Basil’s Labours

Thursday 8th July, 2021

So, Basil Rajapaksa has become a National List (NL) MP after months of dilly-dallying. His appointment has come as no surprise. What is surprising is that he took so long to enter Parliament. He is however different from other NL MPs in that he would have been able to get elected to Parliament easily if he had cared to renounce his US citizenship and contest last year’s general election. He is sure to receive very powerful Cabinet portfolios.

All those who made and broke the Mahinda Rajapaksa government (2010-2015) are now in the current administration, the only exception being President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was not involved in active politics during the previous Rajapaksa regime.

Basil’s NL appointment has been welcomed by the SLPP parliamentary group, but the dissidents in the government must be having bouts of jitters. These dissenters include those who opposed the government decision to do away with the constitutional provision that barred dual citizens from becoming MPs. Basil obviously did not take kindly to their abortive move. One of his ardent loyalists, SLPP General Secretary Sagara Kariyawasam, has been gunning for Ministers Udaya Gammanpila and Wimal Weerawansa as they are prominent among those who opposed the abolition of the aforesaid constitutional provision. Kariyawasam has already fired broadsides at the key members of the SLPP ginger group, and they could be considered warning shots. Whether the warring factions in the government will smoke the peace pipe or continue to be at loggerheads remains to be seen.

The impression that the Basil loyalists have given the public is that both President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa are not equal to the task of hoisting the country from the present economic mire. State Minister Nimal Lanza did not mince his words when he declared recently that Basil would not have allowed fuel prices to be increased if he had been in the country.

Basil’s problem is that his loyalists have marketed him as a crackerjack maven capable of performing miracles such as reducing fuel prices, fixing the country’s balance of payment problems and stabilising the tumbling rupee among other things. Now, he will have to perform these tasks if he is to live up to people’s expectations raised by his loyalists, or he will be lumped together with others who have failed to deliver.

Hercules had to perform only twelve punishing labours, but Basil has more to contend with, the most daunting being the task of putting the economy back on an even keel. (Even Hercules would have shrunk from this task, which looks Sisyphean.)

Basil does not have to worry about his enemies as they are weak and all at sea. Their bark is worse than their bite. But he will have to save himself from his friends. Some of them are behaving like the proverbial monkey, which harmed its royal master by using his sword to strike down a fly that sat on him while he was fast asleep.

Following the 2015 electoral disaster, the Rajapaksa family had a trump card in the person of Gotabaya, and that stood them in good stead at the last presidential election. It was thought in political circles that the Rajapaksas were planning something similar by benching Basil, so to speak. He, as the eminence grise, had power without responsibility. Had he remained the stage manager of the SLPP without undertaking a character portrayal, he would not have drawn much flak, and it would have been possible for the ruling family to repackage him and present him to the electorate later. Having exhausted all their trump cards, the Rajapaksas now have to beat the virus decisively, revitalise the economy and grant the promised economic relief to the public if they are to avoid an electoral setback.

A Sajith supporter, reeling from the SJB’s loss at the last presidential election, was so rejoiced to see the incumbent government making so many blunders that he wrote this, on the back of his three-wheeler: Sajith peraduna eka hondai, neththam api thaama hithan inne Gota weddek kiyala––‘Good that Sajith lost, otherwise we would still have been thinking Gota to be a genius’. One of the biggest challenges before Basil is to deny his political enemies an opportunity to say something similar about his entry into Parliament and his performance.