Ranil’s ‘I-factor’ has many faces

I remember reading a preface by Art Buchwald to a collection of his columns titled ‘I am not a crook’, where the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist thanked Richard Nixon for giving him more than enough material for his satirical column. In 2006, a few months before he died of kidney failure, he told Jeffrey Brown (in an interview) ‘I worshipped the very quicksand he (Nixon) walks on!’

There are some politicians whose antics and pronouncements make satirists salivate Like Nixon. Since Nixon, the USA had Dan Quayle, Vice President to George Bush (snr), whose penchant for getting things mixed up prompted a column titled ‘Quayle Droppings’. President George W. Bush was by far the most humour-inspiring President the USA has seen in remembered history. Barack Obama is not funny but when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace he was mercilessly lampooned.

All politicians slip and the alert satirist, especially the cartoonist, can be relied on to be unforgiving and brutal in response.

Yoonus and Wijesoma, and among the delicate dissectors with word and line, Dasa Hapuwalana have drawn and quartered many a careless politician over the years. The good thing is that they never run out of material.

There’s a lot of political quicksand around and one is guaranteed of a map-less politician blinded by arrogance straying to these areas. Some know to keep their mouths shut. Other just can’t help stuffing their feet in.

I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out if there was anyone who could be counted on to come up with gaffes at a rate more frequent than that which Ranil Wickremesinghe is capable of. Failed.

Ranil always comes up with hilarious stuff. We saw it during the 2004 General Election and in the 2005 Presidential Election as well.

He didn’t slip in his slipping during the provincial council elections either. Bad examples, errors, stumbling, jumbling: that’s Ranil Wickremesinghe on the campaign trail.

Listening to him over the years, I have come to the conclusion that the man is quite lucid when he speaks his mind; when he talks about what he knows in the language of the particular subject, Ranil Wickremesinghe is eminently a ‘listenable’ creature. I think it is when his entourage of aides suggests a wise crack that he fumbles. And when he fumbles, he really goes to the extreme.

Lately, however, I’ve come to think that Ranil Wickremesinghe is out of depth even in the subjects one would expect him to be conversant with.

About a week ago, he announced that in the event that Sarath Fonseka contests and wins the Presidential Election, he (Ranil) expects the newly-elected President to scrap the Executive Presidency and thereafter make him (Ranil) the Executive Prime Minister. Now why should anyone, having fought hard to become Executive President want to divest him/herself of power? And, even if he/she wanted to do so and managed to find a way to do this with JR’s Constitution, why should he/she hand over power to a man who didn’t have the guts to contest in the first place? And even if he/she wanted to switch the system around so that executive power would reside in the office of the Prime Minister, why should he/she not want to occupy the PM’s seat?

But our ‘brilliant man’ Ranil believes that in the fairytale world he lives in things will happen according to the script he has written. He is now wishing for a caretaker Prime Minister post for himself, should some common candidate he supports become President.

His latest trick is the most hilarious. He has a 25-year policy plan for the country. Great. It is good to plan. There’s a lot of rhetoric of course about cleaning the political system. To be expected from any politician of whatever persuasion. The key difference is this: setting up of an Executive Prime Minister. Fantastic.

After making a lot of noise about his desire/hope to become PM, the man talks about conferring executive powers to the post! He’s basically telling the Common Candidate (whoever that may be), ‘You contest and win, then roll over and die, so I can walk over your dead body and collect the executive prize!’

One must be utterly dumb not to see what Ranil Wickremesinghe is saying here. He doesn’t care about a ‘common candidate’. When he hears the words ‘common candidate’ he is thinking/hoping ‘sucker!’

There’s more. The man wants all elections held simultaneously; that is, the parliamentary, provincial council, local government and the brand new (executive) prime ministerial elections held together. Imagine the plight of the voter. He/she has to pick three candidates from the list for the Pradeshiya Sabha, three for the Provincial Council, three for the Parliament as well as one or more for the PM’s election. That’s at least 10 names to remember!

And imagine the plight of the Elections Commissioner and election officials; the numbers needed both to hold the election and to count the results. Perhaps Ranil is thinking of outsourcing elections to some foreign country/agency; that’s a possibility.

Consider all this and we can come to one of two conclusions: the man’s just lost it, or, it’s nothing more than calculated bull-shitting orchestrated to quietly position himself as the candidate of the opposition. I would say, all things considered, he’s got it all set. Any other CC (Common Candidate) pretenders must realize two things by now: a) Ranil Wickremesinghe wants to be the EXECUTIVE (President or Prime Minister) and b) since only a politically naive moron could agree to this, a CC can only expect lukewarm support from the man. It all points to Ranil Wickremesinghe entering the fray.

Let us remember one thing. The man has talked about a lot of things, but Ranil Wickremesinghe has not ruled himself out of contention as a candidate. Says a lot doesn’t it?

I only wish Sri Lanka had an Art Buchwald, but I believe Dasa Hapuwalana and others do an excellent job.

malinsene@gmail.com