“A leader is found! Yet cautiously to myself I ask, a leader to where? Despair overthrown often turns us in mad directions.” Katharine Kressmann Taylor (Address unknown)
In Brother Grimm’s Little Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty), the twelve wise women invited to the birthday feast gift the baby princess with “everything in the world that one can wish for.” A magical intervention of similar magnitude would be necessary to create the kind of leader who can use with moderation and efficacy and for greater good the enormous powers of Sri Lanka’s executive presidency.
Our titanic presidency is a bad fit for mortals. The crown slips down covering the eyes, blinding the wearer. The mantle entangles the arms hampering efficient movement. Near divine powers are thus wielded by a mortal deprived of ordinary sight and ordinary efficacy by the weight of those very powers. How can anything but disaster ensue?