Welcome to Lanka who has lost her good reason,
Where people must fight in and out of their season.
Each one for themselves and not one for the other,
Now whom can you turn to and call your own brother?
Each hour brings a new dread, for we cannot tell,
What deeds will come under the sorcerer’s spell.
The days of the week do go by in a flash,
And Friday once more brings in some new trash.
Silly Willie Sena now runs through the town,
Wielding pen and paper, robed in his nightgown.
“Are the people still awake? It’s now ten o’clock.
Off to bed I have to go… then I’ll spring them all a shock!”
It was on a Friday night when lights were dimming low,
And only just a very few were ready for the show.
Appointments and removals came as quick as quick could be.
While entrants through the back door, clapped their hands in glee.
Then once again on Friday night, the news spread far and wide,
The Parliament has been dissolved, what next would now betide?
As people checked their clocks that night, they knew without a doubt
That now the rules found in the book would he for certain flout.
A third and famous Friday came, one which we can’t forget.
A day like that is still not found and in our history set.
Amidst the shouting and chaos the Speaker took the vote,
Alas! He went through all of that – but it was cancelled by a note.
So it’s Friday Night ‘Specials’ that we do all expect.
It’s become like a habit – one that cannot be checked.
We can’t take the usual, for it’s no longer there.
Like everything else it just wafts on thin air.
A Good Night to you who may stay up to hear
What this Friday has brought to us all far and near.
Surprises, like rabbits, come out of a hat
While conjurors will twist things this way and that.
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Also read The Parliament Fair by same author.
Photo courtesy AP, via South China Morning Post
Founding Editor’s Note: Groundviews was launched in 2006 as a platform to capture and amplify resistance to the violent capture and retention of political power. Much of the platform is dedicated to and features serious writing. However, during the war and for around two years after, the most read, shared and engaged with content on this site came from Banyan News Reporters. Long before the wonderful NewsCurry, this trenchant satire served as an incisive critique of the Rajapaksa regime’s many excesses, nepotism, corruption & violence. As Dr Asanga Welikala reminds us, the “battle for the soul of a nation” must take forms other than just academic, legal debates. This poem joins a growing volume of content on Facebook and Twitter that targets President Maithripala Sirisena, Mahinda Rajapaksa and the SLPP for the unprecedented chaos they, in concert, unleashed on Sri Lanka.