{"id":119876,"date":"2021-11-01T16:18:13","date_gmt":"2021-11-01T23:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=119876"},"modified":"2021-11-01T16:18:13","modified_gmt":"2021-11-01T23:18:13","slug":"please-dont-forget-the-people-who-elected-you-mr-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/11\/01\/please-dont-forget-the-people-who-elected-you-mr-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Please don\u2019t forget the people who elected you, Mr President!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. – Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 – 43 BCE)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 According\nto a popular online Sinhala language news portal (October 31),  President\nGotabaya Rajapaksa said that he appointed (Bodu Bala Sena leader) Ven.\nGalagoda-atthe Gnanasara Thera as chairman of the (recently established) One\nCountry One Law Presidential Task Force to advise him, but not to make laws.\nThe President made this remark when asked about the PTF at a government party\nleaders\u2019 meeting. He pointed out that he had the ability to appoint any person\nto the PTF according to his personal preference. He was also reported to have\nsaid that if he tried to consult party leaders about everything, he would have\nto get their permission about associating with friends! (Aside: As President,\nhe ought to seek advice from sincere, non-politicking people about that, too.\nRRW)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nPresident further said that the same sort of objections were raised when he\nappointed Ali Sabry as Minister of Justice; but now he is performing his duties\nto the satisfaction of everyone, the President added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talking about advice, I think President Gotabaya should take MK Sivajilingam\u2019s demand as\nhelpful advice and immediately disband the \u2018farce\u2019 (as the latter correctly\ndescribes it) of this one-country, one-law Task Force headed by Ven.\nGalagoda-atthe Gnanasara Thera. The value of Sivajilingam\u2019s request lies in the\nfact that he cannot have any intention of betraying the president; only close\nfriends can betray a person, but not an enemy or a stranger. Sivajilingam is an\nenemy at the gate (Pl. see the epigraph above), but an enemy that we know as\none of our fellow Sri Lankans (who doesn\u2019t show false friendship), with whom we\ncan easily restore our traditional bonds of brotherhood by sorting out our\ndomestic problems through talks among ourselves without disgracefully allowing\noutsiders to exploit them for their own advantage and to our common\ndetriment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nreference in this case is to The Island<\/em> correspondent Dinasena\nRatugamage\u2019s dispatch Sivajilingam tells President to disband \u2018one-country,\none-law\u2019 Task Force and solve the country\u2019s problems\u201d (Saturday, October 30)\nabout MK Sivajilingam, former Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Northern Provincial\nCouncillor and close relative of Velupillai Prabhakaran, speaking to the media\nin Jaffna the previous day (Friday 29). He was reported to have claimed that\nthe Task Force was an attempt to boost President Rajapaksa\u2019s flagging\npopularity. Sivajilingam recalled the President\u2019s earlier promise of a new\nconstitution to safeguard the rights of every citizen.  Everyone wants\nthe President to come up with a new Constitution. There is pressure to address\nthe issues faced by the Tamil people. However, the President has suddenly\nappointed a Task Force on One Country One Law. The task force is a joke.\nAppointing Ven. Galagodaatte Gnanasara Thera as the head of the task force\nmakes it a farce,\u201d he was reported as saying. (He\u2019d have been closer to the\ntruth if he said \u2018There\u2019s pressure on the President to address the issues faced\nby all Sri Lankans, not just by the Tamil people\u2019. But he can\u2019t be blamed for\nfocusing on the community that he represents, in this instance.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ntask force was not appointed after consulting people. We urge the government to\nstop distracting people and address the real issues. What we need is a task\nforce to get the country out of the economic, social and political disasters it\nis facing. The leaders must be smart enough to get the support of everyone. If\nthe government doesn\u2019t show it cares about Tamils, they will  keep on\nopposing the government. A divided country can\u2019t face the challenges we are\nfacing now,\u201d he said. I, for one, agree with him. That bit about caring about\nTamils, though justified from his point of view, is a different matter, but the\nsame is applicable to every community, and is not an insurmountable obstacle to\nthe restoration of unity among the communities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of\ncourse, Sivajilingam may be making this demand or offering this advice, tongue\nin cheek; he may be calling the president\u2019s bluff. Sivajilingam is a politician\nand, since all politicians are typically vily, must be handled with care.\nHaving said that, I think his comments should be taken as a piece of\nconstructive criticism that offers an opportunity for opening a\npeople-to-people dialogue involving the north and the south with a view to\nbringing about an end to the reluctant mutual estrangement between the two\ncommunities that has been deliberately created by opportunistic politicians of\nboth sides. Let me try to put Sivajilingam\u2019s remarks in perspective according\nto my own lights as a Sri Lankan citizen with a certain degree of hindsight\n(due to my age), insight (gained through formal and informal education and life\nexperience) and a modest amount of foresight (sharpened by both). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \nresponsible citizens of Sri Lanka pulled the country back from the brink of\nnational disintegration and general disaster by electing Gotabaya Rajapaksa\n(his chief attraction was his no-politian image) as president and the SLPP to\nparliament less than two years ago. In both cases the election was fought on\nthe major platform of \u2018One Country, One Law\u2019, in  which for completely\napolitical reasons, Buddhist monks take an intrinsic interest. But now it looks\nlike Gotabaya has been betrayed and, into the bargain, converted into something\neven more malleable than his predecessor to the wishes of another. The\ncircumstances (i.e., issues and the government\u2019s authoritarian responses to\nthem) are again pushing the country to the edge of a precipice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An\nExtraordinary Gazette notification was issued on October 27, 2021 to the effect\nthat President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had appointed a 13-member Presidential Task\nForce (PTF), using powers vested in him as president by Article 33 of the\nConstitution, 1. To make a study of the implementation of the concept: One\nCountry, One Law within Sri Lanka and prepare a draft Act for the said purpose\nand 2. To study the draft Acts and amendments that have already been prepared\nby the Ministry of Justice in relation to this subject and their\nappropriateness, and if there are suitable amendments to submit proposal (sic)\nfor the purpose and include them in such relevant draft as is deemed\nappropriate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nwas deeply dismayed and disappointed when my eyes fell on the relevant gazette\nnotification online within a few hours of its issuance on October 27. My\nimmediate mental reaction was: \u2018What a harebrained initiative!\u2019 To be frank, I\nnever expected this sort of frivolous exercise from Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in whom\nI have had implicit faith. But then, we can only guess that he has done this\nunder constraint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nPTF was ostensibly established to study how to put into effect the \u2018One\nCountry, One Law\u2019 concept and how to bring the \u2018Acts and amendments\u2019 already\ndrawn up by the ministry of justice into line with that concept. The committee\ncomprises the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) leader Ven. Galagoda-aththe (not\nGalaboda-aththe?) Gnanasara Thera (Chairman) and twelve others including\nacademics, lawyers, and eminent persons (the last category has a maulavi from\nthe Galle Ulama Council and three other Muslims. The Galle Ulama Council is\nsupposed to be anti-Wahhabi, as allegedly claimed elsewhere. The PTF originally\nhad no Tamils or explicit representatives of any Christian or Hindu religious\norganization. In view of the objectives stated, this was a glaring shortcoming,\nthat would not have been allowed to happen, if the President had any sincere\nadviser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\ntotally erroneous exclusion of Tamils provided a genuine reason for\nSivajilingam to complain. However, at a meeting chaired by the President at\nTemple Trees the next day (October 28), Fisheries Minister Douglas Devananda\nand Deputy Chairman of Ceylon Workers Congress Senthil Thondaman and several\nothers raised this issue of non-representation of Tamils in the PTF and the\nPresident agreed to correct the anomaly. Please treat these Hindu Tamil leaders\nas well as you treat Muslim and Ctristian leaders. We need every community\u2019s\ncooperation to neutralize the looming fundamentalist threat.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In\nmy humble opinion, the appointment of this task force will prove a suicidal\nmove both for the Gotabaya presidency and the SLPP government. The negative\nimage of the monk who heads it, whether justified or not, the apparent\nmediocrity of the rest of the members, and the suspicion of an anti-Tamil bias\ngenerated by the initial imbalance of its communal composition (though set\nright later) will be major setbacks for its success. The PTF appears to me to\nbe a hastily but cunningly devised contraption designed by a saboteur so as to\nbe dysfunctional from the beginning, and to ultimately kill the project it was\npurportedly set up to bring to fruition (i.e., the one country, one law\nproject). It seems to be the sinister proposition of an evil genius within the\npresident\u2019s inner circle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be continued<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala\u00a0 A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rohana-r-wasala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}