Thanks to Peter, the JVP will not peter out
Peter Harrold has come to the rescue of the JVP. Providing oxygen for the JVP is not exactly the World Bank country director's line of work, but being white and having handsomely put his foot in it, Harold has arrived with the recipe in hand for the JVP's political survival. All of which is certainly not to say the Country-Director is right about the LTTE.

So now Peter Harrold joins the pantheon of foreigners who went within kissing distance of Prabhakaran and lived to rue the day, and that list includes potentates such as Chris Patten the former British governor of Hong Kong and of course Yasushi Akashi.

But Harold arrives with his foot in his mouth at an interesting conjuncture in local politics when there is much March madness. This is not to talk of Tara de Mel's ritualistic banning of bands from school big matches, but of her boss's inclination to survive in power with a last minute revival of the plan to convene a constituent assembly, accompanying it with a countrywide Referendum.

In these days when it's difficult to write ten words without throwing in the word tsunami, it's clear that the politics of the tsunami have been firmly abandoned. When the tsunami clambered aboard on December 26 and claimed for itself indelible mention in Sri Lanka's contemporary political script, the President granted an interview to BBC. She said "there aren't many people in countries such as ours who can handle a situation like this." Or, at least she said something to that effect, adding that this was the reason she rushed back from London.

Though it was typical Kumaratunga penchant for hyperbole, now it appears that she is beginning to believe in her own exaggerations. She believes in certain managerial skills she does not possess.

But she wields a powerful tool - - the Executive Presidency with which she can steamroller her opposition, and when she does that, she can indulge in whatever belief she entertains. It's been to her advantage no doubt that the opposition and her own junior coalition partner lack managerial skills also. There is no Takshin Sinawatra in Sri Lanka (alas this column has had to say it many times before..) and nobody in the Asian model of Lee Kwan Yew or Mahathir Mohammed whose chief virtue was that they were men who could get the job done. Mahathir in Malaysia for instance, was able to put the country's ethnic issues almost permanently on the back burner by revving up the economic engine. He was fond of saying that when people become prosperous they have no use for rabble rousing. Conversely, when a country is full of rabble rousers, there is no time for progress.

For every bad manager that we Sri Lankans have had in government, we also seem to be coming up with ten or fifteen rabble rousers. In their ranks can be counted retiring Buddhist monks, arch mob orators and when she sees it fit, the President.

Whether she can seal the deal this time around, is the only thing that remains to be seen. The SLFP convention which was out of bounds for the press would have decided already the outcome at least to some extent, so there is not much point speculating about the turn of events in the immediate future. But, suffice to say that the lumpen proletariat is ready for good political theatre.

The JVP has been handed a godsend by the name of Peter Harrold, the President is poised to re-claim her leadership role, Mahinda Rajapakse is angry and Ranil Wickremesinghe is as usual helpless. The ingredients are here for much March madness.

The JVP which promised the working class a piece of the pie has immersed itself so much in the system that it is now punch drunk. Its image as the 'outsider' is compromised, and it has graduated to insider with junior status, still bucking the system desperately but with a grunt and not a roar -- like some heavily exhausted canine. Managing smarts not being the JVP's strong suit, the party relied heavily on rhetoric. But, in incumbency rhetoric did not seem as useful as it was earlier, when the party was on the outside. Mob orators such as Weerawansa were almost getting tongue tied. Then along came Peter Harrold and handed the JVP a cherry.

Peter Harrold alone is not going to provide the JVP its lifeline though, and it seems abundantly clear by now that the President will string the party along in any one of her schemes. Holding onto a sari pota must be so stifling, but still its better than being on the floor.

Tail-piece: Tara De Mel's match fixing became the joke of the week. People do not like mourning to be shoved down their throats it seemed. What would have been a reasonably subdued affair because of the tsunami, turned out to be quite a raucous high-spirited rear guard effort at the Royal Thomian, just because most everybody wanted to do one thing: tell Tara de Mel to go to hell.

However, people were not being insensitive to the tsunami victims, because the collection at the match will rival most relief funds. But they showed that life had to go on - - and the one way they did not want it to go on, was according to Tara's sermon on the Mount. If she really wanted her way at the Big Match, she should have advertised: "Convent nuns only.'' And she could have gone too.

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