Many years ago, when President Ranasinghe Premadasa was in office, my regular column in the Sunday Island was headlined "Waving a flag of convenience". Cartoonist par excellence Wijesoma, who was doing masterly work, drew an illustration of a beggar waving the National Flag. It was the independence week issue of the paper, and I was commenting on the commercial use at the time of Freedom Day and the National Flag, and how one or two manufacturers of polythene were making a killing out of a virtual government order that everyone fly the National Flag on Freedom Day.

My column began with the celebrated title of the pamphlet "What independence and for whom" by Dr. Colvin R de Silva, who from either the LSSP or BLPI, questioned the validity of the independence granted to us by the British, and received by the top-hat and tail-coat clad first Prime Minister and so-called Father of the Nation, D. S. Senanayake. My comments that it was difficult to genuinely wave the National Flag on Freedom Day at a time, when there was so much lack of freedom in the country, led to my being booted out, within the week, from the consultancy work I was doing at the National Water Supply and Drainage Board. It was one more notch on by belt of dismissals, and proof indeed that there was little freedom to be celebrated at the time.

Colvin’s more than rhetorical question, "What Independence and for whom" does have a ring of truth even today. But, the flags put up by the people all over the country as I write this on the 62nd anniversary of Independence, were certainly not done at the behest of any government or to deviously fatten the purse of any manufacturers of polythene or other texture for today’s flags of celebration. These are flags that are flying and being waved in a genuine mood of freedom.

It is the spirit of celebration that has come on the first anniversary of Freedom after the defeat of the terror of the so-called invincible LTTE; and the triumph of democracy throughout the country with so many votes polled, freely and fairly, by both the winner and his main rival in the recent presidential poll.

 Yet, there is more to this celebration than these two main causes. It is the new found Freedom from Fear. If people waved a polythene flag of convenience in years gone by, today they fly a flag of satisfaction at having overcome the raving and ranting of the "Katakatha Brigade" that has been moving on the overdrive for the past one month and more, reaching the nadir of the politics of desperation, while seeking to gain the zenith of power.

As the country celebrates the 62nd anniversary of Independence, albeit with the UNP that lays claim to the winning of freedom, boycotting the celebrations, in an all too familiar display of a sour grapes attitude in politics, there is one matter that calls for sadness in the country too. It is the continuing failure of those who lost in the recent poll to accept defeat, with both dignity and grace.

There is a new political exorcism that seems to be needed to drive out the demons of disbelief that are haunting those who lost out in the count, or could not even come close to a photo-finish in the so-called tight race they were boasting about without knowing the reality all around them.

One sees a plethora of political humbug that is going on in the inability of those who ran the wrong candidate and campaign to learn from their own political blunders. There is Sarath Fonseka living in a world of make believe bordering on paranoia about his safety and the threats of plots against him. There are to those in the UNP who are taking their case of alleged polls fraud to Buddhist prelates, in a possible move to get a ruling from an Adhikarana Sangha Nayake, which of course is the wrong court to petition in this instance.

There are the Rathu Sahodarayas who are running helter-skelter to hide the extent of their defeat, and the overriding reality that they may never be able to raise their heads in electoral politics again, or at least not for a very long time. They took upon themselves the role of king maker for Sarath Fonseka, and now when the candidate has fallen of his swan that is also stuck in a muddy swan lake, they are refusing to see the red alert of impending rout ahead, and day-dreaming of a new Grand Alliance.

The JVP that was shouting itself hoarse for the past several months about a grand alliance with it as the nucleus, thought they made it when they backed Phony Fonnie as the pivot for their alliance of convenience in desperation. With that pivot thrown out, and remaining a political liability, as well as a sign of danger to the ordinary citizen, the JVP seems the group that has lost out the most in the unprincipled and ignoble gamble of convenience that was made for the presidential poll.

Unlike those who waved a national flag of convenience in the Premadasa years, helping to enrich the polythene trade, the losers in the present round of politics are waving their own flag of convenience - a flag that is embossed with rumour, falsehood and lost dreams of those rejected by the people.

It needs people of better stature and quality to win over the hearts and minds of the people, who have seen through the overblown and false propaganda that the country was being forced to put up with in the recent election. Not all of the horses of the green and red flag wavers of convenience, and the mischievous and treacherous white flags of the man riding the swan could sway the people to cast their lot with them.

So now they go about waving the flag of abounding desperation, suffering the pangs of a rout they never imagined would hit them.

The people are now truly free to wave the National Flag, having defeated the LTTE, strengthened democracy and, also having overcome the fear that Fonseka and those promoting him were driving into their minds. They fly a flag of freedom from the imminent danger of despotic military rule, supported by forces ranged against democracy in both the red and green camps – now talking of a grand alliance of despair.