{"id":65817,"date":"2017-05-06T02:16:02","date_gmt":"2017-05-06T09:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=65817"},"modified":"2017-05-06T02:17:03","modified_gmt":"2017-05-06T09:17:03","slug":"yahapalanaya-moves-to-besiege-freedom-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/05\/06\/yahapalanaya-moves-to-besiege-freedom-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Yahapalanaya moves to besiege freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
\u2018At least there\u2019s freedom now!\u2019\u00a0 This has been the stock (consolation?) response of those who defend the\u00a0yahapalana\u00a0<\/i>regime whenever it is pointed out that corruption, nepotism, abuse of state resources for political purposes and other wrongdoings have not ceased after the January 8 \u2018revolution\u2019. \u00a0 No more white van abductions, true.\u00a0 Journalists have not been beaten up, true.\u00a0 Demonstrations and marches organized by the Opposition have not been attacked, this is also true.\u00a0 Does this mean there\u2019s \u2018freedom\u2019 or that \u2018relative merits\u2019 is what counts? Not necessarily.<\/div>\n
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\n\u00a0Avantha Artigala says a lot here. \u00a0But Maithripala’s move is also a ‘Maithri-Ranil’. \u00a0This classic ‘imperative’ of coercion when ideological sway has been spent is not new though.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
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Not necessarily, because things are getting bad. And not necessarily, because playing relative merits is a cop out.\u00a0 There are signs to be read and nothing stands in-your-face as the disarray, confusion and clowning with respect to law and order; in particular the issue of putting Saraath Fonseka in charge.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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There was talk that Fonseka would be put in charge of the Army.\u00a0 A politician in charge of the Army would of course be a disaster not to mention that small detail of it going dead against the\u00a0yahapalana<\/i>\u00a0spirit.\u00a0 Fonseka, thankfully, has shot that idea down, as he shot down (he says) the presidential offer of a post called \u2018Security Division Head\u2019.\u00a0 Fonseka however stated that President Sirisena had made a request and that cabinet had approved it. \u00a0 The request is this: \u2018taking over the responsibility of carrying out duties when essential services were disrupted.\u2019\u00a0 Fonseka has said that a mechanism to implement such a programme would have to be drafted, implying that Parliament would have to approve it.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Fonseka, clearly, has taken it seriously. Minister of Social Empowerment and Welfare S.B. Dissanayake objects, though.\u00a0 He says \u2018the President was joking\u2019.\u00a0 The joke, according to SB, was about making Fonseka the Army Commander.\u00a0 He implies thereafter that the President was not joking about \u2018the post,\u2019 presumably the one Fonseka referred to which, according to SB, would \u2018streamline the services of the Army\u2019. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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All this comes after Cabinet Spokesman Minister Rajitha Senaratne stated that \u2018President Maithripala Sirisena had requested Minister Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka to quit the ministerial portfolio and take up the post of Army Commander or Overall Commander for two years to discipline the country.\u2019\u00a0 Senaratne, like SB, alluded to a Special Act of Parliament and slipped in the caveats about the primacy of operating within the existing laws. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Minister WIjith Wijayamuni Zoysa sang a different tune.\u00a0 Maybe SB and Rajitha are mouths whereas Fonseka and Zoysa are tongues following the Sinhala dictum\u00a0kata boru kiwwath diva boru kiyanne nehe<\/i>\u00a0(although the mouth may lie, the tongue will not).\u00a0 Whereas Fonseka may have been, as per his style, said it as it was, clinically and dispassionately, Zoysa\u2019s was a blurting out: Several underhand forces are operational to hinder the development of the country [and] for that there should be special forces to suppress them.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
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Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development Minister Mahinda Amaraweera had a sober take on the affair.\u00a0 He told a news conference that the President only asked whether Mr. Fonseka could help implement a mechanism to ensure uninterrupted supply of essential services for which Mr. Fonseka agreed.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the reasoning: It was discussed during the cabinet meeting that people had to face inconveniences due to the strike launched by trade unions without prior notice. It was said that the situation had arisen due to the overuse of freedom given by the government. The President said a special mechanism should be set up to provide essential services without any disruption.\u201d\u00a0 He adds, there were such mechanisms even during the war.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
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So what do we have here?\u00a0 Simply put, things have gotten out of control.\u00a0 The allusions are to some \u2018sinister hand at work\u2019.\u00a0 The concern is about \u2018misuse of freedom\u2019.\u00a0 The answer then is about \u2018streamlining freedom,\u2019 if we were word it mildly.\u00a0 The different takes of the worthies mentioned above clearly indicates confusion.\u00a0 Shed the whole thing of hilarity and we are left with a proposal for a mechanism relating to law and order.\u00a0 This means that either the existing mechanisms are inadequate or else the personnel in charge are incompetent.\u00a0 A third, if you will, is that the Government has proven to be utterly incompetent in handling issues, which can be put down to several possible factors such as a) lack of policy-coherence, b) abysmal skill in handling objection, c) poor communication and d) poverty of ideas and imagination.\u00a0 This is the obvious conclusion when a regime gets to a point where it is forced to talk about \u2018lurking evil\u2019 and the need to exorcise it by any means necessary \u2014 which, by the way, is what all these statements collapse into. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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So what of \u2018freedom\u2019 now, ladies and gentlemen, especially those of you for whom \u2018more freedom\u2019 has been the last line of defence of the\u00a0yahapalana\u00a0<\/i>regime? This regime has seamlessly picked up the baton of everything-that-was-wrong-about-the-Rajapaksas.\u00a0 If regime change euphoria yielded a window of opportunity, it\u2019s almost closed now.\u00a0 If \u2018change\u2019 prompted a freedom-honeymoon, it\u2019s almost done.\u00a0 It took the previous regime at least 6 years to lose the professionals, the academics and the artists; the\u00a0yahapalanists<\/i>\u00a0have beaten the Rajapaksa by several years in this aspect.\u00a0 The most telling \u2018drop out\u2019 is the business community, traditionally a UNP bastion; their dismay is less about policies that are detrimental to their interests but the lack of clarity in policy. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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The \u2018solution\u2019 says it all.\u00a0 The \u2018solution\u2019 is a clear vote of no confidence on both system and personnel.\u00a0 More than that, it is an acknowledgment of failure on the part of the regime.\u00a0 It has boiled down to a game of political survival.\u00a0 Ideas, clearly, are not swaying anyone and when that happens it\u2019s the batons that are swung.\u00a0 The\u00a0yahapalana\u00a0<\/i>regime has come to this point just a little over two years into its term (or less than two years, if you take August 2015 as the true \u2018Beginning\u2019). \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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The freedom-argument has all but run its course.\u00a0 The\u00a0yahapalanists<\/i>\u00a0have essentially got freedom by its metaphorical throat (what irony!).\u00a0 So let\u2019s hope that somewhere in the corridors of power there is sanity that can be gathered in adequate quantities to counter the insane and the stupid.\u00a0 If not, \u2018crack down\u2019 will be on the cards and what ensues when that happens can be easily imagined if we turn the pages of post-independence history back to 1988-89. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY MALINDA SENEVIRATNE \u2018At least there\u2019s freedom now!\u2019\u00a0 This has been the stock (consolation?) response of those who defend the\u00a0yahapalana\u00a0regime whenever it is pointed out that corruption, nepotism, abuse of state resources for political purposes and other wrongdoings have not ceased after the January 8 \u2018revolution\u2019. \u00a0 No more white van abductions, true.\u00a0 Journalists have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malinda-seneviratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65817","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=65817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}