Reconciliation does not grow in the Valley of Lies

Negombo. May 5, 2019. Two weeks after the Jihadist attacks. Who attacked Muslims, who boycotted Muslim shops?   

Half a truth here, half a truth there

armed with half-truths onward

all in the Valley of Lies

rode the six hundred.

‘Forward the Lie Brigade!

Charge for the monks!’ he said.

Into the Valley of Lies

rode the six hundred.

Sorry, Alfie. Couldn’t resist. These are tense times and a half-chuckle here and there you would pardon, I am sure. I was reminded of the verse by a number: 300. Half, yes, but this is only half the story. Read on.

In June 2014, 300 Sri Lankans petitioned the then Government to ‘take urgent action to stop attacks on Muslims’. This was in the aftermath of incidents in Aluthgama, Beruwala, Welipenna and Dharga Town, and pointed out to inflammatory speech by the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS).

Aluthgama, Beruwala, Welipenna etc was followed a few years later by Theldeniya and Digana as names associated with violence. Anti-Muslim violence. Violence perpetrated by those who affirmed the Buddhist faith, as per their convictions and understanding. 

In both instances, the Buddhists are made out to have clapped with a single hand, the statements would have us believe. We could quibble about who cast the first stone or who cast more stones, but there are few who are blameless. Well, no one need cast stones and even if ‘the other’ did so, it does not justify retaliation (if indeed that was what it was) of the kind we saw. That said, the popular narrative among the English twitterati is that stone-throwing or rather the casting of the first stone is a Sinhala Buddhist preserve, a ‘fact’ that even  absolves suicide bombers. 

Today, however, it seems that stones have been gathered a long time before ‘Aluthgama’ with or without the knowledge of people living in these areas. ‘Without’ let’s assume. No, let’s say ‘Without!’ with conviction, for grand generalization is a curse.   

What happened to the ‘300’  worthies (and their ilk, numbering well over 600) after the Easter Sunday attack by Muslims who claim to be affirming to the letter their faith? Not all such petitioners are in the practice of issuing statements at every turn, although the Easter Sunday attack was not exactly something trivial. Still, typically, there are signature-solicitors in such exercises. What happened to them? Why was Aluthgama, Theldeniya etc., ‘hot’ and ‘Easter Sunday’ cold? How did the anti-Muslim violence in Negombo following the attack and the boycotting of Muslim business  establishments go unnoticed? Was it noticed but ignored because the perpetrators did not belong to the community such people love to hate, namely the Sinhala Buddhists? Only D.B.S. Jeyaraj talked of what happened in Poruthota, Periyamulla and Dalupotha on May 5, 2019. Is it that our anti-Buddhist anti-Sinhala mobs didn’t find a mouth-watering story to tell? 

Anyway, all of a sudden, in the name of inter-communal amity, we are told to desist from naming the religion of the terrorists, the religion in whose name they killed. So we have a nameless commentator in the state media talking about ‘the hidden hands behind the anti-Muslim riots’. This print warrior will hopefully, even belatedly, tell us about all the hidden hands behind the terrorists affirming their Islamic faith, i.e. the terrorist-spawning educational institutions, mosques and most importantly the teachings, which sadly amount to a perversion of Islam (according to Islamic scholars) but nevertheless taken to be that doctrine in its purest form.  

Jehan Perera, writing in late April believes that Sri Lanka was dragged into a global conflict with Islamic extremism. His biggest worry was that the present government would lost the Catholic vote!  As has always been the case, and evidenced by subsequent missives, Perera is upset by the inconvenience of security measures. Happily he is not in charge of the subject. Again, in a piece about engagement being the price of reconciliation, he expresses his greatest worry — the ouster of this regime. More pertinent is the this human rights warrior’s marked reluctance to engage with the reality of religion-based extremism, how religious freedom was and is being abused to churn out terrorists, and how the problem is deeper than a bunch of people itching to blow themselves up. 

Thisaranee Gunasekara, who loves to chew out Sinhala Buddhists, writing in April unequivocally lays the blame on that community for anti-Muslim violence. It was the BBS that gave birth to Wahhabism, the ISIS and the NTJ, doctrines and outfits that pre-date ‘Aluthgama,’ she would have us believe. Sinhala Buddhists created the hell that is Syria, she might even conclude one day. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu is a bit cuter than Gunasekara: ‘The violence, the animosity, Sinhala Buddhist versus Muslim, certainly could have led to these people becoming much more radicalized.’ 

They haven’t gone as far as Taylor Dibbert of www.foreignpolicy.com to say ‘Buddhist anger could tear Sri Lanka apart’, but that’s exactly where they are heading.  Susan Ormiston of CBC news who interviewed Saravanamuttu and others interjects, casually, ‘Buddhism is the majority religion and has seen the rise of ultra-nationalist groups.’  Interestingly and tellingly, the CBC news item covering an inter-faith event following the terrorist attack huffs and puffs before mentioning the ISIS and even then only in relation to some uniforms being found. Until then it’s about ‘bombings’ and ‘the Easter Sunday attack’. However, CBC is determined to ‘explain how this network of homegrown terrorism grew’. 

There you have it — homegrown. Home. Sri Lankan, exclusively. So it has to be something here. And then we have ‘the experts’ who are either non-Buddhists, anti-Buddhists or feel compelled to be on the bahu jaathika - bahu aagamika (multi religious, multi ethnic) bandwagon, never mind percentages. They relate the ‘Buddhists are to blame’ story.  Terrorists have no religion, we are told, but those who attack Muslims are Buddhist extremists (if they are not Buddhists, as mentioned above, such stories are killed). 

A more sophisticated (but as pernicious) analysis has been offered by Anuk Arudpragasam (‘A state of disorientation: dispatch from Sri Lanka after the Easter Bombings’), who mentions the ‘global factors’ but insists that it is all about ‘the country’s unwillingness to see how it has inflicted wounds on minorities.’ He speaks of deeply engrained racism and unexamined history of violence. All of a sudden, we have the old, tired and pernicious text, ‘the Sinhala Buddhist are to blame!’ And the unsaid but racist, ostrich-like  corollary, ‘minorities are blameless’.  He is right, however, when he says, ‘it is easier sometimes to follow a script, after all, even when it comes at the cost of peace.’ He’s a proponent, and he’s not alone.

All this makes it impossible to address ALL THE FACTORS because few in this drama are blameless.  ‘We are all guilty therefore we are all innocent’ is also a cover, we must insist. However, a preference for half-truths or downright lies (for laudable or vile reasons) takes us to the Vale of Deceit and that is where mistrust, anxiety and hatred are spawned. Looking for root-causes is one thing, but to say, for example, that the LTTE, BBS or NTJ (and no, they are not equals for multiple reasons) gave birth to the other two (or different ‘others’) or, alternatively, they all fell from the sky, is to pass the buck (that was always with all of us) to one another.  

So we get to a point where we cannot entertain any doubts whatsoever about any non-Sinhala non-Buddhist doing wrong. That would be racist. That would be intolerant. That’s what we are being told about Dr Shafi Shihabdeen, the man accused of performing forced sterilization following Caesarian surgery.

One must wonder what happened to the women’s rights outfits that are constantly looking for a protest-op. We all know that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ has not stopped them before. 

Are Sinhala Buddhist women ‘untouchables’ if they suspect someone from another community abusing professional trust (to put it mildly)? Why can’t they ask all women ‘Caesared’ by Shihabdeen and who gave birth subsequently as well to come forward, so we can get an identity-related breakdown of the numbers and thereby get to the truth of the matter? 

The tireless efforts to hang the Sinhala Buddhist as the one and only villain in this drama cannot help reconciliation. Indeed, it allows those who in the name of identity plan and execute violence of one kind or another on religious or other minorities the perfect cover. They would be, simply, just a bunch of villains in a villainous majority community. 

On the flip side, it allows (as it has allowed) the quiet rise of racist and bigoted ideologies and attendant violence. They have the cover of the classic justification: ‘in self defense!’   

The bottom line: identity should not be a cover or an excuse for infringement of the law or abuse of constitutional safeguards such as religious freedoms. The ‘600’ (or more) are not helping. Well, they are helping all extremists, one could add. Half-truths do that. 

malindasenevi@gmail.com

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The problem has to be unveiled

Today the talk is not about the Easter Sunday attacks but ‘the politics of distraction’.  The word has been used by the US Ambassador, Alaina B Teplitz (‘The focus should be on the victims and their loved ones,’ she said and not conspiracies about her country striking while the iron is hot, so to speak). Shaahima Raashid, writing in the website Groundviewsalso uses the word (‘The niqab ban and the politics of distraction’). She points out correctly that none of the terrorist suspects were wearing ‘niqab/burqa/chador’ and claims that the focus on attire is a distraction. More on that later.

We’ve had not just distraction but outright idiocy from many quarters. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe virtually handed out an open invitation to international terror groups by saying Sri Lanka lacks the laws to deal with citizens who are members of such groups. He was demonstrating incompetence, ignorance and sloth. As usual. We had the BBC in the immediate aftermath of the attacks casting aspersions on the Sinhala Buddhists. The BBC, let us remember, made much noice when the Mannar mass graves were discovered but went silent when the results of the carbon dating tests came out.  

Then we have ‘the focus’ of the New York Times: ‘Sri Lanka’s Muslims face an angry backlash after Easter Sunday Attacks.’ The article was interestingly co-written by Dharisha Bastian, an editor at Lake House, the government’s print organ. Political loyalties need not be elaborated. As one would expect, the extrapolation follows a single incident where a mob attacked a house where a family of Pakistani refugees were resident. Typically, again, following tokenist allusion to the attacks, we find broad brushstrokes vilifying Sinhala Buddhists. 

Nothing of the in-your-face assertion of religious identity by significant sections of the Muslim community [in terms of attire, both men and women], a significant section of them inspired by Wahhabism causing existentialist anxieties among people who are well informed about how predominantly Buddhist nations were turned into Islamic States and/or those Buddhist communities destroyed [the Nalanda educational complex was torched along with the monks, in Bangladesh Buddhists were driven to the hills and are still being persecuted]. Forget all that; the NYT is yet to give us a comprehensive feature about the rise of extremism in Sri Lanka where followers borrowed extensively (and of course selectively) from the Quran. Patali Champika Ranawaka, a senior minister of this government, revealed that there were some 800 ‘Islamic’ clerics illegally teaching in schools run by fundamentalists. Apparently they are here on tourist visas!     

Who is against the niqab and why, though? If you want a one-story example to extrapolate NYT style, there are tons to pick from in social media, even during the ban imposed on Facebook and WhatsApp (courtesy VPN). Dozens of Muslims decried both the terrorists and the outward trappings of fundamentalism, including the niqab. Yet their efforts were not reported in the NYT. The objection to the objection, in fact, is the distraction here.  It’s a simple matter of identification. We are suspicious of unattended parcels, bags, vehicles and such. We are suspicious of those who cannot be identified, the faceless to be precise. And rightly so. It is an existentialist issue. Our alternative becomes: either allow the use of what can be turned into a disguise (evidence of such usage exists even in the US), or militarize our streets, our public and civic spaces, our schools, our very country. No thank you. Been there, done that. 

Another distraction: religious freedom. Sure thing. Shihara Farook’s Facebook post on April 24, 2019 talks about it not in the preferred black-white terms used by ‘liberals’ but in ways that address the complexities. She speaks of the kind of tolerance and celebration of other faiths evident in Sri Lanka that the terrorists just do not profess or practice. She does not deny inter-religious tensions nor intolerance, but does not indulge in the kind of extremist vilification as do the BBC, NYT, many ‘liberals’ and supposedly dispassionate commentators.

The truth is that privileges accorded to religious minorities in this country far exceed those extended to counterparts in ‘Islamic States,’ and indeed in most other countries, including the United States. Racial profiling, mass incarcerations of innocents, these are activities preferred and practiced there. Indeed freedoms denied their own in countries run by fundamentalist Islamists are enjoyed in full by Muslims in Sri Lanka. That’s another article and this is not the moment for it. Needs to be flagged though. 

We hear more, however, of the rise of Wahhabism as being a response to ‘Sinhala Buddhist extremism’.  Ven Gangodawila Soma Thero’s expositions in the early days of this century and of course the antics of Rev Galabodaaththe Gnanasara Thero of the Bodu Bala Sena are mentioned frequently. It’s as though the ‘Sinhala Buddhists’ have been making inroads in Europe and even in Syria. It’s as if they had such a reach that they spurred Muslims in the UK and Australia to study the Quran (as per Wahhabist dictates). No. That’s simplistic and a distraction. Ranga Jayasuriya’s piece last Wednesday (How Wahhabism was fostered until it’s too late) paints a more realistic, sober and therefore frightening picture. Speaking of religious freedom in this context, it would not be out of place to mention that perpetrators were exercising precisely that. That ‘affirmation of faith’ apparently also lead to stockpiling swords and other weapons, bombs and ammunition. Apparently, these terrorists were praying and preying on those who were praying to a different god, as per their faith. 

The time for pussyfooting around it is long past. The time to be dismissive or ostrich-like is long gone. A lot of veils have come off. The liberal and even leftist veil has come off the anti-Sinhala, anti-Buddhist veil hordes. Some of them are showing that their Islamophobia is more pronounced than their so-far-privileged religious and ethnic antipathies. Similarly, Sinhala Buddhist extremists have removed their ‘moderate’ niqab in ways that cannot be justified by the real and obvious existentialist threat. 

Several Muslim political parties and even ‘mainstream’ Muslim organizations have been exposed, including those with parliamentary representation and the All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama . They’ve said that they had informed authorities about the rise of extremist groups. The question is, why did they then, at the same time, go out of the way to pooh-pooh concerns raised by other religious communities and indeed vilify them as religious intolerants? The question is, how come close associates of RIshard Bathiudeen (Minister of Industry and Commerce and leader of the All Ceylon Makkal Congress) and so many second-rung politicians in Muslim parties as well as Muslim representatives in other parties were arrested following discovery of weapons and/or revelation of close relationships/friendships with the terrorists? The question is, why didn’t they come out and make public statements? That would have clearly pushed those who see the Muslim community as a monolith to question those unfair assumptions. It may even have lead to the saving of hundreds of lives. Were those lives unimportant because they weren’t the lives of Muslims? 

I was in Kandy on Easter Sunday and travelled back and forth twice in the same week. I saw white flags in mosques and predominantly Muslim areas in Kandy, Mawanella and Kegalle. I saw banners decrying the violence. The white flags, I understand. Mourning. Solidarity with the victims and their families. As for the banners, I did not see one banner or poster naming the perpetrators. Genuine grief, insurance or just more tokenism?  I suspect that the anxiety over the rise of Wahhabism as far as these groups are concerned was itself an existentialist issue: loss of flock and money. I will give the benefit of the doubt, but I would not drop by guard.

The liberals. The peace-lovers. The Yahapalanists. The advocates of co-existence and tolerance. Let’s talk about them again. Why aren’t they (for example Jehan Perera of the National Peace Council) not urging the government to ‘redress grievances,’ enter into negotiations with the terrorists to obtain a dignified ‘solution’? Why aren’t they, in light of these developments, revisiting the much-trumpeted ‘worth’ of devolution and the abolition of the executive presidency? As for the nondescript good dudes and dudettes (candlelight ladies, born-again democrats and such), when Hafeel Farisz first broke the story in the Daily Mirror hours after the attacks they ranted and raved, demanding proof. Looks like they’ve been soundly asleep for years and have crawled into their shells again!  Some veils have been lifted here too, one feels.  

There is a call from all quarters (including people with dubious agendas and suspect political practices) for the affirmation of humanity. It must be heeded. There’s a call for the exercise of compassion. We have to be compassionate. We have been asked not to be emotional. We should dial down emotion, most certainly. In some cases, however, these recommendations have the following subtext: suspend reason. This we cannot afford to do.

There’s a terrorist at large. Sorry, there’s a terrorist organization at large. It is abusing the noble notion of religious freedom. It is preying on tolerance. It has caused a serious existentialist threat to the entire nation and people of all communities in Sri Lanka as well as the world. Quite apart from a serious re-haul of the security apparatus, we need to know more about the dimensions of the problem. The veil must come off the (mis)educational institutions which are clearly being used as breeding grounds for the terrorists. Who set them up? Who teaches in them? Who funds them? Are ‘customary laws’ being abused? Is religious freedom being abused? Is the penal code adequate? Answers and action are required. Swiftly. We could also take a cue from Pakistan, a predominantly Muslim country, where over 30,000 Madrasas are to be taken over by the Government and modern education introduced while banning hate-speech. 

Distraction never helps. Denial does not either. The niqab, metaphorically speaking, is coming off the political face of our nation. It is a good thing. 

malindasenevi@gmail.com

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The unbecoming undressing of 'Good Governance'

What did the Joint Opposition achieve by marching from Kandy to Colombo?  What does it say about the strength of the Joint Opposition? Does it say anything about the strength or otherwise of what is being called, tongue-in-cheek, the ‘Official SLFP (Sri Lanka Freedom Party)’?  Has to solidified the alliance between the OSLFP and the United National Party (UNP)?  Was it an exercise poorly timed because the OSLF and the UNP government has been in power only for a year and a half and as such there’s little chance of this kind of agitation transforming into a mass upheaval resulting in regime-overthrow?  

Jehan Perera in an article titled ‘Opposition protest march consolidates Government Alliance’ published in the Colombo Telegraph offers some observations on power.  He was referring to the recently concluded march from Kandy to Colombo organized by the Joint Opposition. 

“Usually such a bid to generate spontaneous public protest would come towards the end of a government’s term of office when it has over-extended its stay in power and the people are dying for a change. But a mere year and a half of a government which has four more years to go is too soon to evoke a people’s movement to overthrow, or even to destabilize, the government.”

The first sentence is correct.  The second is lends itself to a symptomatic reading.  Whether a march, even one that drew the kinds of crowds it did, can overthrow or destabilize a government is a valid question.  To say that it has ‘consolidated the government alliance’ is misleading, however.

Let’s consider the facts.  Yes, it was organized a mere year and a half after Maithripala Sirisena became President and less than a year after the UNP won the General Election.  There are two ways of looking at it.  Jehan says ‘too early’.  True.  There’s another way.  If such numbers could be drawn to Colombo a mere year and a half after Maithripala Sirisena became President and less than a year after the UNP won the General Election it does indicate discontent of a significant nature.  Putting it down to the ex President’s charisma or the stupidity of his followers will not rob it of this significance.   Loyalties of protestors, ‘true objectives’ of the organizers, the reasons that drew the crowds are relevant of course, but in a political sense it is the show of strength that counts.  We are not talking any more, after all, about the merits and demerits of one regime over another here. 

The march attracted massive numbers.   Contrast it, for example, with the ‘marches’ that other Oppositions under different regimes organized at the tail-ends of terms.  This was put all those to shame.  Contrast it, also, with the rally that the United National Party (UNP) organized at Hyde Park a few months ago.  On that occasion the organizers had to shift the venue to Lipton Circus fearing that Hyde Park might not be filled.  This time Hyde Park was literally dug up by the Government, forcing the demonstrators to Lipton Circus.  The five roads leading to Lipton Circus were ‘peopled’ to a considerable distance.  If numbers matter, these do.

That numbers matter is in fact confirmed by the response of the Government to the march.  The United National Party started off with a bold statement, vowing to affirm the democratic right to protest.  Good.  It went downhill thereafter.   The Government sought support of the courts on the flimsiest of pretexts, threw obstacles in the way of the march, issued dire threats of ‘disciplinary action’, threatened to expedite investigations (obviously against the big names of the Joint Opposition), found a sudden ‘need’ to dig up Hyde Park, indulged in endless rubbishing of the protest, abused state media especially Rupavahini; in short embarrassed itself at every turn.  Hardly the behavior one might expect of a confident and secure regime!

The UNP, at least in secret, might say ‘not us, but them,’ with ‘them’ meaning sections of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) loyal to the President, but that excuse is no longer valid; after all the two parties, their leaders and the key supporters of the leaders, have reiterated marital vows and claimed conjugal bliss ad nauseum.  In fact, the response, in its entirety was reminiscent of the ‘dirty tactics’ used by the previous regime and indeed all regimes that came before.  ‘Change’ (‘venasa’) was not evident.

Interestingly, the bleeding-heart advocates of yahapaalanaya who shed buckets of tears over the abuse of state media by the Rajapaksas, the ‘dirty tricks’ in dealing with dissent/protests etc., are silent.  Instead we have Jehan (who belongs to the aforementioned group) claiming that the Government is ‘stronger’. 

Fine.  Now why should a ‘strong alliance’ fall over itself to rubbish a ‘weak’ protest which, according to Jehan, posed absolutely no threat?  Was it a case of old habits dying hard?  Had they not been tutored enough in yahapalana-practice?  Had they junked whatever notes were thrust into their hands when they got into the yahapalana bandwagon?   Did someone whisper, ‘scared out of their wits’ (for no reason at all a la Jehan’s claim)? 

It seems that things are not as rosy as Jehan would want people to believe.  And it’s not the Mahinda loyalists who are saying it.  When someone like Dr Razeen Sally, a respected economist and academic who now heads the Institute of Policy Studies calls it ‘an unwieldy unity government’ and mentions bad appointments, messy decision-making, lack of coordination and above all faults the government for not having a credible economic plan, talking about political consolidation is downright silly. 

Let’s forget all that.  If anyone thinks the march somehow consolidated the ‘alliance’, then one must talk of the constituents of that alliance and their relative strengths, never mind that the ‘point of consolidation’ is at best wishy-washy given the character certificate issued by Dr Sally.  The UNP is intact but has embarrassed itself by the attacks on the media, foot-dragging on key election pledges and the about-turn and worse on Port City.  Intact, nevertheless. 

And the OSLFP?  Well, they have a party office that is shunned by the membership.  There’s an ex-leader who invites incessant booing by the mere mention of her name.  There are ministers who’ve been rejected at the polls issuing statements about political power, democracy and what not.  And there’s a leader who broke party lines, divided the party, was elected by default with the full support of his party’s arch rival, the UNP, and who whines about Mahinda Rajapaksa ‘diving the party’.   Is the section of the SLFP that he has some control over, the OSLFP, a solid political force?  If this is the case, then the march forcing it to strengthen ties with the UNP would amount to ‘consolidation’.  But the march clearly showed where the rank and file of the SLFP stands.  The louder they OSLFP diehards (and the likes of Jehan) shout about conjugal bliss and solidity of marriage, the less convincing it all sounds. 

All this is good news, probably, for the Mahinda camp.  It has to be bad news for those who truly believed the January 8 result would usher in a different way of doing things.  The generous thing is to put down the silence of such people to a sense of shame or helplessness.  The unpalatable truth, however, could be that they were never serious about ‘change’; they just wanted friends in power, never mind what they do and how they do it.  The verbal contortions that people like Jehan have been forced to indulge in demonstrate this. 

There’s one positive though.  The marchers did not get to undress the yahapaalanists.  The yahapaalanists stripped of their own accord. 

A version of this article was published on August 4, 2016 in the Daily Mirror under the title 'The March as a test of Yahapaalanaya'.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.  Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com.  Twitter: malindasene.  Blog: malindawords.blogspot.com.

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Jehan Perera and the agonies of ‘Pamperditis’

I believe that there are things in this world that warrant the registration of strong objection.  And I believe there are things which, although arguably irritating, are too trivial to tear one’s hair over. There is a difference, in other words, between legitimate complain and insufferable whine.  There is a time to refer that interesting adage about complaining that one didn’t have shoes until one sees a cripple and then there are times when the reference to the worse-case is not a legitimate response.

My thoughts today derive from not so much from a complaint but an insufferable whine in the form of an article by Jehan Perera in the Island (Tuesday, September 29, 2009) titled ‘Need to take risks to overcome North-South divide’. 

I should not be surprised, I know, since Jehan Perera has acquired for himself a considerable reputation as an incurable whiner (in addition to other and less dismissible character traits).  In this case he is whining about what he believes to be the unreasonable length of time taken to process travelers flying to Jaffna from the Ratmalana Airport.  He also whines about the facilities.  He is upset that even after the end of the war (an eventuality that the man fought tooth and nail to prevent by the way), the security procedures had not been relaxed.  

Here is a man who is getting paid to vilify the Government of Sri Lanka.  A man who talks of good governance, democracy and the like but lacks the basic integrity to call to question highly exaggerated numbers and wild claims about conflict and post-conflict scenarios.  Even if we were to believe that Jehan’s ‘Jaffna Trip’ was an innocent excursion, the snobbery of the man is utterly obnoxious. 

I am not saying that the conditions at the Ratmalana Airport are amazingly good.  I am sure there is much room for improvement in facility and service.  However for someone to be so upset over having to get up early in the morning and ‘waste’ a few hours while being processed is bordering on a bad case of pamperditis.  I know, for instance, people who spend seven to eight hours a day of their entire working lives on the road, going to and from work.  I know children who walk 3-5kms to school or to the nearest bus halt to go to school.  Perhaps it is Jehan’s per-hour worth that has caused him to feel a pinch in his tender behind, but I thought it was all a selfless for-the-love-of-the-people kind of exercise that he is engaging in.  Maybe I am wrong.

Now Jehan belongs to that surreptitious gang of English-speaking, English-piddling self-styled ‘elites’ in Colombo who are horrified by conditions in IDP camps (meaning they’ve never set eyes on the poor and the conditions of poverty that are pretty widely evident in many parts of the country).  I was thinking how Jehan would run IDP camps had he been given that monumentally challenging task.  I am willing to wager that the first thing he would do would be to set up office and living quarters for himself, fully furnished with the comforts he enjoys at home. I am sure he would not go for a kind of toilet that the displaced have no choice but to use. 

Come to think of it, Jehan is an IDP himself.  He is displaced in his own country, divorced from its realities and sensibilities, distanced from the concerns of the general population, ideologically located outside this island in terms of preferred Utopia, financially dependent on funds offered by organizations with dubious and patently anti-Sri Lanka agenda and totally at sea when it comes to political realities. 

Jehan says ‘democratic and open societies must take risks that some terrorist or demented person somewhere will explode a bomb’. What does he care?  He never really  ran those risks and in fact, in championing the flawed and highly dangerous Ranil-Prabha Ceasefire Agreement, actively sought to create conditions for such explosions and succeeded too.  Just imagine letting our guard down completely (I think it should be and is a gradual process) and having some demented person (Jehan would qualify, come to think of it) tossing a bomb into a bus filled with school children.  Only someone with a moronic sense of the political would not envisage the fallout of such an incident.  We simply cannot afford anything like that. For the likes of Jehan Perera, though, it would be a gift from heaven.

His final lines are telling. Referring to the vast crowds that flocked to the BMICH during the International Book Fair, Jehan says, ‘The large number of bookshops and book publishers showed that Sri Lanka has a literate and well read population whom the government can take into its confidence in taking the risks that need to be taken to re-link the north and south again.’

Has Jehan forgotten that his plan for conflict-resolution (negotiating with the LTTE) lost out?  Does he know why?  Does he even bother to entertain the idea that the reason for this is that the Government did have the confidence of the ‘literate and well read population’?  Does he not know that monumental risks were taken to re-link the north and south again, in real terms, and not the trivial and probably temporary imbalances and mismatches that are quite understandable given a war that took thirty years to come to an end? 

Or does he think that ‘well-read’ refers only to those who read the trash that he writes and passes off as serious political commentary?  Is he in fact begging that someone takes him into confidence? 

Spoilt.  Utterly spoilt.  A brat, in fact. A bad case of Pamperditis. That’s the Jehan Perera that emerges from this piece.  And I am being generous here. 

*First published in the 'Daily News,'  September 30, 2009.  One hopes Jehan has had a more comfy in subsequent journeys.  

msenevira@gmail.com.

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No one gives a hoot about truth, it seems

There can be no ‘reconciliation’ (whatever that means) without ‘closure’ (whatever that means).  There can be no closure without ‘truth’ (whatever that means).  It follows then that obtaining truth is a non-negotiable for closure which, in turn, is a non-negotiable in the matter of reconciliation.  The ‘whatever that means’ is a necessary interjection because politics is not clean. It is not objective.  The rhetorician lords over the logician in these things. Preferences make for privileging and suppression.  And this is why it can be ‘logically’ said that those who talk of truth, justice and reconciliation as though these are obtainable through clean and clinical cuts of reason are either utterly naïve or are charlatans disguised as benefactors of humankind. 

And yet, come ‘Geneva Time’ we hear these words a lot.  Reconciliation.  Truth.  Justice.  Accountability.  All articles of faith. For some.  Like Tamil National Alliance Member of Parliament M Sumanthiran.  He wants all of it.  A few teaspoons of reconciliation, a dash of truth, a sprinkling of justice, a tablespoon of accountability and you’ve got it made.  A good speech that is, there’s no denying that.

But then again Sumanthiran doesn’s own any of these, separately or together.  Others are smart too. They too pencil in a liberal dose of the said goodies for, as I said, they make for good speeches. ‘Others’ meaning people like Ananthi Sasitharan, for example. 

They say certain towns are too small for two big persons.  Geneva is small and small-minded though both Sumanthiran and Ananthi are it looks like they both think the other is too big to share stage with.  So there was a spat. 

Now this could have been because of upstaging-need, we don’t know, and we really don’t know why Ananthi was upset with Sumanthiran.  Perhaps  she felt a pinch on her ego.  We can guess why Sumanthiran was not in a spotlight sharing frame of mind though.  She has the potential, he might have thought, of wrecking his speech; not on account of using the same vocabulary but, in fact, for the very ‘problem’ of using the same terms. 

See, Ananthi Sasitharan is not cool.  Not for people who take human rights and human wrongs seriously.  Sumanthiran is smart enough to know she’s a liability.  There’s a story she says and a story she would rather no one talks about.  She will talk of a missing husband but will not talk about the husband and what he did.

Sumanthiran is Colombo, Ananthi is not.  Sumanthiran heard of depravation, Ananthi saw it.  Sumanthiran knew that Tamil civilians were used as a human shield, Ananthi knows who the humans shielded.  Sumanthiran knows that those Tamils held hostage by the LTTE tried to flee into areas controlled by the Sri Lankan security forces, Ananthi knows who tried to stop them and how.  For Sumanthiran it was nameless, faceless ‘Butcher-Boys’, for Ananthi it was her ‘Butcher-Boy’. 

Ananthi’s husband, Elilan, was one of the butcher-boys and he played the part to perfection.  He was seen brandishing a sword with blood dripping from the blade, threatening those who would flee with dismemberment.  Some had obviously defied the order and paid the price, the relevant exchange marked on a blade-ledger with the blood of the defiant. 

Sumanthiran knows that the West doesn’t like hearing about blood, about the swipe of sword and the ‘un-limbing’ it produces.  Sumanthiran probably didn’t want those ‘specificities’ brought into the Geneva discussion because it would spoil Ananthi’s case as well as the TNA’s case.  ‘Spoil’ would not have meant the US-led resolution would have lost out. No, it would have made some people squirm in their seats.  People notice squirms.  People comment.  It’s loss of face to lose composure. 

Winning the vote is one thing, but losing credibility and sympathy is quite another. In the long run, sympathy counts.  Even the biggest hypocrites would be happier if they don’t have to field tough questions about the credibility of ‘victims’ especially if these ‘victims’ are providers of ‘evidence’ used to lengthen charge-sheets. 

The problem with all this is that it throws ‘the truth’ out of the equation.    Is Ananthi ready to be truthful about her husband?  Isn’t the truth of what he did, who he killed, who he ordered killed, the grief thus engendered, the doubts and lack of closure it all resulted in less worth investigation and comment than the truth about her husband’s fate?  Is Sumanthiran ready to talk about Elilan-truth?  How about the other fellow travelers, people like Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Jehan Perera, J.C. Weliamuna and Nimalka Fernando?  How about Frances Harrison and Callum Macrae?  Would David Cameron be interested?  How about a whispered query from Navi Pillay to Ananthi?  Would Al Jazeera ‘explore’? Would Channel 4 give us an exposé and air it on the sidelines of the next session of the UNHRC?

Or are they not interested in ‘the truth, the WHOLE truth and NOTHING BUT the truth’?    And if that’s the case, are we to conclude that they are not interested in justice either?  Can we all agree, thereafter, that this reconciliation talk is just a lot of hot air and that no one really cares about peace, harmony, holding-hands, singing the national anthem in 157 dialects? 

A final question:  can we just move on now?

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Stars of the Geneva Pantomime (Revisited)

[Go through this -- written 3 years ago -- and you will find the guys making noises are the same guys who've always made noises when they batted for the LTTE.  The exception is of course Sunila Abeysekera, now no more.  Oh yes, and Patricia Butenis has a new name: Michele Sison.  More importantly, you will find that this is indeed a pantomime and should be treated as such.  Applaud if you are duly entertained!]  

The US Ambassador, Patricia Butenis is reported to have invited some people to discuss a report submitted to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon by some personal advisors.  Why Ki-moon has to make public a personal communication I do not know.  It does seem odd that he treats the said notes as documents that have official and legal standing within the UN system.  As odd is this meeting called by Butenis ‘to discuss’ we are told, the above personal communication, in order to figure out ‘how to make use of it as a constructive instrument for reconciliation instead of one of division and polarization’.  
 

First of all, if a representative of the United States Government was to use anything to bring about ‘reconciliation’ in another country, then protocol demands that relevant discussions should be held with responsible and appropriate authorities in the Government of the particular country.   While the Embassy has refused to comment on the meeting or what has been discussed, one of the invitees has revealed what it was all about. 

The report (in the Daily Mirror online version) came under the heading ‘Diplomats, NGO talk on report’.  The identities of the party-goers were embedded in the title, at least as far as those who are alert to political machinations in Sri Lanka are concerned.  There was Paikiasothy Saravanamutt (Centre for Policy Alternatives), Jehan Perera (National Peace Council) and J.C. Weliamuna (former head of Transparency International).  All three organizations are under a cloud suspect regarding financial deals and how and on what they spent enormous amounts of money obtained from various donors including the USA.  That Butenis, who came out to publicly defend (to the best of her ability) these three organizations, invites them to a chit-chat about how Sri Lanka should manager her (Sri Lanka’s) affairs does not come as a surprise.   Not surprising either that Perera subsequently underlined the fact that Butenis had come out in his defense.

There had been three other invitees.  Sudarshana Gunawardena (Rights Now) once engaged in shameless chest-beating, claiming ‘The Government’s war balloon will burst in Killinochchi!’ That was wish, not prediction based on sober consideration of ground realities. Sunila Abeysekera has accumulated considerable credentials as a mouthpiece for Eelamists.  She has campaigned tirelessly to conflate the LTTE and the Tamil Community. Her loyalties are well known.  The third, Sherine Xavier (Home for Human Rights) has openly stated that among her role models was Adela Balasingham, widow of the LTTE’s longest serving ideologue, Anton Balasingham. Adela was not an LTTE sympathizer. She was and is an ardent and unrepentant LTTE activist and an apologist for that organization.  Xavier has made her ideological and political loyalties pretty clear.

These individuals have frequently argued for legitimization of the LTTE and granting of status-parity vis-à-vis the Government of Sri Lanka, and demonstrated a consistent determination to turn a blind eye on atrocities perpetrated by that organization.   Wikileaks has revealed that Butenis has been one of the biggest advocates for an international investigation into the manner in which the military offensive was executed.  Saravanamuttu has been a cheerleader for the same and one of the first to applaud the love-notes exchanged between Ki-moon and his ‘advisors’.  There are no prizes for ascertaining the identities of the principal sources tapped by these ‘advisors’.  This post-report tea party therefore was scripted a long time ago, i.e. when Ki-moon was prevailed upon by individuals such as Butenis to circumvent and thereby undermine the UN system and all procedural statutes.  In short, it would not be incorrect to say that Butenis had in fact met with the local branch of the LTTE’s rump.  That she invited other diplomats shows attempts to broaden the political base of this insurgent collective. 

Jehan Perera says that the meeting was about turning the advisory note into a ‘constructive instrument’.  He does not dare question the validity of the document in terms of procedural norms of the UN.  He is blind to the manifest double standards embedded in the very exercise.  He does not dare question the reliability of sources.  He will not dare comment on the neutrality-credentials of Ki-moon’s advisors nor acknowledge their slant towards the LTTE position regarding all things Sri Lankan. 

He will not pick out discrepancy, contradiction, exaggeration, meanness of spirit, LTTE-slant, whitewashing of terrorism, lack of substantiation, malice, selectivity, academic dishonesty etc., all of which jumps out of the text at every turn.  That he (and others, probably) believe that anything ‘constructive’ can be squeezed out of such a woefully compromised document says a lot about his intellectual ability and overall integrity. 

I challenge Jehan Perera, here and now, to an open debate at a forum of his choosing, about how such a document can be used ‘constructively’ for reconciliation.  It would be incumbent upon him to prove its worth as an effective instrument against division and polarization. 

The meeting indicates a need to close ranks.  It is the typical response of those who have nowhere to hide.  Now it is official.  It is now established beyond a shadow of doubt that Ambassador Butenis has entertained the local representatives of the LTTE’s rump.   Jehan Perera has confirmed this.  Full marks for his honesty (but will he tell us if the ‘advisors’ consulted him?).  Zero for his intellectual worth. Zero for his political designs.  Zero for his malice. 

msenevira@gmail.com

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Is an election a ‘village tank’ to monitors and donors?

[Sri Lanka has had elections since 1931.  We got 'monitors' only recently.  The need was produced by palpable election malpractices, many but not all eliminated by the introduction of new laws and adoption of fraud-resistant techniques.  With the need to monitor, naturally, there came 'monitors'.  And there were and are all kinds.  We are now getting ready for Provincial Council elections.  Naturally, there's talk of monitors and monitoring.  This piece was written and published almost 3 years ago. Still valid, I believe]

There’s an old joke about NGO operations in Sri Lanka.  NGOs are said to send identical project proposals to several donor agencies.  For example, money would be solicited to rehabilitate a village tank (weva).  If more than one donor agrees to support the project, the particular NGO would not rehabilitate more than a single weva but would submit the identical final project report to each donor.  Some NGOs, the joke goes, would ‘rob’ the work of another NGO, claiming that the weva that NGO 2 rehabilitated was in fact the one mentioned in the proposal and referred to in the relevant report(s). 

That’s an old joke. Decades old.  Donors have since, we are told, tightened monitoring and evaluation mechanisms. Moreover, NGOs competing for the same funds are ever watchful and more than willing to rat on fellow-racketeers.  The state got into the act a little while later. So did individuals and groups who were suspicious of NGOs, especially those outfits that bent over backwards to promote the division of the nation, destabilization of the country and whitewash terrorists and give them legitimacy of one kind or another.  Tough.

This is after all the Age of Communication.  It is not that donors are unaware of the existence of other donors. Typically, also, the donor community, especially countries that have a diplomatic presence in the particular country, run into one another in various forums and indeed their top officials deal with one another on first-name basis.  In general they are aware of who is doing what and where.  ‘Who’ meaning the donors as well as the recipients of their largesse. 

This is why it is strange that the Centre for Policy Alternatives could apply for and obtain a staggering Rs. 58 million to ‘monitor’ the Presidential and Parliamentary elections held in 2010.  The breakdown is as follows:  Rs. 13 million and Rs. 20 million for the Parliamentary and Presidential Elections respectively from the Netherlands, Rs. 9.9 million from the USA (both elections), Rs. 22 million from the Federal Republic of Germany (Presidential Election) and Rs. 3 million from the United Kingdom (Presidential Election, covering just the Eastern Province). 

The monies had been obtained by the CPA on behalf of the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV).  The CMEV, according to its website, had been ‘formed in 1997 by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), the Free Media Movement (FMM) and the Coalition Against Political Violence as an independent and non-partisan organisation to monitor the incidence of election related violence’ and is currently ‘made up of CPA, FMM and INFORM Human Rights Documentation Centre’. 

The FMM has a long history of engaging in fraudulent activities and its one time ‘convenor’, Sunanda Deshapriya, who also worked for the CPA (the incestuous nature of these outfits is well known) was asked to resign after being caught fudging accounts and pocketing bucks.   INFORM Human Rights Documentation Centre has not updated its website since August 11, 2009 and that’s surprising for an outfit devoted to ‘documentation’ in this day and age.  Sunila Abeysekera, another NGO fellow-traveller of the likes of Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu (CPA) and Jehan Perera (National Peace Council), is said to have been a co-founder of ‘INFORM’.  The entire lot engages in a lot of mutual back-scratching and rewarding one another (yes, incestuous is the word).  Anyway, the bottom like is that for all intents and purposes, CMEV is the CPA. 

We don’t know as yet if this Rs. 58 million is a part of the Rs. 272.31 million that the CPA is reported to have received from various donors over the past three years. We don’t know if other fraternal and similarly gift-exchanging organizations such as the NPC, PAFFREL (People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections) and Rights Now (convened by Sudarshana Gunawardena who is also ‘Convenor’ of the ‘Joint Movement for Democracy’ and who recently praised Saravanamuttu when he received a ‘Citizens’ Peace Prize’ awarded by Jehan Perera’s NPC), received money for monitoring activities pertaining to the said two elections from these same funding sources.  We do know that PAFFREL has come under an accountability cloud after its long serving boss, Kingsley Rodrigo passed away recently. 

We don’t know whether the tax payers of the Netherlands, USA, UK and Germany are aware that their governments have been pumping money into organizations with dubious track records including surreptitious and sometimes open support of terrorist organizations.  We do know that Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu has close associations with certain political parties and has even shared stage and petition-space with politicians and parties, a fact which these funders cannot be unaware of and which moreover compromise the ability of the CPA/CMEV to exercise neutrality in election monitoring activities. 

We do not know if each donor mentioned above were aware that the CPA/CMEV were being funded for the same project by the other three.  We do not know the details of the budgets submitted by the CPA/CMEV to each of these donors and we hope that Saravanamuttu gets his ‘under construction’ website running soon and, in the interest of his favourite buzz-terms, transparency and accountability, lays it all out for the benefit of the public he seems to love so much. What we do know is details of the budget submitted to the Secretary for State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs represented by Mark Gooding, Deputy High Commissioner, British High Commission in Colombo, Sri Lanka. 

We don’t know if CMEV rented out a special monitoring office during the two elections or used the CPA office down Ernest De Silva Mawatha for the purpose, but the budget indicates that Rs 1.12 million has been allocated for rent. This is for monitoring activities in the Eastern Province.  The project duration is from December 15, 2009 to January 31, 2010.  That’s 48 days or more than Rs. 23,000 per day!  That’s just a single line-item of the budget.  I don’t have to get into the details.  Saravanamuttu who signed the agreement on behalf of CPA would, I am sure, give us the beef.  Rohan Edirisinghe who signed the agreement with the Netherlands Embassy and L.M. Cuelenaere (Ambassador) who signed on behalf of the Embassy would similarly, in the interest of transparency and accountability (to the people of Sri Lanka and the tax payers of the Netherlands), reveal details of the budget submitted by the CPA/CMEV. 

Saravanamuttu also signed on behalf of the CPA the agreement with the U.S. Department of State (Jeffrey Anderson was the other signatory).  He also signed the agreement with Germany, represented by the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jens Ploetner.  These gentlemen, given their long-standing and dedicated service to the cause of democracy, accountability and transparency, reveal all shortly, I am sure.   They will tell us how many people were required for the overall monitoring exercise and reveal their names too for they know only too well how NGOs cook up names and numbers.  In the interest of decency and civilization and since all this is about the wellbeing of democracy and the citizenry of Sri Lanka, leave no stone unturned so that we know that things are all above board. 

The CMEV, according to their website, has been monitoring the recently held local government elections.  There’s no record of how much money they got, from whom and for what. They’ve issued statements so one assumes that they did some work on the ground.  If they did monitor and did so without bucks, then one cannot help wondering why Saravanamuttu, Edirisinghe and others needed so much dough to monitor the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in 2010.  Were they marketing and selling the same ‘weva’, one wonders.  More disturbingly, one wonders if the donors were ‘in the know’. 

Malinda Seneviratne is the Editor-in-Chief and can be reached at msenevira@gmail.com

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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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