Sunday Times 2
Moral rearmament and ethnic tolerance
Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s often repeated claim that he lost only because of the Tamils, implying ingratitude for their ‘liberation from bondage,’ must surely have a corollary that his apparent victory over Ranil Wickremesinghe in 2005 was also only because of the Tamils (who were forced to stay away from voting because of evil Prabha’s physical threat to have their voting hands cut off, if they did.) One can envisage the ‘thank you’ given to Prabha for his benevolence in giving the former President eight long years at the helm and Prabha’s consequential disappointment at the ingratitude leading to his muddy death in May 2009.
Noble act: TNA leader R. Sampanthan attending the main Independence Day celebrations
In a recent in-depth analysis of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s southern success, the diminishing margins of victory over the past four years could have spelt defeat, even in Buddhist Sinhala strongholds, had he ignored his astrological prophet and carried on for a further two years. Today’s Government is not without its own travails in having to accommodate some who are infected with the same Leprosy of Impunity and indulge in criminal thuggery over the vanquished at the last election.
Again, there are criticisms levelled at the seniors of the new Government for lack of a unified pronouncement of their principles of action. Have such critics fully grasped the complexities of forming a Government of National Consensus by a consenting group with diverse political aspirations? We must understand that their one and only primary call was the Herculean task of defeating an all powerful regime, immeasurably affluent and capable of using every resource to stay in power indefinitely.
To these critics, one cautionary bit of good advice – please be patient and give the Government time to firm up on ‘electioneering promises.’ The Port City Project is a case in point which, however tainted with apparent corruption, cannot be just abandoned without the adverse consequences of losing the credibility of future international investors, so necessary for our economic future. But, going ahead will depend on an acceptable environmental and economic feasibility to be studied over the next 40 days — the area of ‘land fill’ will only be limited to what the environmental feasibility recommends.
There will also be a negotiated removal of any corrupt practices in the present contract and a removal of any freehold bequests and a renegotiation of the quantum of land to be leased to the contracting party. What was important in the election promise was the removal of corruption endemic in many intended projects of the last regime and not the removal of the projects themselves if they merited implementation.
As a proud Sri Lankan and a disillusioned Tamil, the writer is saddened by the news that an arrogant section of the Tamil polity has taken umbrage at the noble act of R. Sambanthan M.P. and M.A. Sumanthiran M.P., for attending our National Day celebrations on February 4. Why, oh why, are these two Sri Lankan statesmen being taken to task for being truly Sri Lankan and attending the legitimate National Day celebrations of our united Sri Lanka? In London, the zombies of the Tamil Youth Forum and the British Forum in their extremist zeal have condemned this act by burning an effigy of Sumanthiran; a similar disgraceful act took place in Jaffna. Isn’t this extremist objection a display of Tamil arrogance? This is one of the chief reasons for the hopeless mess our beloved Sri Lanka has been cursed with an ethnic divide for over sixty years.
In condemning this noble act, here in Sri Lanka, a man of little sense said, “we told our people to vote for Maithripala Sirisena for President and that is sufficient for now and it is up to the new Government to do all they have promised to show their gratitude to the Tamils.” We, as rational and loyal Tamil citizens of Sri Lanka voted for sanity to return to our country, which was on the lunatic fringe of becoming a mongrel state with no self-respect left and certainly not because some polarised Tamil asked us to do so. Aren’t all of us striving to be One People, One Nation, One Proud Sri Lanka? As a Tamil longing for the day we can all be proud to be Sri Lankan, I would implore these polarised few to put aside their differences and embrace the vast majority of our Sinhala brethren who, like most of us rational Tamils, want to be One People. It was so refreshing to read the enlightened, well researched, article of D.B.S. Jeyaraj in the ‘Daily Mirror’ of Saturday, February 25, 2015, rightly calling the evil fringe ‘LTTE supporters.’
The writer’s entire home on six acres by the banks of the Bolgoda Lake and his entire office at Coniston Place, Colombo 7, were totally consumed by fire and destroyed by small rabid mobs on the black Monday of 23rd July 1983; but, in sharp contrast, it was the ‘Maithree’ of the majority Sinhala gentry who, at the risk of their own safety, offered their unstinting help to take us to the safety of their homes, protect and feed us until sanity returned.
At one sick extremist end of this ethnic spectrum lies the virus of an inflammatory Northern Provincial Council rushed resolution for an international inquiry into the genocide of the Tamil people since 1948. They have to be enlightened that the word ‘genocide’ implies the extermination of an entire ethnic entity. What baffles one is the shocking news that this virus infected an otherwise balanced Supreme Court Judge to force him to endorse this spurious resolution, which he continues to defend, raking the past with invective utterances in the ‘Daily Mirror,’ of Friday, February 27, against the goodwill of the amiable Prime Minister.
The Geneva resolution suggesting an international inquiry into Human Rights abuses by both parties, in the last stages of the war in May 2009, first saw reality because of the four-year delay on the part of the last regime to establish with sincerity a genuine independent home grown reconciliation commission into human rights abuses and a further year’s delay in establishing the LLRC recommendation for a genuine indigenous reconciliatory investigation into human rights abuses on both sides. It is in this context that the new President, we Tamils voted for, and the new Prime Minister considered it a justified need to delay the March 2015 Geneva Report for six months, breathing space, to study the ongoing Paranagama Investigations into HR abuses to see if its concluding report satisfies the LLRC recommendations for Truth and Reconciliation. The international community has placed its trust in the new regime to ensure true reconciliation.
At the other extremist end of the ethnic spectrum lie little sadistic men with little bigoted minds, infecting the innocent Sinhala majority with their viral verbiage of hate and intolerance against every sane attempt at reconciliation by the new regime accusing the latter of LTTE support.
No permanent solace can be achieved in reconciliation if the extremists at each end of the ethnic spectrum continue their incessant opposition to each other without any consideration for the other’s culture, without compassion, forgiveness or amelioration and, once again leading the innocent majority of united Sri Lankans to a sacrificial altar of hate. Any attempt at solving this 60 year madness of intolerance on both sides of the ethnic divide has always sadly ended in total frustration. This double virulence must be the mother of all curses that besets our beloved Lanka and gives embryonic existence to little evil Prabhakarans spawned in decent Dravidian wombs! Our so-called Tamil Diaspora should give up their polarised prejudices and join in the genuine attempts at unification by helping economic development with investments in local projects.
Way back, on the evening of July 19, 1977 at Havelock Park, the writer heard the leader of the then opposition, J.R. Jayewardene, concluding his election propaganda, saying the UNP would romp into power in three days and his first duty would be to embrace his Tamil brethren by inviting them to join him in a government of friendship — four months into the new Government, at a November Sunday lunch at ‘BRAEMAR’, the writer reminded the new Prime Minister of his election promise and asked why the major Tamil party was still in Opposition; J.R.J. requested Nissanka Wijeratne who was present at the lunch to take the writer to Parliament and get Appapillai Amirthalingam to answer the pertinent question. At tea in Parliament on the Monday afternoon, the writer posed the question as to why the Tamils did not respond to the Government’s invitation, Amirthalingam’s voice went up an octave, when he screamed back that the writer should ask ‘The Boys’ who forced him to stay in the Opposition — 38 years have passed since and the ‘status quo’ remains unchanged with the same intransigence today.
How can we ever hope to live as One Family, One United Sri Lanka, when we have such venom at both ends of the ethnic spectrum? This Utopian dream of One United People, One Nation, can never be a reality unless and only until we transmute the ugly ends of our polity through a moral rearmament of true compassion, altruistic tolerance, forbearance and endurance of others cultures.