NYT Statements, Hitler blessing and the Tiger Curse

Rajan Philips-July 7, 2018, 8:03 pm 

There have been quite a few political statements in the wake of the controversial New York Times article on the Hambantota harbour, and in the wake of the even more controversial speech in Jaffna about LTTE revival by a UNP Tamil State Minister. Both Mahinda Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe have made public statements on the NYT article, the former through the media, and the latter in a Special Statement to parliament. If Mahinda Rajapaksa’s statement was predictably defensive and self-serving, the Prime Minister’s Special Statement was especially bewildering. The PM may have intended to appear statesmanlike in parliament but in the cruel world of public perception, he may have done more harm than good to his chances in the next presidential election. He was mystifying at best and utterly stupid at worst, in choosing to highlight his government’s good relations with China and letting the Rajapaksas off the hook for their amateurish deal making on mega infrastructure boondoggles.

He even invited Mahinda Rajapaksa to make a statement in parliament on those aspects of the NYT article that he (PM) was not responding to. This is neither good governance nor bad governance, but abdication of basic government responsibility. The Prime Minister should have addressed everything in the NYT article, for no country operates two governments - a past government and a present government, at the same time – with the former accounting for its actions and the latter minding only its current business. Is this the new version of Mr. Wickremesinghe’s earlier contraption: the national unity government? It gets even ‘curiouser’ in the wonderland of Sri Lankan politics.

As it turns out, the ‘Wickremesinghe government’ (President Sirisena is now even less than a non-playing Captain), on whose official investigation files the NYT journalist based her more damning revelations, is now instructing the CID to start a new investigation based on the NYT article. Talk about circularity of pursuits! It is worse than circularity, for it is about the Prime Minister’s timidity to take on the Rajapaksas on specific allegations. You don’t need much courage to lead a chorus - "kowdha hora? Mahinda, hora" - in parliament, as the PM once did. Something more serious, sterner and smarter was needed in the wake of the NYT article. The PM has once again betrayed his lack of the killer instinct for political success!

The poor man is already embattled on another front, fending off the ‘tiger curse’ inadvertently flung at him from Jaffna by Vijayakala Maheswaran, the UNP’s co-opted Tamil MP and the State Minister for Child Affairs. Poor Mrs. Mahewasran, she was apparently distressed by the recent rape-murders in Jaffna, of a six-year old child and a sixty-year old woman, and while addressing a political meeting she attributed these crimes to the absence of the LTTE and expressed a wish for its return to restore order in Jaffna. Amidst a howl of protests and highfalutin calls for constitutional lynching, the Prime Minister got the beleaguered lady to resign her ministerial post while investigations continue to determine her future status in the UNP, if not parliament itself.

In the end, the sacking of Maheswaran is not going to win votes for Ranil Wickremesinghe in the south, just as Maheswaran’s musings on the LTTE may not have won the UNP votes in the north. The Prime Minister and the UNP are in double jeopardy – by continuing to let the Rajapaksas off their corruption hooks in the South and in having to fend off untimely symbolic tiger eruptions in the North. The current controversies, the rush of political statements and counter-statements are clear signs of the political class gearing up to doing the only thing that it is good at doing: election campaigning. What they are also showing is that the needle in the political meter has moved back to where it was in 2014-15. But with the difference - the Rajapaksas are continuously improving their position to avenge their last defeat and the common opposition forces are in total disarray, with their two principal leaders, who jointly benefited in 2014-15, now severally digging their separate political graves.

The question of corruption looms larger than last time but there is no one among the major contenders who can at least pretend to have clean hands for political credibility. Three years ago, there were expectations that the new government will make swift headways in apprehending and arraigning those who abused state power for personal and family benefits and those who deployed state forces to kidnap and/or kill innocent and even apolitical citizens. Those expectations are now dashed to the ground as past culprits are riding back to recapture old citadels. The system of law and order has failed the innocent victims and their distraught families. Police are hamstrung by their political masters, the prosecutors are selective, and Supreme Court judges are recusing themselves from cases involving the Rajapaksas.

The Diyasena Myth

Four years ago, authoritarianism was abominable while good governance and national reconciliation were fashionable. Now the tables have turned. Authoritarianism is becoming fashionable in many social strata in south; good governance has become a bad joke, especially among media maharajas who have developed a Faustian likeness for the Rajapaksas just to spite Ranil Wickremesinghe; and national reconciliation is not even a ‘reasonable use’ for anybody. The Anunayaka’s Hitler blessing, Mrs. Maheswaran’s tiger musings, and the bellicose reactions they provoke are disturbing signs of the times and of creeping trends.

What is even more disturbing is that many of the commentaries on these matters, at least in English, and emanating from those who might fancy themselves to be Sri Lankan thought leaders and most of them, going by name recognition, well into their sixties and beyond, do not show any sadness over these developments or say anything wise or thoughtful to calm tempers and defuse differences. Instead, they make matters worse by either defending the indefensible, or by adding fuel to the fire, quite irresponsibly and in spite of their age.

The contrasting reactions to the Anunayaka’s Hitler blessing and Mrs. Maheswaran’s tiger craving are quite revealing. In many circles, the invoking of Hitler is countenanced because of the desire to have an authoritarian, strong-man ruler in Sri Lanka. On the other hand, even those who are squeamish about the reference to Hitler are not willing to condemn it because of their fascination for Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and their desire to see him become Sri Lanka’s next President – to make ‘Sri Lanka great again!’

So, they try to justify the Anunanyaka’s ‘Be a Hitler’ admonition by harping on the nuances of the Sinhala language and its organic meanings. Those who have come to know about Hitler only in English are outsiders and will never be able to understand these deeper meanings – so go the political arguments. Mercifully, no one seems to have invoked any Aryan connection between Hitler and the Rajapaksas. That would be a shame. And more so, if it were to come now, almost 40 years after Sri Lankan Social Scientists led by Kumari Jayawardena, Leslie Gunawardena and K. Kailasapathy put the old fiction of the Aryan-Dravidian dichotomy to academic death.

Then there is the invocation of Prince Diyasena, who will mythically arrive in times of crisis to rescue the nation. What now is the great crisis in Sri Lanka that requires the arrival of a mythical prince as the saviour? Could it not be that VijayakaIa Maheswaran too was figuratively expressing her hopeless hope for the arrival of a mythical LTTE in a time of social crisis, rather than deliberately calling for the revival of a ruthless organization that was equally ruthlessly decimated a decade ago? In any event, what is the subliminal connection between Adolf Hitler and Prince Diyasena? If Gotabahaya Rajapaksa is the new avatar of Diyasena, hopefully not of Hitler, so be it.

But isn’t it a little strange that a younger Rajapaksa is needed as a saviour barely three years after an older brother and the whole family were sent home by the voters for their misdoings in government. The saviour then was not the mythical Diyasena but common candidate Sirisena. What has changed since? Either nothing has changed, or everything has changed. Of course, the voters have the sovereign right to forget everything and learn nothing. And how can we blame the voters when they have a Prime Minister who will not even remind them today of the allegations he made against the Rajapaksas in 2014-2015?

In the political bidding game, RanilWickremesinghe can never outbid the Rajapaksas in nationalist currency. The state of the economy is a neutral factor because both the present government and its predecessor have done very little to systematically uplift the economy. The only area where the PM can hurt the Rajapaksas is their record on corruption, government irregularities, state crimes and accountability. The PM has enough ammunition left to hurt the Rajapaksas even after a good deal of his weapons against corruption have been destroyed in the Central Bank bond fiasco. But he chose not to use any of them in his Special Statement last Thursday.

The PM must have all the facts on all the matters raised in the NYT article and now canvassed by Mahinda Rajapaksa. And he has the responsibility to exercise his authority and let the public know of all that is there to know. His failure to do so has given Mahinda Rajapaksa the freedom to fill the massive void with his self-serving assertions. Others, like yours truly, can pick holes in MR’s statement, and it is not difficult to do so, but our contentions will not have the same effect as a rebuttal of MR by the PM. The country deserves a full explanation. Will the Hon. Prime Minister make another Special Statement?