Pop your head into one of those oases of middle-class propriety Colombo has in the form of its multifarious clubs on a Friday evening, and you will see the bourgeoisie in hordes, paying no heed whatsoever to their whining wives and bawling brats, engaged in earnest debate on one subject and one subject only: the loose morality of the governing class. We may discuss the stock market, we may argue about cricket and we may contest George Bush’s worldview. But when it comes to debate, the real potato, with fingers wagged, whisky spilt and saliva sprayed into the heavens, there is but one subject that can completely absorb the middle class: politics.

Whatever happens to be the issue of the day, the middle class knows best. How Saddam might have won; how Chandrika can recapture power; how jelly can be nailed to the ceiling. And with the stock market hitting ever-higher highs, the middle classes are smug in the knowledge that in electing Ranil Wickremesinghe as their prime minister, they were on to a good thing. To a man, they are behind Ranil; indeed, the vast majority of them are on first-name terms with him.

But that is not to say the middle classes are smug in the knowledge that they backed a good horse: one that is likely, regardless of the odds to cross the finish, even if only a short head in front of the runner-up. Delighted that the dollars are flowing in by the billion, and that the peace is bouncing along as well can be expected, they worry about only one thing: that the balloon will burst before they’ve cashed in their chips. The middle classes are fretful, anxious and poised on the edges of their seats. They want the happy ending. And they know that one thing and one thing only can deprive them of it: Ranil Wickremesinghe’s complaisance.

Power sits gently on our worthy Prime Minister. Of all the politicians who have reached the top in our nation’s post-independence history, he is the one blessed with the smallest ego. Not just Wickremesinghe, but all his closest buddies — whether Malik Samarawickrema, Ananda Athukorala, Lalin Fernando or Charitha Ratwatte — are rather like one of those fat-free dairy products: they are ego free. No posturing, no scrambling for the head table, no conceit; quite unlike the fraternity that patronises our President, which brims to the gills with airs and graces.

It is Wickremesinghe’s easy-come easy-go attitude to power that catches the middle class in the short ribs. The alacrity with which he folded his tents and decamped from Temple Trees in the aftermath of the 1994 general election; the deference he pays to Chandrika Kumaratunga; the manifest diffidence he shows when it comes to impressing his own five-star code of morality on his ministers; and worst of all, the length of slack he indulgently cuts for the vagaries of Velupillai Pirapaharan: added together it is this that gives the middle classes the jitters, and rightly so. Their favourite prime minister ain’t got the killer instinct. You can dress him up in leather and hand him the whip — and he’ll curl up in bed with some enlightening text on development economics and Third World emancipation.

Week after week we have exposed ministers in Wickremesinghe’s government who are openly and blatantly making money hand over fist or indulging in all manner of vices. Red faced and angry, they track him down on Monday mornings and plead their innocence. "The twenty million rupees was not meant to be a bribe, it was a political contribution for our party." "Actually, this is a business that my wife is doing, and I am not at all involved in it." "I didn’t know there was a gun in my pocket." We’ve heard them all before, and so has the Prime Minister. But all he does is nod sagely and tell them that no one actually takes what comes in the papers very seriously.

The middle classes do: that’s why they are fretful, anxious and poised on the edges of their seats. And it is Wickremesinghe’s very success that gives them the heebie-jeebies. For even as the donor billions gush in; even as the stock market bulls forward to ever greater heights; and even as the GNP growth index starts lifting its tail, in addition to the multifarious committees the Prime Minister has appointed, there is one committee that toils night and day to achieve but a single outcome: Wickremesinghe’s downfall.

Even as she watched her technocratic Prime Minister politically flounder along for his first 18 months in office, Chandrika Kumaratunga knew full well that it was in her gift to wrest power from him any time she wished. Heaven knows she has said as much often enough. Now the Tigers are saying they will come back to the talks, and the signs of prosperity are all over the blackboard. It is now she needs most the wisdom that won her in theory that PhD; now that she needs most the wit that got her that make-believe degree from the Sorbonne. She’s too busy to meet most foreign dignitaries that pass through Colombo, or even to attend the weekly cabinet meetings. Have you wondered why?

There is formidable machine at work to put an end to Wickremesinghe’s Camelot. A fatalist to the end, he doesn’t give tuppence (or in the argot of the day, 2¢). But there is more at stake here than the number of pages in Wickremesinghe’s biography: there is the good of the nation. The Prime Minister has surrounded himself with a cabinet that is in essence a bunch of thieves and hooligans. All manner of excess and corruption are rife, but no one is man enough to cry halt. Not even that citadel of middle-class morality, Milinda Moragoda. Untouchable, he is untouched by the pathos of the tragedy that is unfolding before the UNF, even as several of his brother ministers fall one over another to loot the public purse.

By his indifference to public morality, Mr Nice Guy Wickremesinghe is spawning anarchy. Law and order are collapsing around us and government inefficiency is booming. As last week’s and this week’s exposure of the goings on in the Fisheries Ministry amply demonstrate, the public service know their masters are a bunch of thieves who have due to political expediency the tacit support of none less than the Prime Minister. Given the hopelessness of their position, the bureaucracy either joins in (making a bit on the side for themselves while the going is good), or walks away from the doggie poop, leaving their ministries to rot. Who cares, anyway? Only those suckers who pledged $4.5 billion to help out a Prime Minister who can’t say ‘boo’ to a goose or, for that matter, Mahinda Wijesekera, Rohitha Bogollagama, Arumugam Thondaman or Jayalath Jayewardena (space limits us from naming the entire lot).

If there are tears in the eyes of the middle class, it is not because there’s too little soda in their Chivas or too much chillie-pepper in their devilled prawns: it is because they have no choice but to watch helplessly even as paradise is lost. And all the while, even as Ranil fiddles, that committee toils, plotting his downfall. And unlike all of Wickremesinghe’s committees, this one is poised to succeed. Only one man can thwart their ambition, and that man for obvious political reasons is not man enough to stand up for what is right. Perhaps that committee deserves to succeed after all, if that is what fate decrees this cursed nation.