{"id":87756,"date":"2019-04-26T22:56:55","date_gmt":"2019-04-27T04:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=87756"},"modified":"2019-04-26T15:44:34","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T22:44:34","slug":"the-apologists-of-extremism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/04\/26\/the-apologists-of-extremism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Apologists of Extremism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Palitha Senanayake<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The position Sri Lanka confronts today as a nation\nclearly is a case of electing political apologist of terrorism to power before the\nnation could recover completely from 30 years of terrorism. Ranil\nWickremesinghe, like his current political mentor Chandrika Kumaranatunge, were\nsuch avowed supporters of the theory of \u2018appeasing terrorist to win them over\u2019\nto a point where they ridiculed even the attempts of the country\u2019s armed forces\nto overcome terrorism. An a result they were both responsible, during their\ntenures, in lengthening the period Sri Lanka would suffer under terrorism. The\none hope that many shared when electing Ranil to power in 2015(to a minority\nParliament) is that, \u2018now that the terrorism is out of the way, bring us\neconomic salvation and the rule of law\u2019. But Ranil Wickremesinghe has not only\nfailed to delivered but has proved that a leader who has no vision on national\nsecurity does not deserve to be in power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attitude of both these leaders, Ranil and\nChandrika, has been, when cautioned on threats to national security, is to\ncounter charge the very messenger of being \u2018an Extremist\u2019            (Jathiwadi)\u2019. To prove this point we have to\nreminiscent how Ranil reacted at instances which implied some form a threat to\nthe country\u2019s national security during the last 4 years. In all those instances,\nif the warning came from the opposition he would labelled the one who brought\nit to ntice as an extremist thinker by labelling a \u2018Jathiwadi mentor\u2019 taking\nthe moral highgroungd of a man above petty tribalism.On the other hand if the perceived\nthreats emenated from within his own officers his attitude had been to dismiss\nthe same as being too overzealous. In conducting the affairs of the current\nregime, Ranil indulgd in a lot of wishful thinking by publicly declaring that ,\n\u2018This country will never face the type of war we had for thirty years\u2019 without\nadmitting that his pursuit of peace during that 30 year conflict was not just a\ncomplete failure but an antithesis in obtaining peace. Therefore, Ranil\u2019s\nexcuse that the intelligent information on the pending attack was not presented\nto him peronally was mainly due to his own negative attitude towards such\ninformation and his ire towards those who present such information.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The national security of a small nation like Sri\nLanka, in the context of international politics and big power rivalry to\ndominate world and its economy, depend very much on  that ntions ability to stay clear of big\npower shenanigans maintaining its own interest at heart.  Global \nimperialism works in so many ways \nand so many guises. It needs a lot of rationality in your thinking to\nrealize that global imperialism has evolved today to psychological subjugation\nreplacing armed subjugation. World nations, especially the big powers, only\nhave interests and hardly any principles. But Ranil, with his compacent\nservility to internationalism will always chose to dismiss anything national as\n\u2018misplaced bigotry\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modern civilization, with all its personal rights and\nvalues, have not not been succesfu in making the man give up his innate need to\ndominate his kind. Religious domination is \nmore deadlier than political domination because religions promise\ndividends for devotion and commitment only in the after life. As a result some\nreligions have become \u2018death cults\u2019for its followers because they believe that\nany means, including indiscriminate violence, could be justified  to achieve their after life goals. In such a\ncontext it is na\u00efve to believe that the interests of different religious and\ntribal groups present in Sri Lanka, with their international agenda\u2019s, ceases\nat the point of national interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the democratic setup  politicians are \u2018vote greedy\u2019 and Ranil\nWickremesinghe is a spychphant who believes in the votes of the minoritie to a\npoint of neglecting the interest of the majority. Former Chairman of the UNP\nMr. Panditharatne resigned from his post in 1999 citing the current\nleadership\u2019s minority inclination as the reason for UNP\u2019s failure to win the\nPresidential elections in 1999.  The\npreeption of the UNP leadership has not not changed since then and in such a\ncontext it is difficult to expect Ranil to keep the minorities in their places\nand then to lose their votes. Especially with the target of achieving his life\nlong  ambition to be the President of Sri\nLanka at the forthcoming election in 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Catholic and Christian vote base in Sri Lanka has\ntraditionally been the pocket borough of the UNP. They probably considered the\nless suave SLFP to be too nationalistic. \nThe lesson now however, is that a leader who is more internationalised\nto a point iof disregarding the national interest can not be expeted to protect\na minority when he is unable to protect the nation as a whole. Thus with Ranil\nWickremesinghe at the top, the future for a vulnerable nation like Sri Lanka,\nwith apologist of extremism bound to reign supreme, appears bleak.           <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Palitha Senanayake The position Sri Lanka confronts today as a nation clearly is a case of electing political apologist of terrorism to power before the nation could recover completely from 30 years of terrorism. Ranil Wickremesinghe, like his current political mentor Chandrika Kumaranatunge, were such avowed supporters of the theory of \u2018appeasing terrorist to win […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87756","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=87756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}