Dimu Goes On The Counterattack

By Kumar David -January 29, 2014

Prof Kumar David

Maybe he is old enough and senior enough and fed up with whelps snapping at his ankles; maybe this is the tip of an iceberg of brewing internal convulsions, but Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne has hit out at politicised and corrupt monks. In characteristic parlance he has voiced the need to disrobe them and send them down river in their underpants. He feels secure; no one dare fell this old mara tree he reckons. He may or may not be right, but he is creating one hell of a bonfire with gay abandon; the old fellow may even be enjoying himself.

Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne

Maybe he is old enough and senior enough and fed up with whelps snapping at his ankles; maybe this is the tip of an iceberg of brewing internal convulsions, but Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne has hit out at politicised and corrupt monks. In characteristic parlance he has voiced the need to disrobe them and send them down river in their underpants. He feels secure; no one dare fell this old mara tree he reckons. He may or may not be right, but he is creating one hell of a bonfire with gay abandon; the old fellow may even be enjoying himself.

The JHU and its boss, Omalpe Sobitha in the meantime have sent a Rs 1 billion letter of demand to the PM for insulting the monk in public and causing irreparable damage to his reputation. Dimu (Disanayake Mudiyanselage) has called some monks cheevaradhariyas, an expression similar to ‘men of the cloth’ commonly used in English for robed Christian clergy. I don’t see what’s so offensive. Politicos in national dress are referred to as redhas, does anyone take offence, does anyone take offence? I doubt it.

The tussle has gone beyond the original fracas when one of the PM’s secretaries issued a letter asking the Customs Department to release a container which turned out to be stuffed with contraband heroin. I think it highly unlikely that Dimu is a dope smuggler, and when he says he is clueless what the stuff even looks like, the old fogey is being truthful. But he is a lousy judge in hiring staff or in the choice of people to entertain. So it is fair to call for his resignation as a necessary formality to facilitate impartial investigation. (But whoever conforms to right political etiquette in Lanka any longer?) In any case this has all become a farcical sideshow; whatever the facts of the Customs case, centre stage is now hogged by a crisis in the governing alliance.

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