“Uncle” Ranil-gay Aan-duwa Bang(s)a-well-la!
When Arjun Mahendra was appointed as Governor of the Central Bank he, being a shrewd PR operator, made it known to all and sundry that he was on very close terms with Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Prime Minister, by referring to him as Uncle Ranil”. Every other sentence began with Uncle Ranil told me….this and this” And ended with I told Uncle Ranil this and that..” But within days of his appointment the Nephew” has pushed his Uncle” over the precipitous cliff. The Uncle”-Nephew” team is now going down in a free fall. It proves all over again the old dictum of W. Dahanayake that the UNP is an Uncle” – Nephew” Party.
Uncle Ranil” must take responsibility for the fiasco of the mega-million deal in which his Nephew” is involved. Thjis is another example of Uncle Ranil” has gone out of his way to tuck under his sarong stray snakes running elsewhere.(Aha-ka yana nye aran redda ass-say da-gan-nawa). R. Paskaralingam, the other so-called financial wizard who runs away each time Ranil falls from power, has also come back and is now inside Uncle” Ranil’s sarong. His reputation is well-known to businessmen who had dealt with him. It is common knowledge that he leads a life of splendid isolation in UK. On whose money? So why did Uncle” Ranil bring these snakes from abroad and tuck them inside his sarong? What is it that they can do – or have done – which the locals can’t do? Why is he trying to commit suicide so early when the due date for his natural demise is at the end of April 23, 015, the end of the magic 100-days which he promised would usher in the political nirvana.? When the next election campaign begins After 23rd will he dare go before the business community and promise to deliver another nirvana with a cleaner administration?
No one is to be blamed for ruining the image of the Yaha-pala-naya” (good governance) other than Uncle” Ranil. He is the one who is running the Maithripala Sirisena, the SLFP and the government. He is the one who recruited his Nephew” from Singapore, knowing his relationship with Raja Rajaratnam, the jailed insider trader in US. Clearly, insider trading is nothing new to Mahendra. It can’t get any closer than that of his son-in-law grabbing the lion share of the bond market. And Uncle Ranil” alone should take responsibility for the insider trading scandal.
As if that is not bad enough his Finance Minister, Ravi Karunanayake, has, flouting all known decent norms – forget the promises of running a clean administration within 100-days – appointed his brother-in-law, T. M. R. Bangsa Jayah, an ex-Police Sergeant to a Rs. 600,000 per mensem directorship in the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation. This is the last straw that breaks the charter of a pure administration within 100-days. Uncle Ranil” has appointed Ravi Karunanayake into the key position of Finance Minister knowing that there is case of money laundering linked – surprise!! surprise! – to Raja Rajaratnam, the jailed insider trader in US. This is as good as Uncle Ranil” appointing Gonawila Sunil, convicted rapist, as an assistant in his Ministry of Education in the days when his uncle, J. R. Jayewardene, was President. Everyone knows that it was his Nephew’s intervention that influenced his Uncle JRJ” to release Gonawila Sunil.
All this adds up one simple fact: the Wickremesinghe-Sirisena government is now Bang(s)a-well-la”! The Central Bank scandal and the appointment of a Police Sergeant as a director of the state run insurance company are sufficient to make the accusations against Mahinda Rajapakse look like pin pricks. The disillusionment in the electorate, particularly among the middle class, will ensure the return of Mahinda Rajapakse. a one-horse race.
It can be reasonably assumed that Nephew” Mahendra would not have fallen into disgrace before he could even warm the seat of the Central Bank if he was not banking on the support of Uncle” Ranil. It is also absolutely clear that Nephew” Mahendra’s bonds (pun intended) with his son-in-law, Aloysius, is far stronger than with his Uncle Ranil”. This marks the beginning of the end of Uncle Ranil” claim to run a pure administration. His promise of delivering the pure and uncorrupted political nirvana within 100 days has come to an end within almost 50 days. What a fall for a man who boasted of his capacity to run the economy efficiently and without corruption! Unless the committee appointed to whitewashes the mega-million deal there is no way that Uncle” Wickremesinghe can bring back his Nephew” to head the Central Bank again.
What is alarming is that Uncle Ranil” has so far not asked for the resignation of his Nephew” nor has he resigned as the head of the Finance Ministry. Since he knows the Westminster rules like the back of his hands he should know that even a whiff of scandal of this magnitude should oblige him to resign. Nor has Ravi Karuanayake justified the appointment of his brother-in-law, Bangsa, to the directorate of the Insurance company.
The appointments made by Uncle Ranil” and Ravi Kruananayake raise three questions: 1. Aren’t there competent Sri Lankans who are better than Arjuan Mahendra and Paskaralingam to handle the finances of the nation? 2. What is President Maithripala Sirisena, the High Priest of Yaha-pala-naya”, doing to remedy the situation? and 3, Has the President’s own action of appointing his brother to head the Sri Lankan Telecom tied his hands and prevented any possibility of taking action against his Prime Minister and Finance Ministers for violating the basic principles which he preached as if they are the revised precepts of political dasa seela”?
The shenanigans of the two leaders of the Yaha-pala-naya” makes a mockery of the pure principles promised to the electorate. The President and the Prime Minister have jointly sabotaged their own future. They stand exposed not as members of a pure regime willing and able to change the corrupt political system but as abusers of power to feather their own nests.
The entire campaign of the President and the Prime Minister was based on the single slogan of making a difference” – when-a-suck. But the electorate is still waiting for the promised when-a-suck”. The rate at which the two leaders are violating the principles announced in the when-a-suck” makes it amply clear that the promised when-a-suck” will never see the light of the day – not in 100 days. Nor in a another 1000days or more.
In short, the two leaders played out the electorate with bogus promises they could never achieve. Instead of giving the promised when-a-suck” they have they have taken the electorate to the biggest ride of their lives. There is no when-a-suck” in sight. They have jointly created only a disillusioned electorate of when-a-suckers” who are now repenting for the change they made unwittingly.
H. L. D. Mahindapala
1515 Viewers
