By The Nation –

aithripala, Sirisena, made it clear this week that he wants a supine press, and considers the media absolutely free as long as (as a unit) its practitioners do his bidding. This person gives an entire new meaning to the term cheap tin pot dictator, but more about that later.

Nothing in Yahapalanaya has changed anything fundamental in this country. The NGO charlatans such as Jehan Perera and Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu are still the same. If at all, along with the handiwork of fellow mountebanks such as Weliamuna, their exertions towards ensuring that the soldiers who fought to save you and me are locked up, or worse, are being redoubled.

Ranil Wickremesinghe is still a traitor, the worst of his kind, the type that caused the lives of over 50 Sri Lanka army intelligence personnel to be taken, because he gave them away, lock, stock and location, when he was Prime Minister for a brief interregnum in 2001 or thereabouts.

The UNP is still filled with incompetents who cannot get things done, but can crank out bad news at the top of every hour. This is why the tea industry is down, the rupee is precariously devalued, the rubber prices are down, and the only issues being aired on TV concern so-called international courts, hybrid mechanisms and corruption, so called, by the previous dispensation.

Ranil Wickremesinghe is a vapid know-nothing, who hasn’t the foggiest idea of the words in our national anthem, nor about the elementary workings of an economy.

It is a safe bet that he has not read anything important in his life. It may be correct that this is true for most of our leaders including the last one, Mahinda Rajapaksa.

But if the latter was not very well read, he had enough of street smarts, common touch and useful nouse to compensate, whereas Wickremesinghe is a typical exemplar of Alexander Pope’s warning to nincompoops — ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing, drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.’

A brief perusal of the policy positions taken by Wickremesinghe is  enough to make it absolutely clear that he has no idea what an absolute fool he must look these days.
He has the audacity to insult the Licchavis by saying that the current administration is modeled on the Licchavis system of consensus and unity, while completely stomping on the Opposition, which in the General Elections just behind us, trailed by a mere 50,000 votes, which translates to a ten seat difference due to the quirks of our system.

He calls the deliberately stomped on and curtailed opposition a bunch of pimps in Parliament, forgetting that as far as pimping and procuring goes, his record is unmatched. He pimped and pimps for the racist Tamil diaspora so-called, and pimps relentlessly for the American government of which he has made this country a cheap, supine satrapy.

But having polarized the country as never before by stomping on the Sinhala majority by shutting out their voice in Parliament in many ways, and having used the totally politically degenerate Sirisena to emasculate the SLFP, he talks about Licchavi unity.

But wait, he thinks that Licchavi unity is obtainable and desirable, by shutting out the voices of the Opposition, and by buying over the media through a capitalist pro UNP ownership cabal, now in his pocket.

His nephew’s publications are a disgrace — one of their newspapers recently referred to Wimal Weerawansa’s intervention in Parliament on the Geneva issue, as ‘an unnecessary problem’ in a news headline.

Maithripala Sirisena says, addressing a group of journalists at the BMICH last week, that the press was of one voice, their voice, on the recent Geneva developments, except one English newspaper. He proceeds to castigate this newspaper, issuing veiled threats disguised as bromides about this newspaper’s attempts to ‘disappear him politically.’

He can be safely told that his insecurity is as a result, entirely, of his despicable politics, the kind of politics that redefines the word ‘nadir’, because he has taken skulduggery to a new and sickening low, starting from being the worst type of a traitor to his own political party, and then excelling himself by smuggling in rejects through the National List.

That this pantomime goes on without there being outright rebellion and mutiny is a measure of Sri Lankans’ special brand of equanimity; there is no need to politically disappear a substandard specimen of human detritus such as Sirisena. Given enough rope, he will hang himself soon enough.

A special word of mention goes in these times, when amorality passes off for the norm and the last vestige of decency in politics is no more, to Colombo’s so called voices of liberal dissent! There are no Friday Forums any more to talk about political rejects being smuggled in through the National List. The country’s liberal conscience is in bed with forces of unreason, with their Pinochet-like suppression of Opposition voices, and the handover of the country’s judiciary to foreign prosecutors and other pretenders.

Support for the  last item of cowardice in that list can be expected from a brand of spineless political eunuchs, but at least when it comes to a travesty of democracy, and good governance, through the taking of a son on a joy ride with the UN delegation, at taxpayer expense, or through the hijacking of a National List, one would expect the Tissa Jayatillekes of this world to attempt, at the very least, a squeak through the Friday Forum, but no, there isn’t even the usual nauseating staccato passing of wind.

For this, we give this (mentally) naturalized American in exile Jayatilleke (not forgetting his equally risible Forum caboodle) a Cranberry, as that’s what the Yanks bestow upon those who have been total disasters in their reckoning. Rarely in any human endeavour has there been a more hypocritical, servile and craven bunch as Colombo’s America-aping ‘liberals’ for whom the worst dictator is lily white or roseate, as long as the Americans tell them, that is so!