Examining The Entrails!

By Emil van der Poorten –August 30, 2015

Emil van der Poorten

The political dust will have settled on the recent general election by the time you see this and that is, in one way, quite a relief. The fact that E-Day didn’t feature the murder and mayhem that has, for far too long, been taken as a concomitant of the primary democratic process in this country seemed a matter for surprise to many whom I engaged in conversation on the subject.

I am old enough to remember when it wasn’t so and I am sure that several of the younger generation who are quite easily (and understandably!) bored by my tales of yore, believe that these are but the recollection of a failing memory to which a certain element of glamour has accrued with the passage of time!

But, believe you me, Philip Gunawardena’s use of members of his dock workers’ union to combat the Island Reconvicted Criminals (IRCs) that came out of the Senanayakes’ and Kotelawalas’ plumbago (graphite) mines simply wasn’t in the same league as the unleashing of underworld killers-for-hire by those who depended on the drug barons (and I don’t use the term lightly) of what is constantly referred to as the last bastion of Theravada Buddhism by such as the Bodu Bala Sena (or has that entity disappeared since the political emasculation of Gotabaya Rajapaksa?)

The next obvious question is: what do we do to consolidate and make permanent what we experienced on the 17th of August and advance that newly-re-discovered culture, seeking a long-term solution if not a permanent one to the need for peace and harmony among the ethnic and religious groups in Sri Lanka and the removal of blatant corruption from day to–day governance?Read More