EDITORIAL

Rice From The Moon: A Second Helping

Like her mother before her and indeed like the Bandaranaikes as a class, Chandrika Kumaratunga believes firmly that the people of Sri Lanka are a bunch of dithering idiots. It is widely recalled how in the run up to the 1970 general elections, Sirimavo Bandaranaike pledged to a starving, bankrupt nation that if necessary, she would bring them rice from the moon. A colourful metaphor, perhaps, which no one would take literally- except perhaps a public that had been reduced to eating scraps out of dustbins by seven years of chaos like only the Bandaranaikes can precipitate. It might well be said however, with apologies to the poet Wordsworth, that the child is mother of the woman.

Daughter Chandrika has refined lying to a fine art, throwing metaphor to the winds: she lies with a panache that is little short of admirable, fully expecting the public to believe her every word.

In 1994 too, Kumaratunga promised the moon. Bread at Rs 3.50, the abolition of the executive presidency by July 15, 1995, free school books and uniforms, one million jobs in the first two years, the dole for the unemployed, free housing, a cabinet of not more than 20 ministers, no Benzes, BMWs and Pajeros for ministers, and on and on. Of course, she was lying all along: this barefaced liar finds it increasingly difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction, a weakness she shares with Robert Mugabe, to say nothing of Stalin and Hitler.

Everyone knows now that quite apart from shunning them, she spent upwards of one billion rupees of taxpayers' money on Benzes and BMWs for herself- air freighted to Sri Lanka, to boot. And as for the cheap bread and the other mumbo jumbo, what became of that? A lot of dashed hopes and empty stomachs.

The JVP-SLFP  Alliance's latest manifesto, unveiled last Thursday, was simply a second helping - more of the same. "We are committed to economic development" says Kumaratunga, who actually sent the economy into recession for the first time in post-Independence history (falsely claiming all the while to have a political science degree from the Sorbonne and a PhD in economics). "We are committed to restore peace and harmony among the communities," says the very person who threatened to burn down places of Hindu religious worship. "The National Police Commission" will be further strengthened, we are told, hours after National Organiser of the Freedom Alliance, Anura Bandaranaike pledged to scrap it. "Full media freedom will be guaranteed," say the very people who not long ago threatened "to kill an editor or two" and sealed this newspaper.

Besides, just hours before the manifesto was unfolded, Wimal Weerawansa, a key alliance leader not only threatened the editor of the leading local-language daily, Lankadeepa, but also committed criminal trespass and attempted murder by illegally entering the property of Commerce Minister Ravi Karunanayake with illegal firearms and threatening to shoot dead his attorney.

Perhaps most telling is the renewal of a pledge to abolish the executive presidency. Indeed, the tenth anniversary of Kumaratunga's fraudulent promise to  do away with her job is fast approaching. Faced with the ghastly prospect of being forced into retirement at the end of her second term, before her children can inherit her place in the SLFP's leadership, and not trusting her frequently tipsy brother and his servant boys to play the role of night watchmen, Kumaratunga is now desperate to lead government from within parliament. For this, the constitution must be changed, and the country must be plunged into chaos. And this is the very same President speaking, who sought to spend five billion rupees of public funds on building a presidential palace for herself, quite apart from the one billion on luxury cars. Who would believe this con artist again?

While it is all very well to shower ridicule on Chandrika Kumaratunga and her JVP acolytes, the threat to Sri Lanka they pose is no longer funny. Wimal Weerawansa's criminal and violent actions last week left the nation with a terrible feeling of deja vu, taking it back to the early 1990s when JVP cadres slaughtered thousands of citizens in cold blood, looted banks, and stole jewellery and national identity cards. Now the JVP has pledged to turn over a new leaf and to enter the mainstream of democratic politics. We took them at their word. But Weerawansa has proved that this is all mere bluff- otherwise how is it that he has the gumption to terrorise newspaper editors and to threaten to kill a lawyer after having illegally entered someone else's office?

Driven only by a hunger for power, the JVP and SLFP have now embarked on a campaign of terror to win the April 2 election by hook or by crook. For his part, Somawansa Amarasinghe has been shown to be just that: a crook, and a two-bit one at that. For her part, Kumaratunga seeks only to retain her stranglehold on power, to keep the Lion Flag flying over Horagolla Walawwa. That is what this spasm of chaos the country has been plunged into is all about. Indeed, that is what her second secret swearing in was all about.

The worst fear of the public is the recklessness with which the alliance is driving the country back towards war, a reality to which the LTTE has responded by itself preparing for hostilities. Despite her claims of honouring the ceasefire and the MOU, Kumaratunga knows that this will not wash with the LTTE: that is why she has strengthened her security still further, failing to show up even at the unveiling of her party manifesto. To this extent, the split in the LTTE is hardly welcome, for atrocities committed by one faction could well be pinned on the other. Divided, the Tigers may yet rule.

What is most worrying with less than three weeks to D-Day is Kumaratunga's systematic campaign of abusing the police to further her own electoral agenda. The disgraceful meeting she summoned on March 6, at which she threatened to set fire to police stations that did not toe her line, is surely by itself grounds for impeachment. So is her subversion of the Police Commission, by placing party loyalists in the police force in supervisory control of key electorates. Her greed for power, and the means by which she will satiate it, know no bounds.

While lauding the Prime Minister for playing by the rules, one fears that the likes of Kumaratunga are unlikely, at the end of the day, to quit unless shown the door by public action: the "people power" that drove dictators like Marcos and Suharto from office. The Bandaranaikes are past masters at outstaying their welcome. Just as Sirimavo forcibly and illegally overstayed her term in 1975, so is Chandrika planning to overstay hers in 2005. The people of Sri Lanka have stomached a great deal from Kumaratunga, and it is time that everyone concerned called a spade a spade and stopped pussyfooting around this despot as if she were royalty. It is a mistake Ranil Wickremesinghe has learned to his cost, and it is a mistake the people of Sri Lanka would do well to avoid.