Elephant fights, rock throwing and Radhika’s Albatross

Now that under the Mahinda Chintana or some other worthy philosophy the SLFP headed by President Rajapaksa has embraced the disunited national party to his bosom, even ambassadors are probably instructed by the truckloads of presidential advisers and sundry officials, to speak well of the elephant as a noble beast

By Neville de Silva

When elephants fight it is the grass that gets trampled. It is a wise saw I picked up in my school days many, many decades ago.
Had I the proverbial memory of an elephant I would remember who said it and when. Not that it is of much importance. What matters, in this instance at least, is the thought not the thinker.

There have been variations of this which all come down to the simple truth that when the mighty quarrel it is the small and innocent who suffer.

That old saying naturally came to mind as I read with a sense of déjà vu the vulgar goings on among the Greens some of whom had turned varying shades of blue and others were seeing red as the battle to control the Grand Old Party erupted again.Some tired old elephants who could hardly swallow a bunch of bananas now and ambitious entrants to the party want to be more catholic than the Pope, were turning modern day Martin Luthers with talk of a reformation. If one is ready to forget the low -level antics as batteries of lawyers pocket the cash, it appears that the “reformists” have retired to their corner bruised but not entirely battered and the traditionalists have hugged the blue corner with almost a desultory bow to the kurakkan-coloured chintana.

All this reminded me of the great battle within the United National Party, a misnomer that has surely given those who have lived through these times endless delight as the pachyderms dug their tusks in sullen shows of disunity that surface now and then and eventually ends up in the courts.

One of the most entertaining stories I heard of that major battle of the 1970s between the two leading elephants to control the herd was one told to me in the parliament canteen by no less a protagonist in this historical play than Junius Richard Jayewardene, whose memory could outdo that of any elephant, Asian or African.

But that story which showed that JR’s interest in the military minds of Napolean’s generals was not ill spent, must await another day when I hope to relate it in my book, if I ever get down to writing it.

Anyway, the Martin Luthers of the UNP had gathered under the slogan of reformists not rebels, as though anybody seriously cares about this distinction when Deshemani Lalith Kotelawala has now discovered that the LTTE are freedom fighters, if newspaper reports of some interview with him in the sheikdom of Dubai, are correct.

A journalist friend of mine who had spent several years in the Gulf once told me that the desert does tend to have some unsettling effect on people’s minds. Personally I have no quarrel with unsettled minds seeing how often one has to listen to or deal with such people who unfortunately tend to run our lives, if not nations. The threshold of tolerance is, however, quickly reached when some born again crusader tries to turn every hood that picks the pockets of the innocent into a Robin Hood.

But I digress. The Lutherans of the UNP, having failed to nail their demands on to Ranil’s door, largely due, some say, to poor legal advice that might have been good for the classroom but useless in the courtroom, were left wondering what to do with all those so-called Chinese rolls they had ordered to celebrate their victory with a media conference at Hotel Nippon.

While party faithfuls watched the marauding elephants with growing anxiety and displeasure, in distant Washington they were singing the praises of these four-legged battle tanks with increasing enthusiasm.

Scrolling down the web site of our embassy in Washington in case it had some special insight (such things do happen) into the previous day’s meeting of the so-called Co-chairs, I espied what looked like a wordy headline.

It read: “ Sri Lanka Promotion at the Washington National Zoo begins with lecture on The Conservation of Asian elephants in Sri Lanka and beyond.”

You could see why such headlines have to be espied not just seen. It was probably written by somebody at Lake House that has now lost the last of its journalists with the passing of Ajith Samaranayake.

But it gets better. Immediately below a picture appeared this sentence: “The Sri Lanka promotion on the occasion of Sri Lanka baby elephant Kandula got off to an auspices start.”

Whatever got off to an auspices start heaven and the embassy only know. Certainly not readers of that sentence which could easily have come from Daily News English.

Anyway this whole exercise with a baby elephant reeked not of subtle digs at the UNP but President Rajapaksa’s pep talk to the heads of our diplomatic missions not too long ago where he urged our envoys to go forth and spread the Mahinda Chintana.The engrossing words that follow say that all this was in pursuit of the “Enrichment of arts and culture” section of the Mahinda Chintana and done in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Zoological Park and the Friends of the National Zoo.

Given the complexion of the political establishment in Sri Lanka, our Washington embassy seems to have picked its collaborators with an eye on paradise isle.

My only worry is whether one zoo would be sufficient to accommodate all those who should be rightly housed there, particularly given their nocturnal habits.

Ambassador Bernard Goonetilleke had spoken of Sri Lanka’s long association with the elephant and focussed on “the man-elephant conflict currently existing in Sri Lanka.”

Nobody could be blamed for thinking that Ambassador Goonetilleke had lost his marbles for thinking that our conflict was with the elephants and not the tigers. Located in Washington as he is, he must surely have read the Co-chairs statement and the individual remarks made by the four envoys representing the countries or organisations concerned.

No reference to elephants there, just tigers. But now that under the Mahinda Chintana or some other worthy philosophy the SLFP headed by President Rajapaksa has embraced the disunited national party to his bosom, even ambassadors are probably instructed by the truckloads of presidential advisers and sundry officials, to speak well of the elephant as a noble beast.

Though the State Department’s Nicholas Burns, who presided at the Co-chairs meeting, has saved at least a part of the bacon for this government, our man in Washington might help dig some dirt on Allan Rock who the other day rocked the boat and I don’t mean a Sea Tiger vessel. It would prove valuable in the hands of spokesman Kehelia Rambukwella whose claims to have evidence and explosive information on men and matters appear somewhat suspect though he is threatening to blow the lid on Allan Rock.When Rock was a member of the Canadian Government did he attend a LTTE fund –raising dinner along with another Canadian minister? If so did Radhika Coomaraswamy who gave Rock this assignment in Sri Lanka know about his participation or is this just rumour.

If it is true, then has not Rock compromised himself and his assignment by a seeming bias?

But there is more to these assignments than such speculation. Why is it thought that only persons from the West are capable of or eligible for such assignments?

Is the UN and those who work in or for it burdened by some colonial obsequiousness that such assignments should only go to western individuals even when the western record on human rights is not lily white as some would like to imagine.

Perhaps Radhika Coomaraswamy might send him to Israel. There are women and children there too- or so I’m told.