The Rajpal Abeynayake Column

The Rajpal Abeynayake Column By Rajpal Abeynayake

In Lankan politics, buck stops nowhere

Ex-US President Harry Truman was known to have a sign on his desk that said ''the buck stops here.'' As readers of an American news magazine noted recently, for President George W. Bush, the buck doesn't stop at his desk.

He passes it deftly, and with regard to the issue of the wrong information leading to the war on Iraq, he says "the buck stop over there at Tennets.''.

Tennet is his CIA Director who he now blames for the incorrect claims he made about Iraq's uranium purchases.

No doubt the line may sound threadbare after being over-quoted, but it is a good old case of "you can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time -- but you can't fool all the people all the time.''

That was Lincoln, who no doubt must be turning in his grave even as I write this.
America is a super power, and when George W. Bush lies, even when he lies through his teeth, all that happens is that the American people feel a little cheated. Then, they go on to watch the latest baseball game, or tune into some inane talk show.

Different ball game

When Sri Lankan leaders lie, it is a different kind of ball game altogether. If there is a lack of sincerity in the leadership, and when the top rung of government seems to be too smart sometimes for its own good - - the repercussions maybe such that a few thousand people may die in the process.

It is not exaggeration or hyperbole at all. For example, when the late President J. R. Jayewardene proscribed the JVP blaming the party for having a hand in the July 1983 riots, he was being so smart that he was gleefully glib. Asked if the JVP, now being driven underground, will launch another campaign of insurrection, he said "they will have to find a hiding place before they do that''. That's before the JVP gave him a hiding, and prevented him from seeking a third term in office by amending the constitution.

President Premadasa had a weakness of quoting his opponents from five years back, without attributing a date for the quote making it sound as if the quote was made the day before.

If his opponents fired back at him saying "I never said this'' he will unearth a quote from five years back which was probably made in an entirely different context. His opponents however being no spring chickens rarely rose to the bait.

Sri Lankan leaders, say as opposed to Indian leaders, have yet to come to the point of realising that it is one thing to be smart and entirely another to be smart aleck. But then many Sri Lankan politicians fancy themselves as grandmasters moving in an imaginary board of high stake political chess.

They make moves without quite realising their limitations or the limitations of power as J. R. Jayewardene did when he pinned the 83 riots on the JVP which had nothing to do with it.

Almost habitual political intriguing of this sort is almost endemic to the Sri Lankan political culture.

There are political handlers and a variety of conmen and sharpers who practise it in smoke filled rooms invariably sending their bosses up the garden path. When Wickreme Weerasooriya for example advised the UNP to field the newly widowed Srima Dissanayake as the candidate for the Presidential elections in 1995, he never bargained for the drubbing that made the UNP end up looking pathetic.

But telling the truth can be a political virtue, which politicians who resort to absurd stratagems (and end up being discovered) should know by now. Many of our politicians have ended up with so much egg on their faces that their politics now carry the smell of overdone omelettes.

Around two years ago, the nation was almost doubled up in laughter when a coterie of lawyers carried out an intricate stratagem which ended up with a writ being imposed on Parliament regarding the impeachment motion against the Chief Justice.

Cut to the bone it was a case of a lot of learned men making complete asses of themselves.

Even if it is probable that this kind of buffoon politics might succeed at least now and then in the South, it is inconceivable that it will succeed when it comes to matters that deal with the national conflict.

The Tigers (who raised black flags and closed shops when Sarath Muttettuwegama, dubbed the last gentlemen in politics, died) see through Southern political chicanery with a practised eye.

The Tigers may have fascism of their own, but they have their own even somewhat romanticised sense of appearing to be doing right by their people. Somebody might add that they do right by their people when they are not killing them. Partly true, but their fascism follows a certain logic.

Which is that they will brook no treason, for instance, in pursuance of their cause -- which is why they will kill and still call it honourable.

A perverted logic it will be said, but there is a logic at least in it.

In the politics of the South, all logic has been left behind because of a political culture that sees power as an end in itself.

So Sri Lankan politicians have forgotten the power of being self effacing.
Ernesto Kelly Magtato a reader from Philippines writes to an international newsmagazine about US President George W Bush's denials that the war in Iraq was a mistake.

He says "are today's leaders so blind to deny their failures? Isn't this stubbornness a result of a belief that admitting ones errors are abhorrent?. Maturity is required in leadership, but officials today think that humility will lead to a loss of their dignity.''

Too true, and to add to it, it is as if politicians are impaled in their own petty webs of deceit, which they have spun in the belief that they are smarter than whoever they seek to deceive – the people, or their political opponents.

National cure

Above was only a partial recounting of the follies of recent Sri Lankan politicians who have been too smart for their own good – and who have left the simple devices of sincerity and truth-telling at the door because of certain level of intoxication with their own imagined abilities of being crafty.

At least in the national question, more sincerity and more truth telling is called for. Truth and reconciliation is often mouthed as if it was a national cure- all by our political pundits, but truth and reconciliation cannot be manufactured in a Commission. If there is more truth, there will be more reconciliation at the end of this long winter of our discontent of war and mutual suspicion.

This column wouldn't want to say which politician was caught out trying to be too smart, for instance in recent times, in matters dealing with the national question.

There are many who have for many reasons sought to bring about reconciliation by untruth - and who have come a cropper.

But they don't seem to be learning. It seems the more liars there are on this side of the divide, there are more fascists that emerge in almost direct proportion on the other side.

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