{"id":124377,"date":"2014-05-11T00:01:01","date_gmt":"2014-05-10T18:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=124377"},"modified":"2014-05-18T00:37:38","modified_gmt":"2014-05-17T19:07:38","slug":"the-apparent-opposition-and-the-real-opposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-apparent-opposition-and-the-real-opposition\/","title":{"rendered":"The Apparent Opposition And The Real Opposition"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Malinda Seneviratne<\/span><\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Malinda<\/a>

Malinda Seneviratne<\/p><\/div>\n

President Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/span><\/a> knows better than most how to make the best out of a bad situation.\u00a0 He showed once again what an astute politician he is on May Day when he turned things around after key members of the ruling coalition declined to support what has been dubbed the \u2018Casino Bill\u2019.\u00a0 He said that there is room in the Government for dissent.\u00a0 More importantly he said that things had come to a point where the only discernible opposition was already within the United People\u2019s Freedom Alliance.<\/p>\n

Now, given his readiness to embrace anyone and everyone, the UPFA<\/span><\/a> certainly looks like a massive bedroom housing strange bedfellows. One would expect this to be a recipe for friction, defection and eventual collapse.\u00a0 After being in power for more than a decade it is an indictment on the sad state of the opposition that regime-hating commentators have been reduced to clinging to the casino-opposition as evidence of fissure leading to inevitable regime-collapse.<\/p>\n

So far, the UPFA has survived \u2018regime-fatigue\u2019, international pressure and regular own-goals at all levels.\u00a0 If Ranil Wickremesinghe<\/span><\/a>\u2019s biggest weakness, the fact that he has no close friends, is also his biggest strength; Mahinda\u2019s biggest strength, the fact that he has many friends, is also his biggest weakness.\u00a0 In the play of strengths and weaknesses, so far, Mahinda Rajapaksa has prevailed.\u00a0 The negatives have not translated to a massive swing to the opposition.\u00a0 It seems, instead, that contrary to the usual trend of regime-displeasure translating into default-support for the opposition, the lack of a credible opposition reduces the people to back the regime according to a \u2018known-devil-is-better\u2019 logic.\u00a0 As a three-wheel driver recently summed up, \u2018api bena bena aanduwatama chande denava\u2019<\/i> (we continue to vote for the government even as we curse it).<\/p>\n

This state of affairs, this strange benefitting from the non existence of a default option, is clearly not sustainable.\u00a0 Perhaps the \u2018internal opposition\u2019 is a relatively safe safeguard against collapse.\u00a0 But is that the only \u2018opposition\u2019 to Mahinda Rajapaksa?<\/p>\n

A few weeks after Mahinda Rajapaksa was elected President in 2005, in an article titled \u2018In search of the kurahan saatakaya\u2019 <\/i>I made some observations on the challenges he would be confronted with.\u00a0 The following are some extracts:<\/p>\n

\u2018The kurahan saatakaya<\/i> is and was essentially defined by what it is not, namely\u00a0the tie-coat world as one would put it in \u201cSinhala<\/span><\/a>\u201d. It was the perfect \u201cother\u201d to\u00a0everything represented by the (adopted) children of the colonial project, the\u00a0privileges they enjoyed and the elitism they fostered and fought for tooth and nail\u00a0perhaps never as ferociously as in this election. Its broadest possible articulation covers much\u00a0political, cultural, economic and philosophical terrain, at least in aspiration if not in\u00a0concrete ground-reality terms.<\/p>\n

\u2018Rajapakse obviously understands that in real political terms his hard earned\u00a0victory on November 17 only resulted in the kurahan saatakaya just scratching the\u00a0politico-cultural edifice it challenged. In this sense it was a very small victory. The\u00a0tie-coat, to use that convenient though not inappropriate short-hand, hangs\u00a0around the necks of every institution, the vast majority of state officials, and the\u00a0thinking of important sections of the most influential players in the economy, the\u00a0hegemonic cultural drives and indeed the dominant ideological and philosophical\u00a0frames of reference. The difference is that the kurahan saatakaya has executive\u00a0power and as such has the potential to reform the politico-cultural-ideological\u00a0edifice. The battle, then, has moved from the electoral register to the larger and\u00a0more complex terrain of institutions, territories where Mahinda Rajapakse is at a\u00a0distinct disadvantage.<\/p>\n

\u2018The establishment suffered a\u00a0rude shock, true, but only the utterly na\u00efve can expect it to lie down and die on\u00a0account of that particular poke in the behind. The establishment does not see a\u00a0<\/span>kurahan saatakaya<\/i>. It sees an <\/span>amuda lensuwa<\/i> and it is a gaze of derision, a\u00a0looking-down-the-nose, something that should be out of sight, mind and the face\u00a0of the earth. The establishment operated in according to a by-any-means-necessary logic in trying to defeat Rajapakse and will operate in the\u00a0same vein in trying to bring him down. The establishment knows the ins and outs\u00a0of the system and is deeply entrenched too. All mechanisms available for\u00a0subversion will be employed, rest assured.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

As of now, it appears that the battle between the kurahan saatakaya <\/i>and the tie-coat is not going in favor of the former. When it comes to policy, the latter has prevailed. It is only <\/i>the kurahan saatakaya<\/i> of his natural ways that allows the President to retain mass support.\u00a0 Within him, then, is the true opposition. The one moment when the kurahan saatakay <\/i>prevailed was during the operations to defeat terrorism. On that occasion it was not the \u2018tie-coats\u2019 that stood by him but those of the kurahan-saataka<\/i> ideological bent.\u00a0 Such people have been marginalized or even evicted from relevant circles in the matter of policy formulation.<\/p>\n

Nine years ago, I made the following observation:<\/p>\n

If there comes a day where every single institution insists that all employees wear\u00a0<\/i>
\na kurahan saatakaya we would still not have won if they continue to have tie-coat
\nheads. On the other hand, if these institutions continue to insist that employees
\nwear Western attire, replete with tie and coat, but the people inside these clothes
\nhave a kurahan saatakaya frame of mind, then the November 17 decision would
\nmost certainly have produced something we can be proud of as a nation. I humbly
\nsubmit that this is not impossible.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That day has not arrived, clearly.\u00a0 It has not arrived because the arrival upon which Mahinda Rajapaksa\u2019s political future depends on is being detained.\u00a0 Detained by Mahinda Rajapaksa himself.\u00a0 That\u2019s the true opposition.\u00a0 He cannot deal with it the way he deals with the \u2018visible opposition\u2019 but deal with it he must.\u00a0 His future and that of the UPFA depends on it.<\/p>\n

*Malinda Seneviratne is the Chief Editor of \u2018The Nation\u2019\u00a0and his articles can be found at\u00a0www.malindawords.blogspot.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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