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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Back to 500BC.
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Sunday, June 4, 2017
The Charade Continues
We continue to be assailed with what can charitably called “bilge” from
the so-called mainline media of this country. If one is to believe what
our newspapers have to say, all’s well in the kingdom in which our own
particular brand of Buddhism is ensconced.
A
Dickensian, “Bah. Humbug!” is truly the most appropriate response to
this given the fact that it’s so divorced from the reality that the
average Sri Lankan experiences.
Among
the issues that one cannot but view with cynicism, is the refusal to
prosecute any of those from the last marauding horde against whom there
is more than a prima facie case. Most see this issue as being at the top
of that particular list.
In
a previous column I made reference to one business magnate whose reach
now covers even the manufacture of automobiles with the overt blessing
of Ranil Wickremesinghe who laid the foundation stone for his new
plant. If this is, in fact, the biggest display of political naivety in
recent Sri Lankan history, the man guilty of such an oversight has no
business deciding the fate of every Sri Lankan man, woman or child,
either alone or in tandem with Maithripala Sirisena.
I
have had personal experience and observed the behaviour of at least one
of these leading lights of the current regime which I described at the
time as “genuflectory” insofar as the Rajapaksas and their acolytes were
concerned. I have been given no reason to revise that opinion
since. Some things never change even if the locations and backdrops
do. Once a sycophant, always a sycophant, particularly when there is
financial benefit to be reaped irrespective of who has their hands on
the levers of power.
However,
the great unwashed of this country have neither the capacity nor the
desire to be subjected to financial chaos which we and our descendants
will be paying for through the generations.
I
remember asking an old friend with significant media connections how
Ranil Wickremesinghe, then only the leader of the UNP and not co-leader
of the government, could overlook the behaviour of some of those closest
to him who were materially assisting the MR1 (Mahinda Rajapaksa) lot
while still, supposedly and officially, opposing them and was told that
Mr. Wickremesinghe “had no problem” with such behaviour. I found that
hard to swallow then and find it harder to digest today. How on earth
can anyone identifying officially with a broad coalition of Sri Lankans
trying to restore democratic practice in our country countenance the
very opposite? This is simply hunting with the hounds of that time and
running with the hares of today.
I didn’t then appreciate what
this kind of permissive philosophy ultimately meant but an increasing
number of citizens of this land are being afforded the opportunity, “up
close and personal,” if you will, of seeing that philosophy in action
and what it means to everyone who calls this land home sans the benefit
of the not-inconsiderable financial rewards for such unprincipled,
unethical and undemocratic practices.
I
will make no apology for the fact that I am back to my old message:
“there can be no viable democratic governance without an adherence to a
code of principles, ethics and morality that leaves no space for
self-seeking equivocation.”
Let’s see this government prosecute even ONE of
the last gang of bandits who robbed us in every known manner, and then
some. Even if our courts are full up to the gunwales with wrong-doers
of various varieties, there is no excuse for not launching even a SINGLE prosecution against a SINGLE of the major miscreants.
However,
perhaps the response of one of Ranil’s leading lights to the question
of why no action whatsoever has been taken against, probably, the
biggest thug to lend his muscle in support of the MR1 gang in the hill
country provides appropriate illumination. He told me, with a straight
face no less, that this individual had “done no wrong!”
Apart
from anything else, one thing the emergence of the MR2
(Maithripala-Ranil) coalition had done was give some in their ranks the
capacity to spout this kind of blatant nonsense with a straight face.
But
then this is the same government that contains, in its topmost echelon a
Minister with responsibility for Buddhism and Justice whose defence of
Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s marine enterprise spoke for itself and who did not
express anything resembling condemnation while a mosque in probably the
largest single Muslim community in Sri Lanka was desecrated and
worshippers murdered there. Given that track record, one might as well
have been whistling “Dixie” as expecting some concrete action from him
with regard to the very recent violence against mosques and those who
worship in them in the North Western Province.