{"id":46952,"date":"2015-08-16T10:36:25","date_gmt":"2015-08-16T16:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=46952"},"modified":"2015-08-14T08:36:25","modified_gmt":"2015-08-14T15:36:25","slug":"irresistible-voice-of-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/08\/16\/irresistible-voice-of-the-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Irresistible Voice of the People"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Rohana R. Wasala<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Where national leadership is concerned, Mahinda Rajapaksa is a diamond; he may be a slightly flawed diamond, but he is the only diamond we have. The bitter lessons he has learned will help him to change himself into a polished gem of enhanced value. (These ideas are entirely my personal opinions. Readers need not accept them without first critically examining them. I wrote this essay because I love my motherland [i.e., my people of all ethnicities]. I am not personally acquainted with any politician that I support or oppose here; I have never even seen any of them in person, and don\u2019t expect to know them personally in the future. If you don\u2019t agree with my views, please forget about them.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Patriotic Sri Lankans of all political colours and creeds will recognize the indisputable fact that the general election scheduled for August 17 will be decisive for the future of the country as never before. There is no such unanimity of opinion about the alleged \u2018change\u2019 that was won or wangled by challengers of the then incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa in the January 8 election. Some assert that it was a revolution; some others agree with that assertion, but call it a palace revolution, as boastingly admitted in a TV interview by a self-congratulating key figure involved in the plot. But the signs are that the majority of Sri Lankans, including those who supported Mahinda\u2019s ouster in January, are gravely concerned about the future of our motherland.<\/span><\/p>\n

While there were no allegations about the free and fair manner the elections were held then, the inordinate interest taken by foreign elements in producing an anti-Rajapaksa result in that election did not make for a plausible representation of the public will. It is absurd to be required to believe that meddling outsiders are more concerned about resolving our internal problems than we ourselves are. This time, however, the electors will be relatively free from the mala fide attention of those unwelcome nosy parkers. So there is a better chance for the voice of the people to be heard more loudly and more clearly. Then, the electorate were confused, because few thought that the popular Mr Rajapaksa who had performed well both on the national security front and in the economic development field would lose to an upstart subordinate from his own party. In contrast, on this occasion, they have a clear choice to make between the two most prominent personalities and the two most\u00a0 powerful parties found on the scene today to form the next government under the Sirisena presidency which is a fait accompli. Since, according to the revised constitution, important executive powers are vested in the prime minister, the election of one of the two main contenders for the post is where the public attention is naturally focused.\u00a0 No more antithetical a pair than these two leaders and these two parties can be found in the Sri Lankan political arena at the moment, which will make the choice easy despite misleading propaganda. But again, a low turnout of voters due to a possible bout of \u2018election fatigue\u2019 and bovine ignorance and indifference on the part of some voters (to whom it matters most) might lead to a nationally unfavorable outcome.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr\u00a0 Rajapaksa\u2019s personal charisma and his proven track record as a leader largely account for his\u00a0\u00a0 still undiminished popularity, especially among the mature Sri Lankan electorate, even in the face of long sustained, but utterly unjustified, attacks on his reputation and the turbid stream of personal abuse spouted at him by his detractors. The very fact that his opponents found no really valid reasons to attack him other than alleged corruption, nepotism, and a streak of authoritarianism in his style of ruling goes to prove that they are unable to pick holes in his politics. Mere allegations may be useful as a weapon in an election in a country where the voters are not sufficiently well informed and are without a critical sense, but not in Sri Lanka. In the case of most average Sri Lankan voters, both these attributes \u2013 political awareness and critical discrimination \u2013 have been reinforced by long experience in electoral politics and culturally acquired wisdom.\u00a0 Mr\u00a0 Rajapaksa\u2019s undeniable success as president during two terms earned him the envy of his rivals. But he should know that All who have taken it upon themselves to rule over others have incurred hatred and unpopularity for a time; but if one has a great aim to pursue, this burden of envy must be accepted, and it is wise to accept it\u201d; these wise words were uttered by Pericles (495-429 BCE), the legendary ruler of the Athenian city state during its Golden Age, with which his name was synonymous, for\u00a0 Pericles was a great statesman, public orator, military leader, and a promoter of democracy and culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mahinda\u2019s two main antagonists (Chandrika and Ranil) cannot help feeling diminished before him in this respect. He and they have nothing in common between them except their chronological age; in all other respects Mahinda is ahead of them by a mile. And the contrasts are sharp. In managing interpersonal relations, he is always friendly and cheerful; he is rarely glum and overbearing. He never talks insultingly about his opponents, though he may criticize them on reasonable grounds. The roiling malice that the other two invariably spew when they speak about Mahinda has failed to provoke a matching response from him. The recent claim by\u00a0 Mr Tilvin Silva of the JVP that Mahinda is slinging mud at him is the funniest joke I\u2019ve heard in this election campaign!<\/span><\/p>\n

Addressing newspaper editors and other media personnel at a news conference in the Hilton Colombo Residences hotel, Union Place, Colombo on August 9, a confident Mr Rajapaksa said, among other things, that the investigation of alleged corruption cases must be carried out in a lawful manner, but that it should not be turned into a witch hunt. Queried about Ranil\u2019s claim that Mahinda had bribed Prabhakaran in 2005 so he could win the presidential election, the former president asked in reply, if that was the case, how it came to pass that the terror leader was defeated within three or four years of that alleged deal; besides, he said, he was in parliament throughout that period of LTTE terror, and he knew well what happened to all the (Sri Lankan government) leaders who tried to have close dealings with Prabhakaran; so he was careful not to resort to the same approach. He warned them (the LTTE): Don\u2019t start (any trouble); I will put an end to it\u201d. However, he added, he offered them a chance to negotiate; but finally he was forced (by their intransigence) to go for a military response (against their terror). In this news briefing, he admitted that there were some shortcomings committed by him as a pratujjana (a worldling, a fallible ordinary human being); but he insisted that he never regretted his political decisions and actions, which were correct. But before going further, I\u2019ll try to give the reader a sense of perspective, which might help them to respond critically to this my personal point of view about the evident ascendance of the Mahinda star in the local political firmament at this critical juncture.<\/span><\/p>\n

Personal attacks based on unsubstantiated allegations of corruption, nepotism and cronyism, and a dictatorial tendency shown in ruling have been the mainstay of anti-Rajapaksa propaganda. Mahinda has already answered most of these criticisms with his accustomed patience, humility, and sense of humour on numerous occasions including in his recent campaign speeches, in the media conference referred to above, in the Ada Derana interview (10th <\/sup>Monday night), and in the interview with The Island political analyst C.A. Chandraprema published today (12th<\/sup> Wednesday). The yahapalana slogan has proved to be just another empty shibboleth like the Dharmishta Samajaya of the J.R. Jayawardane presidency (1978-89). The conduct of those who formed a government headed by an unelected prime minister after the January 8 election has been so contradictory to the touted good governance principles that it has led the opposition to raise the same allegations against them with really valid supportive evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is difficult to think that the vast majority of the population are ready to let foreigners decide their future through enforced regime changes. All patriotic Sri Lankans are bound to accept as prime minister the principal candidate of the party that wins the most number of seats or that can establish a workable majority in parliament in alliance with other parties. Forming a national government with parties that want to put an end to the unitary status of the country through federalism or the creation of another (separate) state within Sri Lanka\u00a0 is inconceivable for either of the two major national parties (the UNP and the SLFP) which represent all communities. Federation and separation are non-starters unless imposed from outside. I don\u2019t want to go into details, but it should be remembered that there is not a single internal or external factor that justifies the dismantling of the unitary character of the Sri Lankan state. The Sinhalese account for 75% of the population. More than half of the Tamil and the Muslim communities, though they form the majorities in the northern and the eastern provinces respectively, live among the Sinhalese in the south. All three communities are spread right across the island, with uneven distribution, of course. Creation of ethnic enclaves will not be much of a problem initially for the two minorities, but it will be a disaster for the majority community, and a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions for all.<\/span><\/p>\n

Throughout the nearly five hundred years of European intrusion in Sri Lanka, the majority Sinhalese, except for the few collaborators among them who betrayed their motherland to the foreign occupiers for privileges, were always hostile to them. They shed blood in the name of the independence and security of the country. But they always allowed the minorities to live in peace and harmony with them. Ours is perhaps the only country in the world that has had a harmonious multicultural society for thousands of years before the concept of multiculturalism was invented in western countries in the latter half of the last century. It was due to the tolerant accommodating religious values inherent in Buddhism and Hinduism. Westerners are already lamenting that multiculturalism is failing in their societies. Tendency towards xenophobic exclusivity bred by rigidly dogmatic religious traditions may be a contributory factor of that failure.<\/span><\/p>\n

The agitation by the Sinhalese in some form or other against foreign imperial rule never ceased during the whole of that half millennium. It continued from the very inception of the last phase of European occupation.\u00a0 And it lasted until the middle of the twentieth century. Many armed rebellions by our patriotic ancestors including the better known ones like the 1818 and 1848 uprisings against the occupiers offered heroic resistance to them, though these legitimate liberation struggles were ruthlessly put down by the superior arms of the invaders. Later, the nation was inspired by leaders such as Anagarika Dharmapala and Walisinha Harischandra who perpetuated the tradition of rightful resistance to political and cultural colonization of the people of Ceylon (Sinhale, as Sri Lanka was known then) by foreigners. It was by later leaders who followed their example that freedom from bondage was finally achieved in 1948.\u00a0 The privileged class generally opposed the emancipation of the downtrodden masses. They opposed the introduction of universal franchise, free education for them, change of the medium of instruction from English to Sinhala and Tamil, and making English available to children from dispossessed classes. The young people today don\u2019t know these things. That is not their fault. There\u2019s so much modern knowledge to keep abreast of that there is little time to learn about the past; and education is being subjected to political correctness. There must be proper reforms to address these problems.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under colonial rule, generally, the minorities had been given preferential treatment. The Sinhalese were always discriminated against. Some minority leaders and some leaders among the Sinhalese elite did not want freedom from British rule, because they thought that they would lose the special advantages they enjoyed under it, in case a parliamentary system of government was introduced and the common people came to rule over them. The important Tamil minority leaders were not ready to trust the Sinhalese majority to be fair to them in wielding power after the departure of the British. They wanted the departing British rulers to establish that 50% of the parliamentary seats be allocated for the Sinhalese majority and the other 50% be reserved for all minority ethnic groups together. This demand put forward by Mr G.G. Ponnambalam, a prominent Tamil leader, and a member of the State Council at the time (1947), was flatly rejected by the British governor general Lord Soulbury who ridiculed the proposal as a mockery of democracy\u201d. All executive government leaders from the very beginning of independent governance in Sri Lanka did their maximum to reach out to the minorities and included their representatives in government as a matter of course. However, the initial reluctance of certain Tamil leaders to share power with the majority community on an equal footing turned into a so-called \u2018aspiration\u2019 for a separate state soon after independence. They hardly participated in the important changes that Sri Lanka achieved in 1956, 1972, and 1978. However, we have never had an exclusively \u2018Sinhalese\u2019 government even during the time that the country was worst hit by separatist terrorism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unlike the LTTE, the JVP revolutionary movement was not an interethnic struggle. Only young Sinhalese were involved in both of its disastrously abortive attempts (1971 and 1988-1990) at capturing state power over the whole country through armed rebellion. No Tamils took part in it, and no Tamils were harmed. Over 60,000 young Sinhalese insurgents of both sexes laid down their\u00a0 lives in fighting for the unrealistic, unattainable ambitions of their leaders in the second instance alone that occurred during a previous UNP regime. No international human rights agency cared to speak on behalf of the JVP that was being ruthlessly suppressed then. It was Mahinda Rajapaksa, then an opposition MP, who worked to raise a voice about them and even went to Geneva to try to draw the attention of the world to the human rights violations that were taking place in Sri Lanka at that time.<\/span><\/p>\n

We must also remember that the pioneer leaders of the JVP including Rohana Wijeweera had been initially mentored by Mr Nagalingam Shanmugathasan from Manipay, Jaffna. A lawyer by training he was one of the few patriotic Tamil politicians at the national level we have had; a trade unionist and a Maoist revolutionary, he was general secretary of the Ceylon Communist Party (Peking wing) in the 1960\u2019s. Mr Lakshman Kadirgamar whose 10th<\/sup> death anniversary falls today (August 12) was another much loved Tamil politician of national standing. This great son of Sri Lanka is being remembered in an excellent editorial in The Island today.\u00a0 He was sidelined by the then president Chandrka (who had been romantically deluded about the malleability of Tamil terrorists). Mr Kadirgamar was assassinated by the LTTE a few months later.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both Mr Shanmugathasan and Mr Kadirgamar were patriots; they were Sri Lankan nationalists. They were not racists. Despite differences between their political ideologies, their commitment to the common good of all citizens of our motherland was evident. No doubt, they were inspired by nationalist politicians such as Mr D.S. Senanayake and Mr C.W.W. Kannangara, rather than by Tamil racist politicians like Mr G.G. Ponnambalam and Mr S.J.V. Chelvanayagam. Even Mr S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike was not a racist. To propose changes to government policies that had disadvantaged the majority of the citizenship for many decades of foreign domination, but that had given undue privileges to an infinitesimal minority (of diverse ethnicity), is not racism. The dethronement of English and restoration of national languages to their due place of prominence benefited the dispossessed majority of all Sri Lankans. Some Tamil racist politicians opposed these changes because of their own divisive political ambitions.<\/span><\/p>\n

All previous leaders of the UNP and the SLFP were nationalists, but not racists. The same can be said only about one of the three present leaders of these parties mentioned above: that is, Mahinda. The other two represent a deracinated minority which has no national identity or affiliation. They only look up to the West, while looking down upon the nationalists, condemning them as racists, chauvinists, and fanatics. They ignore the threats to national security that concerned citizens point out to them. Instead, they want to destroy on insubstantial grounds the only national politician who can provide the necessary leadership to the whole country at this critical hour.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before concluding, I must say something about the youth vote and the JVP. Just before the January election, I had the opportunity to ask some youngsters from Sri Lanka what their opinion was about the presidential candidates. They were unanimous in condemning Mr Rajapaksa for all the corruption and other charges he was being accused of in Facebook gossip. I asked them whether they consulted any other more authoritative source of information about the subject. They didn\u2019t need any, it seemed. This trend was reflected back in Sri Lanka: the youth vote was thought to have gone against the then incumbent. Ironically, it was he who had done much to spread IT education to the villages through the Nanasalas (Centres of Knowledge). Of course, they appeared less sentimentally attached to any particular politician than their parents, and that\u2019s not a bad thing, provided that their decision was based on some acceptable rationale. I think this ripple of anti-establishmentarianism is a welcome sign. Yet it is good to remember that it means nothing to be born in an age of \u2018information explosion\u2019 unless young people make that information instrumental in creating happiness for one and all in the society.<\/span><\/p>\n

In our time, information communication technology was only a steadily widening rivulet, but we managed to get immersed in it. As a result we were somewhat better informed about things than our parents. For example, about domestic politics, world culture, science and technology, space travel, Uri Gagarin the Russian astronaut, Cassius Clay (Later Mohamed Ali) the American boxer, transistors, South African heart transplant surgeon Christiaan Barnard, landing on the moon, etc. We looked forward to exciting times. Beatles, the popular British rock band came during the youth movement known as the Youthquake in Europe in which teenagers played the dominant role in revolutionizing fashion, music, and culture. Today, the information world is a boundless ocean, and most people including the young seem to be satisfied picking up pebbles on the beach, which is not a thing to be happy about.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Sri Lanka, young people over 18 were given the voting right in the mid-60\u2019s, I think. I voted at a general election for the first time in 1970. The 1970\u2019s decade was probably the most eventful period in post-independence Sri Lanka, that is, in terms of real \u2018change\u2019, politically and economically speaking: a left coalition led by the nationalist SLFP under Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike came to power through a landslide electoral victory (1970). However, only a few months after Mrs Bandaranaike formed her government, the JVP launched its first abortive attempt to topple it (1971). The government\u2019s response to the youth revolt helped shape in some measure the republican constitution of 1972, which removed the last vestiges of foreign monarchical rule such as the institution of \u2018governor general\u2019 representing the nominal head of the United Kingdom (Britain). Under the new republican system, the post of governor general was replaced with that of president, but the executive powers were vested in the prime minister. Then the UNP led by Mr J.R. Jayawardane defeated Mrs Bandaranaike\u2019s government getting a five sixths majority in parliament and he changed the constitution bringing in the executive presidential system; he also introduced the free market economy model, and initiated substantial development work such as the Mahaveli scheme. Mr Jayawardane released Rohana Wijeweera who had been jailed by the previous government of Mrs Bandaranaike, and seemed to use him to attack her. (Is the JVP being subjected to the same treatment today?) The JVP made a second failed attempt to grab power in 1988-90, but was decimated as a rebel force. They gave up armed struggle as a strategy and entered the main democratic stream in 1994. Over the past two decades the party formed coalitions with both the main parties at different times, but left them disillusioned. Now the chances are that the JVP may emerge as the most powerful third national party in the country, if the leaders use their foresight and hindsight properly.<\/span><\/p>\n

But its current strategy of attacking both the SLFP and the UNP seems to suggest that they hope that the people will reject those parties in a future election and give them (the JVP) a mandate to rule. But that is waiting until the masses get really fed up with both of those parties through their wrong policies. It reminds one of the story about the jackal that patiently followed a fat goat earnestly hoping that a certain pendent part of its anatomy would fall off suddenly so he could eat it. That is a bad strategy. The JVP cannot win by itself. No alliance with the UNP is possible for them. The best option for the JVP is to tone down its criticism of Mahinda, hoping to join forces with him to defeat the antinational schemes now taking shape. The disillusioned youth of the country have begun to look for an alternative leadership. The JVP can fill the vacancy if they are patient enough to work with Mahinda for the time being. A previous alliance with the SLFP did not allow the JVP to work freely and realize its ideals; but that was under a different SLFP leadership and in different circumstances. It is a reformed Mahinda they will have to cooperate with as an initial step towards the top.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where national leadership is concerned, Mahinda Rajapaksa is a diamond; he may be a slightly flawed diamond, but he is the only diamond we have. The bitter lessons he has learned will help him to change himself into a polished gem of enhanced value. (These ideas are entirely my personal opinions. Readers need not accept them without first critically examining them. I wrote this essay because I love my motherland [i.e., my people of all ethnicities]. I am not personally acquainted with any politician that I support or oppose here; I have never even seen any of them in person, and don\u2019t expect to know them personally in the future. If you don\u2019t agree with my views, please forget about them.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Concluded<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Rohana R. Wasala Where national leadership is concerned, Mahinda Rajapaksa is a diamond; he may be a slightly flawed diamond, but he is the only diamond we have. The bitter lessons he has learned will help him to change himself into a polished gem of enhanced value. (These ideas are entirely my personal opinions. Readers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46952","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\/46952","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=46952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}