Zionist Anti Semitism from Palestine to Philadelphia

Pic courtesy www.counterfire.org

On November 28, Prof Marc Lamont Hill of Temple University delivered a speech at the United Nations International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. It is reported that he used the phrase ‘from the river to the sea,’ in his speech. This phrase, apparently, has been used by anti-Israel terror groups and is perceived by some as ‘language that threatens the existence of the State of Israel.’ Temple University issued a statement a few days later, condemning Professor Hill’s remarks, noting that they ‘have been broadly criticized as, among other things, “virulent anti-Semitism” and “hate speech,” and have ignited a public furore.’

Anti Semitism. Interesting term. It is a wrought from anti (against) and Semite (a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language. What are the Semitic languages? The Semitic language family is said to consist of dozens of distinct languages and modern day dialects. The main ones are Arabic, Amharic (spoken in Ethiopia), Tigrinya (spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrea), Hebrew, Tigre (spoken in Sudan), Aramaic (spoken in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Iraq and Iran) and Maltese.

‘Semite’ then is a term that is not contained within the boundaries of Israel or the imagination of Jewish people. Antisemitism would be a doctrine, statements or actions against those speaking Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya, Hebrew, Tigre, Aramaic or Maltese. And yet, it seems that antisemitism can only be about Israel, rather being ‘against Israel.’ It would appear that Israel or the larger Jewish community have appropriated the word ‘Semite.’

So how would you describe Semites who take issue with other Semites? Home and home? Internal dispute? Well, if anyone being against Israel is an Anti Semite (because Hebrew is a Semitic language), by that very token, anyone who is against Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Malta or countries where Arabic is spoken would be an Anti Semite.


The concern here is Palestine. The world knows (and doesn’t talk about) the innumerable ways in which the State of Israel harasses Palestinians on a daily basis. Nevertheless, given that Israel seems to think that her existence is dependent on unleashing violence on Palestinians, speaking about that violence and objecting to it becomes ipso facto antisemitic.  

Let’s get to Zionism now. It is derived from Zion, a place name in the Hebrew Bible used as a synonym for Jerusalem as well as for the Land of Israel as a whole. Zionism is a Jewish nationalist movement originating in Eastern and Central Europe in the late 19th Century that sought to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, which, Zionists claim, was the ancient homeland of the Jews. This is not the place for a history lesson on the establishment of Israel. Suffice to say that the entire process was unholy and that subsequently, Israel, backed by the military and financial backing of the USA, has settled close to a million Jews in occupied Palestine, appropriated over 100,000 hectares from Palestinians, demolished tens of thousands of homes and other structures and subjected millions of Palestinians to all manner of humiliation and violence.

That’s Zionist Anti Semitism, friends. Big. Bold. In your face. All by divine right, they would have us believe. ‘Existentialist threat’ is a useful alibi to wade in, kill, maim, destroy and dispossess, obviously. And if you protest in any way, you are silenced with the antisemitic charge.

Prof Marc Lamont Hill is in the news again. He has been invited to speak at the Palestine Writes Literature Festival scheduled to be held later this week at the University of Pennsylvania. It has caused another furore. Fifteen students representing Jewish groups across the campus have written to the President expressing concerns that ‘the students will be exposed to anti-Jewish propaganda, harm Jewish students who take Arabic, and open the Jewish community at Penn to discrimination.’ Some have mentioned Prof Hill being invited to support this claim.

What is this festival about, though? Jenan Abu Shtaya, one of the organisers, said it is ‘a rare opportunity to celebrate our [Palestinian] heritage through literature and the arts.’ For Tara Tarawneh, an undergraduate, it is about writers and other artists coming together to share their work and narratives, and celebrate Palestinian culture and resilience.

Resilience? Resilient to what, though? Israeli occupation? Oh no! You can’t have that. Israeli Occupation is part of Israel dealing with Israel's very existence, ergo any resilience on the part of the occupied, any resistance and any narrative of lived truths would be Anti Semitic!

See how it works? Zionist Anti Semitism in full force at the mere hint of Zionist narratives being challenged.

The mention of anti-Jewish propaganda is interesting since Zionism is about pro-Jewish propaganda the application of which not only rubbishes other narratives, but brutally attacks those who express them in one form or another. In other words, if a Palestinian wrote about ‘The condition of being a Palestinian under Jewish Occupation,’ that individual would be a threat to Israel, a threat to Hebrew speakers, an antisemite.

What we are seeing in Philadelphia is a deliberate and forceful attempt to silence Palestinian voices and voices that speak of the social, economic and culture of Palestine which of course cannot but avoid mention and critique of what the State of Israel has been doing and still keeps doing in the occupied territories. The savagery cannot be footnoted or deleted. It is in the heart of the text. Unavoidable.

That’s not being antisemitic. It is, in fact, being semitic, speaking the language of the land without glossing over the wounds, scars, blood-letting and voices that will never be spoken again. Anyone who objects would be an antisemite, to use the language of the oppressor here. To be blunt, a Zionist Anti Semite. 

 

malindadocs@gmail.com

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Oh those Russians!

‘Oh those Russians!’ In the raspy voice of Bobby Ferral is how one of the most iconic songs of the German-based pop group Boney M, ‘Rasputin,’ ends. Written by the group’s creator Frank Farina, the song is about Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, widely considered a mystical healer and a close friend and advisor of Tsar Nicholas II and his family during the early years of the 20th century.

What of ‘those Russians’ though? The song paints Rasputin as a playboy toughie who, following legend whose base in truth is unclear, is supposed to have taken some killing, poisoned and later shot in the head. The story is hardly representative of Russian or Russians, so the phrase is essentially a caricature.  

The song was released in 1978. Forty four years later, I heard the phrase again, but it had nothing to do with Russian palace intrigue or some Russian playboy-thug masquerading as a mystic. At the time I was the Director of the Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research and Training Institute and had occasion to discuss collaborative work with relevant UN agencies.

It was a tense time on account of political upheaval and also anxieties associated with the controversial policy of the government headed by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on fertilizer. There was talk of the agriculture sector being destroyed leading to famine. The discussion left out the rhetoric, recognized realities and focused on what can be done. It was a fruitful and open discussion on various aspects related to agriculture, productivity, and food availability, security and sovereignty,  

The senior official who spoke with us accompanied us as we left the building. During the friendly chit-chat prior to our departure, mention was made of the evolving situation in Ukraine, the inevitable rise in oil and fertiliser prices, and the impact on countries like Sri Lanka.  

‘Oh those Russians!’  

That’s what the lady said, essentially painting Russia as a villain and everyone else as benign, innocent, well-intentioned saints.

My response: ’Just the Russians? How about NATO?’  

She immediately replied, ‘yes, of course.’  The gut reaction, ‘Oh those Russians,’ which clearly demonstrates a lack of appreciation of the relevant complexities and machinations of global power politics, not to mention political economy should not detract from the excellent work she does. It does, however, echo a general perception of Russia carefully crafted over many decades: Russia is the Evil Empire.  And it was scripted long before ‘Ukraine’ and long before the Cold War.

There are facts, however, that might make people stop and reexamine ‘received truths’ about 20th century history, facts that might make people think twice about 'Oh those Russians.'

Who suffered the greatest losses in securing the victory of the Entente Powers over those of the Central Powers led by Germany? Well, it’s ‘Oh those Russians,’ to the tune of 1.7 million dead and almost 5 million wounded. And the US losses? Of the 2 million soldiers who reached France, 116,000 died and 204,000 were wounded.

And World War II? Even Churchill, a war criminal long before he became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and certainly no friend of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin or Communism, acknowledged that it was the Soviet army that tore the guts out of the German military machine.

The Soviet Union suffered the highest number of casualties (20-27 million). Of these 11.4 million were soldiers, 10 million civilian deaths due to military activity and an additional 8 million to 9 million deaths due to famine and disease. China lost 15-20 million, Germany 6-7.4 million and Poland 5.9-6 million. The USA lost 291,557.

While the crafted narrative would have us believe that the war would not have ended if the USA had not dropped atomic bombs on Iwo Jima and Nagasaki, the truth is that Japan had already lost the war and was about to surrender. The deployment of Soviet forces pulled out from Europe after the fall of Germany effectively sealed Japan’s fate. The bombs need not have been dropped.  But that was Truman’s USA and not the USA of Roosevelt.

The USA did play a key role in Japan’s defeat. Here’s the gist:

In late 1944 US Air Force general Curtis ‘Demon’ LeMay bombed Japanese civilians with a ferocity never seen before. In March 1945 LeMay sent 334 planes over Tokyo carrying incendiary bombs consisting of napalm, thermite, white phosphorus and many other kinds of inflammable material designed to kill civilians. Tokyo burned and how! Eighty thousand civilians were killed.  By the time the war was over, the US Air Force had firebombed over 100 Japanese cities killing more than a million civilians. Robert McNamara who was in LeMay's staff and would later serve as the US Secretary of Defence under John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson was of the opinion that had the United States lost the war, they would all have been tried as war criminals and deserved to be convicted.

Back to ‘Oh those Russians’: John F Kennedy acknowledged, ‘No nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union in the Second World War.’  

What ‘Oh those Russians’ really did since the invasion of Ukraine last year and will do in the future, the numbers of the dead categorised by nation etc., we will one day know. In the chronicles of the two world wars the ‘Oh those Russians’ have been largely absented. Today, with regard to Ukraine, NATO wants to absent itself from the story.

Let us not speculate about the possible outcome of historiography, by histories and fiction-spinners (and we know that the Western media has perfected that art, BBC and Channel 4 included!). Since we began this with a song, let us end with a story about music.

One in three of the population of 2.5 million people living in Leningrad perished during the 900 days when Germany besieged that city. Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznik, in ‘The Concise Untold History of the United States,’ describes that horror thus:

‘The incessant bombing, the cold, starvation, eating soups made of glue from wallpaper, or rats, to fellow human beings went on to a far greater extent than officially admitted. Such was the pride that many civilians refused to evacuate the city when given the chance. Composer Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Seventh Symphony in honour of this sacrifice. It was called 'The Leningrad.' The orchestra continued to play throughout the siege, until most of the members had dropped from starvation. The Germans never took Leningrad.’

‘Oh those Russians,’ takes quite a different meaning, doesn’t it? 

Dmitri Shostakovich in a fireman's uniform in Leningrad during the siege in 1941. | TASS

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1953: the year that never ended

Ioseb Besarionis due Jughashvili or Joseph Vissarionocivh Stalin, the strongman of the USSR died. Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was crowned queen of England. James D. Watson and Francis H.C. Crick announced the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. Cambodia declares its independence from France. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay completed the first recorded ascent to the summit of Mount Everest. Jonas Salk gave himself and his family the polio vaccine. The Korean War came to an end. The North Sea flood left 1,835 people dead in the Netherlands.

History does not pause. Natural disasters do not retire. The year 1953 was not an exception. Name the year and ask a Sri Lankan, ‘what happened in 1953?’ The likely answer would be ‘The Hartal.’ The answer would be different in each country. Sometimes it is personal but sometimes it is of national importance.

Len Hutton’s Englishmen defeated Australia to win ‘The Ashes’ for the first time in 19 years that year but few would remember the fact. It must have been big news back then. Ask any citizen of the United Kingdom to name a single event that had an overwhelming impact on that country in 1953 and few would say ‘Iranian coup d'état'. Ask anyone in that county if he or she knows about ‘Operation Boot’ and you’ll probably get far more blank faces than raised eyebrows, fist-pumps or shame-showing dropping of gaze.

And yet, in terms of providing an example that clearly indicates the true worth of democracy and human rights posturing of the British and of course her friends and masters in the matter of plunder, ‘1953’ is pretty significant.

It’s all there in ‘Coup 53,’ a documentary by Iranian filmmaker Taghi Amirani which details how the CIA worked with Britain’s MI6 clandestinely in Operation Boot. At the time the British were more like what the US is today, thinking of themselves as equal rather than junior partners in imperialism as evident in involvement in Iran, the Suez Canal, Egypt and of course the most violent and pernicious displacement in the 20th century, that of Palestinians.

The UK now plays second fiddle to the USA, but that country has planned or executed over 40 attempts to remove foreign governments in 27 countries since the end of the Second World War. And the USA?

Here’s a post-1953 list. Guatemala, Syria, Indonesia, Iraq, Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia, the Congo, Laos, Dominican Republic, Iraq (again), , Indonesia (again), Cambodia (again), Chile,  Bolivia, Ethiopia, Angola,  East Timor, Argentina,  Afghanistan,  Poland,  Chad,  Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Haiti, Zaire,  Yugoslavia, , Afghanistan, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan,  Palestinian territories, Syria, Libya,  Syria and Pakistan. This is not counting all those so-called democratising efforts executed by ambassadors like Julie Chung and State Department busybodies like Victoria Nuland.

Iran in 1953 provided a blueprint for CIA-orchestrated coups. Had it not been for ‘Iran 1953’ how would such moves have played out is a question people have pondered. That’s speculation, though.  

Let’s go with what is known. The introduction by Chris Hedges in an interview of Amirani for ‘The Real News Network,’ is a nutshell capture.

‘On August 19th, 1953, 70 years ago this week, the democratically-elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had seized Iran’s vast oil fields from the British and put them under Iranian control, was removed from power in a coup organized and financed by the British and US governments. He was replaced by the dictatorial Shah, who immediately signed over 40% of Iran’s oil fields to US companies.

‘The CIA and the British Intelligence Services used bribery, libel, black propaganda that accused Mosaddegh of being a communist, assassinations, and orchestrated riots by paid mercenaries to overthrow the democratic government. They hired agents to pose as communists to threaten religious leaders, while the US ambassador lied to the prime minister about alleged attacks on American citizens. They oversaw the assassination of the chief of police, a Mosaddegh loyalist, leaving his mutilated body on the street as a warning to others who might defend the democracy. Mosaddegh’s house was surrounded and attacked and most of his security detail were killed. Mosaddegh was sentenced to three years in prison, followed by house arrest for life.'

Amirani observes: ‘To this day, 70 years since the 1953 coup, the British government has not officially admitted its role in this coup. Everything that happens in Coup 53, everything that happened to Coup 53 after its release, everything we talk about right now must be seen through that prism. The British have not yet come clean. The coup didn’t happen. They had nothing to do with it, although the CIA have finally admitted. They released the documents.’

It was about oil. The sequence isn’t all that unfamiliar.

In March 1951 Mohammed Mossadegh presented the idea of nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company to the Iranian Parliament. The Parliament approved it. In April that year Mossadegh was elected as Iran's new Prime Minister. In May 1951 Britain imposed an embargo on Iranian oil and banned the exportation of goods to Iran in retaliation while mobilising her navy as a show of force. In June, President Truman of the USA tried to sort out Iran-Britain tensions diplomatically, but Britain decided to take legal action against Iran in the International Court of Justice. The ICJ threw out the case. In 1952, Iran severed diplomatic ties with Great Britain. In 1953, a failed coup against Mossadegh forced Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to flee, but he returned to power in a second coup heavily backed by Britain and the USA.

This is the story of 'empire' that has only seen the addition of several more chapters since 1953. This is why France is so agitated over the coup in Niger. ‘Our interests,’ France thunders. What are these interests and have they changed since 1953 (yes, and for several centuries before that when marauding Europeans laid waste lands, perpetrated genocide and plundered resources)? Access to and control of resources (primarily oil, but also, as in the case of Niger, uranium), strategic footholds and more, and creation of markets. That’s what it is.

A central feature of Amirani’s documentary is an interview  given in 1985 by Norman Darbyshire to the Granada TV documentary ‘End of Empire.’ Amirani claims that Darbyshire, ‘in the absence of the British government official admission, stands in for that confession.’

‘He happens to be the lead MI6 officer who co-wrote the plan. He masterminded the coup. He ran the coup. He paid the mob. He orchestrated the whole management of agents on the ground. When the British were kicked out of Iran, when Mosaddegh discovered the plots for the coup, he remote-controlled the coup from Cyprus. Darbyshire’s interview is really the most clear piece of evidence of British involvement in this coup.’

The British Foreign Office hasn’t responded, to my knowledge. They do not. Neither does the US State Department. They believe that tossing in liberal quantities of words like peace and democracy, and enhancing traction by kept-media would suffice. They aren’t wrong.

This is why whenever Europeans and North Americans and their lapdog allies Japan and Australia (and sometimes India too) offer tuition classes to countries such as Sri Lanka, they should be told, ‘STOP, tell me about 1953 and all 1953s thereafter that your country has been associated with, directly or indirectly.’  

They might say ‘yes, but that’s then, this is now,’ but they can be told, “‘1953’ is TODAY, darling.’ Got to do homework though. Got to know history. Got to know the global political economy. No shortcuts to exposing lies and liars. 

malindadocs@gmail.com.

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Towards an intellectually robust political lexicon

At the Galle Literary Festival, in 2008, I believe the late Sunila Abeysekera pleaded that ‘LTTE’ and ‘Tamil people’ not be conflated. She was pointing fingers at Sinhala nationalists. The following question was put to her: ‘Is there no conflation when the LTTE insists it is the sole representative of the Tamil people and others either agree or remain silent?’

Sunila, her ideological orientation and outcome preferences notwithstanding could always be counted on for an honest answer. She said ‘yes, there is.’

Words and terms are often used uncritically and are tossed around carelessly. Value is crafted on them, not always innocently. Rhetoricians who indulge in this game obviously would avoid being button-holed about definitions. Interestingly, though, even academics including those who teach and write about the politics of language go along with them. That’s political expediency and academic and intellectual dishonesty.  

‘Conflate’ is just one word that has been heard in the discourse on identity, identity politics, ethnicity and ethnic conflict. Let’s consider a few others.

Peace. Now who on earth would proudly claim to be anti-peace? Even the worst warmongers and executors of terrible wars frequently claim that it’s all for peace. The word is used but it is not unwrapped. Peace, for some, could mean nothing less than a division of the country while for others it would be a situation where such threats are non-existent. Between these ‘non-negotiable’ are innumerable ‘peaces.’ We have seen ‘peace processes’ which are predicated on someone’s definition of peace. Those who took issue with such definitions were vilified as chauvinists, warmongers or worse.

Border Villages. This was a commonly used term throughout the last two decades of the war. On the surface, ‘border’ could be taken as a reference to battle lines and areas of control. At a different level and as per its literal meaning, ‘border’ implies two distinct territories. Went well with the separatist rhetoric. ‘Threatened villages’ would have been better but only if accompanied with necessary contextualisation.

North and South. This is similar to ‘border villages,’ but was liberally used in commentary and even in reportage where scribes would insert at some point disclaimers along the following lines: ‘Tamils are mostly concentrated in the North while Sinhalese are mostly in the South.’ The words were used in other contexts too. It was a neat, clever and pernicious instrument because it presumes a territory cut in half, East-to-West. To an ignorant foreigner, say (and there were many who were lobbied and misled), the picture becomes stark: ‘A Sinhala government in control of a territory of which one half is occupied by a different ethnic group: how preposterous, how unfair!’

Multi-Ethnic, Multi-Religious. Yes, Sri Lanka is not a mono-ethnic, mono-religious polity (which country is?). I have yet to hear anyone using this formula speaking the numbers, the percentages. You could add history to it too if you like. And demographic data as well.
 
United. Google the ‘reconciliation (another word which we will come to) formulas’ of those who want a solution ‘this side of division of the country into two separate states.’ This word features. Here’s the essence: ‘we want devolution of power (or ‘self-determination’) within a united Sri Lanka. United is not a term that can be legislated. It’s either unitary, federal, confederal or separate state. ‘United’ would be the odd one out. It’s a neat, clever and pernicious interjection of a patently non-political idea into a debate about specific legislative arrangements. It tickles the political term ‘unitary’ even as, in a formulaic sense, it subverts such an arrangement of the state.  

Reconciliation. This is a bit like ‘peace.’ There’s an outcome preference that is taken as a non-negotiable. Acknowledgement of exclusive Tamil homelands for example and thereafter agreement to affirm the same through devolution of power (quasi-federal, federal, confederal or separate state) to territories that have been casually marked with no reference to history or demography.

Just the other day I received an invitation to an art exhibition ‘to commemorate un-commemorative July 1983 to 2023.’  The artist who sent me the invite has not exactly ‘un-commemorated’ July 1983 (Black July to some Green-Black July to others). My response: ’83 is quite the cash cow.’ It was a terrible, terrible crime, but no more terrible than other crimes which this particular artist has ‘un-commemorated’ since 1983 — the bheeshanaya of 88-89, the massacre of civilians by the LTTE in numbers exceeding those killed in July 1983 for example. One does not justify the other. The blood of one does not wash away the blood of the other. Selective commemoration and selective use of the word ‘heinous,’ amounts to political duplicity and intellectual dishonesty. In this case, prostitution of art.

There will be reconciliation one day and it will not be on account of these kinds of crass politicisation of tragedy but in spite of such things.  More importantly the cause of reconciliation cannot suffer if the political lexicon is infused with the intellectual rigour it ought to have. Activists, academics included, especially liberals, have demonstrated a marked aversion to engage in such exercises. Their claims to radicalism, peace, reconciliation and such are therefore suspect.

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Exits and the dilemmas they spawn

In the second week of June, the Yahapalana Government dispatched several high ranking loyalists to the UK or else instructed those who happened to be in that country or were planning to visit for other business to lobby UK citizens of Sri Lankan origin against Brexit.

Harin Fernando, Harsha de Silva, Rosy Senanayake, Dayasiri Jayasekera, Dilan Perera and Susil Premjayantha are reported to have done the canvassing at the time. The majority of voters (51.89%) voted in favour of Britain exiting the European Union. The exit was formally written into law on January 23, 2020.

At the time, with Brexit impending, Ranil Wickremesighe, then Prime Minister, was reported to have said that Sri Lanka should look East. Specifically, he outlined long term plans to forget stronger ties with Asian countries (China, India, Japan and Korea). He spoke of fast-tracking ETCA (Economic Technology Cooperation Agreement) with India and Free Trade Agreements with the aforementioned economies.

It took Brexit, then, for the darling of neoliberalism in Sri Lanka to ‘see’ the neighbourhood. Fast forward to 2022, Ranil Wickremeisnghe, now President, ‘shockingly’ resorted to rhetoric that was almost a throw-back to the policies of the United Front government of the early 1970s. He has eased off that kind of stuff since, understandably so given a long standing fascination with neoliberalism which, in current circumstances, requires repeating the mantra ‘IMF is God’ and following relevant precepts.

From Day One it has been a case of wanting to get money from wherever in order to make people feel things are better. ‘IMF’ has been thought of as a means to secure further loans and attract investment on account of a relatively rosier picture of general economic health. The first is essentially about adding to the debt burden and getting deeper into a default cycle. The latter just doesn’t work that way. The government just doesn’t have any solid, sustainable plan to sort out the foreign exchange problem.

The focus instead has been on political viability and, on the economic front, ticking ‘IMF Boxes.’ Among them is a condition on restructuring domestic debt. Problem: local banks are saying ‘no can do.’ And why should they, anyway? They are not obliged to bail out governments.

What are the options, then, if the boxes remain unticked? China.

Wait. Julie Chung won’t be happy about it, right? The lady might think that it’s time for Wickremesinghe to exit! Perhaps this is why presidential pretenders like Patali Champika Ranawaka has adopted an unusually US-friendly position.  Perhaps this is why the pro-US Al Jazeera calls him a ‘dictator.’ That’s the first salvo of vilification and discrediting. Expect more of the same. ‘Unless,’ is the word unsaid followed by the do this and do that of arm-twisting.

Right now, there’s a tightrope to walk. A fine line. On the one hand, the government is unable to tick certain IMF boxes. On the other hand, Chung shouldn’t be displeased. Something has to give. Or, put another way, something has to be given. The devils have to be appeased. SOFA? MCC? Don’t be surprised, folks; this is a battle for political survival and not economic recovery, alleviating miseries or a plan to get the country out of a rut and ensure it doesn’t slip back. It helps when you are ideologically happy embracing such servility and facilitating such outright plunder. Bottom line: whatever it takes, never mind the people, the resources, who gets short-changed, who gets enslaved, what gets looted, the potential pillage etc.

All this is framed by the question of legitimacy. We have a legally appointed president who has a serious legitimacy deficit. Right now he’s dependent on numbers provided by a party that has severely discredited itself since the 2020 election and a few who have reneged from parties such as the SJB and SLMC. Naturally, he would prefer to be a president elected by the people and not their representatives. Thereafter he could stir the coalition soup to obtain the consistency required for political stability. Easier said than done. He does have the advantage of an opposition that’s not only divided by confusion, not to mention the fact that it is composed of groups and parties led by ego-maniacs who themselves stand discredited in the eyes of the people. All that, later. What of the here and now?

Maybe the most serious issue is that a politically beleaguered leader just doesn’t have the space to develop a solid, pragmatic and sustainable plan of action. Tossing out a date (2048 in this case) just isn’t enough. Ranil Wickremesinghe’s government is like a bunch of specialist bowlers batting on a minefield and attacked by unforgiving bowlers while being surrounded by the sharpest fielders ready to pounce on edges produced by each and every false stroke. And no one to cheer either, for it is, for all intents and purposes, an ‘away match.’

The world has changed a lot after Brexit. The West is in decline; only the West doesn’t want to admit it or else just don’t believe the writing on the wall. Wickremesinghe knows this though. Ranawaka knows it too but probably thinks the bad days are still far away — therefore it’s a warm enough embrace to achieve political ambitions.  Wickremesinghe is in the hot seat, not Ranawaka. Right now he’s struggling to appease those who seem to have run out of patience and at the same time is wary of considering the obvious alternatives.

There’s one thing he can do though: address the larger and most worrisome issues at hand. What’s the plan? What’s the plan to fix the foreign exchange crisis? What’s the plan to encourage industry even as you implement austerity measures? The industries have to compete in a global economy. They have margins to worry about. Why not engage with them? Coherence. That’s probably a good thing to be framed by at this point. The sheer lack of clarity on all matters will not help.

And it would be good to revisit the post-Brexit thinking. There’s some distance from thought to action, but Wickremesinghe did get it right in 2016. There were no other options then. There are none today either. Could work, subject to the non-negotiable condition of the national interest informing all engagements.  He’s a tad poor on that. Indeed, he’s not alone there. All major political parties and their leaders are equal to him in this regard. Or worse.

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Republicanism and its discontents

There are words that seem to be very popular among politicians and political groups when it comes to naming a new part or coalition. ‘Jathika’ or ‘National’ would top the list. We have the Eksath JATHIKA Pakshaya (United NATIONAL Party). Whenever this party led coalitions, ‘pakshaya’ was replaced with ‘peramuna’ or ‘front,’ but ‘jathika’ was left intact.

There are others. There are 86 parties registered with the Elections Commission at present. Four (4) of that have the word ‘jathika’ in their names, thirteen (13) have ‘national,’ one has it as ‘thesiya’ (again, ‘national’),  nine (9) have ‘Sri Lanka,’ five (5) have ‘Lanka,’ one (1) has ‘Hela, ’one (1) has ‘Ilankai,’ one (1) has it as ‘Illankai,’ one (1) has ‘desha,’ one has ‘Maubima’ or ‘Motherland,’ and three (3) have ‘Ceylon.’

Some parties/coalition seem to have been fixated on shoving in all the nice words into the name they register: national, people, front, democratic, united, alliance, democratic and of course the name of the country or some reference to it such as Sri Lanka, Lanka, Ilankai and Ceylon. People (or ‘Janatha’ in Sinhala and ‘Makkal’ in Tamil) is also popular.  In some cases the preferred word is the truncated form ’jana’ or the elaboration ‘podujana.’

One has ‘Republican,’ and although it contains ‘people’ (the word being derived from Latin, rēs (“thing”) + pūblica (“public”) and hence literally ‘the public thing’) it has more ideological undertones, much like ‘socialist’ (6 parties have it in their names) and ‘democratic’ (18).

What’s interesting is that the claims embedded in the names are not reflected in the practices. We don’t need to get into that. Parties that have ‘national’ in their names have betrayed the nation. Those who don’t aren’t necessarily traitors. The same goes for democratic and socialist. Names. Just names.

The United Republican Front was officially launched just ten days ago (May 22, 2023). Its potential has to be assessed in terms of the track records of its leaders. It provides, however, an opportunity to talk of republicanism.

The idea of a republic emerged in a context of a political need to abolish monarchical rule. The primacy of citizen and citizenship underpin republicanism. Republics are of many kinds, as history has shown, but in the Sri Lankan context the word obtained relevance from the need to unshackle the country from the British Empire. This is why it is more sensible to have May 22, 1972 as ‘Independence Day’ and not February 4, 1948. We became a republic in 1972. In 1948 we were still subjects of King George VI and therefore beholden to the British Crown.

Of course, we reverted to February 4 after the United National (sic) Party came to power in 1977. Ironically, even as we adopted a new constitution in 1978 and called it the Second Republican Constitution, we not only disavowed the significance of May 22, 1972 but were turned into a citizenry ruled by a president with close to monarchical powers.

And, partly but not wholly attributed to the 1978 constitution, we’ve had to live in a country with a reduced value for citizenship. The feudalism that marked the early decades of independence survived. Citizens, even in reduced circumstances, played their part in the persistence of this state of affairs. Governments were associated with personalities and families, not ideology or meritocracy: the Senanayakes and Wijewardenas of the UNP and the Bandaranaikes and Rajapaksas of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.  Of these, the Rajapaksas were the most conspicuously monarchical, which is of course not to say that the other major political families did not and does not have similar sway. The Rajapaksas were more in-your-face.

Republicanism was not touted in name but the ideas certainly were. The word ‘republic’ didn’t make it to the public discourse, but the relevant attributes were written into demands, scripted into speeches and pencilled into manifestoes, the last of which have not persuaded anyone to take notice, considering that parties and coalitions voted into power have all treated them as irrelevant the moment they were declared winners.

So ‘republican’ is not necessarily a bad choice for inclusion in a party name. In the very least it is an umbrella term that can accommodate the long wish-list frequently articulated by those who consider themselves liberals and radicals (but, let us not forget, frequently align themselves openly with political parties and leaders who have monarchical aspirations).

Ok, let’s see we establish the republican ideal in the sense of formal representative democracy and rules that affirm the principle of meritocracy. All done? No more issues?

It’s still a system of governance that formally recognises citizens and citizenship. That’s political. How about the economic issues? How about the political economic issues? How about the system of legally extracting value, legally exploiting? What do republicans have to say about the neoliberal economic theories that make for subjugation, enslavement, impoverishment and, not least of all, are part of a development paradigm that seriously compromise the health of the planet? Are they ‘separate issues’ or are they annoying issues best left unmentioned?

Of course monarchies can be affirmed even in a republic. We have the Kennedys, Bushes and Clintons in the USA, don’t forget. And even if we didn’t have such dynasties can it not be argued that stripped of egalitarian rhetoric democracy in practice is nothing but serial feudalistic regimes? And how about class, by the way?

Reducing it all to an assessment of relative merits comparing republics and monarchies is a side-stepping of important issues. The problem is that republicans will not say ‘republicanism is necessary but not sufficient.’ They talk and act as though republicanism is an end in and of itself or, as some argue, it is The End. Period.

The truth is republicanism is as stinking a dead cat as is any nationalism that ignores the very same things that republicans do not want to touch.

Republic. Nice term, but in essence a distraction. Republics are not islands. Sri Lanka as a true republic would still have to exist in a unipolar world where nations suffer varying levels of subservience. It’s a ‘public thing’ where people are counted occasionally but are for the most part counted out. And those who don’t want to unpack republicanism are either slothful or are invested in preserving elements of the status quo that matter to them: the sustained development of operations that allow profit, entail slavery of one kind or another and ensure planetary degradation (and the ability to activate coercive mechanisms if this status quo comes under threat).

There are republicans to die for, but the ones proposed by republicans are more likely ones where people continue to run the risk of being run over by the powerful, the demented, the closet monarchs and their apologists. 

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The 'republican' credentials of Patali Champika Ranawaka

I remembered R K W (Raja) Goonesekera. Patali Champika Ranawaka made me remember him. It took me back to the year 1992.

When Patali Champika Ranawaka, along with 14 others were arrested in a temple in February that year and detained for three weeks, the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) accepted a request to represent the group. A fundamental rights case was filed in the Supreme Court. The case, ‘Channa Pieris and Others v Attorney General and Others’ is also referred to as the ‘Ratawesi Peramuna Case’ (SC Applications 145/92 to 154/92 and 155/92). A bench that included Justice Dr A R B Amarasinghe determined that their fundamental rights had indeed been violated. Justice Amarasinghe, in his book on fundamental rights in Sri Lanka, referred to the case several times. It is considered a landmark judgment and has been frequently cited in FR applications thereafter.

Among the BASL members who represented the group were Donald Walter ‘Bacon’ Abayakoon, Manori Muttetuwegama, Sanath Jayatilleka and R K W Goonesekera.  By way of helping these legal luminaries draft the affidavits, I, one of the petitioners, was tasked to interview and write down the political histories of my fellow petitioners.

The genial Counsel Goonesekera having read Ranawaka’s history made a comment that I have not forgotten:

‘I say, this Champa Ranawaka (yes, he mispronounced the name then and in court as well) is a remarkable fellow. But I worry. You know, I have seen people like this before. I once heard Mahinda Wijesekera speak. He was brilliant — thinking on his feet, shooting off his hip. Look where he is now. I hope this fellow won’t end up in the UNP.’

He did. For a while at least. There’s no telling if the parting of ways in 2020 marked the burning of bridges. In politics, bridges are rebuilt and if not, there are innumerable vessels that can be used to cross back. And forth.

Here’s his history in a nutshell: the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, Jathika Chinthanaya, Ratawesi Peramuna (RP), Janatha Mithuro (JM), National Movement Against Terrorism (NMAT), Sihala Urumaya (SU), Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) led by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), the United National Front for Good Governance led by the United National Party and the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) which was essentially the rebranded UNP.

Most of these parties and organisations are now defunct, in decline or have embraced ideologies that are far removed from what was espoused originally. Patali Champika Ranawaka is still around. The misfortunes of these organisations haven’t stopped his star from rising in the political firmament.

Not too long ago, parting ways with the SJB, he launched a group called ’43 Senankaya (Battalion 43).’ Not ‘43rd’ as he himself occasionally mis-names his own political formation, but ’43’ (after the year in which free education was launched in the country). Now he’s all set to launch a new party, ‘United Republican Front (URF).’ The launch has been scheduled deliberately for May 22, 2023, the 51st anniversary of the day in which Sri Lanka became truly politically independent, i.e. a Republic. The name, the date, the history make sense, but only as frills.

If history says anything, his followers, admirers and political associates should know that for Champika, as he once openly stated, political parties are mere vessels that allow him to move from one shore to another. Stepping stones, then.

People don’t have to stay in one place, politically or ideologically. They can plead, ‘I know better now.’ That’s legitimate; one does not have to stay rooted just because roots were put out at one point if one realised that it was the wrong spot to stop.

Where is he going, though? Put another way, where can he go?

Strictly in terms of positions held, the previous avatar would seem more grand. He was after all President Sirisena’s ‘right hand man’ in the Constitutional Council even as he was Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s ‘right hand man’ as General Secretary of the coalition led by the UNP. He was a minister then and today he’s fighting to retain his parliamentary seat.

Given the way politics unfolds following the Second Republican Constitution (1978) with proportional representation and the marked reluctance for electoral reform, new entrants do not make waves. The SU got one seat in 2000. The JHU, in a unique political context, got 9 in 2004. Small parties do have a role. They help color the picture of a coalition. The leaders, if eloquent (and he is), clever (he is) and has a reputation as a doer and not talker (he’s a doer; his accomplishments when handed over important ministries are impressive), could attract the preferential votes of loyalists belonging to the main political party of the coalition. They could also wrangle a spot on a national list.

But where is Patali going? Where does he want to go? With whom? The answer is, ‘well, he would know, for personal goals outweigh ideology and even political groups he himself forms/leads.’

He voted for the 18th, 19th and 21st amendments to the Constitution [In the original article published in the Daily Mirror, I erroneously stated that he had voted for the 20th as well. Apologies to Mr Ranawaka]. They were certainly not tailored from the same political cloth. I haven’t heard any explanations from him. He was the General Secretary of the coalition led by Ranil Wickremesinghe and the UNP even as he was SLFP leader and president Maithripala Sirisena’s representative in the Constitutional Council. He was a minister under Mahinda Rajapaksa and in the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government.

He was, unlike others playing the ‘small party’ card to further personal political ambitions (he is ambitious and that’s not a crime), a key spokesperson for those regimes and coalitions. Indeed, he was clearly the thinker when it came to conceptualising and writing political manifestos. Good as a side kick to some ‘whoever’ who may even consider offering him the prime minister’s post which of course would be read by him as yet another stepping stone.

To expect him to be a republican or a nationalist at this point, however, would be silly. His minions in a recent YouTube discussion clearly indicated that Patali Champika Ranawaka is quite cosy with the USA or rather the representatives and thinking of that country. He’s come a long way from screaming for ‘capitalism of he Putin and Mahathir kind.’ Makes sense. If he’s THAT right wing, he might as well share bed with the big bosses of that paradigm. Republican, then, in the sense of the Reagans, Bushes and Trumps of this world. Nothing more, nothing less.

This is what amuses me about picking the 22nd of May to launch his latest party. This is what made me remember and respect all the more that kind, gentle, highly intelligent man of integrity, R K W ‘Raja’ Goonesekera. 

Related Articles:

That man Patali Champika Ranawaka

Patali Champika Ranawaka: future, tense 

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The 13th Amendment: by thugs, with thugs and for thugs

There are some uncomfortable truths about the 13th Amendment, devolution of power and of course provincial councils. Let’s begin with the here-and-now.

Provincial Council elections haven’t been held in years. It is more than 10 years since the Eastern Provincial Council elections were held and more than nine since they were held for the Northern Provincial Council. Did the people in the Northern and Eastern provinces complain? Did their representatives complain? Did any who have screamed for devolution for the last forty years raise even a whimper? Did those who make a living out of talking democracy, reconciliation, good governance, devolution and conflict resolution complain? Have those who are now, in the name of democracy, agitating for local government elections, ever insisted that PC elections be held? Did anyone say ‘constitutional provisions should be implemented?’

No. Simply, no. Humbuggery, yes.

Let’s go back to 1987. Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, soon to be assassinated by the very terrorist outfit he and his mother before him funded, trained and armed, in effect held a gun to the head of the then President of Sri Lanka, J R Jayewardene, forcing him to sign the Into-Lanka Accord and thereafter get the then parliament (made of parliamentarians who he forced to sign undated letters of resignation) to pass the 13th Amendment. The people were not consulted. There was no debate. Illegality was written all over the document, its enactment and implementation.  

It was an act of thuggery endorsed by a man who had excellent thug-credentials (having bashed heads of striking workers in July 1980, looked aside while thugs from his party’s trade union unleashed violence on Tamils in July 1983 and under whose watch two university students were killed in June 1984). And it was designed to further a cause of a bunch of terrorists. Simply, thuggery.

Most importantly, it wrecked rather than made easy administrative functions a case in point being agriculture, in particular agricultural extension. It has been estimated that on average no less than two-thirds of monies allocated to provincial councils have been used to pay salaries and maintain offices. Some PCs, like the Northern Provincial Council, couldn’t even spend all the money allocated to it in certain years. Simply, a white elephant. Nine of them in fact. Nine rogue white elephants.

Today there’s talk of the 13th Amendment being implemented to the letter, meaning police and land powers would be devolved. First of all, not only was the 13th Amendment imposed by a thug and illegally enacted by thug and his minions for the benefit of another bunch of thugs, it had nothing to do with ground realities. Devolution of power as a remedy to stated grievances is a monumental joke given geographic, economical, historical and demographic realities. We need not elaborate, but if you really believe in the Eelamist lie about 'traditional homelands,' you could read up on Raja Raja Chola I and how that particular marauder who had no stake in championing 'Sinhala chauvinism' described this island: 'the land of the warlike Sinhalas,' no less. 

That said it has acquired legitimacy, if not in the circumstances of enactment by affirmation through practice — all major political parties have contested provincial council elections at one time or another. Not because they agreed with the narratives of ‘grievance’ and ‘aspirations,’ but that they saw it as a means to advance political projects, as individual politicians and as collectives.

Two factors may have serves to dispel concerns regarding the 13th Amendment. First, the powers vested in the office of the president was the insurance policy against separatism. Secondly, land and police powers were never devolved. With regard to police powers, several amendments beginning with the 17th, in effect, made such devolution unnecessary. Land was not even talked about.  

Now, if we are to go with the intent expressed by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, we could very well see Chief Ministers of Provincial Councils having the kind of sway that even the President does not enjoy with regard to policing in their respective domains. Now there’s also the threat of each Chief Minister having the power to override all central government safeguards with regard to the protection of forests and the preservation of archaeological sites at will.

We do know that certain Chief Ministers belonging to certain ethnic groups have been averse to archaeology perhaps out of fear that wild narratives about what happened and creative historiography will be proven beyond a shadow of doubt to be absolute bunkum. We also know that parties such as the JVP have at various points in their history talked of tearing down stupas so that building materials could be put to other use. We had Sunil Handunnetti recently ridicule Buddhists for their preferred forms of worship. What such people in the role of Chief Minister could do should be reason enough to be wary, extremely wary about devolving land powers.

Forests! There are protected areas in all provinces. Even without land powers being devolved forests are being cut down, partly in the name of development and probably more extensively on the sly. Just imagine nine politicians (and we know that it is a profession favoured by crooks, thugs and the uncivilised) with police and land powers running their own fiefdoms. Pretty? Pretty grim!

A word about the JVP is necessary. The JVP gained much ground riding the general antipathy to Indian intervention and opposition to the 13th amendment. Sixty thousand (60,000) people, INCLUDING JVP LEADERS AND ACTIVISTS died in a period of two years (1988-89). The JVP now wants the 13th Amendment to be fully implemented, i.e. with land and police powers devolved. Perhaps we’ve seen the last ‘Il Maha Samaruma’ of the JVP. Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Co., will have to answer to all the party members, supporters and others who perished during the bheeshanaya.  Will Dissanayake say ‘those sahodarayas were a bunch of idiots back then!’

What should be done with a piece of legislation describable as ‘by thugs, with thugs and for thugs’?

Repeal. Simply, repeal. 

Relevant Articles

The pluses and minuses of the 13th Amendment

The 13th Amendment and moral obligations

The forgotten 13th bears upon the 19th and 20th

What of the 13th, 19th, Circular 5/2001 and the MCC Compact?

20th Amendment without repeal of the 13th: a recipe for disaster

The 19th, 20th and sanctimonious humbuggery

Raja Raja Chola and the quicksand of Tamil Chauvinism 

The 'Traditional Homelands' tells a story  

How about including 'Reparations'  in school curricula? 

 

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Towards the fortification of nutritional sovereignty

 

When the then US Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, Teresita Currie Schaffer, insisted in the early 1990s that Sri Lanka’s food security lies in the wheat fields of North America, it was obviously a part of a general anti-rice rant with a view to propping the American wheat farmer. This is not surprising for Schaffer had served in the State Department as Director of the Office of the Office of International Trade in the early 1980s.

It made sense as per certain dubious economic theories: you can grow or you can buy, so if you have purchasing power it doesn’t matter whether or not you grow whatever it is you may want to eat. Just imagine if the Russia-Ukraine crisis had happened in a context where few if any Sri Lankans were bread-dependent!  

The 1990s was full of that kind of rhetoric which of course was dutifully regurgitated by some politicians, academics and officials. It was complemented with a lot of anti-rice ‘expert’ opinions. Some pointed out that the world needs to get out of rice because the crop emitted greenhouse gases. They didn’t say that the world’s biggest industrial polluters, including the USA, should shut down factories. Some said ‘wheat tastes better.’

Absent in the entire discourse was the issue of health. What was recommended was wheat bread; rice was rubbished. Well, not exactly the hybrid varieties that made the big boys and girls of the seed industry and those in the agrochemical business very, very rich.

Privatisation of water resources in the guise of democratising management a la user-control was another attempt to wrest control of water and thereby what could be cultivated.

The question is one of food sovereignty but that’s not enough either. It’s nutritional sovereignty that counts.

Today, three decades later, those who made a living out of vilifying rice and promoting wheat seem to have realised that rice is a hard habit to kick. It’s not all bad news for the businesses that benefited from the kind of policy-regime that ‘experts’ wanted to establish. The seed industry will continue to thrive. The chemical fertilizer industry will continue to thrive. The agrochemical producers will continue to thrive. Those who benefit from recommending policies that necessitate such inputs will probably continue to reap benefits in terms of luxury holidays and kick-backs. The paddlers who have for all intents and purposes play the role of agriculture extension officers will continue to thrive. Meanwhile Sri Lankans will continue to be exposed to all manner of health risks including non-communicable diseases such as diabetes.  

And now, they’ve come up with a new strategy, again wrapped in the rhetoric of good intention - fortified rice. The argument is quite simple and could be persuasive: if Sri Lankans cannot kick the rice habit and if rice is not contributing to nutritional sovereignty, let’s do fortified rice!  

What are these ‘fortified rice’ varieties? What kind of hybrids are they and who develops them? In other words, who will grow and sell the seeds? Are they the kinds of seeds that need to be purchased every year or can farmers, farming collectives and nations create their own seed banks? Will they need pesticides and weedicides and if so who produces the same? Or are we to imagine that no one is interested in profits and that economic benefits have not played any role whatsoever in designing these proposals?  

So there are issues. There’s national security. There’s national food security. There’s national food sovereignty. There’s national nutritional sovereignty. There are also issues about the dangers typical of single-option solutions. What’s required, experts critiquing India’s fortification strategy claim, is to look for balance.

So let’s talk about balance then. What is important is to see rice as one of many foods that make for a good, nutritious meal. In such a situation, rice works as a staple best when it is complemented by fruits, vegetables, yams etc., that make for 'balance.' For this, we need to know what's out there, what is grown, what grows wild and recover memory of all this.

Even as of now, Sri Lanka lacks a comprehensive food inventory or, more accurately, a comprehensive mapping of available foods. The focus has been on commercially grown foods. Now had the ‘experts’ thought about such things, then volume wouldn’t be larger-than-life, volume would not be the be all and end all of policy-making. Complementarity would have been accorded some value. Nutrition would have been factored in. Medicinal properties too.

Back to rice. There are 300 traditional rice varieties stored in Gannoruwa, apparently. The number of varieties ‘gifted’ to the International Rice Research Institute is probably greater. IRRI has over 11,000 rice varieties. Today, traditional rice varieties are grown only in small quantities by a small number of farmers who have, despite many challenges, operated as the guardians of these seeds and the knowledge associated with them. Here’s a fact that should open eyes: the nutritional density of traditional rice varieties is far superior to that of the high-yielding varieties that have been made to become more popular.

But yes, there is a concern about volume as in how much per hectare. The problem is that the moment nutrition is thrown out of the equation, we are left with only volume. That’s bad science which is probably good for certain kinds of businesses.

There are eight universities with agriculture or agriculture-related faculties. Each faculty probably has over 1,000 students. In addition, almost all universities have departments covering subjects such as economics, sociology, geography, statistics, plant science etc. Even if just 1% of students were persuaded to study traditional rice varieties, map food complement of villages, assess nutritional densities etc., we are talking about a corpus of knowledge hitherto absent in policy-making.  

That, ladies and gentlemen, would be ‘fortification’ of the kind that multilateral agencies and ‘experts’ drafting policy briefs for politicians would never want to see the light of day.

So we want food sovereignty on the table. We want nutritional sovereignty on the table. We want science to be informed by a full consideration of all relevant factors and a concerted effort to obtain such information. Any ‘fortification’ proposal that tries to transplant theories that shy away from such an exercise has to be read as mischievous. And any politician or official saluting such recommendations be seen as an enemy of the people.

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‘Moderate’ is a convenient garb for the pernicious

In the year 2019, sometime in the month of May a chance investigation threw up a name: Shanthilal Silva.  Dr Silva, attached to the Peradeniya Teaching Hospital. Although not an Obstetrician and Gynecologist, he was known to be one because he had performed caesarian sections and delivered babies. The name was thrown up, but no one picked it up.  

Now this Dr Silva, capitalizing on lax oversight at the hospital and of course able to cash cheques on account of superiors who got him to ‘cover’ when they went to earn a buck or two doing private practice, enjoyed his work. He liked to cut up expecting mothers. Mothers and of course the fathers of the children they delivered were extremely grateful to Dr Silva. After all, he ensured they could take healthy infants home.  

At one point something hit the fan. The ‘good’ doctor apparently had some skeletons in his cupboard which spilled out. Women ‘treated’ by Dr Silva suddenly remembered. Some claimed that they didn’t have babies after this doctor performed Caesarian Sections on them. Did he fiddle with their tubes, they asked themselves and others. Was he some kind of communalist (because all these people who claimed victimization happened to belong to some other community), they asked themselves and others.  

Immediately the big-name watchdog nations on human rights (never mind their sorry track record on this subject) got the wind up. They issue statements (politely) demanding that the Sri Lankan government provide speedy justice and reparation to the victims of this unfolding tragedy. Minister Mangala Samaraweera issues a 10 page statement against enemies of peaceful coexistence. He gaily indulges in essentialist terminology vilifying all Sinhalese and all Buddhists, especially the bhikkus. The US Ambassador immediately visits ‘victims’. There are howls of horror from ‘Civil Society’ especially women’s rights outfits. Demonstrations are held in Colombo by Born Against Democrats, Candlelight Ladies and Funded Voices at Lipton’s Circus. The UNHRC boss powwows with representatives of big-name nations to draft yet another resolution against Sri Lanka which Mangala and others of his ilk are itching to champion and endorse. 

Alright. None of the above happened. And neither were such revelations preceded by the bombing of churches and hotels by a group claiming to be the purest and only true adherents to the doctrine of the Buddha. 

We don’t have to listen to the not-so-veiled threats of ex Governor of the Eastern Province, Mahamood Hizbullah to understand that there is a real and abiding danger of a kind of terrorism this country did not know before Easter Sunday.  And yet, the noises made in English, in and out of the media (mainstream and social) are almost exclusively directed at the majority community, the Sinhala Buddhists. 

We know what happened. A large number of Sinhala women (close to 800) who complained about Dr Shafi (who is not, contrary to reports, a gynecologist and obstetrician) have been vilified. People have asked why only some 60 odd of them have agreed to submit themselves to examination, never mind that concern is one thing and anxieties about probes and related publicity are two different things. Pregnancy, childbirth and the ability to deliver are extremely personal matters which are surprisingly ignored in the relevant discourse.   

An academic, attached to an English Department in a state university no less, asks ‘where did all these women turn up from?’  

And we know what didn’t happen. We haven’t had a single Muslim woman ‘treated’ by Dr Shafi coming forward to say ‘I too was unable to conceive following the C-Section done by him’. Note that this doctor operated (!) in areas where there is a sizable Muslim population.

We know what is unlikely to happen too. Many have pooh-poohed allegations against Dr Shafi. Many of this ‘many’ were reluctant to pooh-pooh allegations against the Sri Lankan security forces during the last stages of operations against the LTTE. Innocent until proven guilty is a selectively applicable thing, apparently. Anyway, if they are so convinced, could they do the following: if they are of child-bearing age and inclination or have wives, daughters and friends who are, would they, by way of putting money where their mouths are, name themselves and say ‘Dr Shafi is my first choice medical practitioner in this regard!’? 

Today we have many lecturers on coexistence, harmony, reconciliation, peace and such things, just as there were when the LTTE played ‘Poor relation of the ISIS’.  Terrorists have no religion, we are told. Don’t conflate Muslims with the Jihaadists, we are told. Don’t alienate Muslims. Don’t isolate them. We are told. 

I am in agreement with all of the above, in general. Isolation and alienation would, as argued, most certainly play into the hands of the extremists. There’s no doubt that we have to deal with the terrorists as they ought to be dealt with, from processes and structures that feed ideology and facilitate recruitment to detecting and dismantling operations. With respect to ‘processes’ anything that isolates and alienates the relevant community will be an obstacle.  Perhaps the error is in exaggerating the possibility of the latter and pretending that isolation and alienation can only be inflicted and not chosen.  In any event (and this is a generous reading), we have seen a lot of this exaggeration which has in fact snowballed into two things: a) a crass generalization and vilification of the majority community, and b) scandalous silence on all other factors including the threat at hand and the relevant complicities of the Hizbullahs of the Muslim community, apart from the odd and token reference.  

It is a script that we’ve read before. It is a film we saw during the nineties and the early part of this century. And those who wrote and read and play it out call themselves or would have us believe they are ‘moderates’.  

I firmly believe that there are some who are in fact ‘moderate’. Vilification of an entire community, in this case the Sinhala Buddhists, is probably not THEIR intention. Neither would they advocate the alienation and isolation that could result and indeed seems to be the outcome preference of their fellow travelers. In fact I believe the majority of the moderates are, well, moderate. I am not talking about them but those moderates who give a bad name to moderation.

What’s their beef, though? Who are they, though? Among them are people who are neither Sinhalese nor Buddhists. Among them are people who for whatever reason believe and worry that the ‘Sinhala Buddhist community’ is the preserve of those opposed to the current government led by the United National Party. In other words, they are politically inclined to support or are affiliated with that party. Among them are people who talk of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious Sri Lanka while carefully avoiding numbers and percentages and of course brushing aside history and heritage.  They talk about a Sri Lankan identity in public, but fervently affirm their ethnic or religious identities in private. Many are wont to believe (although they won’t say it) that Sri Lanka is Colombo and vice versa, and assume (without saying it) that the affairs of the country should be managed by the English-speaking, Anglicized and relatively wealthy class.  

Many of them consciously or unconsciously are ashamed of their own skin and DNA traces, talk about how great things were under the Europeans (never mind ethnic-cleansing, genocide, extraction of resources and the fact that the ‘great works’ were funded by taxing the people and through their underpaid labor), and find the vilification of Sinhala Buddhists a means to self-isolation and self-alienation that makes them ladies and gentlemen.  They would shop, to put it a bit crudely, in the high end department stores like Odel (for instance) but would not be caught dead at Uptown Kandy in case (to use oft used derogatory epithets) ‘gode’ or yako’ rubs off on them. There are also among them people who do not belong to this class, people who are Sinhalese and Buddhists, who can’t afford high-end consumerism but want to be ‘posh’ and therefore do the costless thing of mimicking the ‘posh’, namely taking up the vilifying chant. They would be sneered at by the ‘Real Deal’ in private, but they won’t know it.   

They rant and rave against isolation and alienation, but in fact isolate and alienate. Caricature is their watchword. And this is why those like Rev Gnanasara and outfits like the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) are ‘heaven-sent’ to them. Such individuals and outfits, however rejected they may be by Buddhists, are used as proxies for that community. No caveats. No specifics. Totalizing, instead. Generalizing instead. Caricatured. And that’s ‘moderation’ and ‘moderates’ for you, ladies and gentlemen. Part of the problem. Sri Lanka must rise up, but to do that Sri Lanka must wise-up to these fake-moderates for they endanger everyone. That’s fundamental. 

malindasenevi@gmail.com

[A shorter version of this article was published in the 'Daily Mirror,' June 13, 2019]

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අනතුර, ආරක්ෂාව සහ පුරවැසි වගකීම

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Where's the ‘National’ in this National Government?

Just the other day, this Government appointed four new Provincial Governors. Almost immediately one of them, who used to be a Governor in a different province, was removed and reappointed to his earlier post.   

What is it with this Government and Governors? Not too long ago, the Government appointed a man with a less than glorious track record as the Governor of the Central Bank. When he came under a cloud, the Prime Minister defended him. When he was effectively sacked, he was given ‘other employment’. When he was charged with wrongdoing and ordered to appear in court, those who guaranteed the man would submit to such an order, went silent. 

When the above was pointed out, someone quipped, ‘they are good at sacking and appointing judges, though’.  That entire process was quite sordid, though.

Anyway, if all this was bad, the circus that the much talked of cabinet reshuffle has turned into is far worse joke.  First of all, following the rout of all constituent parties in the Government at the local government elections, the Ministry of Law and Order changed hands not once, but twice!  After the vote on the no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe a bunch of ministers who have resigned. 

Then we had the entire Parliamentary Group of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party wanting to quit the Government, followed by the party leader and president, Maithripala Sirisena, urging the bunch to re-think. Now we have the General Secretary of the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), a coalition led by the SLFP, saying that even those who supported the no-confidence motion will remain with the Government.  Mahinda Amaraweera in an elaboration says that this is ‘to support and strengthen the President’.  Note, it’s the President and not the Government whose strengthening is sought here! 

Meanwhile, a section of the UNP wants to punish those SLFP ministers who ‘betrayed’ by bringing a no-confidence motion against them. Some of these ‘betrayers’ have decided to sit in the Opposition. In other words, the marriage between the UNP and the SLFP is strained (to be generous).  

Let us not forget that the President arbitrarily relieved certain key institutions from certain ministries and vested them in others. Let us also take note of whispers that ex-ministers Ravi Karunanayake and Wijedasa Rajapaksa are to be rewarded with cabinet slots for support shown during the no-confidence motion. Most importantly let us remember that the Prime Minister or the President or both (most likely the former) have been shuffling the cabinet pack for more than two months now. It looks like their general incompetence is finding expression even in this simple exercise of naming a new cabinet and it’s gravity is made even greater considering the chest-beating assertions about a new government being formed. ‘New’ in terms of a new cabinet.  

They key issue here is not coherence, it’s not restructuring or rationalizing. It’s about rewarding friends and buying off enemies. The problem is that retaining a parliamentary majority (note: the government in effect has lost its two-thirds majority) is about holding together 113 individuals whereas ‘holding’ has been reduced to an exercise in appeasement by way of portfolios, if not  cabinet minister then at least state or deputy minister posts. 

This is where we get to the thorny issue of the ‘national government’.  The 19th Amendment had two major flaws; first, the composition of the Constitutional Council which effectively compromises the ‘regaining’ of the independent institutions abrogated by the 18th Amendment, and secondly the caveats pertaining to the size of the cabinet. 

The 19th limited cabinet size to 30 ministers. The 19th  however allows for unlimited expansion where there is a ‘national government’. The architects of the amendment and those who voted for it (only one MP voted against it while one abstained and seven were absent) were complicit in keeping ‘national government’ undefined.  

It left us with an as yet unanswered question: what is a ‘national government’? It is ‘national’ if ALL PARTIES REPRESENTED IN PARLIAMENT are part of the government?  Is it ‘national’ if the two parties with the largest number of seats form a government? Would it be ‘national’ if one party (say, the UNP) forms a government with a few from the third largest political group in Parliament (in this case, the SLFP)? Would the word be valid for a ‘UNP + one or a few others’ that form a government?  

The key issue right now is that this is no longer a SLFP-UNP coalition. It is at best a government made of the UNP, a few SLFP stragglers (note, ‘UNP’ means all those who contested under the elephant symbol at the last General Election).  As such this cabinet would be illegal unless we use a very loose and even silly definition for the term ‘national’.  If common sense definitions are used, then the size of the cabinet as of today is unconstitutional.

This probably explains why both the UNP and the SLFP are laboring with the cabinet reshuffle.  The UNP needs to please more than 30 and it cannot do this if the SLFP doesn’t play ball.  Even if the SLFP decides to play ball, the term ‘national government’ would be hilarious if it weren’t an absolutely pernicious twist of the term since the there are at least 70 MPs who are not listening to Sirisena as of now.  At the last count (i.e. at the vote on the no-confidence motion), the Prime Minister had only the support of his party and the Tamil National Alliance. A government led by a Prime Minister who is not backed by over 100 MPs is not ‘national’ and not even a perversion of ‘national’. 

It is clear that a ‘National Government’ is no longer tenable and perforce cabinet size has to be cut down to 30. 

Wickremesinghe’s ardent fan club believes the man is a democrat (despite all evidence to the contrary) and a decent politician; yes, some say he’s a statesman. Let’s call the bluff.  Let him show that he is. Let him prune the cabinet down to 30.  

What he does (or probably will not do) is less important than getting the constitutional flaw corrected. ‘National Government’ needs to be defined so that political machinations by crooks, thugs and self-serving ego maniacs are stumped at every turn, including cabinet reshuffles.  That’s more important than seeing some two-bit politician stumble.  Agreed?

Also read: The19th Amendment should be revisited

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer. malindasenevi@gmail.com. www.malindawords.blogspot.com

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