By Rohana R. Wasala

The Sinhala language online lankacnews/June 6, 2020 reported that the controversial Elections Commission member Ratnajeevan Hoole, in an interview with the regional Tamil language DAN TV channel in Jaffna, asked the voters in the north not to vote for the SLPP at the coming general election. The website carried the piece of news with a facsimile of the top part of an English language publication from which it was relaying the item of news; the latter carried Hoole’s picture alongside the headline in big letters, which ran: ‘Do not vote for SLPP…’. Hoole allegedly said this in Tamil. A number of other news sources have disputed this; Hoole said no such thing; his message had been garbled by supporters of the SLPP. According to lankacnews/June 8,Hoole,  interviewed by Sirasa TV/June 7, 2020, denied having asked voters not to vote for the SLPP; he had only stated that they should not vote for corrupt persons, liquor bar owners, individuals prone to violence, etc. Asked to comment on Hoole’s alleged controversial remarks supposed to have been made in Tamil, EC chairman Mahinda Deshapriya refused to comment on it until he received an authentic translation of the same. (Subsequently, Deshapriya has declared that he agrees with Hoole’s position, which suggests that the latter is not acting alone.) Some opposition speakers, meanwhile, are gleefully taunting the SLPP: ‘If the cap fits, wear it!’ 

Of course, the opposition might have something more than this chance of jeering the SLPP to thank Hoole for. Be that as it may, what, in my view, is important here is whether Ratnajeevan Hoole is capable of saying what he has been rightly or wrongly blamed for saying. Certainly he is capable of shooting his mouth off like that in the current highly charged pre-poll situation. His accustomed political postures, actions, and utterances over a long period of time, apparently inspired by a strange tribalism never expected in such a respected knowledgeable person, leave us in no doubt that it is not beyond him to act in that morally and legally unacceptable way.                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Is it because he probably thinks that he is about to be in at the kill, when, as he hopes, the coup de grace is delivered to the unitary Sri Lanka by completing the interrupted Yahapalana agenda after having the dissolved parliament recalled through some constitutional sleight of hand with the help of Sumanthiran exploiting the Covid-19 situation? Hoole charged, as reported in the online lankacnews mentioned at the beginning of this piece, that the SLPP is engaged in spreading misinformation against him through the media; news channels supportive of the SLPP are disseminating falsehoods about him, he complained. He has declared that he does not know Sinhala to read the ‘garbage’ published in that language. He is also reported to have stated that some people claim that he is going to resign from the EC, because they think that, when they say so, he will stop his activities. But, he added, the 19th Amendment makes it difficult to mess around with the election. (Now, who is trying to ‘mess around with the election’ by trying to postpone it indefinitely or cancel it altogether under the pretext of allowing time for dealing with the catastrophic Covid-19, which, however, has by now been definitely brought under control?  The government or the opposition? Any rational observer can understand it is the opposition.)

To date, while being an EC member, he has conducted himself as if he is interested only in what he believes is good for his own tribe, to the exclusion of the rest 85% of the multiethnic population. I am 100% sure that the vast majority of ordinary Tamils do not expect him to behave in the way he does, which must be embarrassing to them. Obviously, the LTTE’s alleged hostility to him did not mean that he was a friend of the Sinhalese, or of all those including Tamils who opposed it. The older Sri Lankans have not forgotten news reports to the effect that he was accused of collecting funds for the LTTE in Nigeria in the 1980s.  Just before the presidential election in November 2019, Hoole made public utterances encouraging MP Sumanthiran of the appointed opposition’s TNA, who used to hector in parliament to bungling ministers of the UNP administration (the rump of Yahapalanaya on its last legs); when parliament was dissolved, he unsuccessfully moved court against it. Wikipedia says that Ratnajeevan Hoole is a dual citizenship holder (SL and US), which must be true. But he  didn’t seem concerned about the injustice the current president Gotabaya Rajapakse was subjected to by his opponents and their NGO allies or sponsors persistently challenging his candidature for presidency on the false charge that he had failed to renounce his USA citizenship, despite the American embassy in Colombo having confirmed that GR had legally given up his American citizenship well ahead of the announcement of his nomination. 

Practically, Hoole opens his mouth only with a view to frustrating the country’s democratic return to the permanent peace and political stability of the five years 2009 to 2015, established after the nation having paid for it in blood, sweat, and tears, and thousands of innocent lives lost, and some fourteen thousand young soldiers – some in their early twenties – maimed for life, and now lingering in army hospices, some of them lying in bed like vegetables; to this must be added losses incurred and casualties, mostly suffered by the young, on the rebel side, very much a part of the cream of Sri Lanka’s human population, like the young soldiers who fought in defence of the state. Only the mindless racist fringe represented by Hoole and others of his ilk are impervious to their pain and suffering, and now remain deliberately in denial of the collective anxiety experienced in that deadly past returning to haunt innocent Sri Lankans of all communities  in the menacing shadow of the Covid-19 monster.

Ratnajeevan Hoole seems to be nursing a pathological hatred of the Sinhalese, particularly, of Sinhalese Buddhists. He despises everything associated with the Sinhalese, their history, their literature, their ancient knowledge, and their spiritual heritage. Once, referring to the claim by a scholar that the 15th century CE Sri Lankan Buddhist university Vijayaba Pirivena of Thotagamuva (- though primarily a large Buddhist pirivena, it was a centre of secular learning as well, that flourished during the reign of king Parakramabahu VI of Kotte) was one of the earliest universities of the world, Hoole took umbrage at that description and denounced it as an insult to other universities of the world! His recent confession that he does not know the Sinhala language reflects his mysterious antagonism towards the Sinhalese. It doesn’t seem to matter that he was born and had school education in Nallur, Jaffna, in the north and that he completed his university education in Colombo in the south, as a beneficiary of free education, among the traditionally peaceful and egalitarian Sinhalese, before proceeding to UK and US for his postgraduate studies in engineering. 

The trouble dealing with Hoole is that, in the country’s dominant traditional culture, people believe that the learned are disciplined (vidya dadaati vinayang – knowledge imparts discipline)   and therefore, are worthy of respect and paying heed to); in their innocence, they equate learning with education; they don’t know that a person may have much learning but little education. We have been plagued with quite a number of characters like that in politics recently. But the cultured ordinary citizens, out of the respect they have for this engineering professor, have so far viewed his ludicrous behaviour which is unworthy of him as a member of the august body that the elected parliament assigned him to, with some amused indulgence. Probably, he has forgotten about his own self respect in his anxiety to live up to the commitments he might have made to the cynical politicians who put him in that position with certain ulterior motives. But enough is enough! He must either resign or serve out his term with the appearance of an honoured senior citizen who is growing old gracefully, something he owes to the peace-loving Sri Lankan people.