POLITICAL SKETCHBOOK

POLITICAL SKETCHBOOK by Rajpal Abeynayaka

This article is of an interim nature…
Those were days when Colombo was entranced by the talk about the talks about talks.

Now Colombo is entranced by the interim over the interim. Nimal Siripala Silva and Karunasena Kodituwakku are trading insults. Tyronne Fernando and Champika Ranawaka are trading insults. Lakshman Kadrigamar and G. L. Peiris are trading backhanded insults that might even sound like compliments.

This interim is beginning to look more like an intermission -- they might consider selling popcorn and Icy Chocks for this show while the interest is still on. The Prime Minister says he has put paid to the notion that there is something different between the interim proposals sent to the LTTE and the one sent to the President.

It must be the interim of our discontent. Nimal Siripala Silva accused Karunasena Kodituwakku of lying about this "even though you are a Professor.'' The issue is not whether there are two versions of the interim proposals anymore - - it's whether Professors should be truthful or not.

Talks about talks finally lead to talks -- - so going by the government's relying on history repeating itself, the interim about the interim will finally lead to interim rule. Or something like that at least. If history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce, which one is this - - the tragedy or the farce? Karl Marx said that, didn't he? Oh well, Karunasena Kodituwakku might say that Marx wasn't right about much.

The Prime Minister's contention is that history is not being allowed to repeat itself properly. ''Your letters of exchange with the LTTE were kept confidential'' he tells the President, '' which is why I expected this to be confidential too.''

Rauff Hakeem, looking like a deer caught in the headlights, knows more about history than any of these people. He creates history, while the others only go about repeating it.

At least in this interim about the interim, there is no room for questions such as "interim towards what?'' This is an interim towards an interim. So there.

But it cannot be a joyless period, which is why there are helicopter rides, intrigue about multiple versions. It is a movie Lester James Peiris wouldn't have quite taken to -- but maybe Stephen Spielberg would have liked.

When the real interim administration comes along -- if it does -- it might be such an anti climax that all the people involved might feel a little bit let down. It will be like the Prime Minister saying '' it should have been confidential'' when even the cook woman was talking about the interim administration and not about the next episode of the Yasodha Wimaladharma tele-drama.

But then who knows? They might still be talking about the interim for the next ten years. The President's much talked about TIME magazine interim was after all first talked about more than five years back, and still, five years later we are on the interim. It looks like an interim that lasts forever, like eternal damnation for a day, a perpetual oxymoron -- an evergreen interim.

I suspect they might still be talking about the interim when hell freezes over, or Nimal Siripala stops talking about two separate versions, whichever comes first. Woody Allen said that life is what happens when you are making other plans. An interim is what happens when you are planning for the interim.

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