{"id":74550,"date":"2018-02-08T06:10:21","date_gmt":"2018-02-08T13:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=74550"},"modified":"2018-02-08T06:10:21","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T13:10:21","slug":"an-unhappy-prologue-to-the-swelling-act-of-the-imperial-theme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/02\/08\/an-unhappy-prologue-to-the-swelling-act-of-the-imperial-theme\/","title":{"rendered":"An unhappy prologue to the swelling act of the imperial theme"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.\u00a0<\/strong>S. Eliot<\/p>\n

On February 4, 2018, Sri Lanka completed seventy years of independence from Britain. My inclination until that day was not to write anything to mark the day because the information I generally read while browsing the Web about what is currently happening in Sri Lanka in all important spheres, particularly in the political arena, suggests no reason for celebration. However, I changed my mind about it, as this tells you. In the unusually (though unsurprisingly) hotting up local government polls related electioneering atmosphere, the little public enthusiasm about the independence day anniversary that still lingered in the past few days finally\u00a0 vaporized. (That is the feeling I get from what I gather from the news online.) But the two events (independence day functions and LG polls) together will not be without significance. They frame the crucial week that starts today (Sunday 4th \u00a0<\/sup>) when the independence was celebrated; and the voters are due to go to the polling stations on the last day of the week, that is, Saturday 10th<\/sup> February. The latter date is turning out to be a D-Day for the nation, given that the election result will reflect the real, authentic public perceptions (both positive and negative), as opposed to the mutually contradictory claims of the government and the Joint Opposition, about the \u2018change\u2019 that was effected with the help of our foreign well-wishers three years ago. \u00a0However, as it is now evident to most Sri Lankans, the January 8, 2015 \u2018regime change\u2019, was a retrograde development. The common people eagerly hope that the long overdue LG elections will be held on February 10, 2018 as scheduled, without let or hindrance. It is going to be the first opportunity they get to provide the rulers with some badly needed feedback on their performance.<\/p>\n

According to The Island on February 1, 2018 Prince Edward, the third son of Queen Elizabeth II, who had been invited to be chief guest at the state independence day ceremony to be held on February 4,\u00a0 <\/sup>had already arrived. A couple of days ago, when it was first announced that the prince had been invited and that the invitation had been accepted, it was also reported that invitations had been sent to the royal families of Japan and Thailand (as I read in the Daily Mirror). But there was no news, as far as I know, about any equivalent VVIPs from neighboring countries in the region or elsewhere having been similarly invited to grace the occasion. As reported, the celebrations were going to be dedicated to the theme of One Nation\u201d. The fact that royal guests from Japan and Thailand who, similarly, have little to do with the subject of Lankan independence had also been invited could imply that those who are currently at the helm are preoccupied with the theme of royalty rather than with the really important subject of national independence that they are supposed to be celebrating. Then there is the theme of national unity, which is at present getting a severe battering as never before. The surrealism of this irrational juxtaposition of incongruent images \u2013 royalty with independence, illusion of One Nation with the ground reality of threatened national disintegration\u00a0 through the forced introduction of a divisive federalist constitution\u2013 is likely to have been lost on most foreign visitors and interested foreign observers who participated in the celebrations, but, the deeply disillusioned majority of us ordinary Sri Lankans didn\u2019t fail to notice it. The surrealism could symbolize for us\u00a0 an unconscious revelation of the truth by the powers that be who have brought the country to the brink of disaster, the ominous truth being that the yahapalana regime has by now become a cynical farce whose single motive is to keep going till the end of its term. The absurd show of the independence day celebrations today portends a calamitous future for our beloved Motherland. There is no doubt in my mind that the question of how to forestall that dire eventuality occupies the thoughts of all concerned citizens of all ethnicities.<\/p>\n

The scene I feel compelled to conjure up in my mind as I read, watch or listen to news about Sri Lanka (on online media sources of both Sri Lankan and international origin) is one of doom and darkness as in a Shakespeare tragedy. Scenes of extreme undeserved suffering, thieves accusing and punishing innocents, overriding ambition, cut-throat scrambling for power, murderous treachery, betrayal, illusion alternating with reality, portents, ghosts rising or raised from graves, invocation or consultation of the supernatural by the heroes, energetic evil, and even mysterious halos flickering about the heads of doomed characters (I mean in a metaphorical sense: rumours about honours like the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded). What is glaringly lacking in our would be heroes, however, is the unparalleled greatness of the Shakespearean tragic hero and the equally important element of deeply experienced personal remorse over evil committed by them.\u00a0 Hence the title of this brief opinion piece, adapted from the Shakespeare play\u00a0 \u2018Macbeth<\/em>\u2019.<\/p>\n

The so-called ethnic problem or Tamil Question or minorities against majority crisis or separatist\u00a0 conflict, in the final analysis, has local roots and must be resolved locally, without foreign intervention if possible, particularly without highhanded interference in the internal affairs of the sovereign state of Sri Lanka. Actually, at the level of ordinary citizens, there is no serious issue that obstructs peaceful co-existence among the communities. The overwhelming majority of the population are culturally compatible Sinhalese and Tamils (Muslims also have the same racial roots, though they are mostly Tamil speaking). \u00a0The key requirements are mutual cooperation and interdependence between the different communities; \u2018and\u2019 must replace \u2018against\u2019. \u00a0\u00a0This was practically demonstrated in 2009, and the problem was effectively consigned to history, but unfortunately, the peace and harmony we achieved at such great cost has now been completely ruined, and we are back at square one, or probably worse, mainly due to the \u2018fishing in troubled waters\u2019 sort of intervention by the imperialist global and regional superpowers in pursuance of their \u00a0self-centred geopolitical\u00a0 ends.<\/p>\n

With a convenient lack of conscience they exploit the troubled political situation in the country for their own advantage, inflicting great suffering on our people. Post-independence politics has been dominated by the usually hostile, but occasionally cooperative, interaction between four broad political groups: the Anglophile or West-dependent\u00a0 neocons represented by the UNP,\u00a0 nationalists led by the (original) left-leaning SLFP (not the faction infested with parliamentary rejects that has formed an unholy alliance with the UNP), unashamedly communalistic regional minority groups organized in the form of a multiplicity of Tamil and Muslim parties, and last but not least the leftists, currently vying for a place in the sun in national politics, who have got divided into a variety of parties with varying membership strengths, though without any significantly large electoral bases. An important point to remember is that all the ethnic, cultural and religious communities are represented to some degree in every one of the four groups, except in the case of the most exclusively racist or fanatical entities within those four groups. So, we may rest assured that not everything is lost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.\u00a0S. Eliot On February 4, 2018, Sri Lanka completed seventy years of independence from Britain. My inclination until that day […]<\/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-74550","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\/74550","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=74550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}