By AndereƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚  Courtesy The Island

April 17, 2012, 12:00 pm

WhatƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s in a name, asked the Bard. Like Pontius Pilate he did not wait for an answer. He had one of his own. A rose, by any other name, he said, would smell as sweet.

Well, that is okay for roses. Shakespeare knew that. We know it too.

But, would Kumar Gunaratnam, by any other name, smell as roses do? Oh he does smell, believe me. He smells terribly fishy. And if you ask me authorities in the country of his recent adoption have not come out of this unsavoury episode smelling like an attar of roses either.

I mean this is very confusing. In Sri Lanka he calls himself Kumar Gunaratnam. That is if he is not using any of the other aliases that he is known to use or have used.

In Australia, the country which he apparently escaped probably to avoid arrest, he is known as Noel Mudalige.

Then he comes to Sri Lanka on a passport that identifies him as Noel Mudalige and quickly converts himself to Kumar Gunaratnam, the prospective leader of a political party that bears the name of Frontline Socialist Party (FSP).

Not only does he reappear in Sri Lanka as Kumar Gunaratnam alias this and alias that. Having entered the country as Noel Mudalige, he happily settled down for a long haul, long enough to overstay his visa. I say happily because if he was not happy he would not be fiddling around in Sri Lanka for six months or more. Right?

So whatƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s in a name, you might well ask. The answer my friend is blowing in the wind. Gunaratnam by any other name smellsƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢¢”š¬‚and smells fishy at that. Why does he play hide and seek with his name? Why does he operate under so many names? Is the name given to him by his parents not good? Or is this charade because he has many things to hide?

The skeletons are beginning to rattle in his cupboard and this is what is worrying. The Australians who gave him a passport under still another name, have been partly complicit in this game of hide and seek, if not in the whole game itself.

According to one media report I read the Australians have said that Gunaratnam had to be given a passport under another name as it might have been too dangerous for him to continue under his own name. It did not say which particular name was referred to here, since he appears to have obtained a Sri Lanka passport under still another name.

Even Australians cannot be that puerile as not to ask themselves why Gunaratnam cannot function under that name. Surely, they should have asked themselves whether he was guilty of any crimes or offences in Sri Lanka.

If Gunaratnam had confessed to wrongdoing in Sri Lanka when he applied for a permanent status in Australia, the Australian authorities should have probed more into it to ascertain whether he was a wanted man here.

If Gunaratnam admitted no guilt but innocently maintained that the Sri Lankan government was after him for political reasons, then it seems the Australians are easier to fool than I suspected.

On the other hand, there is another damned good reason why Gunaratnam ended up waving an Australian passport. Criminals seem to be very welcome in Australia. After all, the history of Australia is too well known to need repetition. But still I will to buttress the argument.

AustraliaƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢-¡‚¬ƒ¢-¾‚¢s more recent history is that of a penal colony. It is to this distant place that the petty crooks, jail birds and other despicable characters from Great Britain were sent so that England could be free of the unsavoury.

Not that the United Kingdom was ever freed of all the crooks and shady characters as even a cursory look at the British media today will show. Anyway over two centuries ago Britain sent all the riff raff to Australia. Once that riff- raff set foot in Australia they quickly set about getting rid of the native aboriginals adding to their list of crimes.

So a country that was born out of the flotsam and jetsam that was evicted from the mighty United Kingdom would surely welcome their own kind from other places that once formed the British Empire. That is why Gunaratnam found succour Down Under among kindred spirits just as other terrorism-linked men and women have been welcomed.

If that comment that Gunaratnam was given a new name and an Australian passport was because of the dangers he faced in Sri Lanka under his own name that nothing but a hollow excuse.

According to reports Gunaratnam had returned to Sri Lanka six times since 2009 using the passport in the name of Noel Mudalige. Unless he had undergone a remarkable physical metamorphosis surely he would not have passed unnoticed, that enough people who would have recognized him or known of his presence in this country.

If he was in such mortal danger as the Australian authorities seemed to have convinced themselves, how is it that he made six visits to Sri Lanka in three years?

If Gunaratnam was in such fear of being detained in Sri Lanka, how come he kept popping up there like a cork?

Moreover, why did he come so often if he had actually settled down in Australia? It would seem that this former JVPer who Indian media now claim was responsible for the death of 14 IPKF soldiers and was also guilty of jumping jail, was preparing to return to the violent politics that he knew so well. Was Australian authorities in fact promoting this, some might be tempted to ask after the curious role of the Australian diplomatic mission.

One more thing! Consider all the hue and cry about his abduction and disappearance. It was Gunaratnam who was reported to have gone missing and brought protests and demands from groups in Sri Lanka and outside.

So how did the Australian High Commission in Colombo get into the act on behalf of somebody called Noel Mudalige, who is not the person who, it was claimed, had been abducted?

When was the connection made or did the Australian mission know all the time that this was the person to whom the Australian authorities had given a passport in the name of Noel Mudalige.

This whole episode smells to high heaven, whatever the Bard has to say about name change. Part of that fishy smell emanates from Down Under.