Ranil holds two-day pooja in India worshipping Hindu Gods

His panic attacks are understandable because he has lost every card played. He has entered into alliances with anyone who is willing to go to bed with him. When he gets up in the morning he finds that his partner/co-signatory has left him, leaving him to pay the bill. His demonstrations – conducted invariably from the back seat of his car – are as impressive as Mangala Samaraweera hitching up his Barbara Sansoni sarong to dance the baila with “Kolu”.

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by H. L. D. Mahindapala in Melbourne to Sri Lanka Guardian

(June 12, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) Ranil Wickremesinghe’s intense concentration on religious activity in India has gained some notoriety in the Indian media. An Indian publication, Asian Age, reported: “On Saturday (7/6) and Sunday (8/6), Mr Wickremesinghe prayed at the Lord Krishna temple at Guruvayur before emplaning for Chennai. Though a Buddhist by birth, the Sinhala leader is a frequent worshipper at many Hindu temples in India.”

The Asian Age noted: “The UNP chief arrived at Kochi from Colombo on Thursday and had closed-door sessions for two days with well-known astrologer Parappanangadi Unnikrishna Panicker.”

It added: "It was for an Ashtamangalya Prasnam (an astrological pooja for knowing what is in store in the coming days) that Mr Wickremesinghe came here. He used to call on me quite regularly," Mr Panicker told this newspaper.

Some UNPers are disturbed by this report. They point out that he removed all the Buddha images from Sri Kotha, the UNP headquarters, and then goes all the way to India to worship Hindu gods. Of course, Hindu gods have filled the need for heavenly intervention in earthly affairs – a power absent in agnostic/atheistic Buddhism. Wickremesinghe is following this tradition of seeking sustenance from Hindu gods plainly because he has failed repeatedly to gain any substantial support from the Buddhist electorate. God only knows how many other gods he has approached to save him from political extinction.

Anyway, given his pro-Western and anti-national stance, it is not surprising to see him throw the Buddhist images out of UNP Headquarters. Furthermore, removing of Buddhist symbols from the UNP goes nicely-nicely with his overall policy of inviting the Catholic Portuguese to celebrate their 500th anniversary of invading Sri Lanka even after historical records have established the wanton and indiscriminate destruction of Buddhist temples and sacred sites by the Portuguese -- the cruelest of the three colonial masters. Considering also his anti-national activities at home and abroad it seems that he is bent on finishing the jobs that the Portuguese could not do during their occupation.

It is also not surprising that after facing the defeat at the polls for the umpteenth time he should rush to sit at the feet of Panicker for two days trying to figure out what is in store for him. What can he expect from the future when he does not know his past, or learn lessons from the past? Panicker has boasted that Wickremesinghe rings him regularly to find out what the configuration of the astrological position is for him to go down the track of his “juck-muck-toot-toot” politics. It cannot be denied that there is some validity in astrology, provided it is read scientifically. But to ring Panicker each time he runs aground is a sign of a desperate man clinging to straws.

His panic attacks are understandable because he has lost every card played. He has entered into alliances with anyone who is willing to go to bed with him. When he gets up in the morning he finds that his partner/co-signatory has left him, leaving him to pay the bill. His demonstrations – conducted invariably from the back seat of his car – are as impressive as Mangala Samaraweera hitching up his Barbara Sansoni sarong to dance the baila with “Kolu”.

In a desperate bid to dispel the image of being anti-Buddhist he wrote a kind of treatise (of course, ghost-written by a hired writer) and to counter the charges of being an agent of Prabhakaran he renounced both federalism and the ill-fated CFA. But the people are refusing to buy whatever he is selling. It is not so much his poor salesmanship that is undercutting him. It is his shady deals of selling the nation to the West, to Prabhakaran and now to Rauf Hakeem which are undermining his credibility. His habit of running from one capital to another bad mouthing Sri Lanka has not earned him any marks either.

By now the UNPers should realize that he has an image problem arising from his weak character. He is also seen as a sly salesman who cannot be trusted. As any local advertising agency would tell him, no one is willing buy a car from him even if he states that it was driven only by Chandrika Kumaratunga to buy her stock of favourite French wines once a week in gay Paris. Besides, how can the people trust him when his own backbenchers have no faith in him and desert him in droves? The biggest ever exodus from the UNP occurred under his failed leadership. He not only brought the nation to the brink of institutionalizing separatism with his disastrous CFA but also reduced his party to a useless lump of elephant dung.

Another weak characteristic of his is to open his mouth like a tap when he goes abroad, denigrating Sri Lanka. Of late, he has been lambasting the editors for not giving him enough publicity for his “juck-muck-toot-toot” politics. Of course, his barbs are not directed at his two stooges – Lasantha Wickrematunga and Ms. Sonali Samarasinghe of The Leader group. There is a symbiotic relationship between Wickremesinghe and Wickramatunga, one scratching the other’s back. In return for running the opposition (because Wickremesinghe has failed to do so) they get political appointments in peace delegations or in diplomatic missions abroad when Wickremesinghe crawls into power.

In running advertisements for themselves Wickrematunga and Ms. Samarasinghe crow that they are “Unbowed And Unafraid”, or “Nothing Escapes”. But how valid are these self-promoting ads? Take, for instance, the symbols in the masthead of The Morning Leader. All the national and traditional symbols of the nation have “escaped” the attention of these two stooges and they focus on a Buddhist monk waving his hand who is juxtaposed next to an armed squad pointing their rifles. This is not surprising coming from Lasantha, an avowed anti-Buddhist Christian fundamentalist.

However, if he is unbowed and balanced as he claims to be, shouldn’t he also run an image of Holy Mary being smuggled out of the Madhu Church by a Catholic priest who is handing it over to an armed group of child soldiers? Like his master, Wickremesinghe, Lasantha finds Buddhist images as hateful symbols. He also labours to make-believe that the sun shines out of Wickremesinghe’s toilet bowl every morning. The following paragraph culled from his latest editorial is an example of how he bends over backwards to whitewash his master’s failures: “Ranil Wickremesinghe as the Leader of the Opposition and the UNP took upon himself to canvass the EU membership to continue with the GSP+ subsidy. That should be the duty of any responsible politician. Instead of thanking Wickremesinghe for his efforts, he is being roundly abused and threatened by government members who accuse him of canvassing for the GSP+ to be withdrawn! This is petty politics of the village bazaar.”

This is a typical example of Lasantha’s vain attempts to transform a rat into a cat. This is also a glaring example of how the facts have “escaped” his attention. The facts as known to the public reveal that it was Wickremesinghe who first mooted the idea of canvassing the EU, giving the distinct impression, at the height of the eastern province election, that he has a bigger clout than the Mahinda Rajapakse government to fix GSP+ subsidy. After all, he is a regional head of International Democratic Union – the leadingpro-Christian club of the West. The editorial is right when it says that it is the duty of any responsible politician to come to the rescue of the nation. (It is, indeed, odd that the leader writer confines the argument of Wickremesinghe’s responsibility only to the issue of subsidy and not to more serious matters confronting the nation.)

That aside, Wickremesinghe’s mission was doomed from the word go. First, he is in the forefront of the NGO and the Tiger lobby to bash the government on human rights. Having bashed the government on human rights his chances of arguing a case to change EU policy were zilch. It is this kind of kinky thinking that makes him believe that he can have the cake and eat it also. Second, he thought it was good card to play at election time to save himself from defeat more than the garment industry. He was grandstanding to impress the electorate that he could do things if he gained power in the east and elsewhere which the government cannot. Third, it is doubtful whether he did the job with a sufficient degree of commitment to win the case. We have only his word for it. Fourth, his excuse that he failed because the EU insists on improving the human rights record is like the story of the man who went up the coconut tree to cut grass. Everyone knew that there was no grass to be cut at the top of EU. Wickremesinghe went up to satisfy his own needs and when he came down empty handed his excuse was that there was no grass! And Lasantha wants the nation to say “Alleluiah!” to Wickremesinghe for climbing the coconut tree to cut grass.

The EU mission will go down as another failure of Wickremesinghe: he couldn’t even convince his Western buddies to grant the subsidy. So what has he ever achieved for the nation, his party, or himself? No wonder the poor man has to ring Panicker every few seconds seeking divine intervention!

The choice is simple: either he must change his astrologer or his brand of anti-national politics for the obvious reason that no politician who abandons the grassroots can survive for long in politics.

- Sri Lanka Guardian