The Rajpal Abeynayake Column

Deplorables? Ghouls? Now, that comes close.

Ingrates? Absolutely fits the bill, but is not a complete description.
Vermin? Very close. These are the words that describe the current, dispensation, Prime Minister, President and all.
Why should we say all this? Because words are important and they have to be used at the correct time. There’s no point in using the accurate description 30 years from now, when everybody knows that these words were the correct description.
These things are important, because there has to be the definitive revelation of the truth.
The truth is for instance, that the entire government is based on despicable backstabbing.

The Rajpal Abeynayake Column
If so and so was not happy with the government he was serving in, by all means get out of it in good time, and campaign for change.
But there he is (he could mean any number of them), enjoying every minute of it, devouring all the perks, and stabbing his leader in the back at the last possible moment, days before the 2015 election.
It’s momentous personal treachery.
But then there is a lot more.
Take the recent example.
Mahinda Rajapaksa is their sworn enemy, true.
But he has all the right to be an active politician, especially if there are people who look to him for leadership.
Whether anybody likes it or not, that seems to be the case considering the crowds at the recent Galle Face May Day rally for instance.
But what do they do?

Ranil Wickremesinghe with you know who
They removed his security detail — decimated it almost — soon after that gigantic rally.
Real men? No scumbags and ghouls. Sorry we don’t use the first word; the second would be eminently suitable, but a lot of people don’t use it either in polite discourse as such …
Well, they should.
They absolutely should, especially since this regime appointed those who lost their seats to parliament.
So, nobody should take the rap for the fact that they have placed themselves beyond the pale.
They have done it all by themselves.
But people, ordinary folks and political activists, should not be averse to placing them beyond the pale, where they belong, and make it show.
This is what everyone knows.
Can anyone really endorse the smuggling of those who lost, via the national list? A dozen or so of them?
No, it cannot be done. Can anyone endorse the deliberate and planned persecution of the armed forces?
Can anyone endorse the wanton persecution of the former president and his family?
Wanton because the persecution redoubles whenever there is a successful rally, with thousands of people showing up to see the former president.
The message is clear. Do not engage in any politics, or we will get you.
And these are the great bleeding heart democrats? A new word would have to be invented; hypocrisy is not anywhere near adequate.
The president said once that he would make the Rajapaksas walk on the streets if they form a new party. Say that again?
So these are ghouls, and it’s impossible for the people not to see that.
But most people are averse to saying so, because at least when those ordinary folks are concerned, there is very little decency or propriety left in some of them either.
Among others, it’s a case of their own disbelief. They cannot believe that they elected this lot of ghouls, and ingrates, and cowards.
Acknowledging that these people are beyond the pale, is as they say in the pithy Sinhala, ‘akin to spitting while gazing upward.’
And why is their conduct beyond the pale?
It’s because they have done so many things that are just that — beyond the pale.

This list here is not exhaustive:

* How could those who were with the former President and his government barely a month before the past presidential election, now stab that gentleman in the back and call him the most vile names? And call for his persecution? It’s a simple act of treachery and moral decrepitude of the highest order. Is this the example Sri Lankan adults are supposed to impart to their kids? Stab, and stab well, right in the back?

•   How could they sanction the continued persecution of the armed forces? Where is the gratitude? The basic gratitude towards those soldiers for more or less literarily saving our lives?
• How could the president sack the Secretary of his own party before the polls, and say after the fact with pride, that he made his own party lose? In any other country, the fate of a person who commits such a blatant act of treachery and venality should not have to be particularly underscored.
• How could they be so cowardly as to deprive the former president of a house that he is entitled to as former president? There is no reason for such an act; as the president who ended the armed conflict he deserved more than any past president but then, scumbags rule, right? Oops we don’t use that word. Certainly, ghouls would do, but …
• Blatant persecution of political opponents for political ends. The proof of this is that whenever there is an election or a visible threat from the Joint Opposition as it has been styled, somebody is marched off to be placed behind bars.
• Having barely squeaked through, with a few seats or a few thousand votes more, they say they would change the Constitution. It’s announced as if they have a god given mandate. What happened to the ‘Grundnorm’, the two thirds majority in an election that’s needed to change the Constitution and engineer transformative change? Not when they play god. Listen to us they say. It’s a god given right, never mind that we squeaked through to power, like dogs.
• And never mind those who stabbed their leader in the back just before the election. How about those who did so after the election, having ridden to power sticking his image to their election propaganda? Now they collaborate with a government that on a daily basis persecutes that leader, and his family. Is there any other word more suited than scum, to describe that kind of pond scum?

And so it goes on. As I said, the above list is not exhaustive, but why does it have to be, when you have the above already?