Jumbos out of bidding for Colombo's garbage

Light Refractions by Lucien Rajakarunanayake

The long green hold the UNP had over the Colombo Municipal Council has been lost due to a simple flaw in its list of nominees for city elections.

In the past weeks the media was full of the factional clashes within the UNP its mayoral candidate for Colombo. The pundits said the contest had narrowed down to Sirisena Cooray and Thilanga Sumathipala, which caused many an eyebrow of decent citizens of Colombo to be raised. Others throwing in their hats were small fry, without the financial backing of the Maharaja Organisation with Sirasa and MTV or the Sumathi Group with the "Lakbima" and a huge network of bookies.

Various Mayors

Not that it would have meant anything much for the citizens of Colombo. The UNP, under various Mayors has had its control over the city for over 25 years, and all we have seen is the mountains of garbage not only on the streets, but also the horrendous garbage of corruption within the municipal administration, which has been expanding to block all avenues of local government with each new UNP Mayor.

Well thanks to a flaw in its list of candidates handed in for nomination, with Sirisena Cooray at the top, the Colombo and its citizens have been saved from yet another term of a corrupt administration that stinks worse than the garbage it is unable to clear from the streets and junctions of the city.

Coming atop the already simmering crisis within the UNP over leadership, what bothers the die hard UNPers today is whether things have got so rotten in the green camp that they cannot even submit a proper list of candidates for election.

Al the joy and celebrations over the release of Sakala Banda from imprisonment at the Merchant's Ward were doused by this debacle over the CMC.

The talk at the Green Elephant was all about how the UNP has lost such a vast stock of garbage to profit from.

Rajitha Alihakka did a jerk of his neck and said the whole lot of lawyers of the UNP should have their legal teeth examined. "We are said to have the best and most expensive lawyers in the country, but we can't even draw up a proper petition to the Court of Appeal", he said.

"Damn right", said Navin Alipetiya from the hills. "The Court of Appeal threw out our petitions to have the elections postponed twice, because of bad drafting of the plea. How can we expect people to trust us with power if we don't even know how to move a court in our favour?" he asked. There were muffled sounds of agreement from the jumbo trunks around him, who had come to drown their sorrows over the loss of Colombo.

"Colombo gone and what a prize lost" said Azath Ali Baludin, who lost his chance of putting to death all the stray dogs of the city. This was the man who brought stray dogs to "demonstrate" at the first rally at Hyde Park against the imprisonment of Sakala Banda. All his dreams of endless smoke coming from the chimney of the Colombo Dog Pound's incinerator were lost.

"Just one wrong name in the list and so much is lost" said Ravi Horagajaya. "Thank heavens we still have hope getting at the gravy train in Kotte."

"What is Kotte, when the crown jewel is lost," said Malik Alihenduva, who still had control of the leader. "Think of all we could do with Colombo in our pockets. We could get the best sites for our meetings; break all municipal by-laws at will with no one to question us. And suddenly, with one minor flaw all that is gone."

Several municipal jumbos were beating their trunks in sorrow at their losses. "All those market tenders are now lost to us. Think of those contracts for roads and drains that never get built. This is how we got the buckshee for the party and ourselves. We will lose millions, and worse whoever that takes over will probe all that happened in the past."

"Just one loss"

"Don't worry this is just one loss, a big one no doubt, but we can recover from such shocks" said Milinda Alivanguva, who was promoting the Sirisena Cooray list with the support of buckshee from Maharaja and media spin from Sirasa and MTV.

"What happened is that we lost our concentration on the details in the wrangling over who would be the mayor. I think we deserve what we got," said Sajith Alipodda.

"But look what happened to the Bulath team at Gampaha. It was a bad blow for them too. Why don't we celebrate the blue debacle at Gampaha," said Milinda Alivanguva, trying to change the trend of discussion.

"That is because they were also divided. You can't have two leaders running affairs and expect success. Those who tried to control Gampaha will have to take all the blame, and I'm sure it will come very soon," said Sajith Alipodda.

Very soon they were debating whether Sirasa will have a SMS poll on the numbers who predict Vasudeva to be the next Mayor of Colombo or the leader of the JVP bellboys.

I heard a voice shout, "Damn the SMS poll, whoever that wins we will be the biggest losers"."
