Educating Ms. Sison – the school ma’am with a cane
Posted on July 13th, 2014
H. L. D. Mahindapala
The egg-shaped face of the American Ambassadress, Michele J. Sison, does not mean that she is an egg-head. A closer look will reveal that her elongated oval face resembles more of El Greco’s tendentious elasticity stretched to the farthest point of caricaturing the humbuggery of the Spanish courtiers. If, however, the looks are deceptive and hides innate qualities of a respectable egg-head then it is fair to ask : why is she consistently engaged in non-productive anti-Sri Lankan activities which she tries in vain to disguise as benevolent gifts from Uncle Sam? Apart from her facial lineaments she comes nearest to the Ugly American whose talent is for misreading, misrepresenting and misreporting the local situation and ending up with egg on her face.
Her latest escapade into educating Sri Lankans in citizenship was bound to end in a blow-back that would have worsened the US-Lanka relations. Fortunately, in the nick of time, the program has been shelved. But in deciding to even entertain such a juvenile program she has revealed her failure to grasp the fundamental dynamics that move the critical Sri Lankan political forces. How can ill-informed theoretical zombies in NGOs change the political landscape with a few classes in citizenship that will never reach the masses in the villages? By what yardstick are they a match to President Mahinda Rajapakse whose achievements in restoring peace for the benefit of all communities has raised his image to that of a hero in national folklore?
The very idea of educating Sri Lankans on how to be good citizens is like trying to teach American grandmothers how to suck eggs. Will not that money be put to better use if she spends it on teaching American students how not to use guns against their classmates? Her ill-informed actions indicate that it is she who must sit at the feet of Sri Lankans and learn a thing or two about how to conduct herself as a diplomat befitting the status of a Big Power.
In any case, her proposed program was totally useless because she has yet to learn that there are no citizens in Sri Lanka. There are only 20 million politicians who can teach Sison how to suck eggs without even breaking them.
This whole idea sounds like a typical marketing ploy dreamed up by her hired NGO henchmen to rake in dollars to fill their coffers. If she had to teach anything it was to the NGOs. She should run courses for her NGO lackeys like Paki” SaravanaMUTTu on how to protect his female staff from abuse by the senior staff of the Center for Policy Alternative (CPA).When Paki’s” senior staffer, Sanjeeva (foul-mouth) Hattotuwa, verbally rapes a Tamil lady shouldn’t Sison rush to defend her gender and, in addition, initiate classes for the senior staff in NGOs on how to manage their female staff with dignity and respect.
Besides, NGOs are not only now big business enterprises but also the biggest growth industry sustained by foreign funds. The recent UNHRC resolution rejected by US-EU combination focused on formulating a legally binding contract to enforce human rights in business and corporate work places. Resolution No. A/HRC/26/L.22/Rev.1 (Title – Elaboration of an international legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights) was all about protecting human rights in business enterprises. And violence against women, including verbal violence that degrades them, is one of the Guiding Principles that comes within the ambit of the Resolution.
When the issue of verbal violence against women in the CPA was raised Paki” took cover by saying that it is an internal matter”. Is it, really? When Sri Lanka refuses to allow Navi Pillay’s appointees to investigate Sri Lanka he refuses to accept that it is an internal matter which can be handled locally. He insists that the whole world should move in and investigate the last days of the war. But he protects his foul-mouthed stooge by letting him get away with insulting and humiliating a subordinate female worker on the excuse that it is an internal matter. Mark you, Paki” is the same person who accused ITN of misrepresenting him and demanded Rs. 10 million. But when a female staffer is abused in filth by foul-mouth Hattotuwa he merely pushes him sideways and keeps him in storage, hoping to bring him back when the issue dies down. So what has been Sison’s reaction when one of her gender is humiliated by a foul-mouthed, male chauvinist pig in Paki’s” outfit? Shouldn’t she begin by educating her lackeys to observe basic decencies in handling NGO staff?
In any case, selecting NGOs to educate Sri Lankans on citizenship is like handing the education of the military in war time to Jehan (Pacha) Perera. This was the brilliant idea of Chandrika Kumaratunga & Mangala Samaraweera duo. Put together both knew how to run down the nation but not to run the nation. CBK was the plastic dummy ready to grin from ear to ear wearing the Emperor’s clothing stitched by her Matara tailor. Jehan (Pacha) Perera’s joined this bandwagon to demoralize the soldiers by preaching to the soldiers that they can’t win the war and the way forward was to accept the P-TOMS (better known as PACHA-tons!). This gang failed to deliver peace despite their readiness to hand over the north and the east to Tamil Pol Pot of Jaffna for ten years without elections. (TIME).
The anti-national NGOs were doomed to fail not only because they were/are the unrepresentative fringe completely out of touch with the grass root forces but also because they are corrupt. In a comprehensive analysis, Susantha Goonatilake, the social scientist, had detailed the corruption that has corroded the integrity and the value of the foreign funded NGOs in Sri Lanka. (See: Recolonisation, Foreign Funded NGOs in Sri Lanka, SAGE).
Of the 1421 registered NGOs the politicized NGOs dancing to the drum beat of the Western diplomatic missions constitute nothing more than the scum of the earth. They are good at repeating Western clichés and threadbare theories. But to this day they have failed to produce a single leader within the NGO ranks that had either won the confidence of the people or provided viable solutions to the issues faced by the people. Their seminars, publications, lectures, lobbying etc., have been essentially mercenary exercises to rake in more dollars by exploiting the misery of war-ravaged people. Their rich life style funded by million-dollar budgets have, no doubt, fattened the likes of Paki” SaravanaMUTTU whose growth of his girth has not been matched by any growth of grey cells in his cranium.
They have no power to move the people. They can only move the Sisons with misinterpretations of the ground realities which fit into their Western agenda but not to the agenda of the people. Their capacity to educate the people is exposed in their failure to produce any positive results either at elections or in any visible and tangible shifts in public opinion. It is against this background that Sison’s choice of selecting NGOs as her medium to educate the Sri Lankans seemed ridiculous. Besides, the NGO instrumentalities invited by Sison to educate the citizens are anti-Sri Lankan agents whose known agenda has been to (1) push the political barrel as close as possible to Tamil separatism (2) swing the nation to toe the failed agenda of the West and (3) effect regime change with which they hope to achieve (1) and (2).
Gotabaya Rajapakse’s move to stop this rot was timely and necessary. Sri Lankans have a right to demand that their nation should be run by the elected representatives and their appointed administrators and not by unelected charlatans who can’t even run their mushroom outfits without insulting and humiliating the helpless female staff. The time has come for the Registrar of NGOs not only to enforce with greater rigour the legal framework within which the NGOs are supposed to operate but also to take the next step of introducing and strengthening new measures to prevent NGOs running wild like dogs let off the leash. The insidious attempts by NGOs, creeping in through the backdoor, to take over the reins of government must be stopped forthwith.
Paki” SaravanaMUTTU and Jehan (Pacha) Perera may possess some talent to diddle the Western Sisons to fatten their bank balances. But their failed record in providing any resolution to the big crises faced by the nation proves that they should be kept in their places without meddling in national affairs which are definitely beyond their comprehension.
July 13th, 2014 at 6:27 pm
Looks like she got a HUGE PROMOTION like Bloody Blake. Only Butt-Tennis failed to get a big one.
That means Uncle Sam sends TOP diplomats to SL to try REALLY HARD to do REGIME CHANGE.
Thank you GR for time action. BAN USAID funded regime change projects. May the regime change agents fall victim to “LTTE” attacks.
July 31st, 2014 at 8:58 pm
Sison’s ‘promotion’ is typical of the Obama Administration (Bush used to do this as well), in which he moves an ineffective loyalist into a new role with more pay and a better title rather than fire them, thereby preserving them for future appointments in what is hoped will be another Democratic Party Administration after Obama.
Ms. Sison certainly was not a positive force here in Sri Lanka. She aligned herself with the Tamil separatists who were defeated in war and then focused mainly on supporting political division and the exploitation of isolated incidents to try to undermine and embarrass the Sri Lankan government. She never understood how much of a loser Tamil separatism (or any kind of separatism) is politically in Sri Lanka, including with most Tamils who prefer to continue to live wherever they want rather than in some Tamil Eelam in the Far North. She also never understood that her actions simply accelerated Sri Lanka’s movement into the Chinese/Russia geopolitical orbit, which is obviously not in the best interest of the United States. And rather than expand US business interests in Sri Lanka, she has roused the same protest sentiment that led to the successful Halal boycotts and has therefore threatened the success of US brands here.
Although I have much respect for Susan Powers (Sison’s new boss), the only similarity of Sri Lanka to Rwanda is that the European colonists (the British in this case) pursued a deliberate policy of divide-and-conquer and minority rule by giving their favored minority (the Tamils in the Sri Lanka case, just like the Tutsis were favored by the Belgians in the Rwanda case) gross over-representation in university education, and prized government and private sector jobs so that the Sinhalese majority would focus on fighting with the Tamils rather than uniting with them against the British. But unlike Rwanda, the post colonial period and civil war that followed was more about preventing the formation of a separate Tamil state than genocide against Tamils in general. In fact, the Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims actually came together as one community to get rid of the British colonists and become an independent country. And the Tutsis in Rwanda were never represented by a brutal terrorist group like the LTTE who killed thousands of Tamils and Muslims, not just Sinhalese, and used their own Tamil people as a human shield during the end of the war. Nearly everyone – Tamils, Muslims, and Sinhalese – were happy with the end of the civil war and the end of the prospect of LTTE terrorists blowing up buses or trains that Sri Lankans of all faiths and ethnicities have to use in their daily lives.
Sometimes it’s easy to completely equate two different countries when they have ‘any’ thing in common, and I think both Powers and Sison errored in this regard (Hillary, also has this tendency). We will therefore see an entirely different outcome than what we saw with Rwanda in terms of world sentiment in favor of Sri Lanka in the General Assembly (even on the UNHRC, the anti-Sri Lanka sentiment failed to get a majority of voting members with only 23 of 47 possible votes) and with a veto by either China or Russia of any action against the Sri Lankan government in ending the 35-year civil war.
While it is good to be vigilant and on the look out for more Rwandan-like genocides brewing before they happen, Sri Lanka is just not one of those cases, and I think the evidence supporting this fact will become even clearer as we move forward with the reconciliation process.
I agree with the comment in the article above that Sison simply could not grasp the political realities on the ground that favor reconciliation over accountability, unity over separatism, home-grown post-conflict solutions to internationally imposed ones, and REAL development dollars with no internal meddling strings attached (China) to the “we are going to dictate your internal affairs by using our money” failed approach of the US. Let’s hope that the new US Ambassador does not make these same mistakes as Sison, and completely abandons the Tamil separatism alliance that is dragging down the US and harming its interests in Sri Lanka, and respects the will of the vast majority of Sri Lankans rather than engage in divisive efforts to undermine the Sri Lankan government.