A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Standing Up For The Gay Politician: Mangala Samaraweera On Right Track?
By Chamindra Weerawardhana –May 8, 2017
At a parliamentary debate on 5 May 2017, a less than pleasant verbal exchange occurred between Mangala Samaraweera MP, the Minister of External Affairs, and the opposition benches, especially with Wimal Weerawansa MP
of the Jathika Nidhahas Peramuna. The former was accusing the latter of
corrupt practices during the Rajapaksa administration, providing
evidence of specific cases. One such case included financial malpractice
(and diplomatic misdemeanour) in relation to a foreign trip on state
business. The External Affairs Minister was clearly seeking to make a
political statement, and so was Weerawansa, who found an opportunity to
slam Samaraweera. At one point, a statement came from the opposition
benches that the incumbent government was composed of ‘ponnayas’,
a highly pejorative term that implies a discriminatory and downgrading
attitude towards non-cisnormativity. This term is also widely used as a
homophobic slur, and this was the intention of the MP who used this word
to refer to the yahapalana government.
An LGBTQI-friendly government? OR NOT?
A number of non-heterosexual politicians occupy high-profile posts in the yahapalana government. However, none of them have ever risen in the chamber to stand openly for Sri Lanka’s LGBTQI community. When President Sirisena openly affirmed “Samalingika yojanava visikalé mamai”
earlier this year, each and every one of the cis gay MPs and ministers
[and those in ‘even higher’ office] maintained pin-drop silence. At
election campaigns and in their day-to-day lives, the majority of cis
gay MPs present themselves as ‘heterosexual’ – being legally married to
cis women. In sum, present-day Sri Lanka does have a segment of the
political class that is non-heteronormative, but it is composed of
individuals who are cautious to NEVER affirm their non-heteronormativity
in public.
Samaraweera as the exception?
In this context, Samaraweera has been the exception. A cabinet minister
since 1994 (with a number of interruptions in between spent in the
opposition benches), Samaraweera has never sought to hide his sexual
orientation behind a cis-heteronormative marriage. In 2016, under his
purview, Sri Lanka made the exemplary decision of voting in favour of
the appointment of the UN’s Sexual Orientation and Gender
Identity/Expression (SOGIE) Special Expert. Sri Lanka was also the only
country in the South Asian region to vote in favour of the Special
Expert. This decision is extremely important, as Sri Lanka’s foreign
policy apparatus has a long-standing habit of brushing SOGIE issues
directly under the carpet. They did so with skill, for example, at the
2013 Commonwealth summit, making sure that no SOGIE issues were openly
raised during the summit proceedings held in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka’s endorsement of the SOGIE Expert is therefore a crucial and
highly significant foreign policy decision, which ought to preferably
mark the development of a stronger emphasis on fundamental rights, with a
strong SOGIE component. That the Special Expert who was eventually
appointed, Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn, is a distinguished academic and a
citizen of the Kingdom of Thailand, a country with which Sri Lanka
shares centuries-long ties of kinship, shared sociocultural, artistic
and religious traditions, is also of tremendous significance.
Problematic elements of Yahapalana Foreign policy?
The exemplary nature of the SOGIE vote, however, does not transpire in many other foreign policy decisions of the yahapalana government.
As this writer has noted in previous writing to the press, foreign
policy under Ranil Wickremesinghe and Mangala Samaraweera leaves a great
deal to be desired. Some aspects of foreign policy management involve a
bleak understanding of strategic priorities, and a lack of thinking
‘beyond the box’ of conventional foreign policy trends of a bygone era.
The effort to produce the polar opposite of the previous administration
is yet another pitfall. The continuity of an external affairs
budget-burden to sustain a ‘white-elephant-foreign-affairs-structure’
that Sri Lanka simply cannot afford is an issue that is largely
overlooked. Deeper problems remain when negotiating the fine balance
between national sovereignty, regional cooperation and global
priorities, in one of the least supra-nationally integrated regions of
the world.
However, and despite all these issues and more, a mere cursory glance
suffices to admit the fact that the present foreign policy approach is
much more disciplined and dignified than what preceded, especially
during President Rajapaksa’s second mandate (2010-08/01/2015). In this
sense, the Samaraweera-Wickremesinghe duo deserve a word of commendation
in carrying themselves with a decedent level of decorum on the world
stage.
Samaraweera’s response in Parliament, 5 May 2017
Returning to the above-mentioned parliamentary debate, Samaraweera
marked himself out in an exemplary manner when the word ‘ponnaya’ was
thrown at him. He immediately responded that he is happier to be a
‘ponnaya’ than a thug, thief or a murderer. The parliament of Sri Lanka,
with a highly disproportionate number of cis-hetero-normative men, is
an extremely homophobic and transphobic, and indeed heavily [cis and
trans]misogynist place. In a context of that nature, making a statement
that ‘assumes’ one’s non-hetero-normativity from the frontbench is a
brave and laudable feet indeed.
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