Majority Verdict and bewailing of Nihilists – Part II
Posted on August 16th, 2020

By : A.A.M.NIZAM – MATARA

Lional Bopage, who was the first General Secretary of the 1971 JVP, who was the first of the 21 leaders of JVP accused for launching a rebellion to topple the government and who was a close associate of Victor Ivan and who now enjoys a luxury life in Australia and who was also responsible for the untimely death of thousands of poor educated village youth in 1971 in an article to foreign sustained NGO vulture Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu’s one of the websites, the Groundviews titled The best and the worst – 2020 General Elections” states the general elections on 5 August turned out to be an outstanding victory for the Rajapaksa Family and the Sinhala Buddhist nationalists and ordinary members of the country’s majority community. He says that in his opinion a victory of this magnitude provides a great opportunity which could be used for the benefit of the country and its people. It also brings up, he says, a more worrisome scenario where militarisation of the democratic institutions will continue, concerns of minorities will be ignored, and erosion of the rule of law and less transparency and accountability are most likely to occur and this victory has opened a new chapter where the government could perform at its best or at its worst.

He claims that when the Rajapaksa regime led the campaign to defeat the Tamil terrorists (which he calls as a Tamil militancy and not as terrorism)  solely based on a strategy of war, he was  critical of that approach and after the military defeat of the LTTE the regime had a unique opportunity to address the issues that caused the  war by developing a just solution to the Tamil demands and even now these issues remain unresolved and keep festering since a historic opportunity was missed. He adds that had this been handled with honesty and statesmanship, it could have paved the way for the regime to stay in power for a long time, with the possibility of Mahinda Rajapaksa even becoming a Nobel laureate.

Bopage says that Sri Lanka had several such opportunities in the past when different political persuasions were brought to power by the electorate with a two-thirds or even higher majority. Mr S W R D Bandaranaike, Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Mr J R Jayawardena, all had the same opportunity, but they did not rise to the occasion due to their self-centred desire to remain in power which they could only do by catering to the partisan needs and demands of their political factions and most of the time, these factions could not see beyond the tunnel vision of a mono-cultural unitary state and their own corrupt financial interests.

This doomsday pundit states that from 1956 till 2015, the minority parties did not play any major policy determining role as constituent parties of government. Despite this, for nearly 60 years there was no constructive solution proposed or implemented to address the numerous issues the minority communities had raised and now that the new government is free from the elements that the SLPP identified as racist”, there is another great opportunity to concretely address the power-sharing issues with minorities and create a better country for all.

This doomsday pundit has completely ignored the solution President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa offered during his first foreign visit, during the visit to India in which when the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned about the need to implement the 13th amendment the President responded that he has been elected as the President of all Sri Lankans and he is committed to serve all Sri Lankans alike without any ethnic, religious or caste discriminations.  What else we need and why the doomsday pundits cannot understand the real meaning of this noble statement by thevisionary President and commend him for this stance. 

Continuing further Bopage states that at the election, the plea of the SLPP leadership was to grant them a two-thirds majority to change the constitution to rearrange the power relationships between the parliament and the president. Yet, under the current constitutional arrangements, the brothers, Gotabhaya and Mahinda continue to enjoy the totality of presidential and prime ministerial powers between them. Whatever the changes that would be made in the future, the totality of constitutional power shared between the two brothers will remain the same and only the checks and balances that scrutinize their activities by parliament and independent commissions are open to manipulation.

Having received an overwhelming majority and not at the mercy of the so-called minority racist and extremist parties he says that the SLPP and the Rajapaksas have now got an opportunity to carry out their long-term political intentions unhindered. What they proposed he says was to modify the constitution by abolishing the 19th and 13th amendments and discarding these (oppressive) safeguards will abolish the devolutionary nature of the governance established under those amendments and debilitate the independence of the institutions that were established to scrutinize (dominate) the process of governance.

Not only the 13th and 19th the 15th amendment which reduced the original percentage of votes required by a political party to become eligible for parliamentary sear from 12.5% to 5% should also be repealed.  This amendment was adopted 48 hours before the 1988 presidential election on the commandeering of Ashroff to Premadasa to get Eastern province Muslim votes in the 1988 highly manipulated and rigged presidential election.  If it was not for this political bribe to Ashroff, Madam Sirimavo Bandaranaike would have won the presidential election in 1988.

Bopage claims that these amendments were adopted with the intent of addressing certain fundamental issues that prevailed for many long years and that that intent was wantonly diluted from the drafting stage onwards, and even before the bill was presented to the cabinet for approval, it was further diluted by last minute amendments made during the final parliamentary proceedings. Some of those responsible for such dilution later became leaders of parties like the Samagi Jana Balawegaya.

Referring to 1970s Bopage states that the Constitutions of 1972 and 1978 were imposed upon the people without any consultation and the constitution making process was neither participatory nor inclusive. This claim applies only to 1978 constitution whereas in respect of 1972 constitution it was formulated by Parliament for which the National State Assembly constituted itself as a Constitution assembly in which all parties including the then major Tamil party TULF participated and this constitution was not unilaterally imposed on the people as the bizarre 1978 constitution well known as the Bahubootha Vyawasthawa. 

He warns that the Nationalist extremists in the new regime could negatively influence the chances for justice, democracy, human rights and economic opportunities, except for a select few. This may lead to escalating corrupt practices, disempowerment of the judicial and parliamentary processes, ignoring legislative responsibilities (was there legislative responsibilities during the last five years?), sidelining non-majoritarian communities (was not the Sirisena/Ranil government over appeasing TNA diktats and neglecting its duty and responsibility to the majority community?), ethno-religious discrimination in policy and decision making, adopting antagonistic foreign policy positions, and introducing repressive legislative and constitutional arrangements. This doomsday pundit who confined his JVP in 1971 only to rural Sinhala youth and pontificated against Tamils in their 5 political orientation classes now states that here could be protests and strikes by the disillusioned electorate, who would be forced to rethink about who they have brought into power and it could also lead to bloodshed.

He says that the election results also reflect a class divide between the intelligentsia and the ordinary people of the country. Confirming he still holds his allegiance to the JVP he says that the low vote for the National People’s Power (the camouflaged JVP) and similar organisations represents the mismatch of the thinking patterns between the people at the grassroots level and those of the intelligentsia. The necessity of the traditional organisational patterns at the grass roots level and the urban intelligentsia, mostly professionals, want a regime for good governance, rule of law, and an economic model that would cater for the increasing profitability of a few.

Bopage says that the working people, both rural and urban, however, want to elect a regime that would provide them with work opportunities that satisfy their basic needs, such as shelter and food for the survival of their families and in any political and economic endeavour, both these needs need to be catered for and this can only be done by analysing the prevailing issues based on evidence and their causes. Only then can these issues be addressed and polices developed that address these issues at the ground level. Otherwise the election results for progressive parties (Do we have anyparty that can be branded as a progressive party other than the SLPP.  Bopage’s colleagues the JVP is now an utter reactionary party prepared to do any scavenge for monetary benefits) will continue to be abysmal, as has been the trend for at least two decades.

In a form of ridiculing the high literacy rate in Sri Lanka, this doomsday pundit says that it refers only to those who have the actual ability to read and write and such a literacy level has not developed the ability at a societal level or the capability at an individual level to develop political empathy in understanding the differences between a mono-cultural society and a multicultural one with its attendant advantages for long-term peace and prosperity.

There is unfortunately a global trend in which a strong segment of nationalist intelligentsia does not focus on the betterment of society and the long-term future of the generations to come. Instead, they, like ‘Viyath Maga’ in Sri Lanka and their collaborators, appear to focus on developing better ways for duping people, promoting individual self-greed with short-term emphasis, he says and adds that even during the 1920s in Germany, similar intellectual groupings helped Hitler to gain and sustain power, while the media similarly played the role of providing publicity only to Hitlerite Nazi views.

Ordinary people will attend a meeting; listen to leaders and go back home, later to be trapped by the political and idealist influences of the mass media and the organisational networks that largely serve the interests of the privileged and the ultra-nationalists. Without organisational networks at the grass roots level to mobilize people and counter such influences, the efforts of the intelligentsia will fail as attested by the current elections.

Bopage, who still persists in his original JVP ideology states that in addition, ordinary people who had been previously politically active may have perceived those trying to influence them from the top as leaders, intellectuals or outsiders as a threat rather than working for the collective benefit of all and it had become increasingly difficult to expose the misleading positions presented by the nationalist intelligentsia to the people at the grassroots level due to the barrage of misinformation spread via strong media campaigns. He says the election results confirm the success of the nationalist intelligentsia and a notable failure of the efforts of the more pluralist orientated approach of the intelligentsia.

Commenting about the future he asserts that the disastrous failure of the political forces that value plurality, diversity, equity, fairness and social justice to get political traction compels Sri Lankans to rethink, re-strategize, regroup and reorganize and such an effort cannot be made by daydreaming or being an armchair critic.    He says that Sri Lanka’s most urgent priority is to connect with the ordinary working people both rural and urban and enter into a dialogue with them, learn about the issues that concern them most and then produce evidence based and consensually agreed solutions on issues that affect their lives.(If it is so, why did his acolytes, the JVP functioned as loyal stooges of Sirisena/Ranil dispensation during the last five years?)

He predicts that such actions will provide the opportunity to critically examine the previous approaches and re-strategize for the future, and only then  Sri Lanka could work towards an alliance that is open to all people travelling in the same direction, who are taking diverse paths for achieving the same goals of prosperity, human rights, rule of law and good governance, that will benefit all members of Sri Lankan society as a whole and not just a few.

Again focusing attention on two thirds majority he asserts that Sri Lanka’s post-independence history has witnessed on several occasions, regimes coming to power with a two-thirds or a higher majority but they failed, and failed abysmally, leading the country into three major rebellions. Afterwards, the regimes that led to such situations have also been defeated. If the new government traverses a path creating better opportunities for all and a rule-based society that values individual life, treats everyone with dignity and respect, ensures a guaranteed minimum standard of living, and empowers people so they may develop their full potential – then we have a duty and responsibility to support such moves and otherwise, it would not be too long before the disillusioned voters take to the streets demanding implementation of the many pledges made to them, in particular the improvement of their socio-economic conditions, in an organised and democratic manner, he concludes.

In the meantime the notorious Tamil servile traitor Dayan Jayatilleke who is obsessed with the craze of devolution of power to Tamils even in excess of what is outlined in the despicable 13th amendment enforced by hegemonic India and who was a Minister in the Varadaperumal’s Eastern Provincial Council and associated Perumal in his unilateral and illegal declaration of indepemdemce for the Eastern province and later became a close associate and shameless advisor to former President Premadasa and who unsuccessfully attempted to infiltrate Viyathmaga to create internal dissensions and got kicked out from that patriotic organization and now reported to be functioning as a political advisor to imbecile Sajith Premadasa in an article titled Understanding the unipolar moment of Sinhala nationalism” states that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa repeatedly made two requests to voters during his electioneering walkabouts and one was that they had given him 69 lakhs (6.9 million) of votes at the Presidential Election but now he wanted 79 lakhs (7.9 million) votes and the other was that he wanted a two-thirds majority. He didn’t get his first wish, but has surely got his second and strategically more significant. 

Continuing his anti-Sinhala rhetoric he says that one cannot comprehend the 2019-2020 steamroller majority without understanding who and what it rolled over; who and what the voters chose to bury – and why one could not understand its precursors 1956, 1970 and 2010 without understanding the target profile the UNP presented.

Dayan asserts that the new hyper-majority, which unprecedentedly empowers the Rajapaksa clan and the Sinhala supremacist agenda, can be traced to clusters of factors and tracked through specific periods and states that the most proximate was ‘Yahapalanaya’ which contained within itself a grand asymmetry: it had not won the majority of the majority which happened to be Sinhala-Buddhist. It should have been mindful that in the Sinhala heartland it was on very thin ice indeed. Instead of consolidating and expanding its Sinhala base in concentric waves, it adopted a pronouncedly minoritarian profile starting with Ranil’s appointment of the expatriate Central Bank Chairman and the top appointee of Mangala Samaraweera to ICTA, and ending with the outline documents of a new constitution which dropped the definition ‘unitary’ in English and substituted ‘orumittanadu’ instead.

When Mahinda was defeated in January 2015, the Sinhala nation was in shock. The Sinhala people felt that Mahinda was their hero and he had not been displaced by their collective electoral consent. They felt it occurred without their warrant. This translated into a sense of conspiracy. It manifested itself in a spontaneous surge of Sinhala solidarity with Mahinda. Sinhala angst, guilt and outrage were the springboard of the rapid revival and resistance, starting with the Nugegoda ‘Mahinda Sulanga’ rally of February 2015 and culminating in MR’s triumphant re-election last week.

The 2015 Yahapalana experiment does not, by itself, explain the volume and velocity of Sinhala nationalism that made the two-thirds majority possible. 

The ‘driver’ was the mismatch between the military defeat of Tamil separatism in May 2009 and the adventurist over-assertiveness of Tamil nationalism after and despite that defeat, the Tamil Diaspora was in denial about the defeat and that state of denial took the form, backstopped by inflows of funds, of encouragement of Tamil political personalities and parties to go on a permanent political offensive, abandoning the framework of and pressing beyond the 13th Amendment in talks with President MR in 2011. This was mightily compounded after 2013 by Chief Minister Wigneswaran’s provocative political discourse and behavior, which swung the balance of opinion in Sinhala society, from settling Tamil grievances by negotiated political accommodation based on devolution, to unilateral imposition of a post-war order. 

This traitor points out that at the dawn of Yahapalanaya, Sumanthiran trumpeted it as proof that the minorities had political weight equal to the majority and the Yahapalanaya state media and supportive ‘civil society’ lustily disseminated these ideas in an orgy of nihilism towards the war, the Lankan state, and the Sinhalese majority. 

To the collective Sinhala psyche, he says that it appeared as if the fellow-travellers of Prabhakaran, fronted by those Sinhalese who had appeased and collaborated with Prabhakaran, would have a greater hold on political power and the state than would the Sinhala nation that comprised the overwhelming majority, which had resisted, sacrificed and defeated armed separatism. An effort was underway he says to overturn the military victory by political means, demonise and vilify the victorious war and the side that won it, install the losers as political winners, and move towards dismantling the unitary state the military fought for – making for future separatism.

He points out that the Sinhalese felt an existential threat and hence turned to Mahinda Rajapaksa who had saved them before. But with his second defeat at the August 2015 Parliamentary Election, word travelled on the temple network MR had operated on after his defeat – and the word was ‘Gotabaya’. He alone could be guaranteed to generate, by taking it the next level, that enhanced Sinhala swing which could offset the entrenched minority support for the UNP. It was a Fox News/Trump candidacy moment.

The Gotabaya succession, he admits,  had been in gestation during MR’s second term, hence the launch of the volume with the hyperbolic title Gota’s War” (2012), but it took Ranil-Mangala-Chandrika discourse and policy direction within the Yahapalanaya administration to give it the traction needed for the candidacy and victory. 

Referring to the heroic war heroes, this Tamil acolyte says that the role of the ex-military brass was crucial and they saw in Ranil Wickremesinghe, the leader who had called off a Long Range Rapid Penetration ( LRRP) hit on Prabhakaran, arrested Military Intelligence officers, entered a lopsided ceasefire agreement, allowed the LTTE back into Jaffna, permitted a Tiger buildup around Trincomalee harbour – and this time around, endorsed a self-hating Geneva resolution and a non-unitary federal and secular draft Constitution. 

He asserts that the confluence of the Sinhala masses of the heartland (represented by Mahinda Rajapaksa), the monks, and the ex-military brass (around Gotabaya), created the hegemonic social bloc of today which is quite determined never to experience, permit or leave room for the humiliating experiences the Sinhala majority was put through under the Sirisena/Ranil government. He says it will therefore demolish every reform ‘tunnel’ that makes such traumatic incursion possible and build a wall and moat around Sinhala political power, promulgating a new Constitution which changes power-relations so that hierarchy is inscribed, full-spectrum Sinhala-Buddhist domination entrenched and its ideology driven deep, and minorities permanently marginalised by the truncation of proportional representation, restoration of a high cut-off point, and ethnic gerrymandering (‘re-demarcation’) of electorates. 

Tamil servile Dayan further states that Wigneswaran’s arrogance and mythology  will cease to be possible once the 13th Amendment is castrated, boosting the power of the Governor, ex-military governors appointed, and devolved land annexed. 

Referring to ITAK/TNA’s failed constitutional reformsoverreach and Wigneswaran’s ‘developmental boycottism’ has revived avatars of Chelliah Kumarasuriyar and Alfred Duraiappah in the North. He says that the regime gleefully believes in the Trump-Jared Kushner-Netanyahu formula of the trade-off of political self-identity and territorial autonomy claims in return for development funding.

This 13th amendment maniac nutty political commentator in conclusion states that the sole salvation for the Tamils is to apply the written advice that Lord Soulbury gave C. Sunderalingam in 1964, which denotes that all their political representatives must ally with and support Sajith Premadasa and mount a defense of the 13th Amendment and boasts that this imbecile and

ignoramus guy for whom he functions as am advisor is the only southern political leader who stands by it while the JVP and FSP are non-committal. 

To be continued……….

One Response to “Majority Verdict and bewailing of Nihilists – Part II”

  1. Charles Says:

    Dear Nizam, Minister of Justice Ali Sabri with his attitude that the Muslims should enter into the mainstream Sinhala Buddhist culture of Sri Lanka on the question of one country one law seems not to be quite clear. Wahabism he explins in not serious as most seems to believe.Sharia law he says had been their for ages and cannot be changed . About the child marriage too though he say he is against it, he does not give a clear statement as to whether it should be stoppd or not. Even with regard to multi marriage he shows statistics to explain that there not many such marriages and that there is none in his own family who have more than one wife. He says that the new Birth certificate which as I hve heard was an idea of UNP Minister Ajith Perera where the ntionality or the religion is not mentioned is a very good idea though many Sinhala Buddhists oppose it. He also says that amendment 13A to the Constitution cannot be withdrawn as people are now used to it. What do you think of this new Minister of Justice, there is already opposition to his appointment as Minister of Justice.

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