Max Weber’s phrase "Politics as a Vocation" perfectly describes Mahinda Rajapaksa. In the practice of that vocation, the art and craft of politics, Mahinda is a maestro. He combines instinct with experience, maturity and a steely political determination and will. None of that would be enough if not for the factor of magnetic personal chemistry bordering on magic: sheer likeability; pure public appeal; personality.
His political opponents were just not in the same weight class as this Muhammad Ali of politics. Taken together with the various talents of his brothers and sons, he has an ‘A Team’ as the core group. Add to that the experience and abilities of the Joint Opposition leadership and the 50 plus Members of Parliament who displayed enough moral fiber not to be coopted into the Yahapalana government after August 2015. Mahinda has a top-notch political army and it is on the advance. Feb 10th was Yahapalana’s Stalingrad defeat.
This society is divided between those who prefer Ranil to Mahinda and those who think the opposite. It is similarly divided between those who find Brigadier Fernando’s gesture far more objectionable than Tiger demonstrators shouting "Our Leader-Prabhakaran!" outside our High Commission on our 70th Independence Day. It is now blindingly obvious which camp the majority of his country’s citizens—the sovereign People—belong to, and in what ratios.
"In Ceylon, the road to political power lies through the paddy fields" wrote my father, Mervyn de Silva. Ranil let the paddy fields start to die for want of fertilizer while Mahinda used the old Maoist strategy of "encircling the cities from the countryside". It is the beginning of the end. But what kind of end will it be and when and how will it arrive? Will it be a crash and burn, preceded by labor, student and peasant unrest?
If the Government wishes to survive without a major upheaval even until the end of next year, it will have to shift to a new model. That is the model which Michael Kalecki and KN Raj defined as that of an "intermediate regime". This would entail a total rupture from the neoliberal policy of Ranil and Mangala. As Giuseppe de Lampedusa said in his famous novel The Leopard, things have to change if they are to remain the same. If I am to modify it slightly, if the Government is to remain, it can no longer remain the same. It has to change and be seen to do so drastically and immediately.