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Who invited President Sirisena to speak at the Nelson Mandela Peace Summit at the UN in New York few Sri Lankans or South Africans would know.

As he was due to address the UN General Assembly a day later those who arranged the Mandela event probably thought two speeches for the price of one was sound economics — a sort of buy-one-get-one-free promotion.

But it was hardly a price worth paying by those who read the two back to back speeches that Sirisena made during his annual pilgrimage to New York.

Sirisena’s address at the Mandela summit was brief, for which Mandela would have said a thousand thanks from wherever he is. So would those who had to listen to it, especially the South African leaders.

One must read the Sirisena tribute to Mandela followed by his address to the UNGA. Sri Lankans and those who follow Sri Lankan affairs would see the threat of hypocrisy more clear than others would.

I am not certain whether what appeared in some local media was the entirety of his tribute to Mandela or whether they were excerpts. Whatever it was such brevity was welcome, though hardly the soul of wit.

I searched the president’s media outfit for a longer version but there was none, for which I do not really know which deity to thank. In case our leaders follow in the footsteps of that churlish US President Trump who finds any news that does not praise him more than he does on his own, “fake news”, I thought it safer to quote what a State-run newspaper said from the scene of the crime, as it were.

“President Maithripala Sirisena while calling on world leaders to follow in the path of anti-apartheid revolutionary and statesman Nelson Mandela yesterday said that his life teaches the world many lessons about peace, reconciliation and above all humanity.

“He added that world leaders should study the life and work of Mandela who demonstrated remarkable leadership qualities. ‘The world should be guided by his leadership qualities and follow in the path of this extra ordinary leader,’ the President added. The President added that former South African leader Mandela set many examples on giving up or limiting of powers centric on him.’

“While extolling Mandela as a remarkable leader, Sirisena urged world leaders to follow along the path laid out by South Africa’s first democratically-elected president whose “life teaches the world many lessons about peace, reconciliation and above all humanity.”

Three cheers and all that for urging world leaders to take the Mandela road, with Sirisena playing a modern day pied piper leading the rats. But the pity is that these lessons are not learnt.

It would surely have been more credible if in making that clarion call Sirisena had shown the way by example. There is an old saying that charity begins at home. Now wouldn’t Sirisena’s plea to respect Mandela and emulate his extraordinary qualities as a leader be worthy of taking seriously if Sirisena himself had done a fraction of Mandela did in his life time instead of doing the opposite?

Consider the last sentence of the newspaper report. Sirisena is quoted as saying that Mandela set many examples on “giving up or limiting of powers centric to him.”

One such sacrifice was serving one term as South Africa’s first Black president and then calling it a day. He could well have been president for life, had he wanted it. That was the atmosphere in South Africa when I went there 15 months after Mandela’s release in February 1990 when I was working for the Hong Kong Standard newspaper.

It was an exultant black majority but Mandela was acutely aware of the tremendous problems ahead and the enormity of the task of bringing the suppressed and depressed black majority and a racist white minority together and weld them into one nation.

Space does not permit a discussion of my impressions gathered of the new South Africa struggling to be born. But Mandela’s greatness was that he understood the tasks ahead and was ready to shed hatred and treat both the oppressed and the oppressors with a sense of justice.

But he was not going to hug to power though he had the means to do so. One term as president and he stepped back as promised.

Here, however, is a Sirisena who told the people from public platforms that he too would quit after one term and return to his beloved village and live with the peasantry, as it were.

Now the man is hoping to stay — if he is elected that is — for another term while urging world leaders to absorb Mandela’s qualities and practise them. He has already announced — or it has been announced for him — that he hoped to continue in power (having savoured it for nearly four years). Then last week he told world leaders to follow Mandela including, one supposes, his readiness to relinquish power.

While urging other leaders to emulate Mandela, he seems to avoid asking himself how well he has applied Mandela’s lessons in his own political life.

In his address to the UN, he pleaded with the international community to view Sri Lanka with different and perhaps more sympathetic eyes.

“I call upon the international community to look at my country from a new perspective with new ideas…. as a country at peace following a deadly conflict; as a country that is strengthening national reconciliation; as a country where national harmony prevails; as a country that has taken and continues to take every possible step to prevent recurrence of another conflict; and as a country that protects and upholds human rights. I respectfully request you to allow us the opportunity to resolve our own issues.”

Interesting, very interesting indeed! But urging the world to view Sri Lanka more humanely, more understandingly would be more credible if the Sirisena government fulfilled the pledges it made to the world in a resolution it co-sponsored at the UNHRC where the then Foreign Minister promised to set up, among others, an accountability mechanism — a truth and reconciliation mechanism — something like South African’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Sri Lanka sought advice from Pretoria about setting up such a commission and announced on September 14, 2015 that it would set one up. Even as Sirisena, emulating the self-triumphant Trump did, spoke about his government’s achievements but said little about the Truth Commission which it has neglected to set up despite asking for more time (two years initially) to begin doing the socio- political repairs.

For a man who lectures the world to follow Mandela, the Sirisena government is turning a blind eye to one of Mandela’s most important achievements — its Truth Commission.

So how is the world expected to look at Sri Lanka differently unless it gets itself a collective cornea graft?

One of the great faux pas of recent years was at the Golden Jubilee of Lawasia held in Colombo in August 2016 when in the presence of Asia’s legal glitterati, Bar Association President Upul Jayasuriya referred to Maithripala Sirisena as Sri Lanka’s emerging Mandela.

Addressing President Sirisena in his opening speech Jayasuriya said: “It is my belief that history will judge you to be the Nelson Mandela of modern Sri Lanka –the citizen who united our country and its people and created one nation and one people.”

That reference to Sirisena as one who united the country and created one people reminded me of the words of Samuel Coleridge about the willing suspension of disbelief.

Surely it is hard for even a foreign audience not entirely uninformed of developments in Sri Lanka, to believe that President Sirisena had united “our country” when his own party is passing through rounds of rupture and his coalition government is in disarray and applying a poultice is temporary.

Marx (Karl not Groucho) said that history repeats itself first as tragedy then as farce. This seems to be a case of farce trying to make history and sounds more like a biting observation by Groucho rather than Karl.