Wickremesinghe’s 100-day programme risks developing into a farce, with ministers desperately scratching their heads thinking of things to do beyond, that is, appointing committees to look into things. Elsewhere in today’s edition, we have taken the initiative of proposing eight simple things that could be done in the short term to make Sri Lanka a better place. We have gone further and stated explicitly which ministry should do them. Let us now sit back and await results, if any.

The UNF was elected to office because the electorate was deeply disappointed with Chandrika Kumaratunga and the PA government. During their seven years in opposition, the greens made much of Kumaratunga’s numerous transgressions. They promised to undo the wrongs she had done when one day they themselves came into government. They have now been in government a full month, and there is no sign whatever of any reformist activity from the party, save for initiatives by the prime minister who, heaven knows, is no Premadasa-style dictator. There is a growing suspicion that the UNF is brain dead, lacking direction, wallowing about like a ship without a rudder.

If the swollen ranks of his ministers are incapable of taking the initiative, Wickremesinghe himself had better do this or watch his government swept out in a wave of apathy. If the PA actually did little, it nevertheless at least talked of doing things. The UNF, sadly, has done neither. We once accused the PA of being in a state of strenua inertia or ‘energetic idleness’. The UNF, it seems, is bereft of even the strenua. The issues it fought so vociferously for in opposition have been swept under the rug. The insecurity of the slender majority the party enjoys in parliament shows in the actions of its ministers: they are preoccupied in nursing their electorates (rather than the subject matter of their portfolios) in the expectation of a premature general election. This will get the country nowhere.

Look at some of the causes the UNP espoused in opposition. The brutal murder in public of the Papua New Guinean rugby player, Joel Perra; the on-going construction of the presidential palace in Kotte; the Air Lanka privatisation; the numerous tender abuses, not least that of the purchase of French railway locomotives. The corruption-ridden Katunayake expressway. Wickremesinghe pledged that he would not instigate a witch-hunt using presidential commissions and the like, but let normal law take its course. But normal law is not likely to take its course so long as the police is led by a politically partisan crony of the ilk of IGP Lucky Kodituwakku. A PA political appointee of the worst sort, Kodituwakku is breezily carrying on a full five weeks after he should have been evicted.

What also of Dhammika Kitulegoda, who, thanks to having been educated at Rahula College, Matara (ditto for Kusumsiri Balapatabendi, Chandrananda de Silva and Rohan Daluwatte) skyrocketed from obscurity in a minor judicial post to becoming the first secretary general of parliament to be appointed from outside? And why? Merely to spite the Deputy Secretary General, Priyani Wijesekera, whom Kumaratunga suspected of being a UNP sympathiser. A more blatant act of political victimisation is hard to imagine, and the very same UNF MPs who today cow tow with Kitulegoda on machang terms were the ones who stood up then and pledged that the next UNP Government would send this usurper marching. Now almost a month after the 12th Parliament first sat, Kitulegoda reigns supreme, and on backslapping terms with his former critics.

When Kitulegoda was first appointed, then Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, aided by the TULF’s Joseph Pararajasingham and the JVP’s Nihal Galappathy went in delegation and pleaded in vain with Speaker K. B. Ratnayake to ensure that justice was done to Wijesekera. When that failed, they pledged to remove Kitulegoda and appoint Wijesekera at the first available opportunity. Now, all that is necessary for the removal of Kitulegoda is a resolution passed by a simple majority of the House, requiring Kumaratunga to remove him in terms of section 65(5)(e) of the constitution. The same resolution could call upon the president to appoint Wijesekera. Well, let’s hear it from the UNF!

The same goes for Chief Justice Sarath Silva, who was not only improperly appointed, but has been proved to be unsuited to the dignity of the office he holds. The UNP actually submitted a motion to impeach him to the last parliament, but this lapsed with its prorogation. The impeachment bill should be submitted forthwith, and Silva should be jettisoned without delay. With people of his ilk, there is no point in waiting on ceremony: if the UNP had the courage of its convictions to impeach him in 2001, the people have a right to ask what has changed in 2002?

The UNF must also face the challenge Kumaratunga poses. At the dissolution of parliament, it was poised to table an impeachment motion against Kumaratunga. That was before the CDB Director Bandula ‘Show’ Wickramasinghe’s damning revelations about Kumaratunga not only knowing of the circumstances behind the murder of All Ceylon Tamil Congress Leader Kumar Ponnambalam, but suppressing an investigation into it in the knowledge that he was murdered on the instructions of her nephew, Mahen Ratwatte. As seen elsewhere in today’s issue, this has been further corroborated through an affidavit from yet another police officer, Nuwan Wedasinghe. For its part, what does the UNF plan to do? Coexist with Kumaratunga in a blissful symbiosis, knowing full well that her hands are stained with covering up numerous murders, not to mention gross abuse of power? Or root her evil presence out of President’s House once and for all?