{"id":133940,"date":"2014-11-30T00:05:38","date_gmt":"2014-11-29T18:35:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=133940"},"modified":"2014-12-03T12:40:29","modified_gmt":"2014-12-03T07:10:29","slug":"the-presidential-persona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-presidential-persona\/","title":{"rendered":"The Presidential Persona"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"Malinda<\/a>

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

Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/span><\/a> doesn\u2019t have a \u2018persona\u2019 problem when it comes to \u2018presidentiality\u2019. He\u2019s been doing that job for nine years now. He ended a war. He presided over an ambitious development program and even if one has issues with the development paradigm he subscribes to, there\u2019s stuff to be seen. And if anyone has complaints about the economy it is more about relative disparities than impoverishment. After all this is a country where undergraduates protesting the lack of facilities take selfies and post them on Facebook almost immediately using expensive smart phones.\u00a0 If one were to compare his track record with that of his immediate predecessor, Chandrika Kumaratunga<\/span><\/a>, he\u2019s way ahead.\u00a0 She\u2019s got nothing to show by way of presidential footprint.<\/p>\n

Presidentiality is not a constant. Things get added to track records and things are subtracted from the same as well. In this respect, Mahinda Rajapaksa has suffered. The entire country knows his face. But it\u2019s as though the President and his backers are not sure that they do, if one were to think of the countless hoardings, cut-outs and posters that carry his face.\u00a0\u00a0 The in-your-face nature of it all defaces more than prompt memory about the positives associated with the face. Someone remarked wryly \u2018Wherever you look, there\u2019s a picture of Mahinda Rajapaksa \u2013 and he\u2019s laughing at you people, do you realize this?\u2019\u00a0 It has come to a point when people are joking about a new distance-unit: the number of \u201cMahinda cut-outs\u201d between A and B.<\/p>\n

\"Mahinda<\/a>Overkill is just one kind of defacing. The man is loved. His brothers are not loved, but neither are they hated. By and large, they are viewed as hands-on hard workers. It\u2019s the rajapaksawarun<\/i> or the larger family of non-related hangers-on that are despised for their high-handedness, thuggery, thieving ways and scant regard for the law. He has suffered them all and that robs from rather than enhances image.<\/p>\n

For all this, Mahinda Rajapaksa stands tall. Taller than Maithripala Sirisena<\/span><\/a>. As of now. That\u2019s because this is about picking THE LEADER. Strength (whether used for good or bad) matters. Mahinda\u2019s got that and he\u2019s done a lot that people can be grateful for. Maithripala is relatively untried. Personality counts. Mahinda\u2019s got that too. He\u2019s way ahead of the field among national leaders the common people can identify with. Maithripala, in this respect, is untried.<\/p>\n

Mahinda has baggage, sure. He has surrounded himself with individuals who are not exactly saluted by the people.\u00a0 Maithripala also has baggage.\u00a0 He\u2019s got brothers too.\u00a0 They\u2019ve got wealthy during the Mahinda Rajapaksa years.\u00a0 But that\u2019s still nothing.\u00a0 His heaviest baggage at this point are those who treat him like a proxy and a serf rather than presidential candidate and would-be king.\u00a0 If Mahinda\u2019s presidentiality has been dented by his negatives detailed above, Maithripala\u2019s presidential credentials appear stillborn.<\/p>\n

It all began with the candidate being overshadowed by his former boss. Chandrika Kumaratunga stole the show not so much with vigor and vitality as with venom.\u00a0 She was in his face and in his ear as well, prompting the candidate who appeared to have lost his script 10 minutes into the press conference where he announced he would be challenging Mahinda Rajapaksa. He is still to come out of her shadow. A puppet on a string manipulated by The Chaura Regina<\/i> (Queen of Deceit), as Victor Ivan describes her, doesn\u2019t look presidential at all.\u00a0 When he genuflects before this discredited politician clearly consumed by hatred and revenge-intent on the one hand and the Leader of the Opposition, another individual who has earned the tag \u2018loser\u2019 (for very different reasons), on the other, he looks more pawn than king.<\/p>\n

Maithripala states, \u2018I will abolish the executive presidency\u2019.\u00a0 He also says \u2018I will make Ranil<\/span><\/a> the Prime Minister with executive powers\u2019. Together, he is essentially leading us to conclude that he\u2019s Ranil\u2019s proxy (when he\u2019s not lip-reading Chandrika).\u00a0 That\u2019s not presidential.\u00a0 That\u2019s pawnish.<\/p>\n

But Maithripala has shown signs that this state of affairs is temporary.\u00a0 When he echoed the words of Champika Ranawaka<\/span><\/a> with respect to war crimes investigations and the possible trying of the President in a kangaroo court put together by the USA and its allies, he scored.\u00a0 He showed humility.\u00a0 He showed humanity.\u00a0 He showed generosity.\u00a0 He showed that he could be everything that Chandrika is not.\u00a0\u00a0 He\u2019ll have to do a lot more showing to look as presidential as Mahinda.\u00a0 He would not only have to ask Chandrika to leave the stage but get her to retire from the campaign as well.\u00a0 \u2018Task done, thanks\u2019 he could tell her.<\/p>\n

It must be mentioned that it is Ranil Wickremesinghe and not Maithripala Sirisena that has saved the latter the blushes after the \u2018executive premiership\u2019 faux pas<\/i>.\u00a0 It is the United National Party and its leader that have spoken of a \u2018national government\u2019 and salvaged a campaign that threatened to be about distributing posts in the event of victory.\u00a0 What this means is that Maithripala is being ill-advised.\u00a0 And it is dwarfing the man vis-\u00e0-vis Mahinda Rajapaksa, self-effaced and defaced though the 2009 image of the man may be.<\/p>\n

When will Maithripala come out with a manifesto?\u00a0 Who will be his key allies?\u00a0 Who will run his campaign? Answers to these questions will tell us how presidential the man can be.\u00a0 It will reveal his true political height.\u00a0 This election will be about two individuals, no disrespect intended to other candidates of course. Mahinda was quite tall to begin with.\u00a0 He\u2019s lost a few inches. Maithripala has a few inches to grow.\u00a0 Some can lift him while others are busy bringing him down by getting him to bend over.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s only so much one can grow in a matter of four to five weeks.\u00a0 Shedding inches, on the other hand, is easier than shedding kilos.\u00a0 Both candidates have backers more than capable of crippling them.\u00a0 Maybe it will boil down to who gets cut down less.<\/p>\n

*Malinda Seneviratne is the Chief Editor of \u2018The Nation\u2019\u00a0and his articles can be found at\u00a0www.malindawords.blogspot.com<\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":105560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Presidential Persona - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-presidential-persona\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Presidential Persona - Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[…]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-presidential-persona\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Colombo Telegraph\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-11-29T18:35:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-12-03T07:10:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Malinda-Seneviratne-150x150.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"130\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"135\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"COLOMBO TELEGRAPH\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-presidential-persona\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-presidential-persona\/\",\"name\":\"The Presidential Persona - 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