Chill out Chilcott or go to the back of the class

Keith Vaz, behaving like a petty potentate appears to think that because he is an elected British MP he has some divine right to visit Sri Lanka and travel to the LTTE-controlled areas.

By Neville de Silva

Dear High Commissioner,

A few weeks back the Norwegian foreign ministry sent an “open letter” to the editor of this newspaper. Not tutored in the fine art of diplomatic hair splitting, I was wondering why they could not have closed it.

On inquiry I was told that it was not the lack of glue at the foreign ministry that made the Norwegians to send an open letter. They wanted others to read it too, not just the editor.

I found that explanation rather funny (not funny ha! ha! but funny curious). After all if it was meant to be published then surely others were going to read it anyway, unless the contents were as dull as dish water and the editor flushed it down the drain.

Now that we have learnt a thing or two from the Norwegians (and haven’t we) I thought I’ll follow in the footsteps of the great peace maker and address this to you as you have been talking of war and peace and other things in your interview published last Sunday.

Actually I found parts of that interview funny too – not ha! ha! but curious, mind you. But first I want to applaud you – ranks of Tuscany and all that – for educating your interviewer by simplifying for him some of the procedures of the Mother of Parliaments especially about the practice and implications of an adjournment motion debate. Personally I felt you should have thrown the book at him – a well thumbed copy of Erskine May preferably – for had he done his homework he would have known that our own blessed parliament adopts virtually the same procedure. It used to, anyway.

However, it is not your elementary lessons in parliamentary procedure that attracted my attention but your wide-ranging comments about the seeming omniscience of your parliamentarians, UK’s concern for human rights, law, democracy, its proscription of the LTTE, the situation of civilians in the Sri Lankan conflict and even the Northern Ireland peace process.

Unfortunately space constraints stop me from commenting on these at length as should be done to expose the kind of hypocrisy that lies behind Britain’s public utterances and its sanctimonious preaching to others of principles and norms that it does not practice at home.

Wasn’t it Lord Palmerstone as foreign secretary who was described as a liberal abroad and a conservative at home? It seems that Palmerstonian politics still survive in Blighty in good measure.

It was a famous Indian Sioux chief who, when confronted with American duplicity, said more in sadness than in anger, that the white man speaks with forked tongue. That was several centuries ago. But it seems such conduct has not changed even in the 21st century to judge by the combined actions of the US and UK both of regularly mount the pulpit to sermonise to the world.

Dear High Commissioner lets try to take some of your comments at random. You say that your “MPs are quite capable of making their own assessment of the situation anywhere.” That is not all. You go on to praise the quality of debate and call it “great.”

That is quite a tribute all round. You might end up with a knighthood (or at least an MBE) for that but is it fact? At one point you say “Well, I have not done a detailed analysis of those MPs who spoke in parliament.” Despite the ambiguity of that statement (which unfortunately your interviewer failed to cotton on to) if you meant that you have not studied what they actually said how did you conclude that the “quality of the debate” is “great”?

You don’t seem to have listened to the debate, you don’t appear to have analysed the speeches but you are quite liberal with your praise. You say your MPs are capable of making their own assessment of the situation anywhere. But had you followed the debate, which you don’t seem to have but I did, you would not have offered such tribute blithely.

Many of those who spoke said they were articulating the views of some of their Tamil constituents. That was the position particularly of the Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs.

Does that sound like making their own assessments, High Commissioner? Or as the Sinhala saying about lawyers goes “kuliyate kahinawa (speaking for a fee), in this case the fee being, one hopes the constituent’s vote and nothing more.

As for being able to speak on any subject as implied by you, it is not so much the singer that matters but the song. Your MPs have not checked the veracity of the statements they made but repeated parrot-like what they had heard. Facts, apparently, are of little concern to your great parliamentarians who you suggest should be allowed to set foot in Sri Lanka.

Take for instance one assessment. It came I think from, Lib Dem MP Edward Davey. Whoever it was, claimed that the LTTE had been ready for negotiations and during Ranil Wickremesinghe government had good relations. But it was with the coming to power of the hardline Rajapakasa administration that the relations broke down and violence erupted.

How factually wrong. It reminded me of the Guardian’s Jonathan Steele. Your all knowing MPs seem to forget (deliberately or otherwise) that it was the LTTE that pulled out of the negotiations and it happened during Wickremesinghe’s time as prime minister and for no fault of the government.

Moreover, if the relations between the LTTE and Wickremesinghe were so kosher, why did the LTTE engineer Wickremesinghe’s defeat by coercing the Tamil people to refrain from voting at the December 2005 election?

Talking of democracy most of your MPs seemed to be strangely silent about the lack of political pluralism, the right to free speech and association in the Wanni? Since your government and you preach so much about democracy and even went to war to impose it on the Iraqis, why have your MPs and you not spoken out on this critical issue?

You have specifically mentioned freedom of the press. Does your silence mean that you believe a free press and democracy exist in the Wanni? I believe Sri Lankan people have a right to know where you stand on this.

You say those MPs who are planning to visit Sri Lanka wish to do so “in good faith”. You might have faith in them but to ask the Sri Lanka government or its people to have faith in a bunch of MP’s led by Keith Vaz who was found by the Common’s Standards and Privileges Committee to have failed in his public duty under the Code of Conduct to “act on all occasions in accordance with the public trust place in (him)” is like asking the fox to look after the hens, as another Sinhala saying goes. Certainly after his totally one-sided speech it certainly does.

Another chap who seems to be keen on making the visit is the vice president of this so-called All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils, is the chairman of the Lib-Dems, Simon Hughes who failed to tell the truth to the media about his sexual orientation (or rather orientations) which eventually cost him the bid for the party leadership when he was exposed ( no pun intended of course).

Don’t you think we have enough skeletons in our own cupboards to have such dubious characters roaming round our countryside.
Keith Vaz, behaving like a petty potentate appears to think that because he is an elected British MP he has some divine right to visit Sri Lanka and travel to the LTTE-controlled areas.

Don’t you think this fellow Vaz who likes to gloat in the glare of publicity (except when he is caught with his fingers in the cookie jar) and was last seen trying to get some reflected glory from the Shilpa Shetty episode, should be told he was elected by people in some little corner of England called Leicester East and not by the voters of Colombo West or any part of Sri Lanka. Just the other day I read somewhere that your mission had refused a visa to some elected Sri Lankan MP to visit the UK. Isn’t there something in your diplomatic jargon called reciprocity.

It would be advisable if you kindly inform your MPs with bloated egos that were they to set foot at Katunayake they are likely to be greeted by large crowds and they would not be led by Thamilselvan and they would not be carrying garlands either.

Perhaps JVP’s Somawansa Amerasinghe who you met at his party headquarters to which you went despite your public posturing, would have already advised you what a warm welcome would await Vaz and Hughes and other like-minded busy bodies who might spend more time trying to get the inhabitants from Diego Garcia back to their homeland from which the British Government ousted them.

I have much more to tell you about human rights and humanitarian law etc. Unfortunately I’ve already had my fill – of column inches I mean.

But a quick question before I wind up. Why is your government so silent about human rights abuses in China of which your media has carried several reports? Is it because China is a big power and you cannot bully it, because you have enormous commercial ad investment interests there and Beijing will tell you without any hesitation where you could stick your human rights concerns?
I haven’t heard your government showing too much concern about human rights in Russia either since Vladimir Putin began flexing his missiles.

Nor, for that matter, about human rights violations in Uzbekistan. On the contrary your government fired its ambassador there Murray Craig because he raised the issue of gross violations including torture. There are a couple of other matters such as your proud claim that you banned the LTTE way back then.

Don’t worry, I’ll be writing to you again addressing them and more in the next couple of weeks. I hope you will not be going on home leave during that time.

By the way don’t rush to office after reading this to issue a press release to “clarify matters” as you did that Sabbath morning on February 18 when I wrote that your government was threatening to defer debt relief payments.