{"id":65854,"date":"2017-05-06T22:22:42","date_gmt":"2017-05-07T04:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=65854"},"modified":"2017-05-06T03:52:59","modified_gmt":"2017-05-06T10:52:59","slug":"most-momentous-may-day-in-living-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/05\/06\/most-momentous-may-day-in-living-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"Most momentous May Day in living memory"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\u00a0When sovereign and ministers show perversity of mind, it is impossible even for a Sun Tzu to encounter the foe.<\/em><\/span>-Huai-nan Tzu<\/p>\n

A couple of days back, we celebrated the most momentous May Day in living memory held in Sri Lanka. I watched the five hour long Joint Opposition rally live on the Internet without any significant break, switching channels when necessary; later I also looked at videos of the other three main rallies and listened to some of the speakers. The Joint Opposition, the only coalition of forces unambiguously opposed to the present yahapalana regime, conducted what may perhaps go down in history as the largest May Day rally held since the first May Day in this country was marked in 1934 under the leadership of\u00a0 the legendary A.E. Gunasinghe, Secretary of the All Ceylon Labour Federation. Hundreds of thousands thronged not only the 18.5 acre\u00a0 Galle Face Green, but also the road bordering it from the Fort end to Kollupitiya; for a long time after the rally started, there were still more people marching on the road from Union Place to the venue of the rally. The JO leaders claimed that this rally was three times larger than the combined strength of the competing rallies conducted by the three main parties, namely, the SLFP (Sirisena faction) at Gatembe, Peradeniya, the UNP at Campbell and the JVP at the BRC Grounds in Colombo. The JO\u2019s claim is not an exaggeration.\u00a0 While the JO attracted the largest crowds, the other parties and groups including the principal ones held successful rallies attended by huge numbers. Like the 2009 May dawn of the current terror free peaceful era, the May Day this year brought all Sri Lankans together to focus on a single national theme. Truly a moment that demonstrated unity in diversity with far-reaching implications for the future.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to agree with the popular criticism that gets repeated every year that the May Day is invariably appropriated by self-seeking politicians while labour concerns are relegated to the background as mere slogans or are totally forgotten. There are politicians who are genuinely worried about workers\u2019 problems; and workers after all form the bulk of the electorate in any country. Who else but politicians can give political leadership to workers and harness their collective power to influence government policies so they become worker-friendly?<\/p>\n

The crowds that took part in the JO rally were from across the whole island, and represented all three communities. Most speakers spoke in Sinhalese. But there were three rousing speeches in Tamil as well, one by an elderly Muslim, and the other two by two young Tamils. One of the Tamil speakers was Vinayagamurthy Muralidharan, second-in-command to LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran, before their famous split. This demonstrates the interethnic harmony that usually exists among our people; it is in spite of the divisive influence of some diaspora Tamils and foreign politicos who try to exploit them for their own domestic and geopolitical ends. These elements have no empathy with us, nor are they concerned with our welfare. The so-called reconciliation efforts sponsored by them are meant to effectively undermine the normalcy that \u00a0prevails among Sri Lankans from different ethnic backgrounds.<\/p>\n

What makes May Day this year a very consequential\u00a0 event? A number of factors made it more meaningful to the people than in previous years. It delivered a clear message to the government and \u00a0to interfering foreigners (the West and India). Keep off our country. Don\u2019t try to divide it for your own benefit. Treat us as a single undivided people. We are able to manage our affairs easily by ourselves strengthened by the legacies of our millennia old shared history and our common non-violent and tolerant\u00a0 religious and cultural values, which you foreigners cannot understand. You are making hateful attempts to manipulate affairs here through subservient NGOs and UN bodies in order to harass our immensely popular leaders who are capable of establishing peace and harmony in our country without your assistance and also capable of bringing in economic development with help from genuine friends. Your interference is only contributing to the growing misery\u00a0 of the innocent millions of our country. So, please stop those attempts. And, desist from interfering with their peaceful activism directed at ushering in truly democratic governance. I think this is the message that the massive JO May Day rally conveys to the international community.<\/p>\n

At\u00a0 the same time, the success of the JO rally tells those in power to be responsive to the just demands of the people, without assuming threatening authoritarian postures. All those citizens who attended May Day rallies everywhere are one people, one nation. They are not rioters. The majority of them are saying that something is not right. It is important that prices of essential items of daily consumption are maintained at an affordable level for the average household. That is the least a government can do. There are vitally more important things such as choosing efficient economic strategies that are acceptable to the majority of the people, saving the country from disintegrating into ethnic enclaves, and avoiding auctioning the valuable national assets that we have built up over decades at great cost and that we must bequeath to future generations. Raving madly against those who have a good track record will not solve any problems.<\/p>\n

(Note on the epigraph: Huai-nan Tzu is the compiler of an ancient encyclopedic work on Chinese philosophical thought. Though his birth year is not known, he is believed to have died in 122 BCE. Sun Tzu {544-496 BCE} is the celebrated Chinese general who wrote the well known treatise on war called \u2018The Art of War\u2019.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala \u00a0When sovereign and ministers show perversity of mind, it is impossible even for a Sun Tzu to encounter the foe.-Huai-nan Tzu A couple of days back, we celebrated the most momentous May Day in living memory held in Sri Lanka. I watched the five hour long Joint Opposition rally live on […]<\/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-65854","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\/65854","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=65854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}