When nepotism grants regal status
Posted on October 3rd, 2015

Courtesy The Nation

The problem with his being in the UN delegation for Sri Lanka is obvious. The Government of Sri Lanka allowed it. The Foreign Policy Establishment allowed it.

President Maithripala Sirisena’s son was part of the Sri Lankan delegation to the United Nations, and he was front and centre when his father met the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi in the sidelines of the General Assembly.

He (Daham Sirisena) can write the most hilarious drivel about his UN visit for all we care. He’s not accountable to the public and neither is he a public figure as he claims to be

There were no ifs and buts about it. The son, who is no diplomat or politician, had no business being part of the official Sri Lankan delegation at either the UN or the summit meeting with Modi. If be there he must, he should have been in the public gallery and have had no part in the UN proceedings.

This fact was instantly recognized in social media, and many including some previous Sirisena and Wickremesinghe apologists voiced their unequivocal displeasure.

The young man however for his own part seems to be rather taken aback by the unanimous criticism, and has chosen to write to his ‘friends’ on Facebook explaining the situation.

The Asipatha CutsHe said there was no ‘nepotism’ involved as he was merely standing in his mother.
The atrocious English in that post could be excused, and so could the substance. This young man must know that his mother too would not have played any part as a member of the Sri Lankan delegation. If she was there, she would have been accommodated in a public gallery as well. Perhaps she would have had special accommodation as a Head of State’s spouse, but she would not have had any part to play in that delegation, and if she did, she would have rightly met with the same measure of harsh criticism.

But this columnist is not going to be so churlish as to fault somebody who is probably barely out of his teens and owning a Facebook page, for attempting to justify the absurd. He can write the most hilarious drivel about his UN visit for all we care. He’s not accountable to the public and neither is he a public figure as he claims to be.

The problem with his being in the UN delegation for Sri Lanka is obvious. The Government of Sri Lanka allowed it. The Foreign Policy Establishment allowed it.

The President had no objections. That is putting it rather hilariously. There is no way the young fellow would have been there without an invitation from his father.

The young man could say     anything he wants on his Facebook page. What matters is the attitude of the powers that be, and in particular the Head of State, who was responsible for an act of inexcusable nepotism and boorishness.

That Obama who raised a glass to the president of this country saw nothing objectionable in this conduct is very much in character. For Obama’s understudy Sirisena, in his latest satrapy, this exhibition of nonchalant dictatorship was good enough, and was probably a good sign too. It signaled that the Sri Lankan leadership; now under U.S. tutelage, was free to do absolutely anything, and be admired in the West for it.

This is the publication Counter Punch saying it straight: Obama declared Washington’s purpose to be one of preventing bigger countries from imposing their will on smaller ones.” Imposing its will is what Washington has been doing throughout its history, especially under Obama’s regime.

When Assad drops bombs it oppresses people, but when Washington drops bombs, it liberates them. Obama justified Washington’s violence as liberation from dictators,” such as Assad in Syria, who garnered 80% of the vote in the last election, a vote of confidence that Obama never received and never will, writes the former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts, in the publication Counter Punch.

In Sri Lanka, democracy is being held in a state of suspension under the jackboot of a U.S. satrapy administration. Nobody cares, certainly not in the United States. As Paul Craig Roberts writes, the impunity enjoyed by the U.S. is near absolute, and this impunity rubs off on the satrapy dictatorships, of which Sri Lanka is a front ranking one now.

The shenanigans go on. Smuggling candidates who lost the election through a National List, making a Presidential son holding no elected or public office a part of a UN delegation, disenfranchising 47 million people entirely by forming a so-called National Government for which there was absolutely no mandate, rigging elections by forceful takeover of party machinery when election laws are in force – this dictatorship is absolute and unadulterated. It is similar to many US backedsham regimes in many parts of the world: shameless, hypocritical, and doing nothing more than extending the Imperial writ, as decided in Washington.

None of these politicians, journalists, civil society shamans and other so-called public figures popping up this regime of imposters, are honorable. They are all acquiescing in, if not actively aiding and abetting this recolonization of the country by an imperial power. All of these people who back the regime run from Washington are scoundrels, but you will see a great many of them being feted and celebrated just as Obama is celebrated when he bombs foreign lands and says he does it for their ‘liberation.’

Here’s more from that article by Paul Craig Roberts:
The UN has done nothing to stop Washington’s invasions and bombings, illegal under international law, of seven countries, or Obama’s overthrow by coup of democratic governments in Honduras and Ukraine, with more in the works. End quote.

White is black indeed, and vice versa in this topsy turvy world.

The sickening charade goes on, and is no more grating when it is now at home, with a propped up, illegal regime of buffoons in Colombo.

But take heart. The arc of the moral universe is long, and it bends towards justice!
This flagrant show of moral degeneration would be over, though it could be later, rather than sooner.

2 Responses to “When nepotism grants regal status”

  1. vyasan Says:

    I fully agree with what has been said in the article. Unfortunately for the people in the developing nations in all over the world, as these nations happen to be relying on the western powers for many of their needs, like funds in the forms of trapping loans, technological and other sorts of assistance, they inevitably become the slaves of those powers. And as for the political leaderships in the developing countries, the ambitious/avaricious politicians are prepared to bow down to any low to please the western masters in order to come to or cling to power. They don’t care that their countries get trapped in a way to carry out the interests of the western powers as long as they enjoy the political powers in their countries. The result is the real dictators are praised as being leaders of democratic principles while the one who really worked for the people and the country are shown to the world as dictators and abusers of human rights.

    In Mahabarata, one of the great epics of India, it has been said, that “in the ‘yuga’ (epoch) that follows the time of Mahabarata, the virtuous characters will get abused, while the vile ones get praised and or promoted, the good ones will be seen as bad and the bad ones will be seen / or promoted as nobles.”

    We have witnessed it during our own short life time when the western powers invade destroye and plunders of the wealth of other countries, particularly that of the developing countries, and / or to promote their own interests all through blatant lies and on basis of false propaganda. In fact, if there were no invasion or interference by these western powers the developing countries would be much more better off economically and be politically stable.

    That is what is happening in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in the world.

  2. Tilak Says:

    Ninety nine per cent of Sri Lankan politicians are the same. They talk something when they are not in power, but once in power and tasted its pomp and glory, they forget what they said before and what the public have appointed them for.

    Worse are their children. The people in this country have witnessed, read in newspapers and seen on TV how some children of the powerful elite have been behaving worse than hoodlums, ruffians and thugs, waving their guns at night clubs, abuse power more than their fathers at times by using their fathers’ security squads by not only wasting public money but becoming a liability and a nuisance to the society. There is No need to give examples, but such incorrigible behaviour of such has saturated in to the society well and truly in the past and is continuing even today during the yahapalanaya.

    In my mind both such fathers and idiotic yobbos are only a damn disgrace to this beautiful nation.

    This problem has become contagious and turned into such a shameful state of affairs where the ordinary folk who appointed these politicians are being taken for a ride all the time. Could it be a collective bad Karma that those born in Sri Lanka are paying year on year, term after term and decade after decade. There is no salvation to be seen in the horizon.

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