposition leadership simply failed to put forward a united front. No charismatic leader has emerged, at least as at the time I am writing this column, to rise above the fray and dominate the arena and take full charge of the situation and its inconsequential players.

Parliament might meet in the next few days and settle the issue of who our next President is and who our next Prime Minister is. Whether the issues of declining economic conditions would worsen further or make a slight turn towards betterment, the political crisis is never going to be resolved in the way it is being attempted to be resolved. Breakdown of trust and confidence is total; its downward journey is only gaining its alacrity with each step our politicos are taking with or without being conscious of the more profound issue that is at the center. When they fail in their lack of perception and lack of understanding of the central issue, the problem goes further down and develops its own character and momentum without depending on the actors and onlookers. This inscrutable phenomenon is taking ahold of our collective mindset and we don’t see it because we have stopped looking. Indulgences in Band-Aid solutions have overtaken our better sense, savants as well as ignoramus, and relentlessly attacking the very existence of sanity and moral human conduct. How we will come out of this dreadful morass is anybody’s guess. One thing is yet so sure: selection of a new President and a new Prime Minster is surely not going to solve our problems.

*The writer can be contacted at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com