How far away are the faraway places?

‘Faraway’ is a word that makes one think of the most beautiful places, destinations minimally touched by human beings. Idyllic. In a sense it tickles that part of our beings that is unhappy, disenchanted or even disgusted with the places we happen to inhabit, literally and metaphorically. It nudges the urge to ‘get away from it all.’

Not everyone can get away at will. Often the diurnal gets in the way. Sometimes it’s about means. And yet, there are some among us who have discovered the secret of retiring material needs, pushing aside the burdens of familial responsibility in order to pursue a dream, indulge a passion and do what pleases the heart.  

Tharindu Amunugama, fitness buff and photographer, gets away from it all so often that the ‘faraways’ seem to be where he has taken up residence, the city and ‘home’ places he occasionally visits. Just going by the photographs he posts on social media, it is easy to conclude that he has traveled the length and breadth of the island, gone to less-visited corners, discovered, breathed and photographed more landscapes, people and ways of being that anyone alive. The late Nihal Fernando, also a photographer, might be the only one who has seen more. 

Tharindu on occasion posts ‘the immediate’. People. Faces. Work. Customs and rituals. And yet, gives us bigger slices of the ‘faraways’ in the main; island-beauty that doesn’t find its way to travel magazines simply because eyes cannot transport that which they have not seen. He essentially and perhaps unintentionally issues an observation: you haven’t seen a fraction of the beautiful island called Sri Lanka. 

There are faraway places about whose existence we now know thanks to the likes of Tharindu. Some who think ‘somewhere outside Sri Lanka’ when thinking about dream-destinations might pause and consider exploring Tharindu’s ‘faraways.’ A related question can be put to them. Or to ourselves, if that’s the case. 

‘Have you seen your neighbors, lately?’  Put another way, ‘how much of your neighborhood have you seen?’ We can zoom in further: what’s in your garden? That’s just one example.

Have you ever stopped to look at the grass or weeds defying pavement stones? What’s under the moss covered brick that is one of several lining a bed of roses? What lessons about cycles or the eternal verities pertaining to birth, decay and death does the Bo tree hold as it sheds leaves in the hot months, puts out new light green and almost golden ones, have them turn a deeper green later and make them fall, one by one? What is the politics that blares out in cityscapes? What is the resistance that whispers off the walls? What are the splendid treatise  on the political economy of survival, contestation, frequent defeat and and rare victory are written in the silences amid the cacophony of battle and celebrations of the victors? 

Are they all so close that they are out of reach? Are we farsighted or shortsighted? Is gaze too long or not short enough? 

There’s something mercurial about ‘faraways’. Clearly touchable and yet hard to hold. We know it’s within reach, but we let it pass. We delight in Tharindu’s photographs. We like. We share. We comment. We ask, ‘Where? Where?’ We make a mental note, ‘must visit’. We sit in chosen residences and keep our doors closed. And that makes the immediate something outside our doors as fascinating as Tharindu’s magical destinations. 

There’s magic. Near and far. We are an island. A small one. Endowed with such varied beauty. We don’t have to travel far to encounter something so elegantly textured that the caressing would change the way we see the world and one another.

That’s another album embedded in the many that Tharindu posts on Facebook. It doesn’t look like a collection of photographs. A blank box then. He could titled it ‘the unseen.’ We have to acquire eyes to see the unseen, he seems to be saying, for since there are ‘faraways’ there must be  ‘nearbys.’ To be seen or to be passed over. To enrich or, in the passing, leave us poorer.

This article was first published in the DAILY NEWS [January 22, 2020]

malindasenevi@gmail.com

Other articles in the series 'In Passing...': 

[published in the 'Daily News' on Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week]

There ARE good people!

Re-placing people in the story of schooldays 

When we stop, we can begin to learn

Routine and pattern can checkmate poetry

Janani Amanda Umandi threw a b'day party for her father 

Sriyani and her serendipity shop

Forget constellations and the names of oceans

Where's your 'One, Galle Face'?

Maps as wrapping paper, roads as ribbons

Yasaratne, the gentle giant of Divulgane

Katharagama and Athara Maga
Victories are made by assists
Lost and found between weaver and weave
The Dhammapada and word-intricacies
S.A. Dissanayake taught children to walk in the clouds
White is a color we forget too often
The most beautiful road is yet to meet a cartographer

The Eldest: a story written on face and in eyes

Read more

Credibility gaps and complicities

Is Ranjan Ramanayake a hero or a villain? Depends on who you ask and depends on what you are talking about. If anything he has done or said causes embarrassment to someone or some political group then that person, his/her supporters or the party (as the case may be) would not cheer him. The relevant opponents might. There’s a lot of subjectivity in these Q&A exercises.

The chain of events has thrown up some names. It has revealed some glaring flaws in multiple apparatuses of the state. Such things are not unknown. Even proof of the same is available. And yet, the entire saga of leaked tapes has revived the serious discussion on systemic flaws, political culture, the average political persona and ethics.

Such things need to be discussed. This is good. However, we also see this discussion being displaced by a fascination for the sordid. This is not good.

In all this, ‘due process’ has been subverted, sometimes deliberately and at times by the over-enthusiasm of ‘the public.’ Whether the end justifies the means or not is sadly a question that’s not been considered important enough to discuss. 

Ranjan Ramanayake did not leak recorded conversations. They were leaked by others. Ranjan Ramanayake does not seem to have been interested in exposing corruption. Instead he has encouraged wrongdoing to see that justice is done. Supposedly. When the frills are removed we are left with a politician who has no scruples about bending rules, either through ignorance or arrogance or both, to achieve objectives he has set himself. These objectives are clearly partisan and framed by narrow political agenda. 

Recording phone conversations without the permission of the persons at the other end of the line  is clearly out of order. Leaking such confidential matter without the permission of the relevant persons is also out of order. Ranjan’s act is immoral. We know that the state is in possession of the tapes. It is also probably that others have such taped material in their possession. The state has a responsibility to protect confidentiality. In the case of others it is a moral obligation, nothing more. Who leaked the tapes? We need to know. 

So, let us repeat. Ranjan did not leak the tapes. They were leaked. Claiming after the fact of leakage that exposure was intended is untenable. He was not a whistle-blower. Neither were his intentions honorable or defensible as having the larger interest of the people at heart. That’s all balderdash.

That said, Ranjan’s claims about fellow parliamentarians, if they can be substantiated, are certainly serious. Maybe he is in a land called ‘Nothing Left to Lose’ and if so there’s nothing heroic about it. It more like ‘if I am to drown I will take everyone in the ship down with me.’  

Still. 

Ranjan has unwittingly confirmed what was widely suspected if not known: there’s complicity (at worst) in wrongdoing and there's a massive credibility gap. We cannot trust this parliament. We cannot trust the judicial system. We cannot trust the law enforcement agencies. Worse, considering our own complicities (in general) by way of electing immoral, deceitful and corrupt representatives and by privileging exchanges of a personal nature over those that have relevance to systems of governance, we cannot trust ourselves as a citizenry. That's not a happy state for a nation or a citizenry. 

It is easy to say ‘let’s get rid of the 225.’ We send 225 to Parliament every election, so there’s complicity there, tempered of course by the limitation that our choices are limited by the preferences of party leaders responsible for making the relevant lists. However, if charity is to begin at home, then we can raise voices, stand together and stamp feet. Remain silent and we relinquish the right to complain. 

Now it is likely that Parliament will be dissolved in early March. Then comes the nomination process. If any party fields even a single person who is in the ‘tried, tested and miserably failed’ category on account of sloth, incompetence, bending or breaking rules, unethical conduct or worse, then that party essentially indicts itself. It shouts out, ‘We do not deserve your vote.’ And if the people go ahead and vote for ANY candidate from such a party, then the people indict themselves. They shout out: ‘We happily renounce the right to complain; we deserve to be lied to, robbed and treated as though we do not count.’  

It is hard to imagine that things could get worse than this. And that’s the positive aspect of it all. We can only get better. But that’s up to us. If the major political parties insist on ‘business as usual’ then it is up to the people to put them out of business or make do with inferior and even toxic goods which they must necessarily consume. 

Of course, in all this, we have to presume innocence until proven otherwise. As of now, we have Ranjan Ramanayake incriminating himself as an immoral, unethical and willing-to-bend-rules politician. We have judges who have compromised themselves. We have the possibility that state agencies leaked the tapes. Ranjan has leveled charges at all and sundry. The tapes he tabled in Parliament may or may not offer evidence to the effect that his fellow-parliamentarians were or are guilty of wrongdoing. Investigations are necessary to generate proof one way or another, with the hitch that there’s very little confidence in such processes being independent, efficient or just. 

That said, it cannot be disputed that there’s a stink that has been emanating from Parliament for decades. We put that stink in Parliament. We cannot do much, but there must be ‘a little something’ that we can do. Perhaps we should do ‘our bit’ at every given opportunity.     

This article was first published in the DAILY MIRROR [January 22, 2020]

malindasenevi@gmail.com

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There ARE good people!

About a week ago, a woman from Gonagalapura, Induruwa, brought her son to the Lady Ridgeway Hospital (LRH). The child who is autistic has to be shown to a doctor ever month. After the examination, they had taken a bus, intending to catch the return train to from the Fort Railway Station.

As they were crossing the road, the boy, around 12 years old, had suddenly fainted. 

‘We had to rush to catch the train to Colombo and I couldn’t prepare breakfast. I just got him a lollypop.’  

Such things happen. What made her tell me the story is what happened when her boy fainted. 

‘This was in Pitakotuwa (The Pettah). A lot of people quickly came up to us. Someone called the 119 “Suwasariya” ambulance service. They helped him into the vehicle. Maybe it was the sweetness on an empty stomach that made him vomit. He recovered almost immediately. Anyway, we ended back at the LRH!’

‘They were all strangers, but they helped us,’ she repeated this several times. 

Later, her father, Manikkuvadura Daniel, who is almost 90 years old, in the midst of discussing broad as well as specific issues relating to local and international politics laced with ideological elements he has always been fascinated with, brought up this incident. 

‘Apey rate minissu hondai (the people of our country are good),’ he insisted. ‘If not,’ he argued, ‘why should those people in Pitakotuwa have helped my daughter and her son?’

There are good people all over the world. In most places, such circumstances prompt quite response. There are kind hearts. There are quick minds. There are solidarities that can be formed with strangers. It’s all about circumstances. 

Danny Aiya, as he is know by most people, even those who are young enough to be his great grand children, was responding to a question about his neighbors. 

He’s old. Doesn’t own an inch of land, he made sure I noted that claim. He lives with two daughters and the aforementioned grandson. The mother of the child is the sole breadwinner. She obtains good tea from a nearby factory, packets and sells it to retail shops in the area or to her neighbors. She also collects goraka (brindleberry) and sells it in small packets to mothers of kids who attend the same school as her son. 

The Induruwa Hospital isn’t too far away but I couldn’t help wondering, ‘what if there’s a medical emergency…who would take him to the hospital?’ That’s why I asked about the neighbors.

‘They are lovely people. Very helpful. Ape rate minissu hondai.’

And he added after a slight pause, ‘paksha deshapaalanaya thamai varadda (it’s party politics that is vile).’  

‘They were random people. Strangers. They helped my daughter. She wasn’t a friend or a relative. If political affiliations were discussed, do you think people would have helped? It would immediately prompt several groups of people to get about their own business.’

Party politics is certainly divisive. On the other hand, people are not political all the time. There’s a time for politics. There’s a time for humanity. On occasions even the politics is humane.  

Danny Aiya has lived long enough to understand the inhumanity associated with politics. He’s seen humanity push aside the political. Now, after more than 70 years of political engagement (he’s a former Maoist who once spent many months in China, where he had the opportunity even meet Chairman Mao Zedong), he has concluded that a diminished political party footprint makes for a better society. 

Danny Aiya has generous blood, so he knows about giving. And what he’s received has had little to do with political affiliation.  A couple of years before he died at the age of 102, Danny Aiya’s father, whom Danny described as a "Kawthuka Vasthuva (an archaeological treasure),” had given up his room to accommodate refugees who had fled terrorist attacks in the Eastern Province, and this "in a country where there are people who are reluctant to offer a glass of water to a stranger." His mother was from Waawwa, Devinuwara, a village that gave rise to the tongue-twister "Waawwa Weve Vee Vewwa”. 

Danny Aiya is like his late father. He once recalled that the inmates of the Kantale Refugee Camp who had been forced to abandon their village, Alla, in 1986, had come to the South upon hearing rumours about lands being distributed among refugees. Danny Aiya had been running a small scale coir rope industry at that time and he had two toilets. He had decided to take everyone to his house. 

‘People from nearby villages rallied round me to ensure that these people who had lost their property and livelihoods to LTTE terror are looked after.  Despite his modest means,  he had looked after these 183 people for 5 full days. Thereafter they had gone to Ambalantota, seeking relief from the Government Agent. Instead of relief they had been set upon by a group of thugs. Danny, along with others had been arrested and had to languish in police cells for a month. The matter had been taken up in courts, where it was determined that "Every citizen has the right to live anywhere." No compensation was granted.

That’s his life, right there. Do what’s necessary and wholesome and pay a price. Keep doing good, regardless of whether or not the world appreciates. 

There are good people in our nation. There are good people in all nations. Maybe it’s the good they do that keeps this world alive and beautiful. They fight the good fight and have enough love to support a young widow take care of her sick chid. They go unnoticed, un-blessed. They don’t mind. Like Danny Aiya.

This article was first published in the DAILY NEWS [January 20, 2020]

Other articles in the series 'In Passing...': 

[published in the 'Daily News' on Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week]

Re-placing people in the story of schooldays 

When we stop, we can begin to learn

Routine and pattern can checkmate poetry

Janani Amanda Umandi threw a b'day party for her father 

Sriyani and her serendipity shop

Forget constellations and the names of oceans

Where's your 'One, Galle Face'?

Maps as wrapping paper, roads as ribbons

Yasaratne, the gentle giant of Divulgane

Katharagama and Athara Maga
Victories are made by assists
Lost and found between weaver and weave
The Dhammapada and word-intricacies
S.A. Dissanayake taught children to walk in the clouds
White is a color we forget too often
The most beautiful road is yet to meet a cartographer

The Eldest: a story written on face and in eyes

Read more

M.D. Daniel’s lessons on integrity

Manikkuvadura Daniel will be 90 years a few months from now. He lives with two daughters and a grandson in Gonagalapura, Induruwa. He sometimes uses glasses, but can still read without them. On the rare occasions he gets on his push bicycle and rides to the retail shop in the village. He spends most of his time reading and making notes of the world around him and the universe within his mind.  

I first met Danny Aiya in the year 1990 when we were involved in a political group which evolved into the now defunct Janatha Mithuro. A few years later we were arrested along with 13 others in a temple in Wadduwa. Danny Aiya and I were transferred to some security-related office on Longdon Place. That first night was the most uncomfortable ever because he and I were handcuffed together. The following morning, Danny Aiya, then a veteran political activist 62 years of age, threatened to urinate all over the office space (where were were held) unless our captors agreed to allow us to sleep in a less fettered manner. He won the day. We won some degree of the rest of the nights of our captivity. 

Danny Aiya, to all his political associates regardless of their age, has of late read and reflected on the Tripitaka, the canonical collective of Theravada Buddhism. He is as well versed in the Marxist canon as he is in the Dhamma having been a long time Maoist. He knows history. He knows heritage. He knows politics and political nuance. He can see beyond what most people see because he can see through them all. 

Danny Aiya has many stories to relate. The visit was too short to listen to even a fraction for we had to reminisce, update each other about our respective families and of course partake of a humble but absolutely delicious meal of rice, a potato curry and a mukunuwenna malluma. According to his means, I told myself. As always, we discussed the political moment about which we could have talked for hours. He spoke briefly, mostly in Sinhala, and said a lot.   

‘It occurred to me that if people who had no notion of the way Buddhism is practiced by some in Sri Lanka read the Tripitaka and also visited our country, they would be shocked.’

We have to take into account the objective reality, he said, in English, and went on to talk about Angulimala. 

‘The Buddha, Gauthama Muni, not on stopped Angulimala’s crazed quest for 1,000 fingers, but ordained him and even dedicated a sutra for mothers undergoing labor pains. That was Gauthama Muni. Here we see bikkhus who come on various television channels insisting that that one or this one must be punished. It’s all selective. There’s a pattern of ignoring the vile things done by “our people.” We never had that kind of trait in our system, that was not our upbringing.’

Two things. First the selectivity. We have had successive governments operating as though the only mandate received was to arrest the government that had been ousted. There is selectivity. There appears to be targeting. There’s also soft-hands approaches on loyalists or rather those considered to be on ‘our side’. 

That has become par for the course. The Yahapalanists were supposed to do things differently. They were by far the worse in recent times. The FCID, for example, was a kangaroo court run by a set of people tasked to take political opponents down. The crimes of ‘our people’ were not taken up. This Government, to be fair, has not gone easy on ‘our people’. It’s still ‘early days’ but surely, even though there’s enough reason to investigate some who have been questioned and even arrested, there are far more serious crimes about which we are not hearing much. Perhaps some matters take time, but then again there remains two pertinent issues: a) it is the prominent people in the Opposition who are being targeted, and b) there is a lot of media-noise about these cases.  

The second issue is that of the political role of the bikkhu. I don’t subscribe to the view that the bikkhu should do nothing apart from meditate in a temple or a monastery. The boundaries of a bikkhu’s universe cannot be determined anyone but the vinaya rules and of course those set by the particular bikkhu. It is silly for those who are rabidly anti-Buddhist and who subscribe to fundamentalisms associated with other faiths to pontificate on what a bikkhu should and should not do. And yet, there is something that just doesn’t seem right when a bikkhu advocates punishment. That’s the business of the judiciary. If the judiciary appears to be slothful, selective, incompetent or even unjust, the bikkhu following the social role of the clergy and as a citizen has every right to advocate reform. What that reform ought to be is the business of those conversant in such matters.

In the end it is about self-discipline. The lessons are in the buddha vacana or the Word of the Buddha, as contained in the Tripitaka. In general self-reflection on the extent to which fundamental tenets are adhered can help. Jathi-jara-marana (birth, decay and death), the Sathara Brahma Viharana or the four divine virtues/abodes (loving-kindness, compassion, equanimity and the virtue of rejoining in/with another’s joy) and such. Serenity. Now. Always. In and out of the political firmament. In and out of the temple. In the delivery of a sermon or a political speech, in the contestation of that which is patently evil, in essence, in the course of conduct, every moment.   

Danny Aiya, as we parted, smiled and said ‘mata eka bim angalak nehe (I do not own one inch of land).’ He fought and still fights to win freedom for the people of this nation. For him there’s no end-point in event and time. He refuses to retire from political engagement. He knows who has wronged him but holds no grudges. He recognizes mistakes and strives to correct them. A bikkhu without a saffron robe exemplifying a practice that certain agitated bikkhus would do well to emulate.

This article was first published in the SUNDAY MORNING [January 19, 2020]

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malindasenevi@gmail.com

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Is the party really over?

Truth be told, the better question would be, ‘didn’t the party end a long time ago?’ The ending was scripted in the Second Republican Constitution of 1978 and the proportional representation system that replace the first-past-the-post method of electing representatives to Parliament. It ensured that we won’t see the kind of electoral routs such as the ones in 1970 and 1977. It also meant that parties would struggle to secure a clear majority in parliamentary elections. 

J.R. Jayewardene, the architect of that constitution, probably regretted that decision for he went dead against the spirit of that logic in 1982 when a referendum was held whereby a ‘yes’ vote of 50%+1 allowed the United National Party (UNP) to continue to enjoy the five-sixths edge obtained in 1978. The party-fixated nature of the UNP’s legislating ethic was also apparent when several amendments were passed just before the 1989 Parliamentary Elections, i.e. when the loss of the all important two-thirds majority was imminent. They were all partisan pieces of law.  

Since then, apart from the Parliamentary Elections in 2010 and the violence-ridden one in 1989, no group was able to get a clear majority. In 2010,  United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) rode the immense popularity following operations to deliver a comprehensive defeat to terrorism. That alliance (yes, not a ‘party’) returned 144 to Parliament.  In 1989, the UNP got 125, but this was with the Ceylon Workers’ Congress. Even in 2010, the UPFA, led by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), was made of no less than 14 registered political parties. 

The coalition-necessity is obvious, but equally obvious was that the two major parties, the UNP and the SLFP, called the shots. The others tagged along and reaped the benefits or suffered the pain of general popularity or disenchantment of the incumbent regimes. 

The classic example is that of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in 2004. This party, which needed a proxy (Sri Lanka Pragathisheelee Peramuna) to secure just a single seat in 1994, increased its parliamentary slice to 10 in 2000, 17 in 2001 and a relatively whopping 41 in 2004. It’s fortunes plummeted thereafter. In 2010, the JVP used the Sarath Fonseka tag to get 7 elected and in 2015, going it alone, returned just 6 members to Parliament.  

In incredible hike in political fortunes was simply because the JVP contested under the betel leaf symbol of the UPFA. Under the prevalent system, people vote first for party and then for candidate. We can only speculate as to how the JVP would have fared had that party contested independent of the UPFA. The 2010 and 2015 results as well as the results of local government elections indicate, however, that the slice would have been thinner if they had done so.

So we have coalition. Coalitions led by the UNP or the SLFP. We had, to be more accurate. In 2019 November, the winner didn’t belong to either of these parties. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was the candidate of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP). True, the SLFP officially supported him, but its leader, Maithripala Sirisena, then the president of the Republic, was at best wishy-washy. Key aides openly backed the UNP candidate, Sajith Premadasa. The SLFP, as indicated by the results of the 2018 local government elections (securing just 15% of the overall vote), had by then declined politically to being an entity that could, at best, best the JVP.

However, it has to be remembered that the SLPP was forged by former SLFPers. Whereas, typically, breakaway groups make a small and insignificant dent in the fortunes of the ‘Mother Party,’ this phenomenon was reversed in 2018 and 2019. Essentially then, what we have as the SLPP is something like a name-change. Something akin to an aggressive corporate take-over preceded and not followed by brand-name change.   

What of the UNP? That party has had its share of internal problems, but never as intense as right now. The leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe was forced to step aside to allow the wannabe leader, Sajith Premadasa to run for President. It might come to be seen as a strategic move to let the storm winds pass. We can’t tell for sure. 

Right now, Sajith Premadasa is fighting for a consolation prize: the party leadership. In the event that the party constitution proves to be too robust and therefore would protect Wickremesinghe, Sajith and his loyalists may opt to break away. 

Keeping in mind that Sajith’s father, facing similar situations vis-à-vis Wickremesinghe’s uncle, J.R. Jayawardena, opted to remain in the party (‘I would be nothing outside the UNP,’ he had observed, apparently) and that Sajith is by no means the UNP equivalent of Mahind Rajapaksa (who, even in defeat was clearly the most popular and loved leader in the country and therefore excellently positioned to bounce back in a few years), it is unlikely that such a breakaway party could do to the UNP what the SLPP did to the SLFP.   

Nevertheless, it is clear that the two old parties are infirm, diseased and at death’s door. The SLFP has all but taken up residence in its new avatar, the SLPP. The corporeal transformations of the UNP are as of now unclear.

Now it is quite possible that the SLPP (an alliance or ‘a front’ if we go just by the name) and the UNP (or a breakaway faction that grows up and eventually dwarfs the parent party) could toss power-keys from one to another well into the future. It is possible that the proportional representation system is reviewed and amended or done away with altogether. 

The amendment tabled by Wijedasa Rajapaksa (22nd) to revert to the original 12.5% minimum of the total votes poled for a candidate to be elected from a recognized party or independent group from the 5% set by an Amendment in 1989, would certainly force almost all ‘small parties’ to cling to one of the two ‘big parties’ for political survival. While this would make for political stability and certainly limit the ability of political tails to wag political dogs, the invariable result of a two-party system (where both are essentially two factions of a single and right-wing political agenda separated simply by the degree of nationalist sentiment) could become a ‘democratic’ headache has bad as what we have right now without the proposed 22nd amendment.

What we need to come to terms with is not that the ‘old parties’ are gone or on their way out. What we need to ascertain is the degree of difference between ‘old’ and ‘new’. Old wine in new bottles, is that what we have and are likely to live with into the foreseeable future? That wouldn’t be something we could wholeheartedly cheer, surely? 

The challenge, then, is for ‘breakaways’ to demonstrate difference in terms of development paradigm, understanding of sovereignty, recognition of all threats, local and international, on all fronts, be it threat to territorial integrity, servility to foreign powers, tyranny of the arms industry, human smuggling, citizenship anomalies, invasive nature of Big Pharma, climate change, poisoned soils, polluted oceans, deforestation, generations deranged by drugs etc., etc. 

That’s where the true discussion should head towards. Not names. Not even histories. In other words, is Gotabaya Rajapaksa a ‘Rajapaksa’ in terms of all that is associated with that name? Is he a different kind of Rajapaksa. Is he an SLFPer wearing SLPP clothes? Is he a UNPer sans colonial baggage but willing to ‘go along’ with the Washington agenda? 

Even more importantly, we must ask, ‘what kind of citizen are we?’ We must ask, ‘what is our nation now?’ And ‘what kind of nation do we desire our children to be citizens of?’ Indeed, ‘what kind of citizens do we want to be?’ 

We are in that kind of party. The music is loud. The food is bad. We are not among friends or if even if we are, the friendships are cursory and little more than acquaintanceships. I would want to go to different kind of party or else get a different DJ, a different caterer and invite a different kind of crowd. There’s work to be done and not just by the newly elected president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

This article was first published in the SUNDAY OBSERVER (January 19, 2020)

malindasenevi@gmail.com

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