The Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) made a decision. The party decided that those who hold various
positions in the government will resign forthwith. The party further decided that it will remain
in Parliament as part of the ruling UPFA coalition. The party reserved the
right to decide on a course of action in the event a presidential election is
called, whether in such circumstances it would field its own candidate or
support a ‘common opposition candidate’.
The JHU made this move without a presidential election being
called. It did so before the Opposition
came up with a ‘common candidate’. As
such it is a preemptive move as much as it is anything else. How did they arrive at this juncture? Well, IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE they would
divulge stuff. Here’s what a
pre-announcement conversation might have been like.
‘We cannot support Mahinda this time,’ Ven Athureliye
Rathana thundered.
‘Yes, you’ve said that many times, ape haamuduruwane,’ Udaya Gammanpila observed. He added, ‘In fact you have with your caustic
statements which have not been sanctioned by the party, trapped us into a
process we can’t turn back from!’
‘You tell me, Udaya, on what grounds we can support a
Government and a President that has failed to deliver on promises made on two
occasions. This time also they have
promised. We would look fools if we
believed them. So even if I was silent
this is what we would have to do,’ Ven
Rathana Thero defended himself.
‘What’s happened has happened. We have to look ahead,’ Ven Omalpe Sobitha
Thero wanted to infuse some sobriety to proceedings.
‘Ok. Let’s
recap. There is talk of a presidential
election but it has not been announced.
The Opposition seems confused and unable to come up with a name that is
acceptable to all stakeholders. There’s
no guarantee that the candidate they pick would be someone we can support. If it is Ranil, then we can either boycott or
field our own candidate. If it is Karu,
we could consider supporting him. If it
is…’ Champika Ranawaka wasn’t allowed to finish the sentence.
‘There’s no one else worth considering,’ Nishantha Sri Warnasinghe said.
‘Correct,’ Champika continued. ‘There are too many factors that are out of
our control in this equation, I feel.’
‘Exactly! That’s why
we should not bother about those other factors,’ Ven Rathana Thero showed agitation and
excitement quite at odds with the content of his bana deshana.
‘That’s easy to say. We have to think about our political
future,’ Udaya said.
‘Your political future?’
Nishantha asked with a sly grin.
‘No, no, no. The
party’s political future. The future of
the Sinhala Buddhist nationalist movement.
Our ideology, out party constitution,’
Udaya quickly pressed his ‘political correctness’ button.
‘The truth is we have no choice now. True, we really didn’t expect the SLFP to
jump up in joy about our proposals. We
know Basil, Dullas and others well enough to know what they want and how they
calculate. It was a proposal they just
could not accept at this point. The
truth is we didn’t have a choice when we submitted the proposals either and
that’s not because Rathana Haamuduruwo’s Pivithuru
Hetak operations. Anyway, now we
have to make something out of this,’ Champika
said.
And so they went into a long huddle. And decided to call a press conference to
announce the decision of the party.
Late that night, ‘the team’ met up again at the Sadaham
Sevana to assess the outcome.
Everyone seemed to be in a good mood.
‘We ended up positioning ourselves ahead of the Opposition,’
Champika observed.
‘Early days, though,’
as always Ven Omalpe Sobitha Thero’s was the voice of reason and
calmness.
‘I think Mahinda must be pleased,’ Udaya was going with “may all beings be
happy,” one would think. “After all, by
taking a stand we are showing up the Opposition. Their indecision and confusion seems even
bigger now. Therefore the gap between
Mahinda and Whoever has expanded.’
‘But that makes us and our decision non-factors if there’s a
presidential election, right?’ Nishantha
was curious.
‘Well, we don’t really hate Mahinda, do we? We just don’t like him. As long as the JHU acquires new value that
can translate into a better performance in a General Election, why should we
worry about Mahinda being re-elected?’
Udaya argued.
‘Hmmm….’ said Champika Ranawaka softly.
‘We have only started!’
Ven Rathana was not ready to do a sit-back-watch.
‘We started a long time ago and we have quite a long way to
go,’ Ven Omalpe Sobitha Thero said
quietly.
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