Ranil Wickremesinghe's words and deeds

Ranil Wickremesinghe, when he addressed and briefly responded to questions from heads of media institutions and editors, was clear, precise and quite articulate.  He articulated the Government’s strategy, progress made and what’s in the pipeline on three broad subjects: reconciliation, corruption and the ‘100 Days’ Program’.  

When asked if corruption allegations predating the Mahinda era would also be taken up, he correctly pointed out that we cannot go back to ‘The Beginning’ (wherever that may be) and supported the ‘post 2005’ selection by saying that it is hard to collect relevant information pertaining to 2005.  He deftly sidestepped the issue of whether or not the draft 19^th Amendment was a reflection of promises pertaining to reforming the executive presidential system scripted into President Sirisena’s election manifesto.  Where parliamentary elections will be held before or after electoral reforms, he left grey.  These are understandable, however.  He is a politician and is in the business of power.    

His ‘spelling out’ of the above three subjects was classic.  It was a politically correct presentation.  It was a classic note marked at every turn by the best in what could be called ‘the spirit of democracy’.  If one forgot the articulator and his record, that is. 

Let’s take the three areas, one by one. First, reconciliation.  Let’s forget the past of the CFA, promises of federalism to Anton Balasingham and Thoppigala talk. 

In the here and now, we have him endorsing the appointment of ex President Chandrika Kumaratunga as head of a ‘Unity’ body, i.e. one that will facilitate reconciliation.  Kumaratunga, during her tenure as President was not only despised by Tamil nationalists (for not giving enough) but was criticized by the Sinahala nationalists on many counts.  No leader since Independence has attacked the Sinhalese and Buddhists as she has, it can be cogently argued.   

Then we have his Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera, a staunch Kumaratunga loyalist of course, claiming that the Government would review the proscription of organizations considered to have supported the LTTE.  Review is good, but when it comes to matters linked to the LTTE, it is not a job for the Foreign Ministry.  It is a national security issue and that’s President Sirisena’s territory.  Mangala getting this basic things twisted is understandable given his past associations and competencies, but Ranil ought to have seen the error and corrected it. He let it fly. 

Saying that the Tamil version of the National Anthem is an affirmation of things unitary by referring to the line eka mavakage daruwo (the children of one mother) is correct.  Necessary.  Hardly sufficient.  The rub of reconciliation is not located in anthem but choices that have considerable implications.   Chandrika and Mangala, together or separately, is bad news for reconciliation.  These choices make a mockery of statements that could even be called nationalistic (e.g. ‘We have not signed the Rome Statute,’ ‘We will have a truth and reconciliation commission a la South African but one that is adjusted to social, cultural and historical context of Sri Lanka,’ ‘we will not let the West or anyone else dictate to us.’). 

Ranil also said, in passing, that the Government will not do anything to antagonize any country, but seems to have forgotten that he bad-mouthed Tony Abbot of Australia and made a loose statement on shooting Indian fishermen who stray into Sri Lankan waters. 

Corruption.  Again, some good lines about due process, deferring to the Rule of Law instead of pandering to those who are asking for blood.  However, the credibility of this position has suffered untold damage by the appointments he’s made, the appointments made the appointed and the dodgy actions he has defended.  Yes, the ‘Central Bank Bond Blast’.  The appointment of Arjuna Mahendran was going to draw flak.  The scandal over Mahendran’s son-in-law, information-leakage and the appointment of lawyers associated with the party to investigate actions of a man appointed by the party leader cannot thrill anyone who expected this Government to do things differently.  It certainly takes the gloss from all that he said about combating corruption and combating it the right way.

Finally there’s the ‘100 Days’ Program’.  A lot has been done, he said.  He’s even appointed a former member of the UNP’s Working Committee and man who earned a good reputation for his impartial work in the NGO Commission, to help publicize the progress of the Program.  But ‘free wifi’ is hardly the most important ‘change’ that those who voted for Maithripala Sirisena wanted.  It’s the structural reforms that are most important. 

The 19^th is a blast from the UNP’s sordid ‘past’ when it comes to amending the constitution.  In a word ‘partisan’.  Without dealing with the thorny issue of where executive power should reside and in what measure with fidelity to relevant passages in Maithripala Sirisena’s election manifesto, Wickremesinghe’s effort seeks to make an individual elected by the entire country servile to an individual elected by a majority in a 225-member Parliament. 

What we are seeing with respect to constitutional amendment is tinkering that suits a particular party and individual with little or no trace of the statesmanship that ought to mark such an exercise.  To be fair, that’s partly thanks to the Prime Minister’s uncle for whose crimes of omission and commission he should not be asked to pay.  Still, he can do better. 

Finally, the truth or otherwise of his democratic pretensions has to be measured by his democratic flair, let’s say, in his own party.  This is where ‘do’ (or rather, ‘not done’) stumps ‘word’.   

Read more

In praise of ‘lesser’ creatures

This is the twenty fifth article in a series I am writing for the JEANS section of 'The Nation'.  The series is for children. Adults consider yourselves warned...you might re-discover a child within you! Scroll down for other articles in this series. 

Think of pencils.  Think of lead pencils.  Color pencils.  Pencils that come with an eraser fixed to one end.  Now think of using them.  Points get broken.  When this happens we have to sharpen either with a sharpener or a blade or knife.  The points break again or else they become dull, requiring us to sharpen them again and again.  Over time the pencil grows short.  Finally they become too short for us to hold.

What happens to those way-too-short pencils, have you wondered?  They fall off tables, roll into corners and are eventually swept away.  They get forgotten. 

Now there was once a man who thought of pencils in a very different kind of way.  Actually he was not thinking of pencils.  He was thinking of the sun, the earth, himself and the passing of years.  He was in prison.  He had enough time to think. He had enough time to write. 

It occurred to him that the earth had gone around the sun ten times since he had been put behind bars.  He realized that if earth and sun could speak and were asked to comment on this observation  (that the earth had gone around the sun ten times), the following observation might be made: ‘it’s nothing…a microscopic span’.  In other words, the earth has gone around the sun so many billions of times that 10 revolutions are hardly worth comment.  To the prisoner, though, it is ten years of his life. 

Now if you are just 10 years old, that’s your entire life.  Imagine being in a small room without a chance to be with friends and family all your life.  If you are 20 years old, that’s half your life.

Anyway, thinking about these things, the prisoner’s thoughts strayed to pencils.   When he had been put in prison he had a pencil, he remembered.  He had used it.  It lasted just a week.  Now if he was asked about it he would have dismissed the question with a question of his own, ‘what’s a week?’  What if the pencil was asked, he wondered.  The pencil would have said, if it could, ‘A whole lifetime!’

Pencils are discarded.  Perhaps it is easy to do this since they are inanimate.  But have you ever wondered if we unconsciously grade living things into categories such as very important, important, less important and unimportant? 

If lesser things (like pencils) and lesser beings (say, ants) are discarded or dismissed simply based on their worth to us then we too can be dismissed, discarded and treated as worthy of the trashcan by people who think they are more important than us and therefore consider us ‘lesser’ creatures. 

For the sun and the earth, 10 years is nothing.  For the prisoner, it’s a long period of time.  If sun and earth were to think about his imprisonment, they might say ‘We have more important things to worry about; what’s 10 years or even 100?’

We are all pencils in someone else’s world, aren’t we?  And we all have pencils, don’t we?  That ant in the sink is a pencil-end, isn’t it?  We can turn the tap and flush it down without feeling bad about it, right?  But then again, if we are pencils, we are also ants, aren’t we?  And if it’s ‘ok’ to wash an ant down a tube or wreck an anthill just like we toss pencil ends into a trashcan, wouldn’t it be as ‘ok’ for someone to brush aside just because that person feels he or she is more important than us? 

If there are creatures deserving the label ‘lesser,’ the chances are that in someone else’s universe we are lesser creatures too.  That’s not a happy thought is it?

Maybe we should think about the sun and the earth a little bit more.  More importantly, perhaps we should think about pencils now and then.  

Other articles in this series

Ready for time travel?

Puddles look back at you, did you know?

What's the view like from your door?

The world is rearranged by silhouettes

How would you paint the sky?
It is cool to slosh around
You can compose your own music
Pebbles are amazing things
You can fly if you want to
The happiest days of our lives
So what do you want to do with the rain?

Still looking for that secret passage?

Maybe we should respect the dust we walk on

Numbers are beautiful 

There are libraries everywhere 

Collect something crazy

Fragments speak of a thousand stories 

The games you can and cannot play with rice

The magic of the road less-traveled

Have you ever thought of forgiving?

Wallflowers are pretty, aren't they?

What kind of friend do you want to be? 

Noticed the countless butterflies around you?

It's great to chase rainbows

Read more

A love note to a ferry and ferryman, passenger and passage

Pic courtesy www.redtreetimes.com, a painting by GC Myers inspired by Herman Hesse's 'Siddhartha'

There were two friends from Peradeniya University who filled my heart with music. Nishad Handunpathirana, probably the most accomplished exponent of the israj in South Asia, didn’t teach me anything. I spent days that turned into weeks and months at his house in Sinhapitiya, Gampola, courtesy of the UNP-JVP bheeshanaya.  His father taught music. Nishad played.  They listened to North Indian classical music.  Certain things have to be heard over and over again before they are understood and appreciated, like the words ‘I love you’. 

Thilak Bandara Herath and I had a contractual agreement. I spoke to him in English every morning as we trekked the one and a half miles from our ‘chummery’ in Gunnepana to Dumbara Campus, Polgolla and he sang all the way back.  He writes poetry in English now.  From those unforgettable nights I gathered lyrics and sentiments, images and heartbreak, laughter and tears, all of which have broken me and made me again and again in the decades that swept away life and rained it back on me, hard and soft, now and then. 

They played a game with me, these two.  They would hold auditions.  I was required to sing and they would judge and pass comments.  They would always encourage but would make sure that I entertain no illusions whatsoever about becoming a singer.   I remember a particular night when after singing several songs, Thilak spoke the most encouraging words I had heard up to that point: ‘umbata puluwan machang’ (you can, my friend).  I am, as I write, smiling as broadly as I did back then.  Then came the punch-line: ‘Shelton Pereratath muladi behe’ (even Shelton Perera couldn’t [sing] at the beginning).

That was a back-handed compliment. It was a double insult as well.  I may have deserved it, but Shelton Perera certainly did not.  I saw him only once in my life.  This is how I remembered that moment from 30 years ago when I wrote about Shelton for The Nation some years back:  ‘I was with my father at the Arts Centre Club, following a recital by ‘Ustad’ Podi Appuhamy, arguably the best exponent of the sitar born in this country. The maestro was drunk but this did not take anything away from his performance, as far as I could gather. 

Shelton Perera was accompanying him on the tabla. I didn’t know much about North Indian classical music back then and I can’t claim to have acquired any knowledge since, but I knew that there was tension in the back and forth between sitarist and tablist. I was amazed by both men and the way their respective fingers drew forth sound and (increasingly) fury from their instruments. That tension enveloped the Lionel Wendt auditorium and I gathered from audience response and the expression of resignation (and very apparent disgust) by the ‘Ustad’ that Shelton Perera had bested him.  He was having a drink. He spoke softly. I can’t remember how long we were there, but I remember these words: ‘he asked for it, and I gave it’. ‘

I had heard Shelton Perera before that audition and countless times afterwards as well.  I never detected ‘cannot’ in his voice. It was always ‘can, and how!’ And each time I remember Thilak and Nishad, teasing and thereby humbling me out of exploring a singing career, even in jest.  I heard him a few days ago.  ‘Egodaha Yanno’ (those who want to cross to the other bank) is as much a signature song as any he has sung.  I searched for the song on youtube.  All I found was Udesh Indula’s rendition for ‘Dream Star’.  I don’t watch much TV and am not into these ‘star’ shows. Had never heard of this young boy.  I concurred with one of the commentators, ‘you made me wonder if Shelton had somehow made it to the Dream Star stage’. 

All I understand right now is that a wonderful voice ferried me to another shore and brought me back, only to take me across and thereafter bring me back.  All I know is that we are all ferrymen and we are all passengers and that there are times we are both at once; all ‘beginners’ and ‘virtuosos’, in one thing or another and sometimes both. 

We are all on the banks of a River Anoma. We are all ferrying or being ferried from one shore to the other.   Shelton says, ‘mata hari wehesai’ (I am exhausted).  He urges, gently, ‘come, if you are coming’.  Shelton says ‘I am but going back and forth on this ferry’. He says it is getting late and repeats, gently, ‘come, if you want to go across to the other shore.’  He stopped ferrying people a quarter of a century ago.  The ferry still moves from one shore to the other and back again. 

At some point perhaps ferry, ferryman, imitation, imitator, passenger and passage will all disappear along with music and lyrics.   There are times I feel weary and when voice or its perfect imitation is not substitute enough.  All I know is that I am weary and am not sure if it is on account of ferrying or being ferried.  Maybe it is because, as Thilak said (and Nishad endorsed with nod and half-smile) I am at the beginning. Or perhaps at the end. 

*I heard (a couple of years after writing this article) that Dalton Alwis, the lyricist, had told the vocalist that the song was about an aging Buddha Siddhartha Gauthama.

Malinda Seneviratne is the Editor-in-Chief of 'The Nation'.  He can be contacted at msenevira@gmail.com.  The above article was first published in March 2011 in the 'Daily News' for which paper Malinda once wrote a daily column titled 'The Morning Inspection'.  

Read more

Time is long Dear Rebel, really long

Nazim Hikmet

This is the twenty fifth in a series of articles on rebels and rebellion written for the FREE section of 'The Nation'. Scroll to the end for other articles in this series.  'FREE' is dedicated to youth and youthfulness.

‘Time’ is a term that plagues rebels.  You have to be on time.  You have to get the timing right.  You are always ‘running out of time’.  The ‘time window’ is narrow more of than not.  You can’t be too early, you can’t be too late.  There are a million things to do and there never seems to be enough time to do them all. 

Relax.  There are rebel-moments that are long.  Exceedingly long.  Not talking about hours as opposed to minutes and seconds, not talking about weeks or months.  Years.  For good or bad that’s a possible ‘part of the story’.  In the end it is up to the rebel to make best use of these long moments. 

Nazim Hikmet, the best known and most translated Turkish poet, spent less time as a free man in his native Turkey as he did in prison or exile.  He once made a pertinent observation on ‘time’:  

Since I was thrown inside

                The earth has gone around the sun ten times.

If you ask it:

                “That’s noting – a microscopic span.”

If you ask me:

                “Ten years of my life!”

I had a pencil

                The year I was thrown inside.

It lasted me a week.

If you ask it:

                “A whole lifetime!”

If you ask me:

                “what’s a week?”

During those long years, he could not agitate or attend demonstrations, he could not meet comrades or like-minded people, he could not discuss or debate, he could not raise voice against the many tyrannies he encountered and took on.  He raised his heart and mind, though.  He had strength to lift a pencil and move it across paper.  His words flew out of his heart and into the skies.  They turned into water.  The wind took them to the four corners of the world.  They fell, drop by drop into the thirsty hearts of rebels all over the world. 

There are writers who are incarcerated.  Then there are the incarcerated who turn their agitation and rebelliousness into poetry.  Sometimes they don’t get paper or pencil (or in these days laptops or mobile devices that make communication possible).   But rebels are resourceful people.  They have the will; they find a way.

I once knew a prisoner who had written a comprehensive critique on the dominant paradigm of development.  When he was arrested, the police confiscated all his papers.  I am sure they couldn’t make head or tail of that document, but he never got it back.   Three weeks later, he was released.  In that time he re-wrote that entire book. 

There are of course better known and much celebrated prisoner-writers.  Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Communist, is a good example.  The title of his best known book, ‘Prison Notebooks,’ explains context in just two words.  Contained therein are thoughts that have inspired and informed a lot of social theory over more than half a century. 

No one wants to go to prison.  Well, when blood is hot and stoutness of heart is overestimated there’s a righteous imp within every rebel that says ‘take me in, do your worst’.  It’s not fun.  But more importantly, imprisonment for the true rebel is less a possibility than a probability.  If you are in for the long haul, as they say, tell yourself now and then that bars don’t stop and indeed they can boost capacities and enhance productivity in ways unimagined. 

Time can be very long.  Count it as a blessing.  You might as well.  

Other articles in this series

Dear Rebel, please keep it short
Get ready for those setbacks
The rebel must calculate or perish
Are you ready to deceive?
Dear Rebel, 'P' is also for 'Proportion' 
Dear Rebel, have you got the e-factor out of the way?
Have you carefully considered the f-word?
It is so easy to name the enemy, right?
The p-word cuts both ways
Cards get reflected in eyes, did you know?
It's all about timing 
Heroes and heroism are great, but...
Recruiting for a rebellion
The R, L and H of 'Rebellion'
Pack in 'Humor' when you gather rebellion-essentials

When the enemy is your best friend

The MSM Principle of Engagement

Dear Rebel, get some creature-tips!

Dear Rebel, get through your universities first

Read the enemies Bibles

Poetry, love and revolution

Are you ready to shut down your petrol shed

The details, the details!

Know your comrades

Good to meditate on impermanence.

Read more

On racists, ‘non-racists’, stone-throwing and humility

There was a time when anyone who said that the LTTE should be taken on militarily would be called an ‘extremist’ or a ‘war-monger’.  If the person happened to be a Sinhalese, he/she would be called ‘chauvinist’ and ‘racist’.  The name-callers would salivate in the Sinhalese who argued in this vein happened to be Buddhists as well.  

Now I believe that all communities have more or less the same percentage of bigots and that among the adherents to religious faiths, there are more or less the same percentage of fundamentalists and the same proportion of those who cannot tolerate religious others.  Even a cursory perusal of the island’s recent history would validate this hypothesis, but strangely, we rarely ever hear about Christians being ‘intolerant’ or being ‘fundamentalist’ or non-Sinhalese being racists or chauvinists. 

Indeed any criticism of anything that has even the most negligible blush of Christianity would provoke venom of unbelievable proportions from so-called defenders of the faith.

Do Christians, for example, believe that all Christians are ‘good’ or in the very least that even the worst Christian is better than the best Buddhist, I wonder.  Do Tamils and Moors think the same way?  Valentine Daniel, an Anthropologist teaching at Columbia University at the time, claimed about 14 years ago that Tamils would never kill on account of community.  Do all Tamils really believe this?  Do Christians who look down on Buddhists actually believe that everyone who pledges some form of allegiance to the Christian faith is necessarily a better human being? 

I think any sensible person would agree that ‘superiority’ claims are not just untenable in a practical sense, but indefensible in spiritualistic terms as well.  A human being can claim superiority over another human being only in a very limited sense.  For example, Nimal can say he can add faster than can Kamal, but Kamal could say he is better at taking things slower than Nimal.  No one is divine.  Even Jesus Christ, one notes, was not sure of his status regarding the human-divine divide; otherwise he would not have murmured the words ‘Father, why have you forsaken me?’ when nailed to the cross.  

Jesus Christ was ‘God’ according to Christians, or a manifestation of divinity; in the very least as ‘Son’ of ‘God’. I am an atheist and humanly frail, but in my frailty I would posit that Jesus Christ was a remarkable human being endowed with attributes that are extremely rare and indeed non present in anyone in flesh and blood I have met over the past 44 years.  I think that lesser ‘human beings’ of the Christian faith should be less presumptuous than they tend to be, if not for anything because there is a lesson in humility embedded in the Lord’s Prayer, ‘forgive our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us’.  I don’t know, but perhaps this is an important source of that virtue called ‘Christian charity’.  What is important is the degree to which that quality is nurtured, not just in theory but in practice. 

The same principle can be applied to Buddhists as well. The Buddha did not prescribe ‘good action’ on pain of punishment by a divine authority, merely pointing out that actions have consequences and that the nature of the action can determine the length and nature of sojourn in sanasara.  The Buddha spoke of the sathara brahma viharana; kindness, compassion, equanimity and the quality of rejoicing in the happiness of others.  Nowhere in the extensive archive of the Buddha’s teachings is anger, hatred, revenge etc advocated.  It is a doctrine, one can argue, about humility.  It is about quelling anger with compassion, not anger.  It is about the employment of wisdom or pragna as well as compassion or maithree in appropriate combinations, the appropriateness being determined by degree of understanding, comprehension, experience etc that make up one’s karma shakthiya.      

  

We have to conclude that Buddhists can be Buddhists only to the extent that they engage with the Dhamma and accept it as a way of life, a practical set of principles to conduct one’s affairs and a pathway to emancipation from sorrow.  So there are all kinds of Buddhists.  There are also all kinds of Christians.  And Hindus and Muslims too.

Perhaps I am taking things too far out of the world called here-and-now.  Let me bring things down from what could be perceived as abstract to what everyone will say ‘real’ (relatively).

I have heard a lot of people say a lot of nasty things about people like Prof. Nalin De Silva.  Most of these accusers are rabidly against anyone affirming a Sinhala or Sinhala Buddhist identity.  Some of them are fundamentalist Christians and defend a lot of stuff that many would call ‘unethical’ by saying ‘that’s just politics; people pushing a particular ideology, just like a politician would’.  They show very little Christian charity, have very little humility, don’t have a clue about what is meant by the dictum ‘Love thy neighbour like thyself’ and rather than forgiving trespasses against them, take ‘revenge’ as a legitimate option sanctioned by Jesus Christ.  Let me put all that aside in the way I believe Jesus would have done: ‘forgive them for they do not know what they do’.  But let me also try to put things in perspective.

Take Prof Nalin De Silva.  ‘Racist’, ‘Sinhala-Buddhist Chauvinist’ and ‘extremist’ are some of the wonderful titles he has been conferred with over the past twenty years.  How many are willing to acknowledge that Nalin, more than anyone else, was instrumental in countering Eelamist ideology and dissolving slowly but surely the notion that the LTTE could not be militarily defeated?  Would they say that they contributed anything even close to what Nalin did in the ideological sphere, in political practice or in any other way?  Indeed, is it not true that by supporting political parties and politicians Nalin was opposed to, they helped buttress Eelamism, the LTTE and terrorism, willingly or unwillingly? 

Would they even grudgingly admit that today if they are in any way happy that the LTTE is no more, Nalin De Silva is in some small way responsible for their happiness? Would they grudgingly acknowledge that they owe Nalin De Silva some small token of appreciation for the fact that they don’t have to worry about bombs going off?  Would they be big enough to admit that Ven. Athureliye Rathana played a key role by the brave stand he took in opposing the ‘joint-mechanism’ that international donors were about to thrust down our throats and which would have strengthened the LTTE even further (i.e. even more than they were strengthened ideologically and physically by the UNP regime of Ranil Wickremesinghe via the CFA)?  Would they acknowledge that the stand that Ven. Rathana took at Mavil Aru precipitated the response that turned things around and brought us this splendid LTTE-free political moment?  Would they acknowledge that they have done nothing, absolutely nothing, in comparison by way of contributing to create an LTTE-less Sri Lanka?  Prof. Nalin De Silva and Ven. Athureliye Rathana stood up and spoke when that was necessary. What have their detractors done?  Nothing, in comparison, I am willing to wager. 

Is it not the proper thing to do, to criticize whatever they want to criticize, but acknowledge in the same breath a) that those they criticize were in some aspects better human beings, and b) that it is important that those who criticize engage in a little self-criticism now and then? 

I think there is a reason why all religions teach us that humility is a virtue.  If we are humanly frail, on what ecclesiastical grounds or some principle that is larger than and beyond ‘church’ do we obtain the right to judge, to call people names, unless we are humble enough to admit our error and our bias, instead of hiding behind that timeless political lie, ‘neutral’? 

These are days of stone-throwing.  Solid, physical pebbles and rocks and metaphorical missiles are being cast.  The Catholic Bishops’ Conference has condemned a stone-throwing.  The Jathika Hela Urumaya and the Jathika Sangha Sabhava have also condemned the stone-throwing.  I am yet to hear any comment from Christian groups objecting to the insensitivity in the use of image and specificity of choreographing in the music video that caused the stone-throwing.  They have said nothing about ‘intolerance’ here.  I haven’t heard those who took issue with the Maharaja Organization and Sirasa TV protest the role of others, especially the Tourism Ministry, in organizing this show. 

There is intolerance all around. There is a manifest aversion to be self-critical. This is not what the Buddha taught. It is not what Jesus Christ taught. It is not what either of them advocated in word and deed. 

Where is the humility in the stone-throwers?

Malinda Seneviratne is the Editor-in-Chief of 'The Nation'.  You can write to him at msenevira@gmail.com. 

This was first published in the Sunday Island on March 28, 2011

Read more

Ranil rants, raves and knots himself up

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has come out with a lengthy speech on the vexed matter of Treasury Bonds.  He has defended Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran, pledged an investigation in the interest of affirming that there was no wrongdoing, defended the composition of the panel appointed to investigate and cast aspersion on several individuals and groups. 

It is good that Wickremesinghe has broken his silence on this issue.  It is good that he has decided that an investigation is a good idea.  It is good that he has sought to explain what he claims really happened.  It is extremely good that he has flagged certain questionable practices of the previous regime and Mahendran’s predecessor Ajith Nivard Cabraal.  It is good that he has named names, even under cover of Parliamentary.  

There are things unsaid, however.  There are measures that ought to have been taken but have not.  And there’s a lot of dodging that does not cover him in glory. 

Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way.  Since he has named names Wickremesinghe is now honor bound to initiate proper and criminal investigations into the activities of the named.  Since he has been an ardent opponent of shoving tough questions under a carpet called ‘commissions of inquiry,’ he should not take that easy path to save friends who betrayed trust (let’s assume) by indulging in wrongdoing. 

In the rush to name names, he has confused wrongdoer with people who may be tough to work with but whose integrity is nevertheless unquestioned.  That’s wrong.  Now he has to investigate such individuals as well and if he does this he is likely to come off as a reckless accuser, a man with an axe to grind and one of very little substance.    

Let’s get to the composition of the inquirers.  Wickremesinghe has not objected to the charge that they are members of his party.   When the Leader of the UNP gets UNPers to investigate charges leveled against a Governor he appointed, there is obviously a conflict of interest.   It is scandalous that a senior politician and a lawyer missed this.  Instead of addressing the issue Wickremesinghe chooses to shoot the messenger.  It is shocking that Wickremesinghe accuses the accusers of having vested interest, in this context.

Let’s get to the bonds.  A point that has been largely missed by those commenting on the issue is the fact that there was a Rs 80-85 billion maturity which came up or is coming up.  The Governor either didn’t know about it or knew about it very late.  We don’t know if Mahendran held his head in his hands and if he did it was due to being ‘shocked’ by this piece of information.  But he done exactly that, he has no one to blame but himself.  It may have been due to the fact that many seniors in the Bank were sidelined because they were thought to have been close to his predecessor.  All based on stories, obviously.  If they had been unprofessional they should be appropriately charged and investigated. That didn’t happen.  The lack of information may have resulted in Mahendran being hit between the eyes. That’s what happens when politics overrides professionalism.

Indeed, one wonders if there’s any professionalism at all here.  The previous regime followed an erroneous methodology where small amounts were issued to the market while the majority were private issues, as Wickremesinghe correctly observed in his speech.  He claims that they were issued at favorable terms in the private placement, but this contradicts the general understanding that they were issued at the weighted average.  What is important is that the majority were to state funds and foreign investors.  A significant amount went to the EPF.  There was no benefit to private dealers whose constant appeal had been and is ‘let the entire demand and supply be sorted out in the market’ so that the Bank cannot decide arbitrarily.  However if they were, as he claims, issued at a high rate it means the primary dealers were conned.  Another issue that warrants investigation, please note Mr Wickremesinghe. 

There have been instances where the Bank mentioned 1 billion and sold 2.   They did accept more that what was on offer but the rate remained close to the previous week’s weighted average rate.   Primary dealers had, however, information about tenure and yield.  In other countries cut off rates are published.  The Bank hasn’t done this, perhaps to keep the rates down which of course does not favor primary dealers.  If there was any ulterior motive, part of it would have been, to put it crudely, to screw the market and benefit the state.  In this instance the yield actually rose 300 basis points from what was expected.  The Bank compromised the state, therefore.

Previously, the Bank would maintain a dialog with investors, nurture investor confidence and exert moral pressure to bid low.  The primary dealers typically bid a little above the market.  To insinuate that primary dealers are a cartel or a mafia is wrong.  However, if they indeed are a mafia or a cartel then it is now incumbent on Wickremesinghe to investigate them.  If he cannot prove it then of course there’s more egg coming on to his face.

Mahendran has expressed the position that the market should determine the interest rate.  This is correct on principle.  However there is this ‘thorny’ reality that the EPF makes up 60-70% of the market.  So the EPF can be used by the Bank to fix the market rate. However a low interest rate thus obtained would mean low market activity, which does not help.  The Bank has to take the EPF out of bidding so that the market is not distorted (as long as EPF funds are managed by the Bank).  Right or wrong, the bottom line is that there should be a) policy clarity, and b) information should be released in advance.  It is clearly out of order when you get people to put in bids based on operating procedures and practices and then change the rules once the bids are in based on changes in ‘want’. 

Wickremesinghe admits that this is what happened.  He says that it was discovered that a vast sum of money was required to pay off contracts.  Well, if he (or the relevant minister) didn’t know this and didn’t inform him or the Governor in advance, that’s unpardonable incompetence.  It is indeed strange that Mahendran, when the gooey stuff hit the fan, chose to talk about his son-in-law’s resignation as a director of the company under scrutiny and not about this sudden money-need of the Government.  Wickremesinghe himself or Eran Wickramaratne, the minister concerned, could have mentioned this three weeks ago.  They did not. Why not?

It goes without saying that bonds are not the only way to find money.  The bulk anyway goes to state institutions.  Perhaps Wickremesinghe didn’t know how to deal with the problem. However, now that he has mentioned it, it is clear that he has implicated himself as being party to whatever wrongdoing that took place even if he doesn’t benefit personally.  Since it is highway contracts that are at issue here, two things need to be said.  Such contracts are rarely if ever honored on time.  Secondly, there are low cost ways of dealing with the issue.  The Bank’s job is to find money for the Government at the lowest possible yield and at an acceptable risk profile.  A prudent debt manager would not lock in 30 year borrowing at a high yield.  Wickremesinghe would be hard pressed to name a single corporate entity that will borrow 30 year money on 12%. 

The Prime Minister points to an instance when there was a bond auction in 2013 where Rs 16 billion was raised though 5 year bonds at 11.42%.  Again he mentions the matter of ‘private placements’ ignoring the reality of who the relevant entities were.  He also forgets that while in the Opposition his party members bemoaned high interest borrowings of the previous regime.  He says nothing of the ‘logic’ of long term borrowing on high interest.  In any case that was a different time, a different context and different market realities.  Using it as a justification for what the Bank did is nonsensical.

The Government (and the President is complicit here courtesy his silence) has to do better than the previous regime.  The Governor has to do better than take leave and let friends of his appointer bail him out. 

As things stand, there won’t be betting on the outcome of this investigation.  Wickremesinghe has made sure that a friendly determination will be yielded.  To say the least, it is a poor show on his part.  

See also:  

Ranil puts good governance on hold

Central Bank blues (greens?)

Read more

There’s life and cricket after the ‘Old Guard’ exits

Of course we are all disappointed.  We backed our boys to the hilt.  We forced ourselves to hope that they would win it all.  We all wanted a perfect farewell to our ‘grand old men’ (relatively speaking of course).  We wanted Sanga, Mahela, Dilly and Malinga to have a ‘Tendulkar Moment’ on March 29, 2015. Correspondents to sports pages wanted to write about the win and suggest tweaks that would get us into the Final.  Didn’t happen the way we liked it to happen.

 

On the plus side, no one’s had a heart attack.  No houses have been stoned or torched.  When our boys return no one will say ‘hoo hoo’.  On the contrary, the vast majority of fans will cheer them, pat them on the back and thank them for doing their best.  This is Sri Lanka.  It is not Pakistan or India.  In fact we are more like Bangladesh in this respect, except for the fact that had Sri Lanka progressed there would be less surprise than if Bangladesh had bested India.

So we lost.  So what?  Should we weep?  For those who shed a tear or think we should as a nation mourn, let me recount a conversation with Hindustan Times correspondent in Sri Lanka PK Balachandran which took place eight years ago when it was clear that Sri Lanka was going to lose to Australian in the World Cup final.

Sri Lanka had to bat out the last overs virtually in darkness.  It was a darker night back in Colombo and that’s not because of the time of day only.  On that very day Velupillai Prabhakaran sent a couple of toy planes to target who knows what in Colombo.  There was a blackout so that searchlights could locate these rogue planes.  I was listening to the commentary over a car radio.  I could see the searchlights crisscrossing the night sky.  Then I got a call from ‘Bala’. 

After the usual exchange of greetings, he put a question to me: ‘What does this mean to Sri Lanka?’  And he provided context: ‘There’s an LTTE air attack and you are about to lose the World Cup Final’. 

‘Bala, we don’t mix things up.  The LTTE is one thing, the World Cup is another.  Australia is a very good team.  Now had we lost to New Zealand in the Semi Final, it would have been pretty hard to take it.  Australia, we have to admit, is the better team.  They are not unbeatable though.  If we played them 10 times, we probably would win two games.  We hoped it would be one of those two games, but it wasn’t.’

Then we went on to talk about Buddhism and the notion of equanimity. 

This year is not too different except of course there’s no imminent LTTE threat.  We made it to the quarter final stage.  We lost to the two teams ahead of us in our group and defeated the four teams that ended below us.  South Africa was placed second in their group.  The odds were on them winning.  They did.  We might have made a match out of it, gone down fighting etc., but we didn’t.  Either way, it is not an unexpected result.  This is how good or bad we are and this is the distance that ability could take us. 

Mahela, Sanga, Dilshan and Malinga did not lose stature.  Not in the eyes of Sri Lankans.  Their place in history is secure.  They will be missed no doubt but that’s not something we need to dwell on.  World Cup 2015 is not yet done.  Some Sri Lankans might switch to another channel.   Cricket fans will watch some if not all of the remaining games. 

It is not the end of the world.  There was cricket before Mahela, Sanga, Dilshan and Malinga.  There will be cricket after them.  Better cricket perhaps, who can tell?  It’s time to say ‘goodbye’.  Time to say ‘Thanks’.  Time for a lump to make its presence felt in our collective throats.  The moment will pass, however. 

Let’s turn eyes, hearts and minds to the future.   

Read more

Pasan Kodikara, in and out of the text

Pic by Nilantha Gamage

He’s gone now. He has left a soft footprint in many hearts and along many pathways, literary and otherwise. So soft that it will take some effort to obliterate.  Read my tribute, 'Pasan Kodikara left behind the softest footprints'. The article below was written 14 years ago for the Sunday Island. 

Several years ago, a young man, small-made, thin, sporting a beard and long hair rolled into a bun at the back of his head, stood in a street corner with a friend. Another man had come running by and jumped into a crowded, moving bus. In the rush, the file that he was carrying slipped from his hands, sending a sheaf of half-sheets scattering all over the road and the pavement, clearly unrecoverable. The bearded young man is reported to have burst out laughing. His friend had admonished him at finding humour in another’s misfortune.

"A long time ago, when I went to the Soviet Union to study, a group of us, all committed Marxists, found Soviet society to be anything but what we had thought socialism and communism to be. So we thought we should teach Marxism to these people, and formed a collective called the ‘nyashtiya’ (nucleus). I was asked to write the constitution of the nyashtiya, since I was attending a different university. Having written the document, I went to meet my friends, and as it happened there was a raging snow storm, with fierce winds almost blowing me off my feet. A particularly fierce gust of wind took away all my papers. The blinding snow, the wind and the cold made sure that recovery was futile. I lost the nucleus of the nucleus and didn’t sight the place for three whole months.

"So I laughed because it occurred to me that something which appear to be life and death issues at one point, are trivial and funny at others."

I first met Pasan Kodikara in 1993, when he came to the Agrarian Research and Training Institute to visit his friends from Russia. I was struck by his attire, his huge shirts and baggy trousers accentuating his wiry frame, and his moustache, beard and hair making him a character who seemed to have jumped out of the cartoon pages. I was even more impressed by the depth of his knowledge on literature and the arts and the eloquence with which he articulated these. Eight years later, I met with this now well-known translator and writer, to "catch up" and trace the avenues that his fertile mind had since travelled.

Pasan, born in 1962, was the youngest in a family of three. His mother was a teacher, and his father is the well known journalist, writer and poet, Sirilal Kodikara. His brother, Amila, is a translator and he described his sister, as a good and critical reader. Having access to his father’s considerable library, it was natural that young Pasan would take a keen interest in literature. From an early age he had got used to "reading heavy books".

After completing his secondary education at Nalanda College, Pasan was awarded a scholarship to study in the Soviet Union. After spending 10 months at Lumumba University learning Russian, he enrolled at the Gorky Literary Institute, Moscow where he went on to complete a Masters in 1991. As part of his thesis he presented a collection of poems titled Anithya (impermanence), which included a Russian translation. Some of these poems were published in Russian newspapers and a collection under that title, which includes several other poems is in print and will be put out by Sanhinda Prakashana.

Pasan admitted that he doesn’t write much poetry now. "There are certain material realities that construct barriers, such as the low value for poetry, the difficulty of finding a publisher, etc." Still, Pasan is not a man whose creative urges are not dictated by market forces. He has, over the past few years come out with several books, including several translations. His own collection of short stories, Thahanam Gahaka Gedi (Forbidden Fruit) came out at the end of last year and included stories he has written over the past 15 years, some of which have appeared in newspapers such as Ravaya, Aththa and Divaina. He added "I am right now thinking of a novel of my own".

In 1998, the readers were treated to Aganthukaya and Veradi Vetaheema (translations of Camus’ The Guest and the play Cross Purpose, respectively). In the same year, he translated Boris Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. The following year saw his translation of Bulgakov’s Mister Moliere’s Life. In the year 2000, Pasan came out with "papayata veteema" (Camus’ The Fall) as well as translations of Sigmund Freud’s lectures and Ernest Theodor Amadeus Hoffman’s Nebensansichden des Katers Murr (translated as moor poosage jeevitha dekeem). Hoffman is recognised as the harbinger of magical realism as a literary form and Bulgakov is said to have been greatly influenced by his work. Anatoly Rybakov’s Children of the Arbath (arbath daruwo") and Alexander Balkov’s Magician of the Emerald City (kola menik pure mayakaraya) are currently in print.

Pasan is also a dramatist, specialising in experimental theatre, having produced two plays, Saadarayen Piliganimu and Iththo, a tragi-comedy and a melodrama, respectively. These, according to Pasan were moderately successful. He said that he learnt a lot in the process of producing these plays. He was also a member of a street-theatre collective called Rangana Samuhikathvaya, which also produced an academic journal concentrating on theater by the name of Preksha. He is hopeful that they will be able to produce this on a more regular basis.

Writers are often poorly paid and even then do not enjoy a regular income. So Pasan used to work as a visiting lecturer at Kelaniya University in the Department of Mass Communication, teaching creative communication and inter-cultural communication. From October last year he has been a visiting lecturer at the Sripali Campus, Horana of the Colombo University, teaching aesthetics, literature studies, and several drama-related subjects. "I do enjoy interacting with the teaching/academic sphere, but it certainly hampers my creative work. I have to work on my translations in the time I steal from the work I do to obtain an income," he said.

Although Pasan has made a name for himself as a successful translator, it was not at all easy at the beginning. His first book had been rejected by several publishers. He says it is probably because of an expanding market for translations that he was able to accomplish so much so quickly.

"Actually there has always been a good market for translations," he observed. He mentioned Padma Harsha Kuranage and Cyril C. Perera as examples of accomplished translators, pointing out that the Rubaiyat was translated as far back as 1953/54. In fact, Sinhala and Tamil readers were treated to the best of Russian and other Soviet literatures due to the excellent and affordable books that were produced by Progress Publishers and distributed by the Communist Party’s outlet in Slave Island, People’s Publishing House. Dedigama Rodrigo used to be a household name among university students and it is through him that a lot of young people discovered Dostoyevsky, Gorky, Ostrovsky, Sholokov and other literary giants.

Pasan seemed to be more interested in talking about the translator’s craft than himself or his work. I asked him what factors contribute to a good translation.

He said that one of the major problems is that translators are often forced to depend on already translated texts. "For example, if you want to translate a novel written in Spanish, you will have to work on the English translation, with the inevitable double loss."

"In such cases, the would-be translator has to be equipped with a certain sensitivity that allows him to assess the quality of the first translation. Even when translating from the original text, sometimes the success depends on the extent to which the translator experiences it. Actually we tend to translate that which disturbs us, so to speak. The richer the reading experience, the greater the desire to translate. When I read Master and Margarita, I really wanted to translate it.

Translation is needless to say, a difficult and in many ways a tormenting exercise. It requires a fine sensibility, unencumbered by the handicaps of the ‘whom-to-tell-what’ kind, to achieve an approximation to the nuances in the original text. There are other issues of course.

"The translator is challenged at every turn by numerous questions, and he has to sift through many answers before making his choice. He has to remember that he is basically a prisoner of the text. He cannot experiment and therefore there is often a conflict between his nature and sensibilities and those of the author. Whenever someone attempts a translation that is primarily based on his sense of the aesthetic, it ends in failure. It might read well and may even sell well. Whether it is a translation is another matter altogether."

Pasan pointed out that the Soviet Union’s translation programme was particularly successful because poets and writers were employed, a case in point being Boris Pasternak. Having been "gagged" he turned his creative energies to the art of translation, and his translations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Goethe’s Faust are widely considered to be exceptionally good.

Another problem lies in the field of cultural symbols, according to Pasan. "Where the translator has been denied access to the cultural symbols embedded in the text, the translation necessarily suffers," he said. I asked him if globalisation and the advent of the internet would help alleviate this problem.
"Not necessarily. Very often globalisation sends us specifically ideology-bound slices of other cultures. In many instances, good writers rebel against the cultural ethos of the powerful and if this is what we have to depend on for gleaning cultural significance of a given set of symbols, we would be doing the text great injustice.

"Unfortunately, there are instances where even if the translation is good, society deems it a failure. Sometimes, it boils down to an issue of timing. Just as society was not ready for Whitman’s Leaves of Grass when it was first published, sometimes good translations are appreciated much later."
Pasan confessed that an element of weariness has set in into his translating drive. "There is always the danger of getting trapped in a groove, in other words, getting mechanical about it. Naturally creativity can suffer. Then there are other factors that intrude. Typically a published manuscript will go for 1000-2000 copies of the book. We end up steeped in debt.

"This is partly due to the high cost of paper. For instance in India there is no tax on paper, so printing costs are low. Radical changes in national policy have to happen for writers to thrive. Therefore it is possible to argue that there is a serious problem in this particular market. As a result the future of translations is bleak. Translators, in order to deal with this situation tend to go for short stories and children’s stories. The readership suffers."

Pasan nevertheless showed much admiration for those who consider translating as their life’s work. "Cyril C. Perera is clearly an exceptional translator. I have the greatest respect for him for he has persisted, against all odds, to produce some wonderful translations. In fact he was a regular visitor to our home and I learned much from him. You should have interviewed him and not me, because he has been in this field for many years and probably has the best understanding of all the issues that a translator has to deal with. I have many other interests and therefore I will never achieve that kind of greatness. It requires 100% dedication."

Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the great Pakistani poet once said "translating poetry, even when confined to a cognate language with some formal and idiomatic affinities with the original compositions, is an exacting task, but this task is obviously far more formidable when the languages involved are as far removed from each other in cultural background, rhythmic and formal patterns, and the vocabulary of symbol allusion as Urdu and English."

Translating novels might be easier, but bridging the cultural gaps remains a challenge. Pasan Kodikara has had much exposure to the Russian language and culture and as such does have a comparative advantage in the matter. He said that he has been influenced by books, by the people he has met, his teachers and the ideologies and philosophies he has encountered. All this has gelled into a sensitive artist who is able to discern and distinguish between the subtle nuances of language and life processes. Whether he continues to translate or produce more original work, it is clear that he has already contributed much. In time, hopefully, he will do more.

Read more