Cut out the cut-out heroes!

Hail the self-labelled 'Wise Man of Parliament'!!!!!

Someone said that Ranil Wickremesinghe had ordered his ‘cut-outs’ to be dismantled.  I haven’t seen any RW cut-outs.  So if an order had been issued it must have been on the following lines: ‘Make sure there are no cut-outs of me!’  

Whether any of this happened we do not know.  One thing is certain: a Ranil Wickremesinghe larger-than-life would not attract.  If a move was made, it was wise.  If a move hasn’t been made, that’s wise too.  

What’s disappointing is that RW hasn’t rapped the knuckles of the cut-out heroes in his party.  It is disappointing because these very same worthies were howling not too long ago about Mahinda Rajapaksa’s cut-outs.  Some of them said that cut-outs take away from the city’s beauty, never mind that they didn’t attribute the ‘beauty’ part of it to the very regime they vilified.  But they were right.  Beautification is no license for subsequent desecration.  

It is funny, really.  There’s Wijedasa Rajapakshe claiming that he is the Wise Man of the Parliament. 'ප්‍රාඥයා' (‘Praagnayaa’) actually translates as ‘intellectual’ but ‘wise man’ somehow goes better with the pomposity.  This ‘wise man’ held membership in two political parties, both representing both the lumpen proletariat and the lumpen bourgeoisie.  

He uttered not a word of protest about the dictatorial nature of the UNP Constitution.  Nothing about the Central Bank bond issue. His intellect, sorry wisdom, appeared to have gone to sleep when Ranil Wickremesinghe appointed three party loyalists to inquire into the bond matter which implicated a hand-picked Governor and a hand-picked chairman of a bank who was also a party man.  He went along with his leader’s attempt to institute an all powerful executive prime ministership in place of the much vilified all powerful executive presidency.  He did his bit, wisely, to help scuttle electoral reform.  He looked the other way when his party dumped the Right to Information Act.  Wise.  Very wise.  

Then there’s Sujeewa Senasinghe, the copper-colored MP who has done nothing of significance in or out of Parliament.  He claims or rather he has got his minions to claim that he is our future.  One worries.  Period.  

Oh, Ravi!  That’s Ravi K.  K for Karunanayake.  He’s a big boy.  He’s gone to town.  Lee Kuan Yew described Sri Lankan politics as a periodic auctioning of non-existent resources.  He got it all wrong.  Ravi K is bragging about doing what he has not done as though the doing/not-doing was all done with his own money even as the said money is essentially public funds.  He’s a master at taking credit for what other people have (claimed to have) done.  Check the hoardings.  It’s Ravi who brought down prices (they are all up now, but that’s another matter) of less than a dozen items, some of which hardly figure in the average consumer’s desirable-list.  He brought down the price of fuel, he would have us believe.  He’s done everything.  

And he’s cute.  He’s even inserted a picture of the President (leader of the SLFP and not UNP, let us not forget) to decorate his brag.  Smart.  He is Mr Generosity Unlimited.  Lovely.

Then there’s  Upul Shantha Sannasgala grabbing the walls for his campaign.  He’s used to it, being a well-known tuition master who has been peddling his wares in much the same way for several decades now.  

There are others and no doubt we’ll see other wise and generous people from other parties including those who claim they too are our future laughing at us from walls and hoardings.  But those other parties were supposed to be like that.  The UNP was supposed to be different.  

How could we forget Harin Fernando.  He came to Colombo with a bunch of people. They came in ‘CTB buses’.  Harin no doubt would have hired these buses.  They remain public property though.  Harin’s face was plastered all over those buses.  That’s ‘difference’?  A ‘better political culture’?  What does the Wise Man say?  What does the philanthropist say?  What does the Man of the Future say?  

So what has changed from the Rajapaksa days, huh?  

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Pot Wijedasa and Kettle GL

Wijedasa Rajapakse, Minister of Justice, claims that Prof G.L. Peiris is greedy for a ministerial portfolio, even in a government led by Velupillai Prabhakaran.  He adds that Prof Peiris is worried that he might not be given nominations at the next general election and that’s why he (and others, for the same reason) have brought a no-confidence motion against the Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. 

He could have added ‘Prof Peiris can’t tell his left hand from his right’.  And as an aside, whisper ‘Even Anura Kumara Dissanayake is as confused!’  There is nothing easier than being presumptuous about what someone thinks and does and why.  In the case of Prof Peiris, however, the ministerial-greed charge can be sold given his (Peiris’) track record: Minister in Chandrika Kumaratunga’s governments (1994-2000, 2000-2001), minister in Wickremesinghe’s 3-year government (2001-2004) after crossing over from the People’s Alliance to the UNP in 2001, and minister in Mahinda Rajapaksa’s governments (having crossed over from the UNP).  

One charge or piece of conjecture that can be supported, however, does not mean that others are defensible.  The assumptions here are that a) Ranil doesn’t deserve to face a no-confidence motion, and b) the said motion was a product of fear regarding nominations.  Could be true but that’s only part of the story.   Confidence is pretty much a subjective matter and is informed by political prerogatives that have little to do with a person or government’s performance.  Wijedasa Rajapaksa knows this well.  After all he was eying a parliamentary seat when the then president, Chandrika Kumaratunga, showed her lack of confidence in his current boss, Ranil Wickremesinghe, by grabbing three key ministerial portfolios.  

So when Wijedasa talks as though he has the last word on democracy, we have to treat it as the uttering of just another politician.  And not because of all these loose remarks he has made.  

If he knows about democracy he must know about representation.  He must know who got votes and who did not.  He must know who stood for election and who was terrified to go before the people.  He must know of usurped mandates.  He must know of abused mandates too.  He must know of pledges and discarding of pledges.  

He cannot talk of dissolving parliament when he knows that part of the reason why Maithripala Sirisena is the President and Ranil Wickremesinghe the Prime Minister is the promise to do away with the Proportional Representation system through electoral reform.  He must know that his party and its leader deviously planned to replace a system where the President has absolute power with a system where all that power is transferred to the office of the Prime Minister.

So when Wijedasa Rajapaksa says ‘Professor Peiris is misleading people by giving wrong information,’ we cannot but talk of pots calling kettles black.  

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Impeachment moves into Sakvithi-Mode

Sakvithi Ranasinghe, accused of swindling clients of millions of rupees, is reported to have undressed himself in court on Friday to protest procedure.  Not everyone undresses in public in a literary sense, but many do so metaphorically.  These are days of accusation and conjecture, selective references to rules and regulations and shrill protests and counter-protests.  These are days of appearances. These are days of undressing, unwitting for the most part. 

C.A. Chandraprema, columnist for The Island and well known political analyst recently stated that the accusations of vindictiveness against the government to the effect that proceedings against the Chief Justice do appear to have some logic.  To paraphrase, he said, ‘Charges are leveled against a person and thereafter his wide, who is the Chief Justice (CJ), determines that the signature development project of the Government is unconstitutional, a determination followed by impeachment proceedings; “vindictiveness” can be construed.’

The Government has, by omission certainly and possibly by commission, politicized the process, adding credence to the vindictive-accusation.  This has led to a situation where the veracity of evidence is being question and charges are being leveled on counts of fabrication.  What is indisputable, though, is the fact the CJ’s own documents compromise her to the point of impeachment.  Her documents impeach her and moves to frill the process and turn it into a circus only robs sobriety from it and impeaches the Government on true intent. 

On the other hand, if the Government wanted a circus, it seems that those who oppose the impeachment have agreed to provide the clowns.  It has come to a point where political acrobats are being upstaged by politico-legal clowns.  Let’s talk more about appearances.

People have short memories.  The first to raise objection to Shiranee Bandaranayake was the Opposition.  This was long before the Divi Neguma Bill came up.  The shrill objectors included NGO personalities with sad, clownish and pernicious track records.  Today they attend demonstrations supporting the CJ, appearing as though they’ve burnt to cinders their ‘good governance’ handbooks.  They could, if they believe they are honest (which they are not) fault the Government for what appears to be a witch-hunt but raise queries about issue of propriety in the CJ’s behavior with respect to her many bank accounts, strange deposit-withdrawal records and interest-conflict in handling the Ceylinco case.  Instead, they appear to be playing moment-politics spurred by regime-hatred.    That’s self-stripping of a kind.

Then we have the lawyers playing kattadiya and turning the Supreme Court into a thovil-maduwa, a circus in its own right.  If the Government is finger-poking and thereby desecrating those hallowed chambers of justice, these ladies and gentlemen are but playing accessories-after-the-fact or worse, besting the Government in some strange game to turn the judiciary into a laughing stock in the public eye.   They have played political-entourage to the CJ’s manifest assumption of a political persona.  They’ve cheered the CJ and the CJ has acknowledged with tacit if not open encouragement.  

The independence of the judiciary and especially the Supreme Court, then, in this instance at least, has been damaged not by the executive or legislative but by the lawyers and judges themselves.  Self-immolation, one might call it.  It can also be called self-stripping.  How this impacts the CJ’s ability to hear cases where clients are represented by what might be called (members of) her cheering squad does not require elaboration. 

Then there are those special lawyers, those who have been retained to represent the CJ’s interest directly and those, like Wijayadasa Rajapaksa, who are batting for her outside the impeachment process.  It is strange that some of these very people have and are representing Ceylinco against the depositors who were robbed of millions and millions of rupees.  Strange, also, because of a) the CJ’s decision to) take over the case, b) the manifest leniency on the accused and foot-dragging in concluding the case in contradiction of assurances given to depositors, and c) the involvement in purchasing a Ceylinco property.   Nothing illegal about it of course but it is still hard to digest.

Politicians strip themselves often enough.  That’s not news. Here, though, we are seeing a new set of strippers, who don’t want to acknowledge stripping and would have us believe they are fully clothed. 

At the end of the day, Sakvithi Ranasinghe looks more clothed than this lot.  More honest.  And that, ladies and gentlemen is not something to laugh about. 

[Published in 'The Nation', December 16, 2012] 

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Wijedasa Rajapakshe’s agenda and options for the JHU

On February 15, 2004, on the eve of some prominent bikkhus launching a political party, a political commentator made the following observation in the Sunday Island: ‘It is the duty of the Mayor to ensure, among other things, that the sewerage system works properly; however it is not the Mayor’s job to climb into a cess pit and do the cleaning him/herself’.  It was an observation on the role of clergy, especially bikkhus, in politics.  

The Jathika Hela Urumaya made waves back then and it can even be said that vilified as they were they nevertheless played a key ideological role in shifting the political drift away from division and appeasement to unitary and removal of terrorist threat.  Their fortunes have since dipped, at least in terms of numbers, although the ideology of nationalism they promoted does not seem to have lost any ground.  Even their detractors would concede that the satyagraha of Ven Omalpe Sobitha protesting P-TOMS (June 2005), the march to Mavil Aru (August 2006) and the stand taken at the Donor Forum in Kandy by Ven Athureliye Rathana (May 2005) were landmark events that helped change policy direction. 

Whether political activity violates vinaya rules is of course a moot point, with both defenders and opponents having an array of arguments and citations to support their respective positions.  On the other hand, states are not religious bodies and laws are for all; they have to be blind to the gihi-pevidi (lay-clergy) distinction. A bikkhu, for example, though a member of the clergy, remains a prthagjana or an unenlightened being (the same way that a Christian missionary is not automatically deserving of beatification).  He has an ID card and civic rights. 

It is in this context that Wijedasa Rajapakshe’s ‘Private Members’ Bill’ seeking to stop bikkhus from entering Parliament needs to be examined.  It is not that this country lacks issues that warrant responses by way of Bills, from the Government or from individual MPs.  It is also strange that the debate that ensued following this move by Rajapakshe has focused on prominent JHU members but has completely ignored Eran Wickramaratne, a very well known preacher of ‘The Assembly of God’.  This is why this move is seen as patently ‘Anti-Buddhist’ and given rise to questions about Rajapakshe’s agenda and inquiries about whose interests he is serving.  It reads ‘Clergy’ but targets ‘Bikkhu’.

All citizens have a right to engage in political activity in whatever form that is not illegal.  The Parliament is only one location in a political universe; the machinations of people of other faiths, including clergy, in political affairs is well recorded, for example.  Closing parliamentary doors to a certain group would be an infringement of fundamental rights.  The Bill, Rajapakshe ought to know, would be shot down by the Supreme Court.  As such the move is unsavoury and only adds to an already tense situation with regard to the politics of religion in this country. 

 It is up to the Buddhist Order to pass determination on the kepa-akepa (sanctioned and forbidden) of the bikkhu.  Prohibitions should come from that address, and not the state.  In this, the dayakas do have a say and indeed one can say that this ‘say’ was expressed in the 2010 General Election.  Perhaps the two results (in 2004 and 2010) as far as the JHU is concerned indicate that a Parliamentary role was sanctioned in the earlier political moment but support for that position has since declined.

Rajapakshe alone will know what prompted him to do this and it is up to the general public to read the move as they will.  The JHU would do well to read the general sentiments of the Buddhists in this country in the matter of bikkhus entering Parliament.  Effective as they have been in promoting a particular policy regime, true though it is that Parliament is the supreme forum for representing sentiments of one’s constituency, the JHU might want to consider whether the utility value of Parliament has declined over the last 8 years. 

Ven Omalpe Sobitha Thero famously stated in 2005, ‘Let my silence be louder than gunshots’.  That was ‘Mayoral’, to use the analogy referred to above and written without intending insult to the Venerable Thero.  It is an option that is still open for the JHU. Only, it could be called ‘Presidential’ at this point. 

['The Nation' Editorial of June 10, 2012}

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