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While US President Donald Trump was still ruling the roost and even before his diplomatic storm troopers could set foot on Sri Lankan soil, those in the China shop had fired a salvo across the bows of the Trump ‘war wagon’ accusing Washington of bullying Sri Lanka.

Oh so very considerate of China, so very protective of the Middle Kingdom to warn all those marauding beasts to stay away from Sri Lanka. If such threatening warnings are ignored and Sri Lanka’s sovereign territory is trespassed and trampled by American military boots then China would rise immediately to safeguard the Pearl of the Indian Ocean.

After all, did not the ancient kings of Lanka treat the Chinese emperors with great reverence and friendliness sending Lankan water buffaloes all the way to China to join the other buffaloes there? The pity of it was that the courtiers of old did not send all our buffaloes. So some of the descendants of those buffaloes — I mean the ones left behind — went into other jobs, some even becoming lawmakers and others lawbreakers lucky enough to win pardons from latter day rulers of this blessed isle.

Oft have we heard stories — apocryphal or not only the crooked and wicked can confirm — that those who entered the kingly court — called the parliament centuries later — ransacked the king’s counting house whenever the monarch and his retinue took a well-deserved holiday in some holy place across the Palk Strait, for the royalty had loads of riches, some plundered from the closest plunderer, that they did not know how much was stolen.

In any event most courtiers could not count, for arithmetic was not a popular subject and was not widely taught those days. So the young princes and friends built their own palaces and even divided the country into Ruhunu Rata, Maya Rata and other bits and pieces so they could implant their names all over the place. Even today names such as “Parakrama Bahu the Great” and “Sirisena the Not so Great” and “Dutta Gamani” (though neighbours often called him “Dushta Gamani”) apparently as a slight.

Some names are still remembered though certainly not in veneration. The story goes that there were such ruthless monarchs that had their courtiers invent new ways of murdering criminals and getting rid of enemies and dissidents.

The story goes that once the murder machine was tried and tested and approved by the King’s trusted Minister of Justice, he would be ordered to carry out the sentence which he would faithfully see executed by having the convict tied between two arecanut trees and torn in half. If the convict was of a weight the arecanut trees could not withstand the Justice Minister would order that the man be transferred to two young coconut trees (that was as much law as he knew).

Those of our people who have no sense of patriotism and pay homage to western ideals, ideas and liberalism sniffing at our 2500 year-old civilization, go around saying that the country’s coconut plantations have failed and some of our pseudo- nationalists have to go round measuring the few coconuts we have before selling them because of our failed justice system that was tinkered with by the ancient kings and continue to be messed with even now.

Knowing something about happenings in China during visits there and during my 10 years working in neighbouring Hong Kong under both British and Chinese administrations I used to hear stories of what transpired over the border. Some of them were so weird.

Some Hong Kong journalists once told me that in some provinces or districts in China, citizens who were convicted of some crimes and were shot to death had to knee-down before being shot in the head from behind.  That happened to a Hong Kong criminal called “Big Spender” who was lured over the border, convicted of criminal offences and shot. It is said that in some instances the family of the convicted is asked to pay for the bullet.

I wonder how many Sri Lankans know that the then King of Lanka also sent jugglers to the Chinese court for the entertainment of the Chinese Emperor and the Royal family and courtiers. Is it strange that Chinese politicians and diplomats are still juggling with political problems and how to grab territory and parts of the land and sea that are claimed by other sovereign States.

If smaller and weaker states do not succumb to threats and bullying that Beijing claims other countries practise in order to obtain what they want, then there are various ways in which China’s wish is fulfilled as the Soviet Union did in the past and Russia still tampers with.

What is happening to the Uighur minority in Xinjiang and now to the Hong Kong people is testimony to the bullying and the attempts to suppress and repress those who do not cow down to China’s dictatorial regime and the ruling Communist Party diktats.

A Sri Lanka ruling party big wig said not too long ago that his party would follow the ways of the Chinese Communist Party and India’s ruling party. That would be a complex task. Unless of course, Sri Lanka is going to adopt an electoral system for our ruling party akin to the one practised by the Chinese Communist Party which may be the most democratic but is short and simple and does not require another Mahinda Deshapriya and a commission to tell the Sri Lankan people how to run elections — bit or small — and stay away from Covid and tampered votes.

It would be much easier if the Chinese head of state sits in his office and just ticks off the names of the elected. That might be easier in our Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka but certainly not in China with its 2 billion or so people. The head of state will end up with arthritis in his elbow joints and fingers if he is to tick off millions of names.

The task will be much easier in India with its more democratic process though with a population as much as that of China. I suppose that is what our new foreign policy stalwarts meant by following an “India First” policy.

Now that a new constitution is on the cards let our people should urge the drafters whether they know much of constitution — making or not to make sure that our foreign policy is reflected in the constitution.

Our nation’s name should remain unchanged and steadfast — Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. To show our neutrality we shall remain democratic like the US which is trying to bully us. We shall remain socialist like China which is also trying to bully. They we can remain neutral between the two, both of which are trying to bully us.

If any of them or others try to bully us we can always file an injunction or whatever it is called, in the Supreme Court and pack it with judges favourable or friendly to us, as they do in democratic America, as President Trump did the other day.

So pray the constitution-makers, be they magistrate’s court lawyers, commercial lawyers or barefoot lawyers do as they are told. A former US federal prosecutor James Zirin quoted in his book “Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3500 Law Suits” a saying by Roy Cohen, the longtime lawyer “F- the law. Who is the judge”.

 (Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor, Diplomatic Editor and Political Columnist of the Hong Kong Standard before moving to London where he worked for Gemini News Service. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London before returning to journalism.)