By Rohana R. Wasala 

The evil that men do lives after them.

• William Shakespeare/Julius Caesar

The late Kumar David (1941-2024), retired electrical engineering professor, ex-Marxist, and political economic analyst and newspaper columnist, wrote a  feature article entitled Arrest Gota or not per the evidence: NO to fundamentalism, racial-extremism and neo-populism” published in the Sunday Island/December 10, 2017. The title itself was extremely misleading because what it suggested was malicious fiction. 

No evidence had been found against Gota; given the fact that three years of witch-hunting had produced nothing incriminatory against Gotabaya Rajapaksa or his brothers,  it was not likely that any would be found subsequently either. By ‘fundamentalism’ in the title, KD particularly hinted at alleged Buddhist religious fundamentalism, but there was no Buddhist religious fundamentalism in Sri Lanka or elsewhere whatever the biased  Western media might have said to the contrary; by ‘racial extremism’ KD no doubt meant claimed Sinhalese racial extremism, but there was no such thing then, as there has never been to date. The anti-nationalist regime changers targeted Gotabaya because only he out of the Sinhalese Buddhist leaders had the necessary courage to give an ear to the Buddhist monks’ evidence based complaints about rising violent Islamism in Sri Lanka and took some concrete steps in response.

The dictionary definition of neo-populism then was: A cultural and political movement, mainly in Latin American countries, distinct from twentieth century populism in radically combining classically opposed left-wing and right-wing attitudes and using electronic media as a means of dissemination”. Since by ‘populism’ we had up until then understood a certain bias or a special concern towards the welfare of ordinary citizens, which neo-liberalists argued negatively affected economic growth, neo-populism had to be understood as a new form of the same pro-poor political-economic policy framework. Critics used to accuse Mahinda Rajapaksa of populism, but he didn’t see the rural based economic strategy he favoured that way. His successors (of the Yahapalanaya) seemed to be committed to non-populist policies; they had however fallen short of MR’s success level. So probably, KD feared a return of populism (that MR modeled) in the future. 

This meant that KD’s resounding NO was to ‘evils’ that were non-existent among the majority of Sri Lankans! But there were then, as there are now, many inarticulate hapless victims of religious fundamentalists of the worst kind active globally and racist extremists of KD’s own brand. That is why I say that the title was misleading. Kumar David’s slanderous opening paragraph that spews venom against the majority community runs:

Ex-president MR is on record that Gota’s arrest on trumped up charges is imminent. Joint Opposition-cum-Rajapaksa (JO-Pak) mouthpieces, hoping to stave off an arrest, warn of an almighty Sinhala-Buddhist backlash if he is locked up. This implies that a strong case which will hold up in court exists and JO-Pak is endeavouring to stampede the Sirisena-Ranil duumvirate – not a difficult task – to halt action. If burn-loot-rape gangs are let loose by JO-Pak or the BBS counter-mobilisation must clear the streets. Let the appropriate authority arrest Gota or not as obligated by the evidence; the scourge of racial extremism must not be allowed to panic society. Extremism is my topic today, this panic mongering is a useable starting point.”

These extravagant imaginary false charges betrayed the fact that KD was deeply hostile to the Rajapaksas. He disliked Gotabhaya Rajapaksa because he was a formidable threat to the scheme for dismantling the unitary state of Sri Lanka in order to install a confederation of mini states in its place as envisaged by the proposed constitutional project that had been arbitrarily launched amidst widespread popular opposition. KD congratulated himself, as he had already done many times, for being the architect of the ‘single issue common candidate’ strategy that ultimately led to the unexpected ouster of Mahinda Rajapaksa in the January 2015 prematurely called presidential elections. 

GR served as the vital communication link between the all important political leadership provided by the president, his brother MR, as Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and the battleground military leadership during the humanitarian campaign that defeated the terrorism that had plagued the country for nearly three decades. At that time, it was difficult to guess whether Kumar David sincerely condemned or secretly admired the terrorists for their cowardly excesses against the majority community, towards whom he nursed a visceral hatred. Of course, the terrorists didn’t spare the other communities either, when they stood in their way. So, all communities are indebted to the Rajapaksas for ridding the country of terrorism, which they achieved, putting themselves in the line of fire in the process, both literally and figuratively.

Kumar David was reluctant to acknowledge the Joint Opposition for what it effectively was: it served as the real Opposition in parliament, where the official opposition, according to critics, was performing a rearguard role for the survival of an increasingly unpopular Yahapalana government. Instead, he described it insultingly as the ‘Joint Opposition-cum-Rajapaksa (JO-Pak)’, which was completely unwarranted, particularly when such condemnation came from an rabidly racist, ill informed or deliberately lying ex-Marxist like Kumar David, without even a semblance of a following (that is, without any identifiable group of followers).  What was KD compared to MR as a politician or political analyst in public estimation? How many Sri Lankan voters were even aware of the existence of a character called Kumar David, although his crafty stratagem worked with the vital support of the late Maduluwawe Sobita Nayake Thera (May 1942 – November 2015) of Naga Viharaya, Kotte, something the monk deeply regretted, not long after, when he realized that he had been utterly misled. 

There was no comparison between Kumar David and Mahinda Rajapaksa. KD completely misinterpreted MR’s candid warning a few days/weeks before that there was a move to arrest Gotabhaya Rajapaksa on false charges. I need not dwell on what soon became common knowledge among the overwhelming majority of ordinary Sri Lankans of all communities. The Court of Appeal issued a stay order on the FCID against the arrest of GR on November 29, valid till December 6, 2017. It was then extended to December 15. And then it was further extended to January 25, 2018. Gota’s appeal was based on the grounds that the FCID operation against him was illegal. His lawyers pointed out that no government money had been used in the construction of the D.A. Rajapaksa Memorial and Museum containing wax images; there was no lawful case justifying his arrest. (This memorial structure was destroyed by Aragalaya hooligans in May 2022; but the statue of D.A. Rajapaksa was restored and ceremonially opened by former president Mahinda Rajapaksa in November the same year). Besides, given his august family history (to survive eighty years in national politics is an achievement in itself), his varied educational and professional background, and his long years in the military as a decorated soldier promoted to the rank of colonel during a UNP government (which is significant because he must have been known to the then authorities as a son of D.A. Rajapaksa, SLFP founder S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike’s loyal colleague from the southern province), and his proven moral stature, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was least likely to do anything that could damage his personal honour  and public reputation. Full of malice, KD wrongly argued: Joint Opposition-cum-Rajapaksa (JO-Pak) mouthpieces, hoping to stave off an arrest, warn of an almighty Sinhala-Buddhist backlash if he is locked up. This implies that a strong case which will hold up in court exists…”. 

Only an irrational Rajapaksa hater like Kumar David was able to suggest that Gotabhaya Rajapaksa could indulge in corruption exploiting, at that, a project done in memory of his own late father. The fact that hundreds of patriotic lawyers offered to defend him in court free of charge on an earlier instance of a similar defamatory nature was testimony to the nation’s attitude towards the iconic Sri Lankan that made him safe against such false charges.

.To be continued