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CHILKOTT AND GOOD GOVERNANCE
Gamini Gunawardane
Rtd. Snr. Dy. Inspector General of Police
In the script of the speech Mr. Dominic Chilkott delivered at the Dudley
Senanayake Memorial Lecture published on 'The Island' of 12th and 13th
Dec. he has stated that:
"….. International affairs are no longer exclusively
about what happens between states. When domestic issues have an international
dimension, those domestic affairs can be important for relations between
states. So diplomacy is increasingly concerned with what happens within
states as well as what happens between them".
This statement reminded me of the well known, rich Sinhala saying:
"Dee kirata balalluth sakki" Unfortunately,
I do not know enough of Mr. Chilkott's Queen's language to communicate
the full import of this saying, to drive its point home to him. But
suffice it to say that the Sinhala folk lore is replete with stories,
fables and pithy sayings to identify the attempts by the wicked and
influential people who seek to play sucker out of the unsuspecting weak
and the powerless. Our language is so full of it because the people
in this country had been & are being played for suckers from a long
time.
It really could be traced back to the Portugese times in this country
when they fomented trouble within the Kotte Kingdom in the 16th Century
and moved in there to teach the weak Don Juan Dharmapala the principles
of Good Governance and eventually, Don Juan was rendered so inept that
the teachers were left with no alternative than to take over the governance
to themselves, much against their wishes! Luckily for us Mr. Chilkott,
our Don Juan of the present time is no longer at the helm at the Court
in Kotte. People of this country in their wisdom, have seen to it. So
you have been spared the inconvenience that the Portugese had to suffer.
I mean, spared of the 'White Man's Burden' that your Rudyard Kipling
spoke of.
History repeated in 1815, when your forefathers, led by another envoy,
named John Doyly, engineered by Fredrick North fomented trouble in the
last Sinhala Kingdom of Kandy. When the king as a result became a cruel
monarch, they turned up in Kandy, to teach him principles of Good Governance.
Your forefathers then proceeded to demonstrate to us how Good Governance
is conducted, having borrowed the Government of the Kandyan Kingdom
on a solemnly signed Treaty called the Kandyan Convention. And they
reneged it in no time. And here we are, still addressing you in your
Queen's language which is alien to us, still scared that we may mess
up the grammar. This indeed is, as you say: "So diplomacy
is increasingly concerned with what happens within states as what happens
between them."
You speak of the problems in Afghanistan. You say, "90%
of the heroin on the streets of Britain comes from Afghanistan: so the
political stability and economic prosperity of Afghanistan - resting
on crops other than the poppy - will have a profound effect on British
towns and cities." So Mr. Chilcott, this your new diplomacy
seeks to extend that far, as to determine what people of other sovereign
countries should grow or not grow in their private gardens too?
Let me remind you. In the Eighteenth century, your forefathers put
the entire Chinese Nation to sleep for a century, by deliberately making
them consume opium. Do you recall the appeal made by the Emperor of
China to your Queen against this dastardly act? Did Chinese diplomacy
have the same impact that you seek to have today with Afghanistan? Doping
of China by Britain does not stir the British conscience, but interference
in Afghanistan's internal affairs become warranted when its doping hits
the towns of Britain. Isn't it some skewed logic?
The real logic as we understand is this. According to the religion
that you believe, it is retribution. According to ours it is simply,
bad kamma (action). We are taught that one's bad kamma
follows one inevitably like the wheel of a bullock cart that follows
the bullock. No diplomacy could help you to get away from it. The wheel
has now turned. It is now your turn to experience what your forefathers
did to the people of China. Hence here, even this new diabolical 'diplomacy'
cannot help you.
China, like your Sleeping Beauty, slept over a century, drugged with
the opium your forefathers administered on her people, until woken by
Mao Tse Dong in the 20th century. She is now on her feet like a giant.
And you are now running for cover. But I do not think you and the rest
of your ilk have good reason to fear that you will be conquered. Because,
as seen in their long history, they are not bent on expansionism like
your people were, probably because they are already big enough and more.
Besides, being basically Buddhist, the Chinese will be more interested
in conquering themselves as the Buddha taught them, rather than waste
their energies & resources on the useless pursuit of conquering
others.
You say that: "internal events in Sri Lanka affect Britain.
The conflicts here make waves in the UK" etc…... The
same thing happens at this end when Britain allowed the likes of Anton
Balasingham, a self confessed Terrorist, to engage in promotion of Terrorism
against a lawfully elected government which is a member of your famous
Commonwealth. You allow public demonstrations to be held in your capital
city by terrorist sympathizers who seek to dismember this Country. Some
Members of your Parliament gang up against Sri Lanka government and
make speeches in Parliament trying to discourage and to create adverse
world opinion against Sri Lanka's lone battle to put down the scourge
of worst terrorist movement that ever hit the World. Do not these things
have an adverse effect on the effort by this country to usher peace
in Sri Lanka? In this effort does Sri Lanka have any voice over the
Good Governance practices of Britain in regard to these matters? So
how does your new Diplomacy theory operate here?
You also speak about Pakistan. As long as Gen. Musaraff played 'errand
boy' 'Kade yanawa' for the West, chasing Al-Q'aeda and other
Muslim extremists, his style of governance caused no problems for you.
Once he had done the needful, and when the tide turned on him as a back
lash, resulting from his style of governance, your great Commonwealth
decides unilaterally that "enough is enough" and, foists your
decision on your acolyte countries to carry through a motion of suspension
from the Commonwealth, against that country. This is your Diplomcy and
the essence of the theory of Good Governance.
Another thing. What the US and your country do in Iraq and also what
the US is moving to do in Iran is sending oil prices sky rocketing,
resulting in destabilizing the economies in many countries in world,
including tiny Sri Lanka who is almost squeezed out under such pressure.
How do you think the adversely affected rest of the International Community
could impact the two countries, under you theory of Diplomacy and Good
Governance practices obtaining in your two countries?
We in Sri Lanka do not need to be taught principles of Good Governance
by a Guru with such dubious credentials. People of this country refer
to this kind of exercise as Vedi Bana, meaning "A hunters exhortation
on the value of non-violence" The other point is that, we have
been taught a set of Ten Principles of Good Governance by the Buddha,
long before the people of your country were civilized. That was over
2200 years ago. And most of our long line of kings have been practicing
them until our misadventure with the Portugese since 1505. These 10
principles are called Dasa Raja-dharma. If interested, you could find
details of it on the Buddhist websites in the Internet.
We in Sri Lanka know very well that you and the likes of Alan Rock,
Gareth Evens, Louis Arbor, John Holms, the UNESCO boss and others are
singing the same song in different tunes. We have been listening to
all of you silently only as gesture of courtesy. All that we could tell
you in reply in modern Sri Lankan parlance, is that: "Api E
gona vikunala bohoma kal" In your language it could be idiomatically
translated as follows: "It is long since we had sold that donkey".
Another interesting aspect of your new principle of Diplomacy and Good
Governance is that it seems to be flowing in one direction; mainly or
only in your direction. A random example is that, when your Government
decided to insult the people of this country by compulsorily requiring
them to provide their finger prints to you when they applied for a Visa
to go to your blessed country, which had been acquiesced to, by our
present day Don Juan of Sri Lanka. This was avowedly to prevent all
kind offenders entering your country from this end. But there was no
reciprocity on your part to allow finger printing citizens of your country
seeking to enter our country, helping us to prevent your pedophiles,
drug agents and HIV carriers and their promoters from coming here.
And your bare-bodied Barmy Army is all over here in their thousands
to watch how our 'little men' drub your hapless cricketers, breaking
all records. Some of these had the gumption to rush to the middle of
the playing arena and display their genitals to us, as if to prove a
point! People here, whatever other faults they may have, still have
preserved their sense of modesty and erudition. Your people do not seem
to have that kind of decorum to behave properly at least when they are
guests of another country. What kind of Diplomacy is that Mr. Chilkott?
What indeed were they saying diplomatically?
You know Mr. Chilkott, a French envoy named Spiel Bergen once misbehaved
in this country in the 17th Century, when king Wimaladharmasuriya the
1st held Court in his honour, in Trincomalee which incidentally, the
LTTE now claim to be their 'traditional homeland'. On that occasion,
the king just issued a curt order to his men. "me balla benda
damaw" "Tie this dog". It was promptly done. And,
the 'envoy' was dispatched back to his ship, pronto.
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