His Master’s Voice
Posted on November 6th, 2012

G. de Silva

Dear Editor,

I came across a rather interesting article by one Bharatha Mallawarachi titled ‘Sri Lanka starts to impeach chief justice’ which appeared in the on-line version of Seattle Times recently – http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019573685_apassrilankachiefjusticeimpeachment.html.

It was interesting not because of its content because to know that some event happening in far away Sri Lanka was considered newsworthy in Seattle – I guess there are many people who are sleepless in Seattle! On the other hand perhaps, the Americans generally like reading about impeachment processes? After all, the US taxpayers spent quite few million dollars to impeach their own President not because he violated the rules governing his office but because he supposed to have had oral sex with a member of the staff. So reading about impeachments must give them a bit of buzz?

Now it is interesting that in this case, at least it is alleged that the Chief Justice actually overstepped her authority and it is not about some event about her personal life. So perhaps the impeachment has somewhat more valid basis compared to that against the President in the US.

I am no legal expert or a political observer so I cannot comment on the general thrust of this article written by Mr. Mallawarachi. I am sure we will read various articles analyzing the facts surrounding this case in time to come.

However, anyone who is capable of reading between the lines, so to say, will quickly pick up the punch line which happens to be the last sentence in this article – where one of Mr. Mallawarachi’s sources say “As a result, he said, there could be an uprising by the people to protect the judiciary, and international pressure could be brought upon the government to respect the judiciary’s independence.

Wow! I told myself. I realized that I have heard the exact same lines being mentioned in many other countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria and many more who went through those beautiful color revolutions to effect so-called ‘regime changes’ – or change of administrations which happened to cross the paths with the Western administrations.

I read it again….and no I am not mistaken – ‘uprising by the people‘ and ‘international pressure‘ are the keywords. Is this just coincidence or clear symptoms of a plan underway to bring down this Government? Is this person paraphrasing ‘his master’s voice’?

Irrespective of the fact that one may be against this Government because of one’s political affiliations or whether our seemingly benevolent Western powers do not like the face of the President of Sri Lanka, the fact remains that this Government was elected by popular vote under democratic principles. So the way to force the Government to ‘respect the judiciary’, one would thought, would be to vote them out at the next election – this country holds many elections at different levels and one does not have to wait years to send a clear message to the Government.

‘Uprising by the people’ (read violence) and ‘International Pressure’ (read bullying or subjugation to Western powers) should not have a place in a democracy. Sri Lanka has already paid enough in terms of sacrifices made by our youth (both Sinhala and Tamil) and had been bullied by the colonial masters for more than 500 years and which is continuing to this day.

Fortunately, people in Sri Lanka are rather politically savvy men and women. They did not buy into JVP or LTTE ideologies and hope that they will not buy into ‘color revolutions’, ‘peoples’ uprisings’, ‘Arab Springs’ and the like.

Don’t like Rajapaksa? By all means, say it clear and loud – vote UPFA out at the next election but do not resort to any more uprisings and inviting the colonial masters to do their dirty work in reducing this country to pile of rubble. Those who preach the value of democracy and human rights should not advocate uprisings and should not be cowards to call upon the white masters to fix our own problems.

Or else, some countries might make public statements such as ‘we did not have to deploy a single soldier to effect a regime change in Sri Lanka’.

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