Still Patten? No, it is the Patten hangover…
If Chris Patten has left, why should we be on Patten's case anymore?
Because so much of absolute drivel was written about the Patten visit that as a people, it almost seemed we were gloriously incapable of putting his tour in perspective.Everybody was knocking over each other to pay pooja to Patten, that I was wondering it looked as if the Kandyan chiefs had got together again to cede this country back to the British.

It was made out that Patten was the co-chair of the donor committee, and that therefore he has a natural right to visit Prabhakaran on his birthday. It was also made out that Patten's visit was planned before September of this year, and was part of his journey to India and therefore had nothing to do with Prabhakaran's birthday. It was also made out that -- with so much deference and bending at the knee in genuflection - Patten was a very distinguished man, a man of letters and a humanitarian, and therefore was a man who dignified the Sri Lankan landscape by his very presence.

But Patten was a man who took three trips around his Governor's mansion in Hong Kong, when Hong Kong returned to China after the British lease expired. The three trips were not because Patten had too much gas in the tank of his limousine which was to be shipped back to UK. No, Patten said he believed in an old Chinese saying that if you do three rounds past your old home, you will return there someday!

So much for Patten. What his visit shows on the other hand is that there is still a proclivity in this country to gloss over certain foreign influences that are even more damaging to the country than the local jousts between political contenders.

Ideally there should have been little argument that governments may negotiate with rebel groups since it is often incumbent upon governments to do so. Foreigners visiting leaders of rebel groups is another matter. If at all they do, such visits need to have a modicum of nicety and propriety attached to them. At least Akashi was talking money with the LTTE (essentially) and that too not on Heroes Day.
The fact that the British government negotiated with the banned IRA (eventually!) was good, but the British it is sure, did not want the American President for instance to visit an IRA leader on his birthday.

This is not to say that the LTTE is beyond redemption. Nothing is beyond redemption. But if there are common courtesies that are accorded to government's around the world, it is that there are certain protocols and niceties that are observed.

We are certain for example that Mr. Bush will not like it if Mr Patten's next stop was to meet Bin Laden. To this extent it is not the Patten visit per se that was the problem. It's been a while since Patten left the country after his sojourn, and we don't need to keep carrying his burden on our shoulders long after he has physically left our shores.

There was however the Patten hangover. This was a return to colonialism, almost with a sense of nostalgia. For instance, some articles gushed about Patten's 'accomplishments''' and said that he was distinguished. But there does not seem to be much that is statesmanlike in a man that goes three times around his old governor's Mansion -- in the wish that he comes back - when Hong Kong had firmly reverted back to the Chinese from the British.

Then, much was made of the fact that here was a man '' who might be Britain's next Prime minister.'' We have heard of has beens, but might have beens? All this is not to be unduly unkind to Patten -- it has little to do with Patten in a manner of speaking.

But it shows --- colonial hangovers have a way of lingering. They have lingered on to the point where they look like relapses. Suddenly, Sri Lankans lapse into the colonial hangover. It's like a disease that they never quite totally get over with. For instance, Prince Charles had to be invited for the 50th anniversary of independence, and now there is the furor about getting some Portuguese potentate for some sort of anniversary of a Portuguese invasion. They don't do this kind of thing in Goa!

But if its nostalgia for the colonial power, in it also lies a strange kind of subservience, and an unwillingness to see national problems in a global perspective. Is the cohabitation crisis to blame for the fact that there is a general canonization of somebody called Chris Patten? It would have happened on the best of days. But its galling when "everything goes'' as far as thrashing our own national leaders is concerned -- while there is a general genuflection towards the alien and the intruder.

If the aliens are about to take control of our water resources, that doesn't qualify as something that should invite national disgust. Now, no doubt local politicians may have asked for it -- but does that mean that there is some way in which the national psyche can blot out the alien, while excoriating the local?

Probably, this sort of behavior never came into focus before more than in the Patten visit. When Patten got here, it appeared as if there was an attempt to portray him as a deity, just because there were some others burning his effigy. Burning an effigy is a common form of protest -- but isn't the hagiography of a man who at best has been inept in choosing to coincide his visit with the Birthday of a leader of an organization banned in his own land -- repeat in his own land - in the national newspapers a bit much? One is expectable, if not acceptable. The other is totally unacceptable, but is now in this country coming to be the sort of cloying behavior towards foreign potentates and foreign influences that is coming to be expected.

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