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As children many long years ago we were regaled with national folk tales that featured such loveable characters as Andare, Gamarala, Mahadenamuththa and King Kekille.

Sinhala folklore has its origins in traditional peasant life and reflects our rural, agricultural society of a bygone era.
Just the other day President Maithripala Sirisena castigated the organizers of the recent concert by well- known Spanish vocalist Enrique Iglesias, the son of the more appealing Julio Iglesias, for bringing degrading western ‘shows’ to Sri Lanka thereby undermining our own culture.

Just the other day President Maithripala Sirisena castigated the organizers of the recent concert by well- known Spanish vocalist Enrique Iglesias, the son of the more appealing Julio Iglesias, for bringing degrading western 'shows' to Sri Lanka thereby undermining our own culture.

“I am a villager who used to walk in the village paddy field and bunds. Therefore I act according to our values and with a clear understanding of good and bad,” the president was quoted by a state-run daily as saying.

Leaving aside this non sequitur and fallacious logic, President Sirisena’s rural background he refers to would have acquainted him sufficiently with the cycles of folk tales built round such dramatis personae as King Kekille.

Those who listened to these tales seated at the feet of their elders would recall King Kekille was hardly known for the rationality of judgements he gave in disputes referred to him for adjudication.

Having followed President Sirisena’s curious comments following this concert one can be pardoned for asking whether he is trying to emulate King Kekille, now that the presidency has come to be equated with royalty.

It would appear that Maithripala Sirisena blew his fuse on hearing that a woman in the audience jumped on to the stage and hugged and kissed the singer while another flung a brassiere at him, possibly to advertise our troubled garment industry.
Undone by what he perceived as a supreme insult to our pristine cultural traditions what does the main flag bearer of yahapalanaya propose? “I don’t advocate that these uncivilized women who removed their brassieres should be beaten with toxic stingray tails, but those who organised such an event should be,” he pronounced with the magisterial portentousness of a King Kekille.

Note that the president uses the plural with regard to the number of feminine wear that were flung on to the stage. Those who watched some of the video clips that were doing the rounds might conclude that only one was dispatched from wearer to bearer.

But then the president would have more reliable information including perhaps that of his son and son-in-law who were also said to have attended the concert according to some websites though one cannot vouch for its veracity.

But that is by the way. What is important is who the president says should be punished and the mode of punishment. It is not the “uncivilized women” who presumably degraded our ancient culture with unbecoming conduct. Oh no! It is those who arranged the Enrique Iglesias performance in Colombo as though flying garments was a pre-planned part of the show.
King Kekille was known for his outrageously ludicrous judgements that stood justice truly on its head. President Sirisena’s ‘verdict’ smacks very much like one delivered by our king in folklore.

What is the punishment to be meted out to the guilty party? Whipping with toxic stingray tails which is a severe form of physical punishment used in medieval Lanka. Is such punitive justice also to be a part of our ancient culture that the president proudly claims he wants to preserve?

It is surely a strange irony that while our high- powered diplomatic couriers are travelling the world spreading the message of a new Sri Lanka that is truly committed to human rights, to uphold individual freedoms and liberties such as the right to hold views and opinions, the country’s president proposes forms of retrogressive punishment which modern nations abjure.

In the name of safeguarding our ancient culture we are being urged to return to some of the most reprehensible features of our past. Such retrogressive advocacy will place us alongside countries such as Saudi Arabia whose puritanical systems of crime and punishment include whipping, beheading and other inhuman ways of administering ‘justice’.

What the president left unsaid is whether, like in Saudi Arabia, such sentences should be carried out in public, or confined to the presidential secretariat or for the private delectation of his family like in Roman times. Even if President Sirisena did not mean it literally, the very thought of the Head of State suggesting that we practise this form of painful corporal punishment should lead one to ask whether it is consistent with the Buddha’s teachings of compassion and tolerance that many of our leaders claim to follow.

One news report on the presidential upbraiding said he will not allow those who have imbibed foreign cultural values and hold them more dear than our own, to destroy our ancient culture and traditions.I wonder how he proposes to do that. Is he going to whip all those who he believes have fallen prey to foreign cultural practices or is this mere political rhetoric.

The news report of President Sirisena’s recent address at the National Arts Council award ceremony carried in a state-run daily was headlined “I can’t allow people to walk around naked.” No attempt is made to explain the allusion. But obviously he thought that such behavior is not only uncivilized but vitiates our cultural norms. But that did not stop Sirisena from not only bringing into his fold but also glorifying with a portfolio a politician who publicly said that former president Chandrika Kumaratunga should be made to parade the streets naked.

S.B.Dissanayake who not only insulted womanhood and degraded the values that Sirisena speaks so enthusiastically about is given high political office instead of being treated as an untouchable. Why? Because Sirisena wants to ensure his political longevity by winning over politicians however obnoxious they are.

One is left wondering whether these are the chirpings of hypocritical nonsense or an overture to impending nightmares when self-appointed cultural Robespierre’s begin to sprout, taking a cue from misplaced presidential puritanism.

It is the inconsistency of yahapalanaya policy that is bewildering. On the one hand the government is inviting foreign tourists and investors. Luxury hotels are being built, facilities and privileges provided for investors and even a megapolis is planned in Colombo as an added attraction.

On the other, foreign presence and cultural influence are being decried and participants threatened with whipping and other forms of abuse for fear that they would contaminate the pristine purity of our culture. To claim that one Iglesias concert could have such a devastating effect on our culture is surely to denigrate the very culture we wish to preserve. The implication is that it is so brittle and vulnerable.

If news reports are correct President Sirisena is to offer more cabinet posts to those who once pledged loyalty to Mahinda Rajapaksa, no doubt to strengthen his hand irrespective of the deleterious effects on the country. This might then be a good time to put into practice the Sirisena credo for cultural preservation by appointing a cultural commissar to work under our own puritan czar who is trying to revive a Polonnaruwa era with whip in hand.

That commissar could oversee the forthcoming megapolis to ensure that foreign cultural contamination would not bespoil our own. With Sirisena thinking of life after presidency there should be enough time for the cultural Talibanisation of Sri Lanka under yahapalanaya.