A brief relief for a regime set to suffer no small grief

A rainbow seems to have appeared over the skies of a regime under a cloud. It was a sullen sky in May, and - the truth be told —a once-clear cerulean space darkened by no few thunderheads for the under-pressure NPP government.

- Wijith DeChickera

A promise unmet here, and a potential unfulfilled there. A perspective inimical to the sacred image of the JVP-led regime pushed in the free press here, and a point of view expressed there by the powers that be themselves failing to find favour in an increasingly silent congregation of the faithful as well as sundry converts.

The cost of living and darkening economic prospects hovering over a growing number of islanders’ heads like a growling thunderstorm encroaching on city, town and village atmospheres alike these days...

Then there was a recent judgment delivered by a three-justice-bench recently, however, to clear the stifling air for a brief, bright moment in the breathing-space of the National People’s Power.

Which was when a trio of Colombo High Court judges found former sports minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage and ex-trade head honcho Nalin Fernando guilty of mis-appropriating Rs. 53 million from state coffers, and sentenced them to 20 and 25 years of rigorous imprisonment respectively.

There was rejoicing even in the ranks of Tuscany, which had appeared too ready of late to abandon their putative champions of social justice because of prevailing winds. So the barometer of the JVP-led NPP’s political capital rises again.

With that said — there is a plethora of ways (not limited to what follows below) to interpret the judgment and its ramifications for the ethos of governance under this still new dispensation.

This is arguably because academics and armchair commentators alike are notoriously subject to the shifting sands of perspectivism. That is to say: the points of view of the observer change not only due to principles espoused or positions taken but also because of personal or other reasons.