By: Roger Srivasan
Standfirst: When discarded politicians resort to prophecy and theatrics, it is not strength but desperation that speaks.
A handful of disingenuous and long-discarded venal politicians now find themselves stranded at a cul-de-sac of relevance. After decades spent practising the traditional political art of tergiversation, they linger uneasily as accountability closes in — with prison doors no longer a distant abstraction but an increasingly proximate reality. Udaya Gammanpila, Wimal Weerawansa, and their fellow travellers are emblematic of this fading political order.
Stripped of credibility, substance, and public trust, they have turned to noise. Policy has given way to theatrics; persuasion has been replaced by prophecy. It is the predictable reflex of those who sense that the political ground beneath them has irrevocably shifted.
Gammanpila, in particular — an imbecilic stand-up comedian masquerading as a statesman — has recently embraced political fortune-telling. With performative certainty, he predicts that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake will “languish behind bars” once Namal Rajapaksa supposedly ascends to the presidency in 2029, with prison terms conveniently mapped out from 2030 to 2035.
Such utterances are not analysis; they are cheap political grandstanding. They belong less to the domain of governance than to the theatre of farce. Far from unsettling the nation, they merely expose the intellectual vacuity and mounting desperation of their author and his cohort.
Anura Kumara Dissanayake is a man of indomitable spirit. His political life has been forged in resistance, not privilege; tested by adversity, not insulated by impunity. Theatrical threats and nostalgic fantasies of dynastic restoration neither intimidate him nor deceive an electorate that has grown weary of deception and decay.
As the net of accountability tightens, the decibel level predictably rises. At the cul-de-sac of politics, noise becomes the last refuge of the politically spent. But noise cannot halt justice, nor can grandstanding reverse the verdict of a people determined to move forward.
History, unlike political prophecy, is not amused.
