“Good luck to us and God help us all”
Ranil Wickremesinghe may yet get his fondest wish, which is that the Presidency will fall on his lap like an overripe mango. Being almost unable to work for the post, or at least not having the creativity to campaign for it properly, Wickremesinghe has barely concealed the fact that his primary strategy was to see the government stew in its own juices -- to the extent that he will be granted the presidency on a protest vote.
Some strategy, but last week it didn't show any sign of working as Rajapakse seemed streets ahead in terms of campaign creativity and visibility.

Now, Wickremesinghe may yet have his fondest wish after President Kumaratunga cut the ground from under Rajapakse's feet with a letter that lambasted him and near roasted him to a frizzle. (See our lead story Page 1)

Can any campaign survive an internal tremor of this order of magnitude??

Common sense says no. The opposition should be able to capitalize on this comic state of affairs in the SLFP campaign -- and romp home.
But Ranil Wickremesinghe has this amazing ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of every opportunity. It's absolutely within his right to show that Mahinda's candidature has become farcical, with his own President casting the candidate as a clown. ("You hoped to inform me half and hour before you signed the pact with the JVP, by firing me a call at 9.55,'' she writes tongue firmly in cheek. ".. what you hoped to tell me I do not know, but whatever it was, if you hoped to inform me of this signing at the last moment, that's a joke.'')

She goes on taunting him, saying "you can only hope to have a piece of cake with Prabhakaran with the kind of policy decisions your are committing yourself to.''

There are two aspects to the letter. One is that every sentence of it is dripping with the unalloyed and embarrassing truth, but we'll come to that later. The other is that it can hand the election from this point onwards to Ranil Wickremesinghe on a platter. But then Ranil Wickremesinghe finds it difficult to reach out and take anything that's handed on a platter, his hands being perennially dipped in the butter of defeat. Perhaps there is a third aspect to it also. Mahinda Rajapakse may not get the nomination of his party after all at this rate. The die is cast now, and if Kumaratunga is serious on this - after writing a letter of such tectonic proportions - - the logical thing for her to do may be to follow up on her threat of further action, suspend Mahinda Rajapakse's membership from the party, or at least abort his candidacy. She has time to re-name the party's candidate before the official nomination date is announced.

Welcome then to the presidential race.
In the green corner is Wickremesinghe. His almost only strategy for the country - what's news? -- is to appease the LTTE. He wears this formula on his sleeve, and endorsed it recently by refusing to name the LTTE in a statement issued after Lakshman Kadirgamar's killing.
He lucked out once and won but could barely hold onto this freak victory for two years. There are things the UNP can do for the country, particularly in terms of economic recalibration of the nation's growth engine. Its UNP governments that are baby-sat by the capitalist owning classes, and therefore it follows almost undeniably and axiomatically that its the UNP which always has a better chance of ensuring economic growth per se, as opposed at least, to equitable distribution of wealth.

This is not to say the UNP must win. But its to say that whatever advantages that some people see if the UNP wins, do not even have a soap-foam chance of materializing because of Ranil Wickremesinghe. Furthermore, the man says immature things and says them babyishly. For example, last week he announced that coconut tree climbers will have it easy in a UNP government because they can be instructed from below with the use of mobile phones.

At the beginning of last week, his campaign machine's creativity had already appeared to have run out of steam. Visibility wise, Rajapakse was being seen as an emerging giant as opposed to Wickremesinghe's midget. It was fast becoming a repeat of 2004 -- Ranil and his campaign was so incompetent that people were beginning to take Mahinda's victory for granted. You could refer to television analysis last fortnight, which as in 2004, had speakers preceding their comments with "when Rajapakse wins.''

On Thursday, Mahinda indicated that he could do a good Andare himself, to Ranil's Mahadenamutta. Or, in terms of buffoonery, Mahinda showed he is a good Rohan Kanhai to Ranil's Sobers.

Why so? He handled his new found candidature like a monkey with a razor - and slashed himself in the face while trying to fashion an impossible alliance with the country's most polarizing elements. It's not the alliance per se with the JVP that was hideous, but its everything he agreed to with all comers -- just so he can win the election.
It has incensed his President and with good reason too. Some people say unkindly that she is as mad as a hatter -- but this one letter proves she is yet the only leader of significance with some brains in this country.

Her every sentence in the terse Sinhala letter to Mahinda is damned right, and unchallengeable. She raises two issues basically. Can Rajapakse sign a unilateral candidate's agreement with any party, and not refer back to his own?? The answer is clear to any third grader, though not to Rajapakse: he cannot.

The other issue is, would it be practical -- this polarizing agreement that seems to split the country down the middle. Can Rajapakse run a country -- and fashion even a rudimentary peace or a stable regime with the conditions imposed by the others - even if he gets elected? The answer is no he cannot, in practical terms. In the final analysis, it means we have two candidates to choose from, one a born loser and another an immature quick-fixing klutz, who may now do the quite impossible and lose to Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Good luck to us then, and god help us all.

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