CAN THE ANTI-MAHINDA CAMP THINK STRAIGHT? • by Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka - on06/12/2014“Finally Gramsci…. If we say – as Gramsci did—that the task of the Italian working class is to fulfil the tasks of national unification that the Italian people had posed themselves since the time of Machiavelli, and in some way, to complete the historical project of the Risorgimento, we have a double order of reference.”- Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s) A basic reason for the inability of the anti-Governmental forces, political and civil society , Oppositional and dissentient, to compete with the regime, still less supplant it, is the sheer inability to think straight. While it may be argued that the regime does not do so either, that chronic lapse is far more manifest in the interrelated realms of external and ethnic affairs, and much less so in the electoral heartland, the Sinhala majority areas. It must also be remembered that the government, especially one with a popular leadership, can by virtue of incumbency, afford lapses in thinking, while the Opposition, as an aspirant force, can ill afford such weakness. The inability to think straight translates itself immediately and automatically into an inability to aim straight, politically speaking. This means an inability to hit the political target dead centre. The absence of straight thinking on the part of the oppositional forces and dissenting elements also means that they fail to win the battle of ideas and arguments, thereby failing to persuade the mass of citizens, i.e. the electorate.
