On the future of Sinhala literature ‘for no reason at all’

It is fashionable among certain circles to lament now and then the death of this and that.  We’ve had, for example, the nation sick, dying, dead and duly buried.  Culture is a frequently interred entity too, one observes.  Then there are political parties and ideologies.  They commit suicide, are murdered or die natural deaths and their mortal remains duly disposed.  Literature and art are also subject to this periodical death-pronouncement followed naturally by obituaries, memorial services, appreciations and pleas for resurrection. 

I’ve heard people say that Sinhala literature is dead or, if not, then dying a slow, painful death.  Looking around, though, I realized that this is far from the truth. It reminded me of the Payasi Rajagna Sutra. 

The discourse takes the form of a conversation between the Venerable Kumara Kashyapa Thero and a merchant.  The merchant, endowed with a penchant for debate and a fascination with splitting hairs over nothing, interrogates the bikkhu, demanding definition of things that resist definition, are there to be discovered and not necessarily told and certainly not internalized by memorization.  The Venerable Thero responded by way of anecdote. 

‘There was once a fire-worshipping Jatila.  He had an assistant to help him with his rituals. One day, needing to make a visit outside the village, the Jatila had instructed his assistant to take care of things and make sure that the fire does not go out. The apprentice was negligent. The fire died.  He had then begun looking for the fire, wondering where it had gone. He looked in the ash and split the firewood into tiny splinters but he did not find it.  The Jatila returns, admonishes his assistant and rekindles the fire.  Now, just as fire is not obtained by those who lack the wisdom and analytical skills necessary to discover the fate of the flame that died and to kindle flame, the truth will elude those who look for it sans wisdom and other necessary skills.’

We are looking in the wrong places, I believe.  We are now in the 21^st Century. The times are being embraced by a generation that does not have the hang ups of those who came before; they grapple with different realities and play with different metaphors, but are no less or not more creative than their predecessors.  They are a confident generation, unburdened of the ideological weights that both empowered and bogged down the writers of a different age. 

I think we are in exciting literary times as far as Sinhala literature is concerned.  I am aware that there is a lot of trash being published and even rewarded. The best literature probably remains unpublished, but among that which does come out, amidst the trash, there are gems that constitute reasons for hope. 

I want to write about something else though. A new phenomenon. Blogs.  Thanks to technology and a generation which, thanks to a healthy absence of inhibition, seems to be far more adept at adopting the new, the development of fonts and transliteration-software that side steps the need to learn and master Sinhala keyboards, increasing and cheaper access to computers and the internet courtesy cyber cafes and the nena-sal (Outlets of Wisdom), we are seeing an explosion of Sinhala bloggers.  Like in the formal ‘publication’ scene, we get the entire gamut of quality, from trash to exceptional, with the key difference that the character of the genre is freeing and poverty-circumventing.

For several years I’ve browsed websites where Sri Lankans blog in English.  Colourful pages. Nice layouts.  Nice words.  Grammatical.  Words. Thousands of words. Paragraphs cut into lines to obtain poetic appearance and believed by author and reader to actually constitute ‘poetry’.  Nice thought pieces.  Again we have roughly the same ratio of trash to brilliance. The ‘Sinhala blogger’ is a new entrant, certainly, but has already outstripped his/her Sri Lankan English counterpart in terms of volume and quality. 

What we are seeing is an uninhibited, tech-savvy, creative creature who doesn’t have to worry about money and indeed seems hardly interested whether or not his/her work gets into book form, clearly willing to entertain the idea that books are on their way out (I am old fashioned and I hope this will not happen). 

I want to write therefore about a particular blogger by the name ‘Sandun’.  I believe he works in advertising.  I emailed him once and asked if we could meet and he said nonchalantly ‘sure’.  Here’s the website: www.nikamatawage.blogspot.com. 

The name itself is disarming and therefore potent. It can be translated as ‘for no reason at all’.  The poetry is like that; tiny thoughts, neatly captured in word-combination, laid out tastefully using images culled from the internet (with or without permission, I really don’t know).  Let’s check some lines.

From the day I met you

until now
I go about looking
for those vile creature
who write poetry and sing
about love
divested of lust
and pure like moonlight:
to seek them out
and shoot them.

The poet signs off not as ‘Sandun’ but with a tag.  In this case he ends thus: ‘Sandun, who is not interested in wetting just the lips with the first kiss’.  The reference in the signature line is to the song by Sashika Nisansala, written by Ratna Sri Wijesinha, ‘thol pethi vitharak palamu haaduwen themanna…’, wrongly interpreted as a physical act of kissing (according to Wijesinghe), when in fact it is about the flowering of the Sepalika Flower. The poem itself refers to Nanda Malini’s song ‘Premaya nam…’ (The definition of love), written by Sunil Ariyaratne.  The title of the poem, by the way, is ‘numba nisa mama’ (I, consequent of you).

Sandun’s poetry is witty, thought-provoking and lyrical.  There is economy of words, easy engagement with things familiar, a healthy cynicism of meta narratives of being and becoming, utterly fresh and refreshing.  

There is a poem titled ‘bandune loo madira’ (The wine poured into the glass).

The wine that was poured

took the shape of the glass
and yet
there was no difference in taste.
And though I
when entering her
did not take her shape
a singular taste-difference
did I perceive.
 
The signature is part of the poem: ‘I am Sandul who has abandoned the act of pouring from bottle to glass’.

Sandun’s poetry is intensely personal and for this reason comes off as innocent and honest and moreover has the ability to make the reader extrapolate to things social as well.  He ‘frames’ women, in a poem titled ‘gehenun raamu kireema’.

Since I cannot

re-mould you
in the image of my preference,
I let you be
as you are;
I just photographed you
and framed you
in the dimensions
of my preference.

‘I am Sandun, discoverer of a new way to frame women’.

Some of the poems obtain vigor from image but are strong enough to stand on their own word-legs. There’s one titled ‘krodhaye skandaya’ (the mass of hatred).

The image is split.  On the left there is a drop of water clinging to the bottom of a dark object and on the right a drop that is falling. Two verses. Split as right and left. 

At that moment

when the mass
of your hatred
exceeded a particular value…
gravity
became stronger
than the strength
of our togetherness.

The signature: ‘I am Sandun, looking for a plot of land on the moon to settle down’.  This, to me, is not footnote but part of main-text, for the ‘gravitylessness’ speaks to so many things including the matter of loving and being in a relationship.

I will stop with the one titled ‘binduwen binduwa’ (Drop by drop), decorated with the image of a saline drip.

I was indisposed

extremely ill.

Drop

by drop
by drop
by drop
you entered
my heart.

Drop

by drop
by drop
by drop
my heart
she left.

Signature: I am Sandun, totally cured now.

There are nikamata wage lines, written ‘for no reason at all’. The ease, the healthy frivolousness, the flippancy, ability to laugh at self, the skill with words, the ability to render in simple ways and with minimal fuss things that are familiar and yet so complex and deep, makes the blog an illuminator and teacher, source of entertainment and sobriety-inducer. All at the same time. 

Sandun is a single blogger and he does not make a genre, this is true.  I won’t put him at the forefront of this new landscape into which Sinhala literature has ventured because I’ve not checked out all the blogs and am ignorant of all bloggers.  I’ve seen enough though to be excited and even cynical of those who lament the death or dying of Sinhala literature. 

There is no death, no dying; there is life and living and the Ven. Kumara Kashyapa Thero might very well have said that those who think otherwise are looking in the nunuwana-mode, i.e. without circumspection.  Either way, the Sanduns of these times will continue to key their lines for no reason at all, I am sure. 

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Amidst the carnage there will always be those who keep life alive

The late eighties was a terrible time.  It was a time of death, of monumental loss, tragedy beyond description and helplessness that was not considered newsworthy by the bleeding heart champions of human rights. 

I’ve often wondered how we recovered.  I suppose we never recovered fully, for as my friend and batch-mate, Werawellalage Premasiri pointed out recently the roots of today’s human resource crisis are tagged ‘Bheeshanaya (Terror) 1987-89’.  Still, life went on and we came to a place where we could say in one voice, ‘terrorism is a thing of the past’.  Death and loss are lamented collectively as well as personally.  We moved on as a collective but there’s no way to say that a forgetting or dealt-and-done-with skin has grown over the scars of that tragedy.  I tell myself that a couple of millennia worth of engagement with the Buddhist notion of equanimity and a corresponding understanding of the doctrine of impermanence might have helped.  Here’s a story that might explain in a more tangible kind of manner.

It is set in the late eighties and was recounted by a person attached to the Ambalanthota office of the Irrigation Department.  His superior at the time was one Mr. Paranamanne, now no more.  They both enjoyed reading, especially about ancient irrigation works.  R.L. Brohier’s book on the subject fascinated them.   They were wont to go trekking deep into the jungles of the area in search of abandoned irrigation works mentioned in the book.  This was a time when NORAD had helped developed a cascade of village tanks in the Mala-ela river basin (‘mala’ meaning dead and ‘ela’ canal).  They were not getting filled during the rainy season due to insufficient runoff, he explains. 

Anyway, the two explorers had in one of their excursions come across the now famous Mau Ara Dam, then known as Gal Amuna.

Let him take over the narrative: ‘The Mau Ara was untapped even for the Uda walawe Scheme as it fed the Walawe River in the form of seasonal flash floods; (it was therefore) an unreliable water source. Initial investigations showed that damming this and feeding the Malal Ara was a possibility. This new dam was proposed as a water source for the wildlife in the Udawalawe Park and a trans-basin canal would take the water to Malala basin.  As usual the Irrigation Department was not (in favour of) the project (given the) many stakeholders to deal with.’

The two, who were not just adventurers but dedicated public servants who took their jobs very seriously, had then approached the then Director of the Agrarian Research and Training Institute (‘ARTI’ but now HARTI after adding Hector Kobbekaduwa’s name).  The director had visited the area along with the brilliant but eccentric engineer M.S.M. Silva.  They had been convinced of the project’s viability.  

The Director had organized a two day awareness seminar at the ARTI on the Walawe Basin and its irrigation projects attended by the most eminent people on the subjects of Agriculture, Wildlife, Hydrology and Irrigation in order to get the project to the then political administration.

This was twenty years ago.  Today, our narrator tells us, Chamal Rajapaksa (now Speaker) took up the proposal and we have a truly Sri Lankan project executed with local funding and expertise.   My friend Uditha Wijesena, our narrator here, tells me that Chamal in a recent television interview had mentioned his co-adventurer, Mr. Paranamanne as the engineer who deserves the credit for achieving the engineering feat. 

Uditha also credits the Director, ARTI.

‘[He] too played his part by getting the then political administration to take note of a worthy cause.’ Uditha describes him thus: ‘Seeing his stature and the looks my first feeling was that it would be difficult working with this guy.  But, I tell you Malinda, he was such a gentle guy to work with.  He wanted things his way but I don’t think that was being stubborn. ’    

I remember that Director from twenty years ago.  This was at the height of the bheeshanaya.  He was living at his official residence off Wijerama Mawatha.  There were three undergraduates living in that house, two from Bingiriya and one from Galgamuwa, all hiding from the death squads that roamed our villages and turned roadsides into cemeteries and rivers into dead-carrying waterways; all for the crime of being university students and for having been born in the sixties.  I remember him telling me that nothing we do should compromise his work at the ARTI (he knew we were all politically inclined, anti-JVP as well as absolutely opposed to the UNP regime). 

We saw death and brutality.  We plotted revolution.  He helped keep life alive.  Just by doing his job.  He always worked.  His enthusiasm to serve, to do justice to the salary he got, never flagged even though every single government he served under harassed him for having held leftist views when he was an undergraduate (i.e. before he joined the Civil Service), usually by shunting him to some obscure department or tossing him into ‘The Pool’.  Lalith Athulathmudali had to bypass President Premadasa to appoint him as Director, ARTI. 

I remember him telling me somewhere in the year 1994, ‘I saved millions for this country and after thirty years of service I have only ten thousand rupees in my account, I just finished paying the housing loan and don’t even have a car’.  He didn’t have a car when he retired. He still doesn’t have one.  He struggles to pay his medical bills, telephone bill, water and electricity bills and meet his other expenses. 

Uditha related the above story because memory was sparked by a photograph of a man twenty years older than when he had last met him. 

We recovered from those terrible times.  We pulled ourselves out of a rut and we will do so again and again.  And that’s because we are a different kind of society, I like to think.  It is also because of people like Uditha Wijesena and his boss, the late Mr. Paranamanne.  And of course that former Director of the ARTI.   His name:  Gamini Seneviratne.  To me, ‘Appachchi’.  

[First published in the Daily News, July 2011, reproduced here as tribute to my father, who is not exactly in the pink of health right now, and with so much love to my sister Ruvani and her family, who are taking care of him] 

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Remebrance means learning the lessons

[To mark the 112th birth anniversary of Martin Wickramasinghe]

Martin Wickramasinghe was born on May 29, 1890, one hundred and twelve years ago. On July 23, it will be thirty-six years since the nation lost Martin Wickramasinghe, arguably Sri Lanka’s greatest literary figure of the 20th Century. At the time of his death, I had read only ‘Madol Duwa’ and ‘Rohini’. Both these books created lasting impressions in my mind. In particular, they gave me a sense of our cultural ethos and the history entwined with it, two things that persuaded me to read him attentively later on.

The bibliographer and literary critic will probably do better justice to a listing of the greatest works and a general review of the same, respectively. A journalist can but offer his poverty stricken reflections on a life productively lived and a vision that just might help us through these difficult times, if only we delve deep within ourselves to discover who we are.

I remember Prof. Ashley Halpe lamenting that there were very few students reading English for their degree who had read Wickramasinghe’s ‘Viragaya’. I have come to understand over the years that any serious study of a particular literature necessitates a solid foundation in the literature of one’s own culture. If not, the appreciation suffers from a terrible un-mooring from referential terms. And here I am not speaking of the parochial idea of cultural fidelity. It goes deeper than that, for self-discovery is the cornerstone of exploration in general and appreciation of the specific foreign.

Martin Wickramasinghe’s life reads like a chapter out of Gorky’s ‘My Universities’. He hardly had any formal education. Whether his keen eye for detail, ability to process what he saw and then present his analysis in cogent and aesthetically pleasing forms was something he carried over from some previous encounter with social life or something that he consciously cultivated, we will never know for certain. But his example is enough to inspire the most underprivileged child in our country to stop complaining about the darkness and instead go look for something to start a fire with. For Martin Wickramasinghe, if he did anything, lit a fire and shone his torch far into the future. We can only lament that our leaders have been gullible enough to believe that they can crawl up the feeble beams that mindless profit-seekers have offered as pathways to heaven.

Who was this simple man from Koggala, who in a literary life of about 60 years, produced over 80 books and over 2,500 articles, some of which have been translated into other languages? The short answer is, “a disciplined man so solidly rooted in his cultural history that he was able to spread his intellectual arms into the universe and absorb that which was nourishing, while having the circumspection to reject (and even this very gently) that which was patently poisonous”. The long answer is probably already a doctoral dissertation, or, if not, ought to be one.

This much can be said: Martin Wickramasinghe was not just a journalist and a novelist. He was also a historian, a sociologist, a literary critic, a philosopher and a decent human being who took his responsibility to his people very seriously. Karl Marx once said something to the effect that only those who do not fear the fatiguing climb can someday reach the dizzying heights of the intellect. Wickramasinghe remained an ardent student of society until his death, devouring all the literature he could lay his hands on, constantly searching for answers to the problems of the world. His genius, perhaps, is that he seldom came up with anything close to a The Answer, but chose instead to touch on the fundamentals that all of us need to recognize if we are to walk along beneficial paths.

His literature, without exception, shows a remarkable fidelity to the ways of ordinary people. He is sensitive to the particular economy of words employed by rural folk and he renders these expressions into literary form without hurting the tone and content in translation. I have maintained occasionally, much to the exasperation of my teachers, that I have learnt more about social process from literature than from social theory. Wickramasinghe, in my limited understanding, stands out in this sense as one of the greatest sociologists of our time.

Ralph Pieris argued for a sociology that was home-grown. Sociologists ought to spend more time with Wickramasinghe than with Ralph himself, I believe. Wickramasinghe would probably add two observations to this “thesis”. They should read the Buddhist texts for everything that has been “produced” by way of social theory in the last one and a half centuries, are at one level “reproductions” of Buddhist philosophy. A careful reading of the Satipattana Sutta ought to convince anyone who doubts this.

He would also say that based on such foundational knowledge, it is equally important that the work of other schools be read and understood. He insists that “only unprogressive nations, to hide the sterility of their souls, seek indigenous or supernatural origins for their institutions and culture; progressive nations borrow cultural elements from everywhere and assert their virile genius in remolding and re-creating them.”

He was not a vulgar traditionalist. He believed that tradition is essential for the preservation of stability and advancement of a nation, society or even a family, but qualified this stand by insisting that any tradition, when unchanging, becomes a canker which will slowly destroy a nation. He maintains, after Clive Bell, that “in a highly civilized age, the artist is neither hostile to nor mistrustful of tradition, but helps himself freely to whatever it can give.” Such a flexible engagement with tradition is probably something that is sadly lacking in both art and other forms of social expression, be it politics, economics or philosophy. We miss the rich colors that a realistic, broad-minded and disciplined relationship with the past and with the outer world can generate because we too often take the easy “black or white” way out, i.e. “The west if good or bad” or “our culture is pure or outmoded”.

Wickramasinghe in many ways epitomizes the practice that he theorizes about in his work. He engages fearlessly the whole gamut of Western literature as well as its sociological and philosophical traditions. He is able to take what is best in these traditions for a very simple reason. He is comfortable with who he is and does not feel he has to apologize for what is grotesque in his cultural past. This is why he implores our younger generation to endeavor to acquire knowledge from every source and that building a new and better social order requires hard work, knowledge, discipline and the ability to suffer. He insists that this is not the work for “lotus eaters”.

That “younger generation” he addressed is no longer young. In fact, it has well and truly messed things up further. At the same time, it must be understood that there will always be a younger generation and that there are some things whose worth transcends historical epoch. Civilizations sometimes go under for centuries. If sufficient effort is expended to make sure that the foundations are not destroyed, there will someday arrive a “younger generation” which has the strength, the will and the creativity to recreate the world, often much better than it originally was.

Sometimes, all it takes is to re-read the books our fathers grew up reading. In Martin Wickramasinghe we have an invaluable source. He has done most of the work there needs to be done. It is up to us to build upon it. Takes discipline, commitment, integrity and patience. There are Siddharthas among us who have seen all the “pera nimithi” and who are neither fettered by tradition nor overawed by the glitter of transient things. Perhaps it is time for a mass “abhinishkramana,” not into Sinharaja, but into the wilderness that is society. And among the teachers we will inevitably meet, let us not forget Martin Wickramasinghe, grandfather, teacher and friend.


[Published in 'The Nation' of May 27, 2012]

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Sarath Fonseka’s ‘reduced circumstances’ and options

Democracies don’t need oppositions, they need vibrant, effective and sober oppositions.  Decent oppositions are about the hard work of informed and coherent appraisal of government and governance, and the grind of organizing and keeping spirit alive in anticipation of opportune political moment.  It needs leaders but personality dependence is not indicative of strength but flaw. 

Even powerful personalities need the backing of organizations as well as decent plans of action and the wisdom and maturity to assess with reasonable accuracy the overall political equation.  Sarath Fonseka was not endowed with this kind of resource package in 2009.  As JVP firebrand Lalkantha put it, Fonseka served a purpose.  He was, therefore, used. Discarded. 

He was released after being imprisoned for a little more than 2 years in a move that smacked of political vengeance notwithstanding the reasonable arguments for incarceration on account of being a threat to national security.  He had strange friends back then and was clearly ill-advised. 

There were 5 key people who backed Sarath Fonseka in 2009/10: Ranil Wickremesinghe, Mangala Samaraweera, Somawansa Amarasinghe, R. Sampanthan and Rauf Hakeem.  When Fonseka was released last week, none of them were around to greet him.   Tiran Alles, Parliamentarian and political associate is widely held as the ‘broker’ in getting Fonseka released.  Arjuna Ranatunga, another party member, clearly chagrined, said ‘everyone should get the credit’.  Some (like Jehan Perera) said Fonseka was released because the President was pressurized to do so by the USA, a wild claim considering that President Rajapaksa didn’t bow down to far greater pressure levels (to stop the military operations against the LTTE) in the last years of the conflict.  Alles says, ‘No, the USA had nothing to do with it’. 

Wickremesinghe has faulted Alles for not obtaining a full pardon from the President, although he himself did not lift a finger in the entire exercise.  Fonseka wryly observed that the President cannot be proud of himself for holding back his (Fonseka’s) civic rights.  The President has said that he doesn’t want to interfere in matters decided in a military court which is essentially saying ‘I used my discretion in one way about release and another about granting civic rights’.  The political implication is obvious: Fonseka cannot run for President.

Fonseka’s wife, Anoma, claims that some UNPers secretly (that’s a keyword) back a UNP-Fonseka alliance.  Another report says that UNPers have been warned not to be close to Fonseka.  Prominent UNPers were seen welcoming the former Army Commander when he was released, among them some whose ‘discipline’ is being queried by the party.  The JVP, although their parliamentary presence is largely thanks to having clung onto Fonseka’s coattails in April 2010, has distanced itself from Lalkantha’s dismissive comment, but hasn’t exactly been bubbling with excitement after Fonseka was released. Neither has Fonseka been chummy with his main election-ally. 

In 2009/10 many anti-Rajapaksa elements in the I/NGO community backed Fonseka, betraying thereby their true political objectives; they were closer UNPers who had nothing nice to say about Fonseka when he was Army Commander.  Fonseka has gone on record (after his release) to say that he took a budu pilimaya to the battlefront and took it to prison as well, a statement of fact that cannot sit too well with that crowd.  He is unlikely to back ‘devolution’. 

R. Sampanthan’s party, the TNA, which backed Fonseka’s presidential bid, even getting him to agree to re-merging the North and East in the event that he won the election, went on a hunger strike in support of ‘political prisoners’ (read LTTE cadres, ex-terrorists).  The fact that Fonseka, who had far better credentials as a political prisoner, was not seen to deserve similar protest is not lost on alert political observers.  Rauf Hakeem has since joined the Government.  Mangala Samaraweera, apart from getting his time-trusted minions to run ‘news’ websites that give journalism a bad name, has not been seen or heard of for quite a while.  Chandrika Kumaratunga, who gave a guarded ‘yes’ to Fonseka days before the election, has not offered any comments. 

Fonseka’s true political worth was revealed in April 2010 by the number of votes his party secured, sans UNP support and with just the JVP (in its reduced circumstances) backing him.  The JVP has since split in two. 

The end of the road for Sarath Fonseka? 

No.  An online poll carried out by www.nation.lk asking voters who they believe Fonseka should align with, shows ‘Mahinda Rajapaksa’ comfortably leading Sajith Premadasa and Ranil Wickremesinghe, but lagging behind the 5^th ‘choice’: ‘None of the above’.  That could be a reflection of general sentiment.  In other words, Fonseka should consider leaving these politicians alone (he’s certainly been used and bitten by them).  Makes sense if he wants to be principled and untarnished by the machinations politicians are generally known for.  Lack of an organization, however, doesn’t do much for achieving political goals.  Good men and women have played and lost. Badly. 

Perhaps Fonseka should seriously consider a different path.  Perhaps he could ignore the lure of party politics, parliamentary and presidential aspirations and re-invent himself as someone who stands for justice, good governance and democracy.  There has always been a need to address these issues, but the addressers have been such shady characters that such projects have never captured the wider public imagination.  Fonseka has a history, a lot of shine and some dubious spots, but he has not covered himself with the kind of embarrassment that those mentioned above has.  Harping on wrongs done to him and decrying person and not office/abuse won’t get him far, for he has a handicap: the possibility of having the ‘sour grape’ tag pinned on him. 

He needs an organization, but that’s for later.  He needs people, lots of people, but he has enough to start things rolling.  He needs a project and one that is not about capturing power but getting the country back on track.  In this he will need to be wary, more of his friends than his known detractors.  It’s mine-ridden, this path, but it seems, as of now, the only sensible direction for this colorful and controversial man to take. 

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The importance of disclosure

The Leader of the Opposition, Ranil Wickremesinghe, made a very valid point in Parliament this week.  Referring to the mysterious ‘Plan of Action’ that Minister of External Affairs, G.L. Peiris is said to have submitted to US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, Wickremesinghe said that it is the right of the people in this country to know what kinds of plans the Government has about anything and especially (as in this case) when it comes to matters such as reconciliation and resolving of antagonisms. 

Wickremesinghe must be applauded without reservation for demanding disclosure and the Government must be faulted without hesitation for doing this behind-the-backs-of-the-people number, especially considering the unfriendly behavior of the USA towards Sri Lanka in Geneva in March. 

Wickremesinghe’s patriotism, however, needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, for he signed a Ceasefire Agreement with a terrorist without any by-your-leave of the people on February 22, 2002.  Neither did he object when his uncle and then president, J.R. Jayewardene palmed off sovereignty to Rajiv Gandhi on July 29, 1987 without informing the people, and hiding parts of the documents when presenting it in Parliament and bulldozing through objections using an illegally obtained (through the 1982 Referendum) two-thirds majority.  He may have matured or it may have been lip-service as is typical of those in opposition, i.e. self-righteous objection that slips into matter-of-fact capitulation when in power.

He is correct, even though he may lack the moral authority here for he is yet to confess to errors of omission and commission on the issue of disclosure.  He may not have the moral authority, but we, as citizens, certainly do. 

We can and must ask, ‘What is this “Plan of Action”?’  We can and must object: ‘No, not behind our backs, for we’ve suffered much on previous occasions’.  We can and must remind: ‘This is a democracy, not a monarchy!’ 

This Government didn’t seek US approval for executing the military strategy that resulted in the eradication of terrorism and such it is legitimate for people to ask why sorting out post-war issues as well as addressing grievances that contribute to the conflict require ratification, shall we say, of the US Government. 

The ball is in the Government’s court and the fact that Wickremesinghe tossed it is incidental.   

[Part II of 'The Nation' Editorial, May 27, 2012] 

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Rankin’s outrageous rant

High Commissioner John Rankin

British High Commissioner, John Rankin, has openly challenged a statement made by President Mahinda Rajapaksa regarding scaling down of military presence in the North and East.  Rankin has stated that the LTTE is no longer engaging in military activities and as such questioned the logic of a military presence in these areas that is of a magnitude not seen in other parts of the country.

We can forgive the man for being ignorant about the needs for surveillance and (re) educate him about the well-known English phrase ‘Better safe than sorry’, pointing out the following:  a) military consolidation is necessary in the aftermath of a 30 year long war, b) the road from relative calm to all out conflict is short, and the world is not lacking in governments that are ever ready to provide guns and money to further their interests, through ‘regime-change’ effors and/or fuelling bloody conflicts, and c) LTTE-backers in the West have not given up on their dream of a separate state and neither have they dropped their principal operative stance: By any means necessary.

It would better to tell him that we know what he knows but keeps silent about.  Britain continues to have a military presence in Cyprus, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Belize, Brunei and Canada.  ‘At the behest of rulers,’ they might say. Half a decade after the Northern Ireland conflict was ‘resolved’, British troops remain.  Why?  The United States of America maintains a military presence in over one hundred countries with no talk whatsoever of ‘scaling down’ even though, unlike Sri Lanka, there is not even a shadow of a threat to those states from terrorists or other ill-willed entities. 

Can anyone be blamed therefore for saying ‘What gumption, Mr Rankin!’? 

All of the above, however, are of peripheral concern and mentioned just so he knows we know what’s happening in the world.  What is more important is that this individual, either out of ignorance or, more likely, arrogance, has overstepped the boundaries of diplomatic protocol.  We are not a British colony and Mr. Rankin is not a Viceroy.  He is out of order.  He is incompetent and has to be considered a threat to the security of this country. 

We can pretend he didn’t say all this, but that’s clearly not going to earn us any favours from this nation which is still a monarchy, admits that it invaded Iraq illegally, has scripted torture into interrogation manuals and has aided and abetted the USA in monumental crimes against humanity all over the world. 

Mr. John Rankin has overstayed his welcome.  He needs to go. 

[First part of 'The Nation' Editorial, May 27, 2012]

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