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| Sunday, 19 February 2006 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Politics crablike Olwyn Weerasekera's Beach Wadiya is by many accounts the world's only
proper and real seafood restaurant. Princess Anne was there, and
But, when Olwyn Weerasekera's beautiful people's favourite watering hole was tsunami-hit, his fans and lobster fans worldwide went into hiding and never came out of their crab holes. Ex-President Chandrika Kumaratunga, as if in a show of determination to indicate that she has time on her hands, came on time for dinner recently at the Wadiya. Casual mention was made by Olwyn that there was no response from her (ex) officials to his tsunami compensation request. She said something to the effect that she will look into it, but that was the end of that. It appears now that she was not the only local politician who forgot the taste of Olwyns' lobster no sooner than they had left the Wadiyaa beach. They care only about having the best lobster in the world, surrounded by some of the worlds' most 'beautiful' people. But, they simply don't care how the lobster gets there. So therefore it happens that Olwyn is a seafood hero only at dining time. At other times his considerable politician fans who number enough to fill up a whole cabinet of Ministers, don't care that he was tsunami battered and is fairly struggling even though the Financial Times of London and Newsweek magazine have called the Waddiya one of the ten best pubs of the world. No Deshabandu or Deshamaniya for Olwyn. But, what is curious is that though they all come to be seen eating at one of the ten best watering holes in the world, they would leave Olwyn fighting his own battles. The place also has to compete with the stink coming from a dry fish Wadiya on the surrounding beach but there is no luck on that score either. Though several appeals were made Olwyn has not been able to get the dry fish mudadali out of the range of the glitterati's favourite port of call. The Veep factor
But, that is the de jure position the de facto position perhaps being slightly different. In the political conduits that flow into Temple Trees, sharp political analysts with their ears to the ground are getting used to calling Dallas Allahaperuma, Member of Parliament, Vice President. Mrs. Chandrika Kumaratunga, will probably be the first to tell you that the President will not hear of Mr. Allahaperuma being sidelined for whatever reasons. Calling him Vice President is certainly not her idea and its not Mr. Allahaperuma's idea certainly. Its with some factual basis that even those who refer to him flippantly as Vice President say so, because Mr. Allahaperuma is the closest policy and planning person that the President meets more or less on a daily basis. But, to those who call him the Veep, Mr. Allahaperuma always replies by saying "Ogollo Mawa Amaruve Danna Haddanawa." Lawyer party
But its the UNP list which was rejected this week, due to the inclusion of the name of a candidate who had not yet reached puberty, sorry, reached the age of qualification to be included in the list of candidates. But is this the end game in a domino of legal failures for the UNP? Its nasty going into the details of all of the unglamorous legal debacles faced by the grand old party of lawyers for lawyers. But from S. B. Dissanayake's fiasco which he engineered himself to a great extent, to several others that were to follow - - its clear that the UNP's brushes with the law, so to say, have been less that pleasant. To reinvent the phrase, can one say that the UNP which used to take the law into its own hands is now again taking the law into its own hands again? Only in a different sense this time, by retaining their own lawyers with hugely different results? The duel remembered
That's a bit unfortunate for the television prize fighting culture because a lot was said at this debate that should make television history cricket history and political history. That is if you measure history by the Andy Warhol yardstick of everybody enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame. Arjuna Ranatunge at one point said "Tilanga you cannot ever fall to my level." It was meant to be a condescending remark, but ooops.
This was good television, but most viewers retreated thinking the same thought: both these gods have clay feet, so why don't they get together and do what they can do for the game, without carrying on this vendetta which would make a filmmaker on the Italian mafia want to salivate? But then, if that were the case, what would television resort to in this country which does not care much for boxing as it does for cricket? |
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photographers who tried to do the paparazzi on her remember now that Olwyn
shielded her from all shutterbugs and snoopers. If the sands by the Beach
Wadiya premises could talk, there will probably be a celebrity vouching for
the quality of Beach Wadiya lobster per every grain of surrounding silicon.
Constitutionally speaking, this country has no Vice President even though
there was some kind of daydream once upon a time to promulgate a South
African type of document with too decorative Vice Presidents. But, that
never happened so we have a President and no wiseacre to call himself Vice
President at least for the record. 
The UNP is party of lawyers. Some 70 per cent of the UNP members were
lawyers in the long J. R. Jayewardene parliament, and lawyers have never
abandoned this party particularly if we are to talk of Colombo lawyers and
silks. 
They do battle and then fade away into the sunset to appear again when
the strobe lights are turned onto the maximum. We are speaking of Arjuna
Ranatunge and Tilanga Sumathipala, Sri Lanka's most prized political
prizefighters. (They should both have hairy agents, who hire them for the
big bouts, but that's only a tangential suggestion.) It's a pity that after
the last Thilanga-Arjuna television face-off, both contenders disappeared as
if they wanted a drinks break before coming back. They took the sports
analysts and the talking heads with them. 
Thilanga came out as if knew his management, and Ranatunge as if he was
not bothered because all he cared was about being accountable to the last
cent. 
